Peruvian President Alan Garcia and his delegation pulled out of the APEC summit in Singapore early yesterday in protest over charges that Chile had paid a Peruvian military officer as a spy.
The espionage case has stoked diplomatic tensions in a long-running feud between Peru and Chile over their maritime border, but the two South American nations still share more than US$3 billion a year in bilateral trade.
The “president has left Singapore on his way back to Lima,” a Peruvian government official said.
Peru on Saturday recalled its envoy from Chile and said Garcia would leave the APEC summit early after Peruvian authorities said they had detained a Peruvian air force officer on charges he had spied for Chile.
Garcia and Chilean President Michelle Bachelet were scheduled to meet over the weekend as part of the APEC summit.
Chile’s government on Saturday rejected the spying accusations, and criticized Peru for over-reacting before any investigation had been concluded.
“When there are accusations of this type, governments have to be prudent and serious,” said Carolina Toha, a Chilean government spokeswoman, denouncing the espionage claims against two Chilean military officials.
“We want to be clear: Chile does not spy,” she said.
A Peruvian court earlier began extradition proceedings against the two Chilean officers, as the government launched an official inquiry, justice officials in Lima said.
The Chileans, identified as Daniel Marquez Torrealba and Victor Vergara Rojas, were allegedly working with an officer of the Peruvian air force, Victor Ariza Mendoza, whose detention officials announced on Thursday.
News reports said that Ariza, who worked in 2002 in Peru’s embassy in Santiago, has been charged with “revealing state secrets, money laundering and espionage” on behalf of Chile since September 2005.
Ariza, who reportedly confessed, would have earned US$3,000 a month for his involvement in passing on information, prosecutors said. Authorities said they were also looking into the possible involvement of another Peruvian military officer in the case.
The rift is the most serious in years between the two neighbors, which have had a long-running dispute over their maritime border in the Pacific Ocean.
Peru filed suit against Chile last year at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, disputing the border and demanding more of the Pacific Ocean fishing waters between them.
Chile says the maritime border was settled by treaties in 1952 and 1954 — treaties that Peru argues were meant to regulate fishing, not demarcate the border.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS