BANGKOK, Thailand — As the United States and the European Union consider tightening economic sanctions against the Burmese military regime, U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari is touring Asia to promote the idea of giving the repressive generals “incentives” to change their ways. Gambari is spinning the idea of some form of financial help to address the economic mess Burma has descended into under prolonged dictatorship. It was financial desperation among a population of 54 million, most living on the breadline, that triggered last month’s monk-led mass protests over fuel price rises of up to 500 percent. Gambari is talking vaguely [...]
TOKYO — Reports that India’s nuclear deal with the United States is faltering have prompted a string of gloomy editorials in Indian newspapers. With the government of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh apparently reluctant to face down opposition from its Communists allies, the deal is, as the Times of India lamented, “probably . . . in the deep freezer.” But 3,500 miles away in Tokyo, recently installed Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda may not be feeling quite so gloomy, for the deal risked becoming an awkward sticking point in the blossoming relationship between nuclear state India and the avowedly anti-nuclear [...]
KABUL, Afghanistan — It’s a daily ritual for 8-year-old Bismillah. Every morning, five grimy plastic cans slung over his tiny shoulder, he descends a rugged hillside, negotiating the steep pitches of scree and gravel with goat-like agility. At the bottom of the hill, he waits under the broiling sun in a long queue leading up to a spigot. But wait he must or his family will be left without drinking water for the day. Bismillah lives with his handicapped father, mother and four sisters in a mud-and-wood house in a cramped settlement clinging to a shale-brown hill overlooking Kabul. With [...]
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