Koreas to resume family reunions

North and South Korea have agreed to resume family reunions that were called off by the North two years ago, the two sides have announced in a statement.
The reunions, begun in 2000, were shelved amid worsening relations, but talks on the issue resumed this week.
Several hundred families split by the 1950-53 Korean War will be able to meet for several days from late September, the joint North-South statement said.
The agreement is the latest sign of tensions easing between the Koreas.
Time running out
Red Cross officials from both countries reached agreement after three days of talks at the Mount Kumgang resort in North Korea - where the family reunions are to be held from 26 September to 1 October.
The families will be allowed to stay for a few days, spending time and sharing meals together, before returning to their homes.
Tens of thousands of families were separated by the war and the number who will be briefly reunited is a tiny fraction of those on the waiting list, says the BBC's John Sudworth in Seoul. For the rest, time is running out, our correspondent adds.

Family reunions were regularly held earlier in the decade
The North and South are still technically at war, as a peace treaty was never concluded at the end of the war.
There are still no exchanges by post, telephone or e-mail between people living across the heavily fortified border.
The South Korean officials used the talks to raise other issues, including the status of 500 people, mostly fishermen, believed to have been seized by the North in recent decades and never returned.
The South also believes hundreds of its prisoners of war remain alive in the North. Pyongyang has refused to discuss the issue, claiming they have all voluntarily defected to the North, says our correspondent.
UN sanctions
In the early part of the decade, the two countries regularly held Red Cross talks to discuss family reunions and other humanitarian issues. About 16,000 families were briefly reunited.
However the reunions were stopped after South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office in February 2008, amid North Korean anger at his policy of ending unconditional aid handouts.
He has tied a resumption of aid to progress on North Korean nuclear disarmament.
Earlier this year, relations between North Korea and the rest of the world were extremely strained. It was heavily criticised in May for conducting its second nuclear test and a series of ballistic missile launches and the UN Security Council agreed to tighten sanctions against North Korea.
But the agreement to hold the Red Cross talks is just one of a series of conciliatory gestures by North Korea in recent weeks.
Last week, Northern officials attended the funeral of South Korea's former President Kim Dae-jung.
Former US President Bill Clinton also visited the North recently, and secured the release of two American journalists detained there.
North Korea also announced this month that it would ease restrictions on cross-border traffic imposed last year amid the rising tension.
Some analysts have said the moves may be an attempt by Pyongyang to gain increased aid or foreign currency as sanctions begin to bite the isolated country.

Malki's political suicide

Relations between Iraq and Syria plunged abruptly on Tuesday after Baghdad recalled its ambassador to Damascus over the recent bombings in the Iraqi capital in which 100 Iraqis were killed.
The attacks, which ripped through government buildings on August 19, were the worst in Iraq in over 12 months and came just a day after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki wrapped up a state visit to Syria, where he boosted political and economic relations with Damascus and jump-started bilateral committees to see that security is strongly monitored on the Syrian-Iraqi border.
Since then, however, a tug-of-war has erupted within Iraq between those who blame al-Qaeda and the outlawed Ba'ath Party and those who blame Iran for the Black Wednesday attacks.
Maliki blames both, while Defense Minister Abdul Qadir Obeidi said the weapons used for the attacks had been "made in Iran". Syria's name emerged rather suddenly on Sunday, when a former policeman appeared on Iraqi state-run media, claiming responsibility for the attacks, saying they had been ordered by two Saddam loyalists based in Syria.
The Iraqi government thus recalled its ambassador on Tuesday, asking that Syria extradite two men - Mohammad Yunis Ahmad and Satman Farhan - who are the alleged masterminds of the Baghdad bombings.
The Syrians were infuriated by the accusations, responding immediately by recalling their own diplomat, Nawwaf al-Fares, from Baghdad. A statement from Syria categorically rejected the Iraqi claims, reminding that "Syria had forcefully denounced this terrorist act which left victims among the Iraqi people".
The Syrians added they would welcome an Iraqi delegation that brought with it concrete evidence justifying the accusations, "or else, it considers what was aired by the Iraqi media as nothing but evidence fabricated for internal [Iraqi] objectives".
The contradicting remarks by Iraqi officials, the Syrian statement added, were adequate proof that far from being authentic, the entire ordeal was a fabrication of the Iraqi government.
Syrian-Iraqi relations have improved significantly in recent months, following two visits by Maliki to Damascus and a visit this summer by Prime Minister Mohammad Naji Otari to Baghdad. The countries seemingly realized that they had much in common, despite Syria's colossal differences with the Maliki regime, which was brought to power by the U.S. in 2006.
The Syrians reasoned they could play an influential role in restoring stability to Iraq, which was a high priority on Maliki's agenda, given their excellent relations with Iraqi Sunnis and Shia heavyweights like Muqtada al-Sadr. Iraqi tribes, which once formed the Sunni resistance and which are now the backbone of the Awakening Councils, overlap extensively with their cousins in the Syrian desert.
Syria can build on its excellent relations with these tribes to tame, and eventually disarm, armed groups in Iraq. It can help with more border security, given that it shares a common enemy with Maliki - al-Qaeda-linked fundamentalists.
Chaos in Iraq is dangerous for the Syrians from a national security perspective because it could easily spill over into Syria, as was the case with several attempted terrorist attacks in 2004-2007. During investigations, it was revealed that many of the terrorists that had tried launching attacks within Syria had either been to Iraq, or obtained arms from Iraq.
So, helping Maliki to bring security to Baghdad was also a high priority for Damascus, and it played well into Syria's newfound relationship with the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama. The Syrians reason that Obama wants peace in Iraq to facilitate a smooth exodus for U.S. troops by early 2012.
For their part, the Syrians want Obama to jump-start peace talks by applying strong pressure on the hardline Israeli government to restore the occupied Golan Heights to Syria. If the Syrians deliver on Iraq, Obama would deliver on the Middle East peace process. This win-win formula seemed to be working well since January, when the Syrians used their considerable influence with different segments of Iraq to secure safe and democratic provincial elections. As a result, Obama indeed did take tangible steps towards regional peace, summed up in his speech at Cairo University on June 4.
If this relationship was going so well, why in the world would Syria approve - or turn a blind eye to - such a massive operation in Baghdad? There is not a single argument in favor of the Iraqi argument, because from where the Syrians see it, such an operation would be like shooting oneself in the foot.
All it does is poison the neighborhood, negatively affecting both Syrian-Iraqi and Syrian-U.S. relations. It additionally sends all the wrong messages since the bombings did not target a particular leader or sect, but a political system at large; one with which the Syrians have been comfortably cooperating since 2006.
Nothing in the world would have better served Syria's interest than uncovering the operation before it happened, then handing its culprits over to the Iraqi government, or the Americans. The fact that it did not simply means that it had no clue that such an operation was being hatched. If it did, it would surely have acted accordingly.
Iraqi officials can immediately disqualify this argument, however, saying that the two Ba'athists based in Syria could have acted without the knowledge of the Syrian government. This is also difficult to digest, since all the Iraqi refugees in Syria are closely watched to make sure they refrain from any illegal activity. Additionally, the timing of the operation could not have been worse - 24 hours after Maliki summed up a successful visit to Syria, and while relations were steadily improving with the U.S.
If this is the case, then why blame Syria? Clearly, from the contradicting remarks of Iraqi ministers, Black Wednesday puts many top officials in very difficult positions. It proves just how weak and divided they are - exposing them before ordinary Iraqis who are furious at the rising death toll and want answers from their elected representatives.
More horrendous attacks took place from 2005 to 2008, and never aroused such a stir. The fact that this comes after 18 months of relative peace strikes a raw nerve in the Iraqi street. Self-criticism is uncommon in the Arab world and neither the minister of interior nor the minister of defense was prepared to take the blame for Black Wednesday.
What is always easier than shouldering responsibility is blaming others for one's own shortcomings. Iraqi officials mistakenly thought that they had a ready scapegoat in Syria. After all, not too long ago, Syria was a scapegoat for everything rotten taking place in Iraq.
Whenever Iraqi officials wanted to justify their shortcomings, they blamed the violence on Damascus, and always found a supportive George W Bush administration willing to back their claims.
Nobody in Iraq wants to know who carried out the Wednesday attacks, because reality would expose dramatic mismanagement of government office. That in turn would drown many parliamentary hopefuls in January's elections. It therefore suits all officials to cover up for their shortcomings by blaming Syria.
Nobody in the Iraqi government would dare blame Iran or Saudi Arabia, because of the financial and military clout these countries have in Iraq, along with their respective army of followers. Left standing is Syria, which happens to be Ba'athist and still has Iraqi fugitives on its territory.
In recalling their ambassador from Damascus, the Iraqis will have to deal with the aftershocks in their relationship with Syria. Iraq needs the Syrians much more than Damascus needs Baghdad. Iraq needs it for economic issues related to the pumping of oil and rebuilding of the war-torn country. It needs it to mediate explosive conflicts between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds, whose leaders were all one-time residents of Damascus and still have excellent relations with the Syrians.
Iraq needs it to police the Syrian-Iraqi border, and to continue playing host to over 1 million Iraqi refugees based in Syria since 2003. Iraq needs Damascus to mediate talks between Maliki and both Ba'athists and Sunni tribes. It also needs the Syrians to legitimize the Maliki regime, or whatever succeeds it in January, in the eyes of ordinary Iraqi Sunnis who have historically looked towards Syria for shelter and support.
When Syria decided to open an embassy in Baghdad in late 2008, this greatly legitimized Maliki in the eyes of ordinary Iraqis, who until then saw him as nothing but a sectarian clown who had nothing but animosity for the Sunni community and wanted to punish it collectively for having produced Saddam Hussein.
It is one thing when countries like Jordan or Egypt recognize Maliki and legitimize his administration, but a completely different matter when this is done by Syria, a country that remains dominated by a strong brand of Arab nationalism that is appealing to the Iraqi street.
In as much as the sending of an ambassador was symbolic for the Syrians, recalling him is equally symbolic, and will cause plenty of damage for the prime minister, who needs a broad constituency among Sunnis and Shias in preparation for the elections.

China orders media out of restive Kashgar

China orders foreign reporters to leave the ancient Silk Road City of Kashgar, citing safety concerns following deadly clashes in other parts of Xinjiang Province. A Chinese official advised "All foreign journalists” to leave the regional capital of Urumqi “for their own safety." Quoting a foreign ministry press official, Chen Li, AFP reports that the order to leave Kashgar is in sharp contrast to the rare access granted to foreign journalists in the area and comes only hours after security forces stopped journalists from filing reports from the city's main 'Id Kah' mosque. The northwest city witnessed deadly ethnic unrest Monday which left 156 dead and over 1,000 injured. The conflict broke out on Sunday when the mainly Muslim Uighur minority took to the streets of Urumqi protesting 'discrimination under Chinese rule'. According to Chinese state media, "more than 200 rioters" gathered around the mosque last Monday but were later dispersed by police. Dissident sources, however, claimed that more than 100 Uighurs were killed in the city. Uighurs, make up around 90 percent of the population in Kashgar, a region that lies some 1,000 km (620 miles) southwest of Urumqi and has commonly been the scene of conflicts between the Iughur and the dominant Hans ethnicities. Last year in August, two Uighur men killed 17 policemen in what China described as an act of terrorism aimed at sabotaging the Beijing Olympics. On Friday, around 2,000 armed soldiers patrolled downtown Kashgar as foreigners in the city were advised against venturign out of their hotels.

Fugitive linked to Jakarta blasts

Indonesian officials say there are "strong indications" a key wanted fugitive was behind Friday's deadly attacks on two hotels in Jakarta.
Noordin Mohamed Top is wanted for plotting the Bali bombings of 2002 and 2005 and other Indonesian attacks.
Nine people, including two suicide bombers, died in the attacks on the Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott.
At least four of Friday's victims are said to be foreigners but have not all been formally identified.
See map of area
Police in the Indonesian capital are studying DNA and other evidence to try to identify those behind the attacks.
The anti-terror chief, Ansyaad Mbai, has told the BBC he believes there are strong indications that Noordin was the mastermind behind the blasts.

NOORDIN MOHAMED TOP
Said to have split from Jemaah Islamiah over strategy disagreements and set up new group
Main accomplice Azahari Husin killed by police in 2005
Escaped police raid in 2006 and continues to evade capture
Profile: Noordin Mohamed Top
Noordin was said to be a key financier for the Jemaah Islamiah Born in Malaysia, fled to Indonesia after 9/11 Wanted for planning bombings on Bali in 2002 and 2005 and other attacksmilitant group but is now thought to have set up his own
Born in Malaysia, fled to Indonesia after 9/11
Wanted for planning bombings on Bali in 2002 and 2005 and other attacks
Said to have split from Jemaah Islamiah over strategy disagreements and set up new group
Main accomplice Azahari Husin killed by police in 2005
Escaped police raid in 2006 and continues to evade capture
Profile: Noordin Mohamed Top splinter group.
Jemaah Islamiah has links to al-Qaeda and has a long track record of bomb attacks in Indonesia including the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed more than 200 people.
Friday's bombs contained nails, ball bearings and bolts, identical to ones used by Jemaah Islamiah, police said.
Mr Mbai said he believed the aim of the attacks was to embarrass Indonesia's government at a time when the country was enjoying a greater degree of stability than it had in the past.
The BBC's Karishma Vaswani in Jakarta says the Indonesian people have been truly shocked by these attacks as they thought they had put events like this behind them.
Investigators on Friday recovered an unexploded bomb and other explosives material from what they said was the "control centre" for the attacks - room 1808 in the Marriott.
The attackers paid to stay at the hotel and smuggled in the explosives before detonating them in two restaurants on Friday.
CCTV footage showed one attacker wearing a cap pulling a bag on wheels into the Marriott restaurant, followed by a flash and smoke.
Security has been tightened across Indonesia in the wake of the attacks, with 500 troops put on standby to support police in the capital.
'Shoulder to shoulder'
A New Zealander, businessman Tim Mackay, has been confirmed killed.Indonesian police say Australians Nathan Verity and Garth McEvoy also died.
Their countryman, diplomat Craig Senger, was at the same breakfast meeting. He is missing and feared dead.
A health ministry report said a Singaporean and an Indonesian were also confirmed dead.
At least 17 foreigners were among the wounded, including eight Americans.
Other foreign nationals wounded included visitors from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, South Korea and the UK.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned the attacks as "cruel and inhuman".
US President Barack Obama said: "I strongly condemn the attacks that occurred... in Jakarta and extend my deepest condolences to all of the victims and their loved ones."
Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith is due to arrive in Jakarta on Saturday.
He said he wanted to stand "shoulder to shoulder with Indonesia at this terrible time".
The Manchester United football team had been booked to stay in the Ritz-Carlton next week ahead of a game in Jakarta.
The team has cancelled the Indonesian leg of their tour.
The attacks come just weeks after the peaceful presidential elections.
The country of 240 million people has been praised in recent years for maintaining a pluralist democracy while finding and punishing radical Islamists responsible for the series of bombings more than five years ago.

Tuvalu vows to go carbon neutral

The tiny Pacific island state of Tuvalu has said it wants all its energy to come from renewable sources by 2020.

Public Utilities Minister Kausea Natano said his nation of 12,000 people wanted to set an example to others.
Tuvalu is made up of a string of atolls with the highest point only 4.5m (15 ft) above sea level, making it extremely vulnerable to flooding.
The government hopes to use wind and solar power to generate electricity, instead of imported diesel.
"We look forward to the day when our nation offers an example to all - powered entirely by natural resources such as the sun and the wind," Kausea Natano said.

Inspiring others

Tuvalu and many other low-lying atolls in the Pacific, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean fear that global warning could lead to sea level rises that could literally wipe them off the map.
Other nations - including Norway, New Zealand, Iceland and Costa Rica - have also vowed to become carbon neutral, reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases to zero.
Most of these countries have relatively small populations, and their pledges are unlikely to make a significant difference in the overall battle against global warming.
But many environmentalists say their stance is nevertheless important, as they provide a lead for other countries to follow."In a sense, they are paving the way for medium and larger economies which have to move if we are going combat climate change," Nick Nuttall, spokesman for the United Nations Environment Programme, told the French news agency AFP.
Tuvalu estimates it would will cost about $20m to generate all its electricity by using renewables. It has already begun the process by installing a $410,000 solar system on the roof of the main soccer stadium in the capital, Funafuti.