10 
news without borders
Aung San Suu Kyi meets UN envoy
YANGON: Myanmar’s detained opposi-
tion leader Aung San Suu Kyi (pix) was
allowed out of her lakeside prison home
yesterday to meet visiting UN envoy
Ibrahim Gambari, witnesses said.
The Nobel peace prize winner met
Gambari and senior members of her
National League for Democracy for
one hour from 10.15am (11.45am in
Sri Lanka hospital shelling
kills nine
COLOMBO: Artillery shells struck
a hospital in Sri Lanka’s northern
war zone, killing at least nine peo-
ple and wounding another 20, the
Red Cross said yesterday.
The Sri Lankan military denied
it had shelled Puthukkudiyiruppu
Hospital in a Tamil Tiger-held part
of Mullaittivu district and blamed
the rebels. The Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam made no comment,
but a pro-rebel website accused
the military of the firing.
“At least nine people were
killed and at least 20 injured from
the continued shelling,” said Sarasi
Wijerathne, a spokeswoman of the
International Committee of the Red
Cross (ICRC) in Colombo.
Malaysia) at a state-run guest house.
Officials had earlier confirmed the
meeting would take place.
Gambari, who arrived on Saturday
in Myanmar, was due to travel later in
the day to Labutta in the southwest
delta region, which was devastated by
a cyclone last May.
Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent
She said the ICRC had urged
both sides to allow safe passage for
scores of sick and wounded people
trapped in the conflict zone.
Sri Lanka’s army has surround-
ed the LTTE in a 300 sq km slice of
jungle in the Indian Ocean island’s
northeast, aiming to end a war that
began in 1983 and is one of Asia’s
longest-running conflicts.
The military, which has vowed
to hunt down LTTE leader Ve-
lupillai Prabhakaran, said it had
found a luxury house in the Vish-
vamadhu area which may have
been used by the reclusive leader
and his family.
Concern has grown for the safety
of 250,000 people aid agencies say
are trapped inside the battle zone,
although the government describes
those numbers as overblown.
The government yesterday
urged civilians to enter a “safety
most of the past 19 years detained
under house arrest, refused to
meet Gambari on his last visit to the
military-ruled nation in August 2008,
apparently after he failed to push the
junta into any reforms.
The Nigerian troubleshooter has
returned to Myanmar to try to con-
tinue to nudge the entrenched junta
zone” it had demarcated.
“The government cannot be
responsible for the safety and se-
curity of civilians still living among
the LTTE terrorists,” Lakshman
Hulugalle, director general of the
government’s media centre, said
“We’re shocked that the hospi-
tal was hit, and this for the second
time in recent weeks,” Paul Cas-
tella, head of the Colombo ICRC
delegation, said in a statement.
“There were shells (striking)
before midnight, It seems to have
struck the paediatric ward (of
Puthukkudiyiruppu Hospital), We
don’t know how many killed or
wounded but we know there were
many casualties,” UN spokesman
Gordon Weiss said.
Sri Lankan fighter jets yesterday
carried out more raids, bombing
rebel positions in support of the
advancing ground troops in the
north. – Reuters
What
They Say:
Unsavoury
games
pg 18
toward democracy, but
is not expected to meet
the reclusive head of
state Senior General
Than Shwe.
The United Nations has
said that on his latest four-day
trip, Gambari wants “meaningful
discussions with all concerned on all
Obama’s stimulus
plan heads for stormy
Senate debate
WASHINGTON: President
Obama’s huge stimulus package faced a
Republican blockade in Congress Monday
as opposition senators clamored for a
fundamental rethink to his plans for
Barack
economic revival.
The Senate was poised to debate the
819-billion-dollar bill after the House of
Representatives last week passed the
legislation without a single Republican
vote in support.
Negotiations carried on through the
weekend, as Obama feted a bipartisan
group of lawmakers at the White House
for a party to watch the American football
Super Bowl Sunday night.
Interviewed on NBC’s pre-Super Bowl
show, the Democratic president took his
message to what is usually America’s
highest TV audience of the year.
“I think we’re going to be in for a tough
several months. We’ve got to get this eco-
nomic recovery plan passed. We’ve got to
start putting people back to work.
“I’ve done extraordinary outreach, I
think, to Republicans because they have
some good ideas, and I want to make sure
that those ideas are incorporated.”
Obama scheduled a new round of
talks with congressional leaders Monday
evening at the White House.
The president was stepping up his
lobbying after Friday’s release of dire
figures showing the US economy shrank
by nearly 4% in the last quarter of 2008,
its sharpest decline since 1982.
Despite Obama’s appeals, Republican
Senate leaders said they would use par-
liamentary tactics to stall the stimulus
without a root-and-branch review of its
mix of tax cuts and spending.
“In the Senate, it routinely takes 60
theSun | TUESDAY FEBRUARY 3 2009
the points raised during
his last visit”.
So far, he has met
several officials including
Information Minister Kyaw
Hsan, Foreign Minister Nyan
Win and Aung Kyi, who was ap-
pointed to coordinate junta contacts
with Aung San Suu Kyi in 2007. – AFP
votes to do almost everything. It doesn’t
necessarily mean you’re trying to slow
a bill down,” Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell said Sunday on CBS
programme Face the Nation.
“But a super-majority is required for
virtually everything in the Senate, and
certainly for something that is close to a
one trillion dollar spending bill, it will.”
To overcome a Republican “filibuster,”
the Democrats would need to amass 60
votes to shut down debate and bring the
bill to a vote. Obama’s party can now
count on 58 votes to the Republicans’ 41,
with one seat still unresolved.
Jon Kyl, the Republicans’ second-rank-
ing senator, called for Obama and his
Senate allies to “start from scratch” on
the stimulus bill.
“I think the more people around the
country see of it, the angrier they get,
because it’s very wasteful,” the Arizonan
said on Fox News Sunday.
“And so I see support in the Senate
actually eroding,” he said, despite a
pro-stimulus media onslaught by labour
unions targeting individual senators.
A key Republican demand is to re-
focus the stimulus package away from
a spending spree on infrastructure and
social safety nets, and towards attacking
the root cause of the financial crisis: the
US property market slump.
The Republicans will introduce a plan
to enable homeowners to refinance their
mortgages at a low interest rate of about
4%, Senator John Ensign said on CNN.
“If you combine that with properly
targeted tax cuts, we can really get this
economy going instead of doing a mas-
sive spending bill that just fulfills the last
10 years of Democrat priorities.” – AFP