Syrian regime resembles militia: Turkey

THE Syrian regime has degenerated into an "armed militia" that resorts to brutality in an attempt to stay in power, Turkey's foreign minister said at a meeting with top Arab diplomats.

The officials at a one-day summit in Istanbul described the Syrian regime as a threat to peace and security in the region, and also expressed support for the Palestinians after the United Nations endorsed an independent state for them on Thursday.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey said the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad had lost its legitimacy after 20 months of conflict that started with peaceful protests against the regime and evolved into a civil war after pro-Assad forces cracked down.

"It has turned into an armed militia power that resorts to all kinds of brutal methods just to stay in power," Davutoglu said on Saturday.

"The Syrian regime, which is a serious threat to the future of its own people and country, with each passing day increases the threat poses to the well-being of our region, through its actions that target peace and security beyond its borders."

The Syrian civil war has forced hundreds of thousands of Syrians to flee the country, and many more are internally displaced. Activists say more than 40,000 people have died. Fighting has spilled into Turkey and other neighbouring countries.

Turkey has asked NATO to deploy Patriot missiles on its territory as a defence against any attacks by the Syrian regime, and there are fears that the conflict is deepening sectarian divisions in the region.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour agreed that the Syrian war has "negative ramifications" for the region. But he advocated dialogue as the only solution to the crisis, contrasting with Turkey's calls at the United Nations for an internationally protected "buffer zone" inside Syria that would protect civilians. Such a zone would likely require military action to secure it, including a no-fly zone.

"There should not be any external military or any other kind of intervention," said Mansour, current chairman of the Arab League.

He said the meeting of a dozen foreign ministers as well as other delegates, titled the Turkish-Arab Cooperation Forum, was a positive sign for a region traditionally plagued by a lack of political unity. Turkey launched the annual meeting in 2007.

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Indonesia detains tourist in Papua

INDONESIAN police in restive Papua have detained a Ukrainian tourist attending a prayer session to commemorate the 51st anniversary of the region's movement for independence.

Artem Shapirenko, 36, was detained by police on Saturday in the town of Manokwari in western Papua where around 50 people took part in a prayer at the traditional leaders council building. It was unclear why he had been held.

Shapirenko, wearing a Bob Marley T-shirt, held his fist in the air and yelled "Free Papua" in Indonesian as police officers ushered him into their vehicle, said an AFP reporter in Manokwari.

A photocopy of the man's tourist visa, obtained by the police, showed it had expired in July this year.

"A Ukraine citizen, Artem Shapirenko, is undergoing questioning at police headquarters and is co-operating," Manokwari police chief Ricko Taruna Mauruh said.

Papua declared independence from the Dutch on December 1, 1961, but neighbouring Indonesia took control of the region with force in 1963. It officially annexed Papua in 1969 with a UN-backed vote, widely seen as a sham.

The separatist Free Papua Movement (OPM), which formed in 1965, also marks the birth of its organisation on the December anniversary, when rallies and commemorations are held across Papua.

Police had beefed up security ahead of the anniversary and arrested three youth activists in the city of Jayapura, capital of Papua, according to a provincial police spokesman.

Jakarta keeps a tight grip on Papua and foreign journalists are de facto banned from reporting in the region.

More than 170 people are imprisoned in Indonesia for promoting separatism, most of them from Papua or the Maluku islands in eastern Indonesia, according to Human Rights Watch.

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Spain's elBulli to sell wine cellar

SPAIN'S famed chef Ferran Adria says the contents of the wine cellar of his former restaurant, elBulli, is to be auctioned off to raise funds for his new project.

ElBulli served its last supper and closed in July last year with Adria and business partner Juli Soler planning to establish "an experimental centre looking at the process of innovation and creativity".

Adria told The Associated Press on Saturday that the sale is to raise funds for the foundation. Sotheby's auction house says more than 8800 bottles from elBulli's cellar would be auctioned next year with a view to raising an estimated $US1.6 million ($A1.5 million).

El Bulli maintained an almost unattainable Michelin three-star status for over a decade and was rated the world's best restaurant five times by British magazine The Restaurant.

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Give back our money, Spaniards tell banks

Protesters and members of the Association of Users of Banks and Insurance of Spain take part in a protest to demand that the bailed-out lenders give their money back to customers, in Madrid. Picture: AFP/CESAR MANSO Source: AFP

FURIOUS Spaniards who say banks cheated them of their savings have taken to the streets demanding that the bailed-out lenders give them their money back.

"Thieves! Where is our money?" bellowed a crowd of some 1000 protesters, many of them elderly, outside the central bank in Madrid before marching on the offices of Bankia, the ruined finance giant.

The protesters say Bankia told them it was putting their money in secure savings products but actually sold them "preferential shares" as it scrambled to raise funds after the financial crisis started in 2008.

Now that Bankia and other lenders have collapsed and had to be rescued with funds from Spain's European partners, customers stand to lose a big chunk of their savings.

The banking consumers' group ADICAE, which has brought legal action against Bankia, planned similar demonstrations in more than 20 towns on Saturday.

Its president Manuel Pardos said in a statement the customers were "victims of a massive fraud" and were now being subjected to "illegal imposed losses".

The European Union on Wednesday gave a green light for the payment of the first slice of the rescue aid, some 37 billion euros ($A46 billion), for Bankia and three other Spanish banks.

To meet the conditions demanded by Brussels, Bankia said holders of the so-called "preferentials" would be repaid in shares worth only 61 per cent of the value of the money they put in the bank.

"They want to take away 40 per cent from us," said one protester, Paloma, 59, who put 25,000 ($A31,000) into preferential shares, being told she would get the money back after five years.

"I spent 25 years saving a little each day and now when I need it they won't give it to me," said Paloma, who asked not to be identified by her surname.

Spanish banks were brought low by the collapse of a construction boom in 2008 that threw millions into unemployment and poverty. Spain is deep in recession, with one in four workers unemployed.

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Suu Kyi to head probe into Chinese-backed mine

MYANMAR opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will lead a probe into a crackdown on a protest against a Chinese-backed copper mine which will also assess the future of the disputed project, the president's office said on Saturday.

The 30-strong non-parliamentary commission will investigate the "social and environmental issues" behind the protests, some of the most serious since a reform-minded government took over last year.

The Nobel laureate sought on Friday to mediate an end to the stand-off at the mine in Monywa, northern Myanmar, which saw scores of villagers and monks injured in the toughest clampdown on demonstrators since President Thein Sein came to power.

The commission will "investigate the truth" of the pre-dawn raid by riot police and assess whether the "copper mining project is being implemented in accord with international norms", a statement on the presidential office website, signed by Thein Sein, said late on Saturday.

In addition to probing the crackdown the commission will advise whether "to continue the copper mining project and whether to stop foreign investment", the statement said, without providing further details.

Activists are calling for work at the mine -- a joint venture between Chinese firm Wanbao and military-owned Myanmar Economic Holdings -- to be suspended to allow impact studies amid allegations of mass evictions and pollution.

The commission will be made up of prominent activists, lawmakers and other officials.

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Syrian telecomms down for third day

SYRIAN Internet and mobile phone links remained cut for a third straight day on Saturday, an AFP correspondent in Damascus reported, amid US accusations the government is deliberately seeking to deprive the opposition of communications.

But activists and human rights monitors said that ordinary civilians were harder hit by the blackout than the opposition as they unable to use cellphones even to call for emergency assistance in the event of casualties from the persistent violence rocking the country.

"Many activists have satellite phones, but the average Syrian who needs to make a mobile phonecall to get help for an injured person, for instance, can no longer do so," said Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman.

"Internet was supposed to be restored on Friday, but it isn't back yet," Abdel Rahman told AFP.

He said activists without satellite connections had been forced to resort to landlines.

"We speak in code, because landlines are monitored by the government," said Abdel Rahman, whose Britain-based monitoring group relies on a network of medics and activists inside Syria for its reports.

An activist in a rebel-held area of Syria contacted by AFP from Beirut said that it was primarily people in areas still under government control who were affected by the blackout.

"While many activists in rebel-held areas have access to satellite phone and Internet devices, families in regime-held areas, who have been separated by the conflict, have been cut off from each other completely by this blackout," the activist said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Syrian authorities have said the interruption to normal service is purely for maintenance but Washington has said the move is a deliberate ploy to impede communications among rebels and opposition activists.

State television, meanwhile, accused a US company it did not identify of blacking out the official SANA news agency's website, which has been down since Thursday.

The company "was acting under the pretext of (US) sanctions against Syria," the broadcaster said.

Google and Twitter have said that they have reactivated a voice-tweet program, last used in 2011 when the Internet was shut down in Egypt during its revolution, to allow Syrians affected by the shutdown to get messages out.

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Kuwait poll hit by opposition boycott

KUWAITIS have cast ballots for a second general election in 10 months, but turnout has been low after a boycott call by the opposition which argues the parliament has lost all its legitimacy.

The vote comes nearly two months after Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah dissolved a pro-government parliament following its reinstatement in June by a court ruling that also annulled an assembly elected in February.

Predominantly tribal constituencies led the way with the boycott on Saturday as voters appeared to heed the appeal by both their chiefs and the opposition to stay away from polling over a disputed electoral law.

More activity was seen in other districts, but the highest turnout was in districts populated by the Shi'ite minority, according to an AFP correspondent and witnesses.

The opposition, which held 36 of the 50 seats in the scrapped parliament, cannot win any in Saturday's election as it has not fielded candidates among the 306 hopefuls, which include 13 women.

Voter turnout is therefore being seen as the key test between the Islamist, nationalist and liberal opposition and the government led by the ruling Al-Sabah family.

And each side is already claiming success, although it is still too early to draw a conclusion.

"The Kuwaiti people have succeeded in bringing down (this) election by not taking part," opposition leader and former MP Mussallam al-Barrak said on Twitter.

Former parliament speaker and opposition leader Ahmad al-Saadun said Friday's opposition march and the boycott had taken away "popular and political legitimacy" from the next parliament and government.

Waleed al-Tabtabai, a former Islamist MP, said on Twitter that turnout would not exceed 15 per cent. In the polls held in February, turnout was about 65 per cent.

No official figures have been released so far but Information Minister Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah al-Sabah told state television that "the turnout has so far been positive".

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One dead in Miami airport bus crash

OFFICIALS say a double-decker bus has hit an overpass at Miami International Airport, killing at least one person and injuring more than two-dozen people on board.

Airport spokesman Greg Chin says the bus, which was a cruise or tour bus, hit the overpass going into the airport's arrivals section on Saturday morning. The bus was going about 32km/h when it clipped the roof entrance.

Chin says 32 people were on the bus, and all have some sort of injuries. The arrival area remained blocked off by fire trucks and police cars Saturday morning.

Chin says buses are supposed to travel through the departure area, not the arrival section, because it has a higher clearance for large vehicles.
 

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