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100,000 protest Myanmar junta

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- Some 100,000 anti-government protesters led by a phalanx of Buddhist monks marched Monday through Yangon, the largest crowd to demonstrate in Myanmar's biggest city since a 1988 pro-democracy uprising that was brutally crushed by the military.

As the march headed toward the Defense Ministry's offices along a straight stretch of road, the back of the crowd could not be seen from the front. Monks and activists estimated the turnout was about 100,000, though an exact count was difficult.

The march, launched from the Shwedagon pagoda, the country's most sacred shrine, gathered participants as it winded its way through Yangon's streets. Some 20,000 monks took the lead, with onlookers joining in on what had been billed as a day of general protest.

The march covered at least 5 miles in its first few hours, passing by the old campus of Rangoon University, a hotbed of protest in past times. Students were seen joining Monday's march.

On Sunday, when a small crowd of about 400 people split off and headed for the house of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, security forces deployed in force to block them.

The march raised both expectations of possible political change and fear that the military might try to crush the demonstrations with violence, as it did in 1988 when thousands of pro-democracy protesters were killed nationwide.

On Saturday, more than 500 monks and sympathizers were allowed past barricades to walk to the house where Suu Kyi is detained. The Nobel Peace laureate greeted them from her gate in her first public appearance in more than four years -- a meeting that symbolically linked the current protests to her struggle for democracy.

But any optimism on the protesters' part was tempered when security forces thwarted the second march to Suu Kyi's house. The crowd peacefully abandoned their attempt after being turned back at two different approaches blocked by barbed wire barricades.

"In our country the monks are the highest moral authority. When the monks take the leading role, the people will follow," said Soe Aung, a spokesman for the National Council of the Union of Burma, a coalition of opposition groups based in neighboring Thailand.

Yet people have not forgotten the army's ferocity in crushing the 1988 pro-democracy uprising. Terror keeps many from considering rebelling again.

"The protests will continue to grow as more people gain the courage to join, but they have not yet reached the point where I will allow my family to march," said a 50-year-old taxi driver who would not give his name. "There is still too much uncertainty to do that."

The latest protests began on August 19 as a movement against economic hardship, after the government sharply raised fuel prices, increasing the overall cost of living. Arrests and intimidation saw the movement begin to falter until last week, when monks -- who have long served as the country's conscience -- became the protests' vanguard.

The march of 20,000 people downtown was led by 10,000 monks who gathered at the famous golden hilltop Shwedagon Pagoda before marching downtown to Sule Pagoda and past the U.S. Embassy among other places, witnesses said. For the first time, at least 100 white-robed nuns joined the demonstration.

Some monks shouted support for Suu Kyi, while people in the crowd formed a human chain to protect the maroon-robed clerics.

While authorities did not intervene in Sunday's march, plainclothes police trailed the marchers. Some, armed with shotguns, were posted at street corners along the route.

A monk gave a speech Sunday calling for Suu Kyi's release and national reconciliation, the witnesses said, again positioning their cause with her long-running struggle for democracy.

The synergy could increase pressure on the junta to decide whether to crack down or compromise.

Suu Kyi, 62, is the leader of the National League for Democracy party, which won a 1990 general election but was not allowed to take power by the military. She has been under detention continuously since May 2003.

Other monks' demonstrations took place Sunday in the cities of Mandalay, Monywa, Kalay and the Kachin state capital of Myitkyina, said reports in Myanmar exile media.

"The monks are the majority and they are leading the movement right now," Soe Aung told The Associated Press in Bangkok.

But he expressed concern the military will not stand aside forever.

"Hopefully the international community will not keep quiet, and they will do something before terrible things take place in our country," he said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the Bush administration was watching the situation "very carefully."

Speaking ahead of a meeting in New York with the foreign minister of China -- the junta's top diplomatic ally -- she said the people of Myanmar "deserve a life to be able to live in freedom, just as everyone does."

She said President Bush would discuss the military regime's "brutality" when he meets other leaders at the upcoming U.N. General Assembly.

More Quakes Rock Indonesia; Foreshadow 'The Big One'

By Eric Young
Fri, Sep. 14 2007

Indonesia has been hit by more than 40 aftershocks since a massive 8.4-magnitude earthquake shook Southeast Asia Wednesday, and seismologists warned that the worst may be yet to come.

A local girl pauses at her house destroyed by earthquake in Bengkulu, Sumatra island, Indonesia, Thursday, Sept. 13, 2007. Three powerful earthquakes jolted Indonesia in less than 24 hours, triggering tsunami warnings, damaging hundreds of houses and sending panicked residents fleeing to high ground. Rescuers feared some victims were trapped beneath the rubble.

On Friday, Indonesia's meteorology agency issued the latest in a series of tsunami warnings after another strong quake shook Indonesia’s Sumatra island, although it was lifted about an hour later.

The U.S. Geological Survey measured one Friday aftershock jolting the area at magnitude 6.4.

There have been a series of tremors ranging in intensity from 4.9 to 7.8 since Wednesday's 8.4 quake, according to Reuters, repeatedly setting off tsunami warnings in Indian Ocean countries.

There have been no reports, however, of the sort of widespread tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen Indian Ocean nations after the 9.0-magnitude temblor in 2004.

But experts have been predicting a repeat of the deadly earthquake.

Kerry Sieh of the California Institute of Technology, who has spent decades studying the fault line in the area, said these temblors could be leading up to the big one.

"No one can say whether it will be in 30 seconds or 30 years," Sieh said, according to The Associated Press. "But what happened the other day, I think is quite possibly a sequence of smaller earthquakes leading up to the bigger one."

Danny Hillman, an earthquake specialist at the Indonesian Institute of Science, also believes there is a “strong indication” that the latest string of quakes “foreshadows the big one.”

"We all agree there is an 8.5 or stronger earthquake waiting to happen," he told AP.

Relief Efforts

The latest quakes have so far killed at least 13 people, damaged hundreds of homes and churned up a 10-foot-high tsunami.

Several towns along the western coast of Bengkulu and West Sumatra province, the closest to the epicenters, reported houses collapsed or scores of buildings partly destroyed or suffering from cracks, noted World Vision International in its latest report. Electricity in many parts of Sumatra was down after the quake, as power stations had broken down, the Christian humanitarian agency added.

“So far, the real impact of the quakes is unclear,” said WVI’s Humanitarian and Emergencies Assessment manager, Jimmy Nadapdap, in the agency’s report Thursday. “We are receiving media reports from the cities of Bengkulu, Padang and Jambi, but we are unsure about what conditions are like in the remote regions there.”

As of Thursday, World Vision Indonesia relief teams were en route to assess the impact of the quakes, and Nadapdap said they would provide the international agency with more information, enabling them to make an appropriate response.

Catholic Relief Services (CRS), meanwhile, has long-standing partners in the quake zone that have staff rushing out to communities to gather information for a timely and efficient response. In the meantime, the international humanitarian organization of the U.S. Catholic Church has committed an initial $50,000 to the earthquake recovery effort.

"Between the earthquakes and aftershocks, the damage seems to be more widespread than initially thought – along the coast from Bengkulu, up to Jambi, and reaching as far as Padang,” said CRS Indonesia Country Director Rich Balmadier in the latest CRS report. “There's a lot of information we don't know about how this has affected people in the rural areas. We are concerned about the vulnerability in rural villages, where the houses are modest and less equipped to withstand massive impact."

Barclays rules out disposals to sweeten ABN bid

By Sean Farrell, Financial Editor
Published: 15 September 2007

Barclays yesterday ruled out selling parts of ABN Amro to sweeten its offer for the Dutch bank, which lags behind a rival bid by Royal Bank of Scotland.

John Varley, Barclays' chief executive, added that the falling value of his bank's share-based bid reflected ABN's true value in turbulent markets, unlike the largely cash offer from the RBS consortium.

"The fit between Barclays and ABN Amro is a really great fit. It would not be interesting to us to take its portfolio and take bits and pieces of it," Mr Varley told shareholders at an extraordinary general meeting to approve the merger.

ABN tried to head off RBS's bid by agreeing to sell Lasalle, the US business that RBS wanted, to Bank of America for $21bn (£10.4bn). Barclays had previously not ruled out proposing a sale of other parts of ABN's business to return cash to ABN shareholders.

Mr Varley added that ABN's market value was 8 per cent below the consortium's €71bn (£48.9bn) bid, reflecting doubts about the consortium's ability to do the deal. "The stock market, which is seldom wrong about these things, is indicating at the moment that the outcome is far from certain," he told shareholders at Barclays' building in Canary Wharf, London.

Barclays has been in talks to buy ABN since February. Its agreed deal was gatecrashed by RBS, Santander of Spain and Belgium's Fortis, which want to divide up ABN's business. To win ABN, Barclays is now relying on the consortium failing to finance its bid or falling foul of regulators.

If Barclays does win the battle, it will replace its 279-year-old eagle logo with ABN Amro's green and yellow shield, Mr Varley said.

Barclays said 90 per cent of shareholders voted in favour of the deal, well above the 50 per cent needed. ABN holds a shareholders' meeting next week to discuss the rival bids. Both offers close in the first week of October.

Behind the Republican Revolt

By KAREN TUMULTY, MASSIMO CALABRESI
Friday, Jan. 19, 2007

Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) in the U.S. Capitol, January 16, 2007
Jay L. Clendenin / Polaris for TIME

As George Bush takes the lectern in the House chamber for his State of the Union address, he can finally claim that he is fulfilling the promise of his 2000 presidential campaign to be a uniter and not a divider. With his proposal to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, Bush is indeed bringing Democrats and Republicans together. The problem for him is that the bipartisan front they are forming is against him. It has the potential to lead to the most serious foreign policy confrontation between a President and Congress since the Vietnam War.

Though Democrats are now in charge of both houses, the lawmakers to watch are the Republicans, who for the first time are charting their own course on Iraq. At least a dozen G.O.P. Senators have expressed opposition to Bush's "surge" plan, and one-- potential presidential contender Chuck Hagel of Nebraska--is even working with leading Democrats to pass a resolution against it. Hagel, a twice-wounded Vietnam veteran, has said Bush's plan to increase U.S. troop strength in Iraq by 21,500 represents "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder since Vietnam, and I intend to resist it."

The Senate measure, expected to go to the floor soon after Bush's speech next week, would be nonbinding. However, a strong and bipartisan vote against Bush's surge strategy could pave the way for bolder congressional moves in coming months, including putting restrictions on how money for the Iraq war is spent. One test could come as early as February, when the White House is expected to send Congress a request for supplemental funding for the war. Representative John Murtha, who opposes the war and chairs the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, has said he won't move to cut off funds. But he may, for instance, mandate that soldiers be given at least a year off between war-zone tours, a move that would make it far more difficult for Bush to find the men and women he needs to carry out his plan.

To circumvent the spectacle of some in the President's own party voting against his war plan, Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are hoping to come up with a resolution that their members can support. It is a sign of how badly Bush is faring that they are considering endorsing a bipartisan plan that was rejected by the President. The Iraq Study Group's recommendation last month for a phased withdrawal "is the best option for Republicans at this stage," says a senior G.O.P. aide. "It would be less of a repudiation."

Democratic leaders in the House want the Senate to act first, in the hope that if enough Republicans vote against the President's plan in the Senate, it will make G.O.P. members in the House more comfortable about breaking with Bush. Democratic strategists know that, given the electoral math of the 2008 election, the political climate is dire for Senate Republicans. G.O.P. Senators can little afford to support their President on a policy opposed by more than 60% in most polls. A year from now, Senate Republicans will have to defend 21 of the seats they currently hold, compared with only 12 for the Democrats. That helps explain why some of the strongest critics of the Bush plan are endangered Republicans like Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Gordon Smith of Oregon and Susan Collins of Maine--and why Republican leaders aren't putting any pressure on them to back off their criticism.

Many Republicans say they are frustrated because Bush has not done a better job of selling his plan. "People would support it if they believed that it would work," says one G.O.P. strategist. "They want to support something that's going to succeed, but they are not sure this is it." White House aides say they are hoping to keep opponents at bay long enough to show some shift in the dynamic on the ground, like the Iraqi government delivering fresh brigades to Baghdad's troubled Sadr City. "Time is not unlimited," says a senior White House aide. "But if there are some tangible signs of measurable progress, as well as signs of a new willingness by the Iraqi government to change bad habits or old ways, that should at least give confidence to people."

Republicans are already looking past the President's plan, worrying about the long-term damage they could suffer even after Bush is out of office, much as the "Vietnam syndrome" has for decades haunted Democrats. That's a lesson from history that Republicans don't want to repeat. But if Iraq's troubles spread farther in the region, says Richard Lugar, the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "that will be perceived as a very large failure on the part of whoever is in power."

With reporting by Perry Bacon Jr., James Carney / Washington

Iraqi government has made no progress, US concludes

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Published: 15 September 2007

The White House yesterday issued a new report admitting Baghdad had made almost no new progress in achieving stability and reconciliation between the country's feuding factions, just hours after President Bush argued on national television for a continuing massive US troop presence in Iraq.

The report suggests that over the last two months the Iraqis had advanced on just two of the 18 so-called "benchmarks" to that end. As such, the document underlines how difficult it will be for Mr Bush to convince Americans that political progress is being made in Iraq – claims already undermined by the murder, shortly before he spoke, of a prominent tribal leader in Anbar province allied with the US against al-Qa'ida.

The pacification of Anbar had been trumpeted by the administration as proof that local Sunnis in Iraq were turning against the extremist insurgents. But yesterday more than 1,500 mourners attended the funeral of Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, killed when a bomb exploded outside his house. Government officials described his death as "a national Iraqi disaster".

For Mr Bush, it was a setback that partly overshadowed his prime time address on Thursday evening, capping a spell of frantic activity to show his Iraqi policies were working. During the last fortnight, the president paid an unannounced trip to Iraq 12 days ago, during which he met Sheikh Abu Risha, while earlier this week General Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, and the American ambassador Ryan Crocker, testified for two days before Congress. But the exercise has been only a limited success at best. By general consent, the promised withdrawal of over 21,000 troops by next summer has bought Mr Bush another six months to prove the current surge is working, at least in military terms. The force reduction appears to have persuaded wavering Senate Republicans not to desert Mr Bush – thus ensuring that Democrats will not be able to send him legislation demanding a firm timetable for a pullout. But it is unclear how much longer the White House will be able to hold the line if no tangible further improvement is evident by next March, when General Petraeus is due to give another progress report.

The reductions announced by Mr Bush mean that, despite everything, at least 130,000 US combat troops will still be in Iraq in summer 2008 – and that 100,000 or more will probably be there when a new President is elected next November.

Mr Bush also further scaled back US goals. A year ago he was talking of "victory" in Iraq. On Thursday, he spoke merely of "success", with a new watchword of "return on success" for future cutbacks in US strength in Iraq, beyond the unwinding of the surge. Most ominous however is the prospect of a US presence in Iraq stretching not merely into the term of his successor, but for decades ahead.

In his televised address, Mr Bush referred only indirectly to the issue. The Iraqi leadership, he said, has recognised the need for a US military and political presence "beyond my presidency," and had asked for an unspecified "enduring relationship" with America. In a private meeting this week with conservative journalists however, he is said to have compared Iraq to Korea, where US troops have been stationed for more than half a century after the 1953 armistice.

As that realisation sunk in, Mr Bush's claim that both supporters and opponents of the war would be able to unite around the new strategy rang more hollow than ever

Mr Bush's claims of political progress by the Iraqis were described by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, as an "insult to the intelligence of American people."

A Bush Speech That Could Backfire

By MASSIMO CALABRESI / WASHINGTON

Thursday, Sep. 13, 2007

U.S. President George W. Bush in the Oval Office following his television address to the nation, Sept. 13, 2007
Aude Guerrucci / EPA

President George W. Bush's decision to give a major speech on Iraq in prime time Thursday night made sense on one level. The news has been relatively positive for a change, what with the stabilization in Anbar province and parts of Baghdad. Earlier in the week, Bush and the Congress got a cautiously upbeat report from Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker that recommended a drawdown of some troops over the next nine months. So after months of asking Americans for patience, the President could finally tell them "that conditions in Iraq are improving, that we are seizing the initiative from the enemy," and that, in turn, he can "begin bringing some of our troops home."

But Bush's trumpeting of what he called a "return on success" could end up backfiring. Bringing the war into America's living rooms is never a safe political bet. And if news of a slow drawdown may be popular, Bush himself still is not. Some key Hill Republicans, in fact, were upset that he returned front and center on the issue at a time when the White House had so carefully ceded the selling of the surge to Petraeus and Crocker. "Why would he threaten the momentum we have?" says one frustrated Capitol Hill Republican strategist with ties to the G.O.P. leadership. "You have an unpopular President going onto prime time television, interrupting Americans' TV programs, to remind them of why they don't like him."

Republicans in Congress who were finally breathing a sigh of relief after months of bludgeoning on Iraq felt Bush was risking the progress he had made with those closely following the war by thrusting it in the faces of those who may not be paying attention. It didn't help that Bush said American forces would be on the ground in Iraq, as part of an "enduring relationship," well past the end of his term in office. Even conservative stalwarts like Newt Gingrich felt Bush was the wrong man for the job. "The right two people to talk about Iraq were Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus," Gingrich said on Friday. Asked why Bush took the risk, he responded, "Call and ask [White House political honcho Ed] Gillespie."

It's not that Bush doesn't recognize that he's got problems as a messenger on the war. He reportedly told Robert Draper, author of the new White House chronicle Dead Certain, that he knows his own credibility isn't what Petraeus' is. But his aides say this is a crucial moment for the country, that public support is critical for the prosecution of the war and that the President felt it was his duty to inform Americans of the latest developments. "This is an important moment for the nation," says incoming White House press secretary Dana Perino. "The President thinks it's the right thing to do, he thinks there's a responsibility to talk to the American people... We have 160,000 troops who are on the ground in Iraq, and I think asking for 18 minutes of people's time is worth it."

One thing keeping the spirits of Hill Republicans up is the fact that their Democratic counterparts are in retreat over the war. Centrists are running for cover, adjusting to the relative progress on the ground by trying to lie low. At the same time the left is putting targets on its back, particularly with ads personally attacking Petraeus in the New York Times. Rhode Island's respected senior Senator Jack Reed tried to profit from Bush's prime time foray in the Democratic response Thursday night, but had difficulty differentiating the Democrats' proposal from the President's without sounding defeatist.

But the Democrats disarray only makes Hill Republicans all the more eager to grasp the momentum while they have it. And they have another theory for why Bush is willing to risk derailing the good news in Iraq by stepping into the spotlight of prime time television, rather than giving a speech at a military base somewhere. They claim he's "hitching his wagon" to the popular and respected Petraeus because he knows his place in history is at stake. "He's more concerned about his legacy than he is about helping his Capitol Hill Republican colleagues," says the Republican strategist.

He may be right. White House aides respond to the Republican concerns by saying: "Regardless of what the news was going to be [from Petraeus and Crocker], the President was going to speak to the nation. He's the commander in chief and it's his responsibility. It's his war."