Guinea prime minister backs coup

Guinea's new military rulers were endorsed by the deposed prime minister on Thursday, but condemned by the United States which demanded an immediate return to civilian rule.

Former Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souare said he and other members of the government overthrown after the death of President Lansana Conte earlier this week were ready to work with the coup leaders in the West African country.

"Mr. President, members of the National Council for Democracy and Development, we thank you and we put ourselves at your disposal," he told junta chief Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, in comments broadcast by Radio France International.

Camara was chosen on Wednesday as leader of Guinea, the world's biggest exporter of aluminum ore bauxite, but he said he would not stand for president in elections promised in two years.

The United States said the military must work with civilian leaders to swiftly restore civilian rule.

"The United States condemns the military coup in Guinea. We reject the announcement by elements of the Guinean military that elections will not be held for two years, and we call for an immediate return to civilian rule," the U.S. Embassy in Conakry said in a statement.

"The human rights of all citizens must be respected, particularly those of Prime Minister Souare and the members of his government," it said.

Earlier on Thursday Souare and several of his ministers reported to the Alpha Yaya Diallo military base in the capital's suburbs, as instructed by the junta, which late on Wednesday replaced regional chiefs appointed by the late President Lansana Conte with military commanders.

Mining operations have not immediately been affected but analysts say foreign commodities firms may be targeted as sources of cash by the new rulers.

"I do not have the ambition of being a candidate at the presidential elections," Camara said in comments broadcast by Radio France International.

"I have never had the ambition of power."

Guinea's civilian leader, National Assembly President Aboubacar Sompare, who under the constitution should have taken over as interim head of state, has appealed to the international community to prevent the coup from succeeding.

COUP BACKERS

The soldiers who mounted the coup, calling themselves the National Council for Democracy and Development (CNDD), appeared unopposed in their control of Conakry three days after Conte's death from illness.

Senior military officers who also met with the CNDD gave their backing to the takeover, the Guinean web site www.guineenews.org reported.

Camara said his administration would attempt to fight the corruption he said had become endemic under Conte's rule.

"The government did not do what it had to," he told state television. "It did not deserve the confidence of the nation."

Many businesses were closed in Conakry on Thursday and soldiers patrolled the streets, though roadside vendors were working as normal and people and cars moved freely.

"We have come out because we can't stay at home and we hope the situation will stabilize," said Souleymane Bah, a car mechanic in the capital.

The United Nations, African Union and European Union have also condemned this most recent failure of democracy in Africa, which comes after a military coup in Saharan Islamic state Mauritania in August, and post-election violence in Zimbabwe, Kenya and Nigeria.

France, which holds the six-month rotating presidency of the EU until next month, called for elections to be held soon.

"The presidency points out the importance of respecting time limits and within the first half of 2009 holding democratic and transparent elections," it said in a statement.

International firms including Rio Tinto, Alcoa and United Company Rusal dig bauxite, the raw material for aluminum, in the former French colony.

Until earlier this month, Rio planned to spend $6 billion on the Simandou iron ore project, but postponed work as part of a cost-cutting scheme. A firm owned by Israeli diamond dealer Beny Steinmetz has since said it has obtained the rights to a section of the concession.

Camara and the 32-member junta announced the suspension of the constitution and the government on Tuesday. The CNDD has promised to hold elections in two years.

Camara has defended the coup as "a civic act ... to save a people in distress."

Source : http://www.reuters.com

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China said to be blocking Web sites

HONG KONG--The Chinese government has quietly begun preventing access again to Web sites that it had stopped blocking during the Olympic Games in Beijing in August, Internet experts said Tuesday.

Liu Jianchao, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, said at his twice-weekly news conference on Tuesday in Beijing that the Chinese government had a right to censor Web sites that violated the country's laws. He added that "some Web sites," which he did not identify, had violated China's law against secession by suggesting that there were two Chinas--a reference to the Beijing government's longstanding position that mainland China and Taiwan form a single China.

"I hope that the Web sites in question will be able to self-regulate, and not do things that will violate Chinese law, and for the sake of both sides, develop conditions for Web site cooperation," Liu said, according to a transcript posted on the Foreign Ministry's Web site.

Rebecca MacKinnon, a specialist in Internet issues at Hong Kong University, said that the Chinese authorities had recently resumed blocking access to her blog from mainland computers. "It does appear that in the last week a lot of things got reblocked that were unblocked during the Olympics," she said, adding, "I have not written about the two Chinas issue arguably in the past year; it is not what I focus on."

The government's action comes as the Chinese economy has slowed sharply this fall. Chinese leaders have begun cautioning about risks to social stability from high unemployment. Chinese officials have followed a pattern over the years of censoring the Internet more tightly at times of economic or political stress.

Asiaweek, a Hong Kong-based publication, reported this week that the Chinese-language version of its Web site, as well as those of the BBC, Voice of America and Ming Pao, a Hong Kong newspaper, had been blocked since early December.

On its Web site, the BBC reported that a number of foreign sites had been blocked and said it "expressed disappointment at the apparent reinstatement of the ban" since the Olympics. But at the news conference, Liu defended China's monitoring of the Internet by saying that other countries also restricted access to some Web sites.

The Chinese government "needs to do the required management of Web sites based on the law, just as what other countries are doing," he said. In recent days, Britain and Australia have moved to limit distribution of child pornography over the Internet. Germany requires that search engines not link to sites linked to Nazi activity.

But MacKinnon noted that in contrast to other countries the Chinese government defined crime very broadly, imposed censorship with little if any explanation and provided no process for operators of blocked Web sites to appeal censorship decisions. She added that even when entire Web sites were not blocked, the Chinese government still sometimes limited certain keyword searches.

Source : Copyright © 2008 The New York Times. All rights reserved.

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Rice pushes Pakistan, seeks to curb India response

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed Pakistan to cooperate fully in the probe into the Mumbai attacks but she also warned India against any action that could stoke regional conflict.

In a delicate balancing act aimed at curbing tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors, Rice said she had gone to India to show the Bush administration's solidarity and empathy with the Indian people after the attacks on Mumbai that killed nearly 200 people, including six Americans.

"This is the time for everybody to cooperate," Rice told a news conference in New Delhi late on Wednesday.

But she stressed Pakistan must help India in its investigation into the attacks on the financial hub last week.

"Pakistan has a special responsibility to do so and should do so transparently, fully, urgently and that is the message that we have delivered (to Pakistan)," she said.

India's Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee had harsh words for Pakistan, linking groups based there to the attacks in which Indians and foreigners were targeted. U.S. officials have also blamed groups based wholly or partially in Pakistan.

"I informed Dr. Rice there is no doubt that the terrorist attacks in Mumbai were perpetrated by individuals who came from Pakistan and whose controllers are in Pakistan," said Mukherjee, with Rice at his side.

Rice said if "non-state actors" were responsible, then it was Pakistan's responsibility to take tough action against them and cooperate in bringing the perpetrators to justice.

RISE IN TENSIONS

Pakistan has promised to act but insists it needs tangible proof, and has also indicated it will not accept an Indian demand to hand over 20 of its most wanted men that New Delhi says are living in Pakistan.

When pressed on whether she would push Pakistan to hand over the 20, Rice skirted around the issue and said she did not want to "get into the specifics."

But she made clear any response by India should not lead to increased tensions between the neighbors, who have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947.

"Any response needs to be judged by its effectiveness in prevention and also by not creating other unintended consequences or difficulties," Rice said.

In a two-pronged effort to put pressure on the Pakistanis, the top U.S. military commander flew into Islamabad while Rice was in India, urging that country to broaden its campaign against militant groups following the attacks in Mumbai.

Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, urged Pakistan to "investigate aggressively any and all possible ties to groups in Pakistan" and "take more, and more concerted, action against militant extremists elsewhere in the country."

India's government has come under fire for not heeding attention to warnings about an impending attack.

Rice, who was U.S. national security adviser at the time of the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001 and came under similar criticism, said it was often difficult to translate information into knowledge to be used to prevent an attack.

"I think perhaps we have some sense of what this is like, the sense of vulnerability, the questions that arise, and the desire to make every step to try and make sure that it does not happen again," Rice said.

A senior U.S. official traveling with Rice said there was a sense among Rice and others that the Mumbai attacks could provide an impetus for India and Pakistan to work together to fight terrorism, just as happened in the early days after September 11, when nations rallied to support Washington.

Much of that support, however, dissipated when the United States decided in 2003 to invade Iraq.

"There is a feeling that there has to be an opportunity here. The only way we can see a way out of this is to leverage this into a serious effort (to fight terrorism)," said the senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

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