World

Myanmar's military, under international pressure over alleged abuse against members of the country's Muslim Rohingya minority, said Tuesday that official investigations failed to substantiate most allegations.

The military's Chief of General Staff, Lt. Gen. Mya Tun Oo, said a news conference in the capital Naypyitaw that the increasing population of Rohingya in Rakhine state in western Myanmar, along with an increase in the number of religious leaders and mosques, disproved general charges of genocide and religious persecution.

He said official investigations failed to find convincing evidence that widespread rape or other atrocities directed against civilians had taken place, but allegations that the army burned down thousands of homes were still under investigation.

The two-and-a-half hour briefing, including PowerPoint presentations and use of video clips, was an unusually extensive event for the military, which is seeking to counter a wave of accusations against it. Mya Tun Oo discussed specific cases raised by human rights investigators, saying the government was unable to find firsthand or verifiable accounts that could confirm them. However, critics have said the government cannot expect to conduct a credible investigation by itself and should allow an independent international investigation.

The government has barred independent media access to the Rohingya area of Rakhine since an army crackdown began in October after insurgents killed nine police guards along the border with Bangladesh. Human rights groups have said that satellite photos support their allegations of the mass burning of houses, which the government had earlier dismissed as the work of insurgents.

The U.N.'s human rights agency in early February issued a detailed report based on interviews with Rohingyas who fled to Bangladesh alleging widespread rapes of Rohingya women by Myanmar government security forces, as well as other atrocities against civilians.

On Monday, after a visit with Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, the U.N's special envoy for human rights in Myanmar called for Myanmar's government "to immediately cease the discrimination that the (Rohingya) community continues to face, to act now to prevent any further serious rights violations and to conduct prompt, thorough, independent and impartial investigations into those already alleged to have occurred."

"The magnitude of violence that these families have witnessed and experienced is far more extensive than I had originally speculated," said Yanghee Lee.

Western governments have also expressed their concern about treatment off the Rohingya.

The estimated 1 million Rohingya in Buddhist-majority Myanmar face official and social discrimination. Most are regarded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Many fled home during communal violence in 2012 and over 100,000 live in refugee camps.

At least seven persons, including an underworld don, were killed when a prison bus was attacked by unidentified men in southwestern Sri Lanka today, police said.

The attackers opened fire on the bus transporting prisoners from Kalutara prison to a magistrate court, police media spokesman Priyantha Jayakody said.

He said seven persons were killed and four injured.
The bus was attacked at Nagaha junction in Kalutara, ColomboPage reported.

Among the dead was notorious underworld figure Aruna Damith Udayanga alias 'Samayan' and two prison officials.

Donald Trump's job approval rating stands at just 44 per cent, a record low for a newly inaugurated President, according to a new joint NBC News and Wall Street Journal poll.

In the poll, conducted between February 18-22, 48 per cent of Americans said they disapprove of Trump's performance as President and 32 per cent said that his first month in office demonstrated that he is not up to the job.

Asked about early challenges in the first month of his presidency, 52 per cent called the issues "real problems" that are specific to his administration, while 43 per cent of Americans attributed them to typical "growing pains" for any new President.

The new rating comes two days before Trump is set to address a joint session of Congress, a State of the Union-style speech in which new presidents typically lay out their vision for the country, NBC News reported.

According to the poll, he is the only President in the history of modern polling to begin his first term with a net negative approval rating. Compared to Trump's net negative rating of -4 per cent, former Barack Obama began his presidency with a net positive of 34 per cent.

Trump also continues to register particularly dismal ratings when it comes to his temperament, with just 18 per cent giving his demeanour a thumbs up compared to 55 per cent who rank it as poor.

His personal favourability rating -- 43 per cent positive and 47 per cent negative -- was stable compared to previous polls, and a majority of Americans -- 57 per cent -- said that he was performing about how they expected him to in the White House.

Six-in-10 Americans said they were hopeful and optimistic about the future of the country, including an overwhelming 87 per cent of Republicans (but just 37 per cent of Democrats), the poll showed.

And a majority of respondents to the poll -- 57 per cent - also said that Trump was likely to "bring real change in the direction of the country".

At least 11 people were injured as multiple suicide blasts and firing took place outside a sessions court in Tangi, Charsadda on Tuesday, a police official said.

According to police reports, firing continued till the filing of this report.

“The explosions took place at the entrance of the sessions court,” DPO Charsadda Sohail Khalid said.

Initial reports revealed that there were two judges present in the premises, and proceedings continued as per routine when firing broke out. While the number of attackers is yet to be ascertained, eyewitnesses said one blast took place at the entrance of the court, and one near the bar room. “One of the suicide bombers tried to enter the court, however, was shot dead by security officials,”an eyewitness said.

“One of the attackers lobbed a hand grenade at the gate of the court and then opened firing,” Naeem Iqbal, an eyewitness said.

According to another eyewitness, at least five people were critically injured when the initial blast took place.

Pakistan has been battling insurgency since shortly after it decided to ally with the US following its invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Violence has declined in recent years following a series of military offensives in the northwest border areas as well as concerted efforts to block the militants’ sources of funding. But the remnants of militant groups are still able to carry out periodic bloody attacks, particularly in the northwest.

Pakistan’s battle against the Taliban insurgency began in 2004 after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan forced militants to flee across the border. Pakistan Army launched an operation in June 2014 to wipe out militant bases in the tribal regions and bring an end to a bloody insurgency that has cost thousands of civilian lives since 2004.

It has conducted a series of military offensives as well as concerted efforts to block militants’ sources of funding. Last year the country recorded its lowest number of killings since 2007 when the TTP was formed. But the remnants of militant groups are still able to carry out periodic bloody attacks.

Pakistan has reportedly launched strikes against militant bases in Afghanistan, hours after the army said it has found links that terrorists from across the border were behind a suicide bombing at a Sufi shrine that killed 88 people.     

The army yesterday summoned Afghan diplomats and handed them a list of 76 militants who, they say, were supporting terrorist activities in Pakistan. The move came after 88 people died in a suicide bombing at the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in southern Sindh province on Friday night.     

Immediately after the bombing, Pakistan claimed the attack was planned in militant sanctuaries in Afghanistan, in remarks that can renew hostility between Kabul and Islamabad.     

Geo TV, quoting military sources, reported that the strikes were launched last night. But there have been no official word on the strikes, which, if confirmed, would be the first such operation on Afghan soil by the Pakistan Army.     

The report said four camps of Jamaat-ul-Ahrar terror group were targeted in the strikes across the border of Pakistan's Khyber and Mohmand tribal agencies. Some reports said several militants, including the deputy commander of Jamat-ul Ahrar, Adil Bacha, were killed in the strikes.   

The report quoted the Afghan media reporting that the Pakistani ambassador in Afghanistan has been summoned by the Afghan government over recent shelling in eastern part of the country.     

Pakistan has often warned Afghan authorities to prevent the use of their soil for terror activities in Pakistan.     

Yesterday, Pakistan Army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa told Gen John Nicholson, the top US commander in Afghanistan, during a telephonic conversation that terrorist activities and inaction against militants in Afghanistan were "testing our current policy of cross-border restraint".     

Pakistan Army has launched "intelligence-based operations" combing operations across the country and claimed it has killed "100 terrorists" since the attack on the shrine.     

The army has so far provided no details of how and under what circumstances the militants were killed. In a statement yesterday, it claimed it has found linkages to militant support networks operating from Afghanistan and it has closed the border due to security reasons after the shrine bombing.

A bus overturned in Argentina on Saturday near Aconcagua, the highest mountain outside Asia, killing at least 19 people and leaving 20 injured, officials said.

Operated by the Chilean company Turbus, the bus was traveling from the province of Mendoza toward Chile with 40 people on board when the accident occurred in the Andes region, more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from Buenos Aires.

"Sixteen people died on the scene and another three in the hospital," Oscar Sagas, health undersecretary for the province, told the local news network Siete de Mendoza.

The province's attorney general, Alejandro Gulle, said that the two Chilean bus drivers, who survived the crash, were held for questioning in the town of Uspallata, a tourist spot near Aconcagua, which at 6,960 meters (22,835 feet) is the tallest peak outside the Himalayas.

The authorities are investigating the cause of the accident, which occurred in the afternoon under good weather conditions and on a well-maintained major road between Argentina and Chile.

According to Turbus, the 40 passengers included 32 Argentinians -- three of them children -- four Chileans, one Colombian and a Haitian.

The accident happened on Route 7 near Los Horcones, in a spot called the Curva de Yeso, between the Aconcagua Provincial Park close to the border with Chile.

"It's a curve that is fairly complicated because of a climb and then a drop," Sagas said. Citing witnesses, he said the driver lost control of the bus, which then veered off the road.

One of the children remains in serious condition, and two adults underwent amputations of their left arms due to severe spinal injuries, a medical person at Hospital Central told channel Siete.

A suicide bomber attacked a crowded Sufi shrine in southern Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least 100 people and wounding dozens more in the deadliest of a wave of bombings across the South Asian nation this week.

Islamic State, the Middle East-based militant group which has a small but increasingly prominent presence in Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the attack, the group’s affiliated news agency AMAQ reported.

Senior police officer Shabbir Sethar told Reuters from a local hospital that the death toll was likely to rise. “At least 72 are dead and over 150 have been injured,” Sethar said by telephone. The attack on the famous Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine in the town of Sehwan Sharif comes as the Pakistani Taliban and other rival Islamist militant groups carry out their threat of a new offensive.

The violence has shattered a period of improving security, underscoring how militants still pose a threat to stability in the nuclear-armed country of 190 million people. The high death toll at the shrine makes it one of the worst attacks in Pakistan in recent years.

In August last year, at least 74 people, mostly lawyers, were killed in a suicide bombing of a hospital in the southwestern city of Quetta. Both a faction of the Pakistani Taliban – Jamaat-ur-Ahrar – and Islamic State claimed responsibility for that atrocity. Jamaat also said it was responsible for a bombing in the eastern city of Lahore earlier this week that killed 13 people.

The bomber entered the shrine as crowds massed on Thursday, a statement from the Sindh police spokesman said. Rescue officials said dozens of wounded people were being ferried in private cars to hospitals. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif quickly condemned the bombing, decrying the assault on the Sufi religious minority.

He vowed to fight Islamist militants, who target the government, judiciary and anyone who does not adhere to their strict interpretation of Sunni Islam. “The past few days have been hard, and my heart is with the victims,” Sharif said. “But we can’t let these events divide us, or scare us. We must stand united in this struggle for the Pakistani identity, and universal humanity.”

An ancient mystic branch of Islam, Sufism has been practised in Pakistan for centuries. Lal Shahbaz Qalander is Pakistan’s most revered Sufi shrine, dedicated to a 13th-century “saint” whose spirit is invoked by devotees in ecstatic daily dancing and singing rituals in Sehwan Sharif. Thursdays are an especially important day for local Sufis, meaning that the shrine was packed at the time of the blast.

Most of Pakistan’s myriad radical Sunni militant groups – including the Pakistani Taliban’s various factions and Islamic State loyalists – despise Sufis, Shi’ite Muslims and other religious minorities as heretics.

Russia has deployed a cruise missile in violation of a Cold War-era arms control treaty, a Trump administration official said Tuesday, a development that complicates the outlook for U.S. - Russia relations amid turmoil on the White House national security team.

The Obama administration three years ago accused the Russians of violating the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty by developing and testing the prohibited cruise missile, and officials had anticipated that Moscow eventually would deploy it. Russia denies that it has violated the INF treaty.

U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that the missile became operational late last year, said an administration official, who wasn’t authorized to publicly discuss the matter and demanded anonymity.

The deployment may not immediately change the security picture in Europe, but the alleged treaty violation may arise when Defense Secretary Jim Mattis attends his first NATO meeting in Brussels on Wednesday. It also has stirred concern on Capitol Hill, where Sen. John McCain, the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, called on the Trump administration to ensure U.S. nuclear forces in Europe are ready.

“Russia’s deployment of nuclear-tipped ground-launched cruise missiles in violation of the INF treaty is a significant military threat to U.S. forces in Europe and our NATO allies,” McCain, R-Ariz., said in a statement Tuesday. He said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “testing” Trump.

Trump’s White House is in a difficult moment, with no national security adviser following the forced resignation Monday night of Michael Flynn. He is accused of misleading Vice President Mike Pence about contacts with a Russian diplomat while President Barack Obama was still in office.

Meanwhile, a U.S. defense official said Tuesday that a Russian intelligence-collection ship has been operating off the U.S. east coast, in international waters. The official was not authorized to discuss an intelligence matter and so spoke on condition of anonymity. The ship had made a port call in Cuba prior to moving north, where it has been monitored off the coast of Delaware, the official said.

The New York Times, which was first to report the missile deployment, said the Russians have two battalions of the prohibited cruise missile. One is at a missile test site at Kapustin Yar and one was moved in December from the test site to an operational base elsewhere in the country.

The State Department wouldn’t confirm the report. It noted that last year it reported Russia was in violation of its treaty obligations not to possess, produce or flight-test a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers, or to possess or produce launchers for such missiles.

“The administration is undertaking an extensive review of Russia’s ongoing INF treaty violation in order to assess the potential security implications for the United States and its allies and partners,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

John Tierney, executive director of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, said strategic stability on the European continent is at stake.

“If true, Russia’s deployment of an illegal ground-launched cruise missile represents a very troubling development and should be roundly condemned,” Tierney said.

Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, sees little reason for the U.S. to continue adhering to the INF treaty, in light of Russia’s violations. He has recommended building up U.S. nuclear forces in Europe, which currently include about 200 bombs that can be delivered by aircraft. The U.S. withdrew land-based nuclear-armed missiles from Europe as part of the INF deal.

The treaty has special significance in the recent history of arms control agreements. Signed in December 1987 by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, it has been credited with helping accelerate an end to the Cold War and lessening the danger of nuclear confrontation. It stands as the only arms treaty to eliminate an entire class of U.S. and Russian weapons -- nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles of intermediate range.

The Obama administration had argued for maintaining U.S. compliance with the treaty while urging the Russians to halt violations. At the same time, the Pentagon developed options to counter Russian cruise missile moves, some of which would have involved bold military action.

At his Senate confirmation hearing in February 2014, Ash Carter, who headed the Pentagon until last month, said disregard for treaty limitations was a “two-way street,” opening the way for the U.S. to respond in kind. He called Russia’s violations consistent with its “strategy of relying on nuclear weapons to offset U.S. and NATO conventional superiority.”

President Donald Trump on Wednesday asked Israel’s prime minister to 'hold off' on building Jewish settlements in land the Palestinians claim for their future state, yet held back from explicitly endorsing support for a future independent Palestine.

After weeks of dancing around the issue of expanded Israeli settlements, Trump made the request to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a joint news conference at the White House preceding their private discussions. It is Netanyahu’s first trip to Washington since Trump became president.

While Trump’s call echoed that of past US presidents, who’ve considered Israeli housing construction in east Jerusalem and the West Bank an obstacle to a Mideast peace deal, the American leader broke with his predecessors on the idea of a two-state agreement. While such an accord may have once appeared to be the “easier of the two” options, Trump said he’d be open to alternatives if the two sides propose something better.

The two leaders were to discuss peace efforts as well as Iran and Trump’s campaign pledge to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Relocating the embassy would signal American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a move that would infuriate Palestinians. They claim the eastern sector of the city, captured by Israel in the 1967 war, as their capital.

Trump said Wednesday he’d like to see the embassy moved but that he is studying the issue closely. American presidents have struck a delicate balance in addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, stressing the close US friendship with Israel and lavishing the Jewish state with bountiful aid. But recent presidents also have called out Israel for actions seen as undermining peace efforts, such as expanding settlements.

On Tuesday, a senior White House official said Trump is eager to begin facilitating a peace deal between the two sides and hopes to bring them together soon. It will be up to the Israelis and Palestinians to determine what peace will entail, said the official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the leaders’ session before it took place and spoke on condition of anonymity. Peace, not a two-state solution, is the goal, the official said.

State Department officials said they were not aware of any policy shift on the desirability of an agreement establishing an independent Palestine side-by-side with Israel long the bedrock of US policy in the region. Three officials said the department was seeking clarification from the White House’s comments, which came as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was having dinner with Netanyahu on Tuesday. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.