Myanmar’s reclusive military ruler, Senior General Than Shwe, received a red-carpet welcome in New Delhi yesterday as he began the formal leg of a state visit to India amid criticism from rights groups. The general was accorded a full ceremonial welcome at the presidential palace, although the traditional guard of honor was missing as rain forced the event indoors.
Than Shwe, 77, met Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna and was scheduled to hold talks later yesterday with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The junta chief, who oversaw the ruthless suppression of pro-democracy protests led by Myanmar’s monks in 2007, also laid a wreath at the mausoleum to India’s independence hero and global icon of non-violence, Mahatma Gandhi.
Human rights groups have condemned India’s decision to bestow the legitimacy of a full state visit on Than Shwe, who is regarded as a pariah by many Western nations that have targeted his regime with sanctions.
Once a staunch supporter of Myanmar’s democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, India began engaging the junta in the mid-1990s as security, energy and strategic priorities began to override concerns over democracy and human rights.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
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