THAILAND: Rebels in southern Thailand are prepared to continue their armed struggle for an independent Muslim homeland for up to another five years before they contemplate talks with Bangkok, a leading rights group revealed yesterday.

In a 104-page report on the Muslim- majority region where at least 2,400 people have been killed in the past four years, Human Rights Watch said the BRN-Coordinate group that appears to mastermind the unrest had more than 7,000 “youth members.”

The New York-based agency said it made rare contact with members of the BRN-Coordinate, which has never made its aims public, and was told the group had “no plans to give up the armed struggle for Pattani Darulsalam.”

Pattani is the name of the independent sultanate annexed by predominantly Buddhist Thailand a century ago. Darulsalam means “peaceful state” in Malay, the language spoken by 80 percent of people in Thailand’s south along the Malaysian border.

Along with Narathiwat and Yala, Pattani is one of the three Thai provinces racked by the daily shootings, bombings, machete attacks and beheadings that started with a well- organized raid on an army barracks in January 2004.

Human Right Watch said the rebels, who have shown no desire to hook up with international militant groups such as Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda so far, were preparing for the long haul.

“They believe that at least three to five more years of the kind of violence that has taken place since 2004 is necessary before they are in a strong enough position to come into public view and participate in any kind of political process,” Human Rights Watch said.

The far south has always been distinct from the rest of Thailand, despite efforts by various military governments in the 1950s and 1960s to import Thai language, culture and religion.

Separatist rebels waged a low-level guerrilla war in the densely forested region throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but their campaign petered out in the 1990s under a more conciliatory, democratic government in Bangkok.

Violence flared anew in 2004 after then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a former policeman, dismantled the Southern Border Province Peace- Building Administration, an army-run organization that included civilians and Muslim religious leaders, and put police in charge of security.

Thaksin’s decision to flood the region with 30,000 troops and police further alienated the population, especially after 78 Muslim men arrested after a protest died of suffocation in army custody.

Srisompob Jitpiromsri, an academic at the south’s Prince of Songkhla University, said he had contacted militants through third parties and been told the plan was to inflict a death toll in the tens of thousands before negotiations start.

“One or two thousand deaths is just the beginning,” he said recently.

“Once you have more than 20,000 people dead, you have more bargaining power for independence. They want independence. They will not compromise on this goal.”

JAPAN: A Taiwanese China Airlines plane has been forced to make an emergency landing at an airport in Japan after running low on fuel, airport officials say. 

The jet was on its way from Taipei to Nagoya when its pilots requested a landing at Kansai, in western Japan. 
 
There were no reports of injuries to passengers or crew. 
 
The incident comes two days after a China Airlines plane exploded in a fireball shortly after landing on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa. 
 
The plane, which had taken off from Taipei with more than 160 people on board, was forced to circle the airport in Chubu. A spokesman for China Airlines said the main reason the plane had to make an unscheduled stop at Kansai airport was that it had been told that the runway at Nagoya had been closed after a bird became stuck in the engine of another jet.
 
He said the plane waited until the pilots were told that the runway was open and then continued on to Nagoya. 

Earlier reports said the plane had been forced to land because it had run out of fuel. 
 
In Monday’s incident at Naha airport all 165 people on board survived, with some escaping just seconds before the plane exploded. 
 
Aviation officials from the US and Taiwan have been examining the wreckage for clues as to why the plane burst into flames, and are reported to be focusing on the possibility of a fuel leak from one of the engines.-
AFT

TAIWAN: Typhoon Sepat pounded Taiwan on Saturday, bringing powerful winds and torrential rains that disrupted electricity, air and rail traffic and forced many buildings to shut. 

The Central Weather Bureau said the typhoon made landfall on the east coast, packing winds of 155 kilometres (96 miles) per hour. 
 
With a radius of 250 kilometres, the typhoon was centred some 70 kilometres southwest of Hualien at 8:30 am (0030 GMT), the bureau said. 
 
It disrupted electricity supplies to more than 70,000 households and forced the evacuation of around 1,600 people in mountain villages, according to the National Fire Agency which coordinates rescue efforts. 
 
Television footage showed powerful winds lifting off roofs, uprooting trees and electricity poles and destroying crops in eastern and northern parts of the island. 
 
All domestic flights are suspended while China Airlines and the carrier EVA Airways cancelled seven and 11 international flights, respectively. 
 
Nineteen planes belonging to Taiwanese airlines were evacuated to the Subic Bay international airport in the northern Philippines on Friday to take them out of the typhoon’s path. 
 
Rail services were also affected, with all trains called off in the morning and the high-speed bullet train not due to re-open until the evening. 
 
Ferries between Taiwan’s Kinmen island and the Chinese cities of Xiamen and Chuanzhou are suspended. 
 
“Sepat’s impact will be the strongest on Saturday morning before it moves away from the island, but its intensity has been reduced,” said Lu Kuo-chen, from the weather bureau’s forecast centre. 
 
The typhoon is due to hit the coast of the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian early Sunday. 
 
Local media said a truck plummeted into a 50-metre deep valley in Hualien, killing one person and injuring a second. 
 
Meanwhile, ten Vietnamese women who have been detained at a facility in the eastern county of Ilan for violating immigration laws escaped on Friday, apparently taking advantage of the bad weather, immigration officials said. 
 
One was apprehended and police were tracking the rest. 
 
The weather bureau warned residents across Taiwan to remain on their guard and to avoid coastal activities, and there have also been mudslide alerts. 
 
Some 4,300 Chinese fishermen were seeking shelter in Taiwanese harbours, according to the National Fire Agency. 
 
Typhoon Sepat is evoking painful memories of Typhoon Bilis which hit the island in 2000, killing 11 people and causing huge damage to agriculture.

CEBU CITY: A tourism industry executive said the Philippines could become the top tropical destination in Asia by marketing the country through Cebu, which has a flourishing tourism industry.

“It’s easier to market the Philippines through Cebu,” said Angel Ramos Bognot, president of the National Association of Independent Travel Agencies Philippines.

Bognot said Cebu is the “vortex” of Philippine tourism and luring more foreign tourists through the province will not be difficult given its positive reputation in the international market.

“It’s like selling infant’s milk formula. You only tell them one thing good about the product like it boosts brain development and it sells,” Bognot said.

“Cebu is indeed a world class destination. It’s a tourism magnet,” she added.

She said growth in tourism-related developments—such as the entry of international hotel operators, increase in the volume of foreign visitors and additional flights to and from Cebu—only proves interest among travelers and businessmen in Cebu is growing.

She said it would be easier for tour operators to create inter­island linkages and tourism packages because of Cebu’s strategic location to the rest of the country.

Neighboring provinces like Bohol, Negros Oriental, Pala­wan, Samar and Leyte are already benefiting from the spill over of tourists from Cebu.

“If Manila is for business, Cebu is for leisure,” Bognot said.