World

TOKYO — Pacifist Japan is pressing ahead with divisive plans to loosen restrictions on its military, a top government spokesman said Monday, despite widespread public anger and a protester’s horrific suicide bid.

Hundreds of people in the busy Tokyo district of Shinjuku watched on Sunday afternoon as a middle-aged man in a suit set himself ablaze above a footbridge, after making a speech opposing moves to let Japan’s well-equipped military fight on behalf of allies.

The dramatic suicide attempt was widely discussed on social media, with numerous videos and photographs posted by onlookers.

Many Internet users made the connection between the self-immolation and a groundswell of opposition to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push to relax constitutional rules preventing Japan’s armed forces from going into battle.

Several thousand protesters showed up outside the premier’s Tokyo office on Monday evening, shouting slogans such as “no war” and “arrest the fascists” — as some carried posters showing Abe with a moustache similar to that of Adolph Hitler.

The conservative leader says regional tensions — including China’s increasingly assertive stance in various territorial disputes and an erratic North Korea — mean Japan must be better prepared to defend itself.

The United States, Tokyo’s chief ally, has backed Abe’s plans, but they are highly controversial at home, where voters feel deeply connected to the pacifism Japan adopted after World War II.

The government’s chief spokesman Yoshihide Suga on Monday refused to comment on the suicide attempt, but confirmed that the Cabinet would push ahead Tuesday with plans to change the interpretation of part of the pacifist constitution.

Japan’s military is currently barred from taking action, except in very narrow circumstances in which the country is attacked.

“We are in the final stage of the coordination between the ruling parties,” Suga told reporters. “Once a consensus is made between the ruling parties, we will have it approved by the Cabinet tomorrow.”

At least half the population is against a more aggressive military stance, according to the latest polls.

The liberal Mainichi newspaper said at the weekend that 58 per cent of voters are opposed, while the Nikkei business daily, in its poll published Monday, said 50 per cent of respondents were against the change.

China also warns against moves to bolster Japan’s military might, saying Tokyo is not sufficiently penitent over its actions in World War II.

It sent two ships into waters around disputed islands on Monday, a regular tactic in the long-running animosity.

Suga defended the plan, saying: “The government should protect people’s lives and property as well as the country’s safety... and if there is a defect in the current legal framework, we will address it.”

Tokyo police said Monday that nothing was known of the protester’s condition more than 24 hours after he was rushed to hospital with severe burns.

The dramatic suicide bid received scant coverage in mainstream media — which is sometimes criticised as servile. None of the national newspapers used a picture in their short reports.

Broadcaster NHK, whose chairman caused outrage earlier this year by suggesting that the state-funded body should not contradict the prime minister, did not cover the self-immolation on the day.

At least two private broadcasters did, however, using YouTube footage.

Popular protest in Japan has tended to be muted in recent decades, and protest suicides are very rare, with only a handful taking place in living memory.

In 1970, right-wing novelist Yukio Mishima disemboweled himself after a failed attempted coup, in protest against what he saw as an overly meek state.

In 1967, a 73-year-old man set himself alight in front of the prime minister’s official residence over the then-premier’s support for US bombing of North Vietnam.

JAKARTA — Muslims in much of Asia began celebrating the holy month of Ramadan Sunday, but in Indonesia even threats by hardliners to raid “sinful” bars could not stop football fans heading to nightspots to watch the World Cup.

Across the Muslim world, the faithful fast from dawn to dusk and strive to be more pious during the holy month, which ends with the Eid holiday.

Ramadan got under way in Asian countries including Indonesia, which has the world’s biggest Muslim population at around 225 million people, war-torn Afghanistan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Philippines.

Hardliners in Indonesia have pledged to raid bars that continue to sell alcohol, which Muslims are banned from drinking under Islamic law, or stay open too late. Authorities order bars and other nightspots to close earlier during the holy month.

Radical group the Islamic Defenders’ Front would “monitor any sinful activities in entertainment places, cafés and bars during Ramadan”, said Salim Alatas, the group’s chief in the capital Jakarta.

“If law enforcement officials do nothing about immoral activities, we will do anything we can to stop them, using our own methods.”

But the threats did little to deter people in the football-crazy nation, where most practise a moderate form of Islam, from heading out to catch the latest World Cup action.

Bars that remained open in Jakarta were packed with locals and expatriates late Saturday and early Sunday.

“For me, the fasting does not really affect my enthusiasm to watch the World Cup,” said Intania Permata, a 22-year-old student, who was watching the Brazil versus Chile nail-biter at a South American bar and restaurant.

Endika Setiadi Putra, 27, said that with the World Cup now in the knockout stages, the excitement would keep drawing people to watch the matches in bars even during Islam’s holiest month.

“If it is the weekends, most people will go out [to watch the matches],” Putra told AFP.

For many other Indonesians, the start of Ramadan was a time to be with their families or take part in special prayers, with thousands heading to Jakarta’s Istiqlal Mosque, the biggest in Southeast Asia, on Saturday evening.

Fasting amid conflict 

Politics was in focus in war-torn Afghanistan, with conversation at “iftar” meals after sunset expected to focus on the disputed vote count from the country’s presidential election.

Results are due out during the holy month but Abdullah Abdullah has cried foul in the race against Ashraf Ghani, alleging massive fraud. The inauguration of the new president is scheduled for August 2, shortly after Ramadan finishes.

For half-a-million Pakistanis displaced by a military offensive in the country’s north, the prospect of fasting amid severe food shortages has sharpened anger towards the government.

Taxi driver Shakeeb Ur Rehman, 40, told AFP his house had been bulldozed by the military and his car was destroyed in a bombing.

“I’m homeless and seriously worried about fasting in this hot weather. I think religious scholars should issue a decree allowing us to be exempt,” he said.

Sri Lanka’s Muslims, who account for about 10 per cent of the country’s 20 million population of mainly Buddhists, are set observe a low-key Ramadan after a spate of recent religious attacks.

The Muslim Council of Sri Lanka, which groups nearly 50 Muslim organisations, said authorities had promised tighter security but many were still afraid of Buddhist extremist attacks after four people were killed in religious riots this month.

In the predominantly Catholic Philippines, the country’s Muslim minority was observing its first Ramadan since the signing of a peace deal between the government and the largest Islamic rebel group after decades of conflict.

Von Al Haq, military spokesman of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, said the former rebels would seek to use the holy month to try to persuade breakaway groups still fighting the government to lay down their arms.

In Malaysia, Muslims — who account for 60 per cent of the country’s 28 million people — will spend the late afternoon buying food at markets or meeting at restaurants to break the first fast together in the evening. There will also be special prayers at mosques every night during the holy month.

As in Indonesia, thoughts of the World Cup were uppermost in the minds of fans in the football-keen nation. Ridzwan Rahim, a copywriter, 37, said he looked forward to catching some of the matches when he wakes up for his pre-dawn meal during Ramadan.

“It’s good this year — we will wake up early anyways so we can watch some of the matches,” the Germany and Netherlands fan said.

Ramadan begins when the first crescent of a new moon is sighted. The holy month was also starting across the Middle East, as bloody conflicts rage in Iraq and Syria.

ISTANBUL — Turkish President Abdullah Gul said he would not seek a second term in office, further raising the likelihood that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan would run for the top job.

“I will not present my candidacy... my term expires on August 28,” Gul told reporters ahead of a closed-door meeting with Erdogan in Istanbul, adding that he had already informed the premier of his decision before the local elections in March.

Already in his third term as prime minister — the maximum permitted under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)’s rules — Erdogan is widely expected to be unveiled on Tuesday as his party’s candidate for August’s presidential poll.

Gul, who assumed office in 2007, is tipped as a possible prime minister should Erdogan run in the presidential vote on August 10, the first time voters will directly elect the country’s head of state.

Asked whether he would consider the position of prime minister, Gul said: “Those are the things that we will talk about among ourselves later.”

Gul, who co-founded the AKP with Erdogan, had previously said he did not have any political plan for the future and had ruled out swapping jobs with the premier.

The presidency has until now been a largely ceremonial role but Erdogan has said he would exercise its full powers if he is elected — which could be a source of conflict between the premier and the president.

On Sunday, Turkey’s two main opposition parties formally backed Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, former head of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, to run against Erdogan.

KIEV — The leaders of Germany and France warned Vladimir Putin on Sunday that Russia could be hit with punishing sanctions within days unless he forced Ukrainian rebels Moscow is accused of backing to suspend their deadly uprising.

The French presidency said Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel made their case to the Russian strongman in a call that stretched for more than two hours and included Ukraine’s embattled pro-Western leader Petro Poroshenko.

The new Ukrainian president’s office said the four agreed to speak again on Monday when a truce is set to expire at 1900 GMT with no end to 13 weeks of fighting in sight.

The Ukrainian military reported losing five more soldiers over the weekend.

The second such teleconference in four days was arranged in Brussels on Friday when Poroshenko put his name to a historic trade deal with Europe that broke Kiev’s extended bonds with Moscow.

The European Union also used the occasion to issue an unusually firm statement telling Putin that he had until Monday to put explicit pressure on the separatist gunmen or face the possibility of entire sectors of Russia’s economy being cut off from the 28-nation bloc’s 500 million consumers.

The United States has promised to move in lockstep with Europe on Russian sanctions in the Cold War-style confrontation over the future of the strategic ex-Soviet state.

The French statement said Sunday’s call stressed “the importance of new concrete steps to stabilise the security situation on the ground, the extension of the ceasefire and the implementation of the peace plan presented by the Ukrainian authorities”.

It also cited Friday’s EU punitive measures threat and said the three leaders told Putin they “hoped that results are achieved by Monday.”

Conflicting demands

The Kremlin’s account of the conversation made no mention of the European conditions and stressed the joint call on Poroshenko not to resume his eastern campaign.

It also once again urged Ukraine to accept “immediate” Russian humanitarian aid in the conflict zone. Kiev suspects Moscow of planning to use such deliveries to smuggle arms to the rebel fighters.

The conflicting demands between Moscow and Kiev are also vividly reflected on the battlefield.

Separatist leaders say they will not engage in direct negotiations with Kiev until government forces withdraw from the heavily Russified east.

And Poroshenko refuses to meet rebel commanders who have “blood on their hands”.

The Western-backed head of state has also hinted that he may again resort to force should the guerrillas fail to disarm and cede control of state buildings across a dozen cities and towns.

Kiev and its Western allies accuse Russia of both arming and funding the militias in a bid to unsettle the new Ukrainian government as revenge for the February ouster of a pro-Kremlin president who had ditched the very EU agreement Poroshenko signed on Friday.

Ukraine’s worst crisis since its 1991 independence has now claimed 450 lives.

Russia’s ‘big brother’ approach

The possibility of the United States and Europe freezing access to Russia’s banking sector has already dented the country’s outlook and raised the possibility of the economy contracting for the first time since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis.

Russia’s economy minister warned on Saturday that new sanctions could “seriously” impact growth that the International Monetary Fund believes may only reach 0.2 per cent this year.

But public statements in Moscow indicate it is busy preparing an economic counter-offensive that would put up prohibitive barriers to Ukrainian trade.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday that Russia would treat Ukraine and the ex-Soviet states of Georgia of Moldova that signed their own EU deals on Friday “based on one criterium — how [the agreements] might hurt Russian trade”.

Russian and EU ministers have tentatively agreed to meet on July 11 to discuss how Moscow’s concerns might be best addressed.

Ukraine’s commissioner on European integration said he expected the consultations with Russia to be acrimonious and possibly fruitless.

“Our neighbour has this desire to always act as our big brother, a mentor, to always try teaching us something,” Valeriy Pyatnitskiy told Kiev’s Dzerkalo Tyzhnia weekly.

The commissioner added that Ukraine may have no choice but to appeal to the World Trade Organisation — a global free commerce club Russia only joined in 2012 — to step in as a broker of last resort.

“The WTO — there is no question about it,” Pyatnitskiy said.

DONETSK, Ukraine — As his now-former comrades hugged their goodbyes and wished each other a safe journey home, Junior Sergeant Pavel Stupka explained why he refused to renounce his oath of allegiance to Ukraine.

“It would have been a betrayal. I took an oath to the Ukrainian people,” Stupka said, pushing his beret back on his head.

“The government in Kiev may have changed but that doesn’t mean anything as I took my oath to the people.”

For around a year Stupka had been carrying out his obligatory military service at a Ukrainian interior ministry base housing a munitions plant on the outskirts of his hometown Donetsk.

But his service was unexpectedly terminated after heavily-armed pro-Moscow rebel fighters forced the unit to surrender without a fight on Friday evening.

While pro-Kremlin insurgents and government forces have agreed to a shaky ceasefire running until Monday, the rebels are tightening their grip over the remaining Ukrainian-held outposts in the country’s restive east.

In a choreographed event staged for the press on Saturday the separatist authorities gave Stupka and other servicemen a choice: Either swear allegiance to Russia or leave for good.

In a speech railing against the “fascist junta” in Kiev, a senior rebel leader had tried to cajole the troops to sign up with the separatists.

But when the time came, not one of the roughly 100 young conscripts agreed to switch sides — opting instead to head back to their families.

“If I defected to Russia I would have difficulty living with myself,” Stupka said.

 ‘Scared for their families

Nearby, rebels toting automatic weapons lounged on olive green ammunition boxes they had seized the night before. An armoured vehicle from the base was being loaded onto the back of a truck.

“The conscripts were clearly scared for their families but they don’t understand the situation and don’t know what awaits them when they get home,” said Vladimir Markovich, deputy parliament speaker of the rebel’s self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.

In his farewell speech to the troops the base commander Colonel Oleg Ponomarenko could only offer kind words and wish them a safe trip home.

“In my 28 years of service I have never lost anyone and what is happening today is a decision to protect the lives and health of those under me,” the bespectacled officer said.

“Personally I just want to thank you for fulfilling your duty,” he added to conscripts’ applause.

Several anxious but relieved parents were waiting for the troops after the ceremony.

“Of course, I am happy that my son is coming back to me safe and well,” said one mother, who gave her name as Yelena. “We were very worried about them.”

But serious questions remained over what lay in store next for the soldiers being dismissed.

“My son finished college and then wanted to join the army to help his career but what can he do now?” said Irina, another parent.

“The rebels say they are letting [the soldiers] go officially but what authority do they have?” she asked.

“What if the government decides later to put [my son] on trial for desertion?”

As they posed for a final group photograph and discussed plans for drinking sprees and finding girls, the conscripts said they too were uncertain about the future.

“I feel a hidden joy,” one conscript told AFP after pulling on his civilian clothes.

“Happiness because we’re being allowed to go but it’s hidden because we don’t know what will happen to us next.”

SARAJEVO — Bosnia marked 100 years since the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo that sparked World War I, but the divisive legacy of the gunman Gavrilo Princip meant Serbs were shunning the event.

It was on a Sarajevo street corner on June 28, 1914, that the 19-year-old Bosnian Serb nationalist shot dead the archduke and his wife with a Browning revolver, setting off a chain of events that sucked Europe’s great powers into four years of unprecedented violence that redrew the world map.

Many of those competing powers commemmorated the centenary on the sidelines of an EU summit on Thursday with a low-key ceremony at Belgium’s Ypres, where German forces used mustard gas for the first time in 1915.

But in the Balkans, the legacy of the Great War continues to stir up ethnic divisions between Serbs, Croats and Muslims, preventing heads of state from coming together to mark the event at the site of the assassination in Bosnia’s capital.

“It would have been impossible to bring everyone together on June 28 in Sarajevo,” said Bosnian Serb historian and diplomat Slobodan Soja.

Hero or villain 

There are wildly differing interpretations of 20th century history in the region where the scars of sectarian wars in the 1990s are still fresh.

The assassin, Gavrilo Princip, is among the most divisive figures in that history — either a fervent Serb nationalist who sought to liberate Slavs from the Austro-Hungarian occupier, or a terrorist who unleashed horrific bloodshed on the world, depending on who you ask.

Serbian and Bosnian Serb leaders refused to take part in the main commemorations in Sarajevo on Saturday that were set to feature a performance by the Vienna Philharmonic in the late afternoon — a highly symbolic envoy from the capital of a once-loathed empire.

The Serbs instead unveiled a two-metre-high bronze statue of Princip in eastern Sarajevo on Friday and held their own ceremonies on Saturday in eastern Bosnia.

Top leaders, including Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and Bosnian Serb president Milorad Dodik were to join the ceremony in the eastern town of Visegrad, where a street was named after Princip’s revolutionary movement “Young Bosnia”.

“We are here to pay homage to Gavrilo Princip, a key historic figure of last century,” said 58-year old Ljubisa Simonovic, who had travelled from Serbia for the ceremony along with hundreds of others.

“The divisions are regrettable but so are attempts to change the facts, particularly if they are motivated by recent history.”

Until the Bosnia war in the 1990s, Princip was Sarajevo’s favourite son.

Two years after he died in prison in 1920 his bones were dug up and brought to be buried in the city, where a bridge was named after him and plaques put up in his honour.

During the 1990s conflict, he was worshipped as an icon of Serb nationalism by Bosnian Serb forces as they besieged Sarajevo in one of the war’s most brutal episodes.

“For the army bombing Sarajevo, Gavrilo Princip was a cult figure,” said Bosnian Muslim historian Husnija Kamberovic.

That ensured Princip was even more loathed by Muslim and Croat civilians trapped in the city, who wasted no time in tearing down his plaques and renaming his bridge after the war ended.

Princip’s brazen attack 100 years ago dragged almost half the world’s population into a cycle of violence of unprecedented scale and intensity.

What became known as the Great War lasted more than 52 months and left some 10 million dead and 20 million injured and maimed on its battlefields. Millions more perished under occupation through disease, hunger or deportation.

Four of the world’s most powerful empires — Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman — collapsed in the aftermath. The ruin of Europe cleared the way for the rise of a new superpower, the United States.

World War I fanned the emergence of many of the ideologies that fashioned the 20th century and its conflicts, including anti-colonialism, Communism, Fascism and Nazism.

KIEV — Ukraine’s new Western-backed president is due on Thursday to submit constitutional changes expanding regional powers in the hope the measure will help calm a bloody pro-Russian insurgency convulsing his ex-Soviet state.

The long-deliberated step comes a day before President Petro Poroshenko signs the final chapters of an historic EU accord in Brussels that opens Ukraine’s way towards eventual membership and pulls it firmly out of Russia’s reach.

The submission of constitutional changes to parliament also comes on the same day that Poroshenko gets German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande to join him for a second round of telephone diplomacy with Russian President Vladimir Putin in two days.

Putin came under intense pressure from both European leaders and US President Barack Obama on Wednesday to rein in separatist fighters over whom he says he has no control.

Obama warned that sweeping economic sanctions were imminent unless the Kremlin stopped “the flow of weapons and militants across the border” and persuades militants to abide by a fragile truce.

Washington added that sanctions would be also discussed by EU leaders on Friday when they sign the full Association Agreement with Ukraine that was ditched by the ousted pro-Russian president in November and now lies at the heart of the raging crisis.

The US kept up the pressure on Thursday, with US Secretary of State John Kerry warning that the Kremlin had to prove within “hours” that it was working to disarm rebels.

But 11 weeks of fighting that have already claimed more than 435 lives and brought factories in the economically vital eastern rustbelt to a virtual standstill continued on Thursday despite the ceasefire agreement.

A spokesman for Ukraine’s “anti-terrorist operation” said 10 paratroopers were wounded in rebel attacks on government roadblocks on Wednesday.

Ukrainian media reports said gunmen had also attacked a small airport on Thursday morning in the flashpoint village of Kramatorsk.

Poroshenko’s one-week unilateral ceasefire order last Friday was picked up by senior separatist leaders on Monday in a seeming breakthrough in a conflict that has left some cities in ruins and displaced tens of thousands.

But the downing by militias of a Ukrainian army helicopter on Tuesday drew a warning from Poroshenko that he may resume the campaign before the ceasefire agreement expires on Friday morning.

Putin has urged Kiev to extend the truce to give more time to peace negotiations that the warring sides began on Monday and were due to continue on Thursday.

Rights to regions

Poroshenko’s Western allies have long urged Kiev to amend Ukraine’s basic law and devolve the central authorities’ extensive controls over regional affairs.

Washington views such a system as more efficient. But it also hopes that it may appease local leaders and Russian-speaking voters enough to suspend their sovereignty drive.

Russia counters that only an outright switch to a federal system in which regions can adopt their own foreign trade policies could work in country as culturally splintered as Ukraine.

The proposals outlined so far by Poroshenko stop well short of meeting the Kremlin’s demands.

His changes would enshrine in the constitution the use of Russian in official business and public schools in independence-minded regions such as Donetsk and Lugansk.

Poroshenko said he was also willing to let local legislatures nominate regional governors instead of having them named directly by the president.

The amendments will be registered in parliament on Thursday but are unlikely to come up for debate until at least next week.

But analysts at the Eurasia Group political risk consultancy said there remained “an unbridgeable gap” between what Russia wanted and what Poroshenko was willing to cede.

“Moscow is seeking a structural guarantee that, via its influence over Ukraine’s south and east, the Ukrainian government will be unable to move a unified Ukraine deeper into European political, economic and, above all, security structures,” the Eurasia Group said in a report.

“Ceding this level of autonomy to regions is impossible for President Poroshenko, who must demonstrate to his own constituents that he is capable of establishing control over a united Ukraine and that, while relations with Russia are critical, capitulation to Kremlin pressure is not acceptable,” it stressed.

WASHINGTON — America’s reliance on secretive drone missile strikes against terror suspects has set a “dangerous precedent” that could be imitated by other countries and trigger wider wars around the world, former senior US officials said in a report Thursday.

The ex-officials acknowledged that the robotic aircraft are a useful tool that is “here to stay”, but urged President Barack Obama to lift the veil of secrecy that surrounds their use, introduce stricter rules for the strikes and take a hard look at whether the bombing raids were genuinely effective.

“The increasing use of lethal UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] may create a slippery slope leading to continual or wider wars,” said the report by a bipartisan panel sponsored by the Stimson Centre think tank.

The employment of drones for attacks outside of traditional battlefields “is likely to be imitated by other states as well”, fueling instability and increasing “the risk of widening conflicts in regions around the globe”, it said.

“US practices set a dangerous precedent that may be seized upon by other states — not all of which are likely to behave as scrupulously as US officials,” it said.

In the eyes of the rest of the world, the United States has essentially claimed the legal right to kill anyone it believes is a member of the Al Qaeda network or its allies “in any state on earth, at any time, based on secret criteria and secret evidence”, the report said.

The pervasive secrecy made it difficult for lawmakers in Congress to serve as a check on executive power and threatened to undermine traditional legal principles that underpin international law, it said.

Obama has promised to curb the secrecy around the strikes and in May said that any operation should not “create more enemies than we take off the battlefield”.

The number of strikes in Pakistan and Yemen have decreased since 2010, according to unofficial tallies based on media reports, but the level of secrecy has changed little.

But the US president has faced criticism that he has failed to live up to his own pledges on drones to “uphold standards that reflect our values”.

Call to acknowledge strikes

The report called on the Obama administration to adopt a more transparent stance and acknowledge drone strikes after they have been carried out in a foreign country. At the moment, US officials barely acknowledge the existence of the drone raids and do not reveal who was targeted, and whether civilians were injured or how many killed.

“While secrecy may be required before and during each strike, strikes should generally be acknowledged by the United States after the fact,” it said.

To ensure more accountability for a campaign largely conducted behind closed doors, the report urged Obama to create “a non-partisan independent commission to review lethal UAV policy”.

The panel also said the Obama administration should fulfill its plan to transfer most of the drone strikes from the Central Intelligence Agency to the military, which operates under more transparent legal parameters compared to the spy service.

The authors questioned the overall efficacy of the drone strikes, saying it was not clear that the government had ever conducted a thorough analysis of the strategic advantages and disadvantages of using the robotic aircraft for counter-terrorism efforts.

It was time for the administration to conduct a “rigorous strategic review and cost-benefit analysis” of the drone raids, looking at the effect of past strikes on terror groups, local communities, public opinion, and the cooperation of allies and partners, it said.

The ten-member task force that examined the controversial drone attacks included former senior intelligence and legal officials, and was led by retired four-star general John Abizaid, who served as head of US Central Command and Rosa Brooks, a former legal adviser at the Pentagon who is now a law professor at Georgetown University.

Human rights groups have long denounced the drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere as an unaccountable air war that operates virtually without scrutiny from Congress or the courts.

But the Stimson report was unusual as several of the authors were former high-ranking officials working in intelligence and counter-terrorism, including former legal advisers at the CIA, the State Department and the White House’s National Security Council.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Gunmen opened fire on a passenger jet while it was landing in Pakistan’s troubled northwest, killing a woman passenger and wounding two crew as the military battles Taliban insurgents in the region.

The Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight, landing in Peshawar from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, came under fire late Tuesday as it descended with more than 170 passengers on board.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but attention turned to the Pakistani Taliban, who have promised a bloody response to the army’s assault on their strongholds in North Waziristan.

Authorities said the Airbus A310 landed safely but a catastrophe was only narrowly avoided when it was hit by eight bullets from the unidentified attackers.

PIA spokesman Mashud Tajwar said the plane was between 60 to 100 metres off the ground when it was hit, contradicting an earlier altitude of 1,500 metres given by police.

“The shots were fired from outside the airport, one lady passenger and two stewards were wounded, the woman later died in the hospital,” Tajwar told AFP.

Tajwar said the reason for the firing was not yet clear but the airline had not received any threats.

Muhammad Faisal, a senior police official in Peshawar, said eight AK-47 bullets hit the plane’s tail section.

Pilot praised 

Police cordoned off an area outside the airport to search for the gunmen and paid tribute to the pilot’s coolness.

“Credit goes to the aeroplane pilot that he managed to land safely,” said senior police official Najeeb Ur Rehman.

The airport was briefly closed after the incident and the Emirates airline cancelled its Wednesday flight from Dubai to Peshawar.

The attack came two weeks after a bloody raid on the international airport in the southern port city of Karachi that doomed a largely fruitless peace process with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

Hours before the latest incident, militants staged the first suicide bombing in North Waziristan since the military launched its major operation against the Taliban. Three people were killed in the attack.

The military said it had killed 47 fighters in the tribal northwest in its most recent air strikes — part of the assault which began on June 15.

The armed forces have used jet fighters, tanks and artillery to kill more than 300 people they have described as militants, although the number and identity of the victims are impossible to verify.

The suicide attacker struck in North Waziristan’s village of Spinwam, detonating a car bomb when he was intercepted on the approach to a checkpoint. Officials said two soldiers and a civilian were killed.

The deaths bring to 12 the number of security forces killed in the offensive, dubbed “Zarb-e-Azb” after a sword used in battle by Prophet Mohammad.

The Ansar-ul-Mujahedin militant group, a Pakistani Taliban faction, claimed responsibility for the car bomb, with spokesman Abu Baseer calling it the start of a counter-strike against the military.

“It is the beginning of our offensive, and we will launch attacks against government and local tribesmen if they form an anti-Taliban force,” Baseer told AFP via telephone from an unknown location.

Also Tuesday Pakistani jets and helicopters targeted militant hideouts at several locations in North Waziristan and the neighbouring Khyber tribal region, killing 47 militants, a military statement said.

The offensive has claimed the lives of a total of 346 militants so far, according to an AFP tally.

After some 10 days of shelling and air raids in North Waziristan, a total of more than 470,000 people have fled the region — fearful of an expected ground assault.

Many have headed to the nearby town of Bannu, where police and troops fired warning shots on Tuesday to quell a protest over food shortages.

The UN said Tuesday that up to half a million people could be displaced by the current military operation and urged the Pakistani government to allow its agencies access to the affected areas.

The assault on the militant bastion of North Waziristan, long urged by Washington, was finally launched after the dramatic attack on Karachi airport which killed dozens of people and marked the end of the ailing peace process.

SLAVYANSK, Ukraine — Ukraine’s new Western-backed leader sought urgent talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday after separatist rebels shot down an army helicopter despite orders from their own commander to observe a fragile truce.

The death of nine servicemen outside the pro-Russian stronghold city of Slavyansk and loss of two other soldiers in militia attacks prompted Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to threaten to unleash a powerful new military campaign in the industrial east.

An AFP team in Slavyansk heard a wave of shelling being launched by Ukrainian forces who have effectively surrounded the devastated city of nearly 120,000 on Wednesday morning.

Their push was met with extended rounds of anti-aircraft and heavy machinegun fire that echoed through deserted city streets.

“This is the calm before the storm that begins once the ceasefire ends,” said a 42-year-old rebel who is simply known to his unit as “Oleksandr the Soldier”.

Poroshenko’s warning dealt a crushing blow to hopes of the sides mediating an end to 11 weeks of fighting that has killed more than 435 people and brought the ex-Soviet nation to the brink of collapse.

Kiev’s temporary ceasefire was picked up by separatist commanders on Monday but was due to expire on Friday morning after just one round of inconclusive and indirect talks.

Putin urged both sides to extend the truce and further asked senators to revoke his March 1 authorisation to invade his western neighbour in a self-proclaimed bid to “protect” ethnic Russians from the nationalists now in power in Kiev.

Russia’s rubber-stamp upper chamber approved Putin’s request on Wednesday in a 153-1 vote.

But Kiev and Washington still accuse Putin of covertly arming the rebels in retaliation for the February ouster of a pro-Russian administration that abruptly ditched an historic EU agreement, and preferred closer ties with Moscow instead.

Poroshenko will sign the final chapters of that pact in Brussels on Friday despite the strong likelihood that Russia will follow up a cut in gas deliveries it imposed on June 16 with punishing new trade restrictions.

The Ukrainian leader now hopes that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande will join him on a conference call to Putin that could decide the immediate faith of diplomatic efforts to resolve Ukraine’s worst crisis since its independence in 1991.

NATO warns Russia 

The crumbling hopes for a quick solution will also confront NATO foreign ministers when they huddle in Brussels amid pleas from ex-Soviet satellite nations for the alliance to beef up its military presence along Russia’s western frontier.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen noted entering the meeting that the alliance intended to “review our relations with Russia and decide what to do next”.

“I regret to say that we see no signs that Russia is respecting its international commitments,” NATO’s top civilian official said.

The meeting will also see US Secretary of State John Kerry conduct his first bilateral talks with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin — a veteran diplomat who had represented Poroshenko in closed door negotiations with Russia that resulted in Kiev’s decision to call a temporary truce.

The current negotiations are being led by an unusual assortment of figures who include former Ukrainian leader Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Medvedchuk — the one-time chief of staff of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych who is currently on a US sanctions list.

He unofficially represents the separatist cause but is seen to be so close to Putin that his daughter is rumoured to have the Russian strongman as a godfather.

Some analysts believe Putin trusts Medvedchuk enough to believe he will lead negotiations that result in the Kremlin preserving its influence over eastern Ukraine.

But the Kremlin chief would also like to be seen as a proponent of dialogue to avoid painful economic sanctions that both Washington and the European Union have threatened to unleash unless Putin took immediate steps to promote peace.

The White House said it was encouraged both by Putin’s latest steps and the rebels’ acceptance of Poroshenko’s temporary ceasefire.

But the Mi-8 helicopter’s downing on Tuesday underscores the limited control both Russia and senior rebel leaders have over some militia units that are apparently operating according to their own rules on the battlefield.

“Clearly, not surprisingly, the separatists all are not on the same page,” US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said.