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6 REGION WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10, 2013 Strong quake near Iran nuclear plant kills 30 Damaged houses are seen in the earthquake stricken town of Bushehr in Iran yesterday. —Reuters DUBAI — A powerful earthquake struck close to Iran's only nuclear power station yesterday, killing 30 people and injuring 800 as it devastated small villages, state media reported. The 6.3 magnitude quake totally destroyed one village, a Red Crescent oficial told the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA), but the nearby Bushehr nuclear plant was undamaged, according to a local politician and the Russian company that built it. "Up until now the earthquake has left behind 30 dead and 800 injured," said Fereydoun Hassanv and, the governor of Bushehr province, according to ISNA. Many houses in rural parts of the province are made of mud brick, which can easily crumble in a quake. Across the Gulf, ofices in Qatar and Bahrain were evacuated after the quake, whose epicentre was 89 km southeast of the port of Bushehr, according to the US Geological Survey. The early afternoon shock was also felt in inancial hub Dubai. Abdulkarim Jomeiri, a member of parliament for Bushehr, told IRNA Kerry wraps up ‘constructive’ ME trip TEL AVIV — Top US diplomat John Kerry yesterday wrapped up three days of "very constructive" talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, pledging new efforts to help the West Bank economy as he sought to bring the sides back to the table. Speaking to reporters shortly before leaving for London, a cautious Kerry said it was more important to ind ways of resuming the long-frozen negotiations correctly rather than "quickly." On another key Middle East conlict, he said he would meet members of Syria's opposition in London where he was to attend a summit of G8 foreign ministers. His Jerusalem and Ramallah stopover was the second leg of a 10-day trip which will also take him on his irst visit to Asia since taking over as Washington's top diplomat. During the visit, Kerry met Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in pursuit of what he called a "quiet strategy" for ending decades of mistrust between the two sides, who have not held direct talks since September 2010. "Each of them made very serious and well-constructed suggestions with respect to what the road forward might look like," he told reporters at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport just before leaving. But "doing it right is more important than doing it quickly," he said. On Monday night, Kerry held "very productive" dinner talks with Netanyahu and the two met for a second time early yesterday. "We made progress... and each of us agreed to do some homework" with the aim of "seeing how we can really pull all of the pieces together," he said as Netanyahu reafirmed his commitment to return to talks. "I'm determined not only to resume the peace process with the Palestinians, but to make a serious effort to end this conlict once and for all," the Israeli leader said, noting the key issues of security and of Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Kerry also said the two had discussed "speciic steps we could take to break the red tape" hampering Palestinian economic growth in a move he said would ultimately improve Israel's security. Earlier this week, Kerry said moves to bolster the teetering Palestinian economy "could be critical to changing perceptions and realities on the ground" although he did not elaborate. "We are going to engage in new efforts, very speciic efforts, to promote economic development and remove... bottlenecks and barriers that exist with respect to commerce in the West Bank," he said yesterday. It would involve "increased business expansion and private sector investment in the West Bank," he added. During the Ramallah meeting, Abbas lobbied hard on the issue of freeing Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, saying it was a "top priority" for resuming talks. "President Abbas made a passionate argument to me about the prisoners and I think the government of Israel has a full understanding of the potency of that issue," Kerry said. The fate of prisoners is a lashpoint issue closely watched by the Palestinian street which often sparks mass protests that tend to turn into clashes with the Israeli army. In parallel to Kerry's efforts, Arab states are also seeking ways of reviving peace moves. Abbas attended a meeting of the Arab Peace Initiative committee in Doha on Monday. — AFP Jordan, Iraq sign oil-gas pipeline deal that "the distance between the earthquake focal point and the Bushehr nuclear power plant was about 80 km and, on the basis of the latest information, there has been no damage to the power plant." The Russian company that built the nuclear power station, 18 km south of Bushehr, said the plant was unaffected. "The earthquake in no way affected the normal situation at the reactor. Personnel continue to work in the normal regime and radiation levels are fully within the norm," Russian state news agency RIA quoted an oficial at Atomstroyexport as saying. One Bushehr resident said her home and the homes of her neighbours were shaken by the quake but not damaged. "We could clearly feel the earthquake," said Nikoo, who asked to be identiied only by her irst name. "The windows and chandeliers all shook." Yesterday’s quake was much smaller than the 9.0 magnitude one that hit Japan two years ago, triggering a tsunami that destroyed back-up generators and disabled the Fukushima nuclear plant's cooling system. Three of the reactors melted down. Iran is the only country operating a nuclear power plant that does not belong to the Convention on Nuclear Safety, negotiated after the 1986 nuclear disaster in Chernobyl which contaminated wide areas and forced about 160,000 Ukrainians from their homes. Western oficials and the United Nations have urged Iran to join the safety forum. Tehran has repeatedly rejected safety concerns about Bushehr — built in a highly seismic area — that began operations in September 2011 after decades of delays. Iran sits on major fault lines and has suffered several devastating earthquakes in recent years, including a 6.6 magnitude quake in 2003 which lattened the southeastern city of Bam and killed more than 25,000 people. In August more than 300 people were killed when two quakes struck the north west. A report published last week by US think-tanks Carnegie Endowment and the Federation of American Scientists said that "ominously" the Bushehr reactor sits at the intersection of three tectonic plates. "Iran's sole nuclear power plant is not at risk of a tsunami similar in size to the one that knocked out the electricity and emergency cooling systems at Fukushima. But, repeated warnings about the threat of earthquakes for the Bushehr nuclear plant appear to have fallen on deaf ears," the report said. The quake happened on National Nuclear Technology Day when Iran's leaders celebrate the technological advances they say will reduce the country's reliance on fossil fuels, leaving more of its abundant oil for export. Israel, Gulf Arab states and many Western countries fear Tehran is seeking a nuclear weapons capability and the Republic is under international sanctions aimed at forcing it to curb some of its atomic work. Iran denies it wants nuclear arms and says its atomic work is for electricity generation and other peaceful uses. Meanwhile, Iran has told the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency that an earthquake that struck close to the country’s only nuclear plant on Tuesday did not damage the facility, the IAEA said. The Vienna-based UN body said the quake — which Iranian media said killed 30 people as it devastated small villages — hit about 91 km from the Bushehr nuclear power plant. “Iran has informed (the IAEA’s Incident and Emergency Centre) of the event, reporting that there has been no damage to the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant and no radioactive release from the installation,” the UN agency said in a statement. Based on this information and the IAEA’s own seismic analysis of the earthquake’s magnitude, location and other factors, the agency “is not currently seeking additional information from Iran,” the statement added.— Reuters UN may cut food aid to Syrian refugees due to cash shortage BEIRUT/GENEVA — The United Nations said yesterday it will halt food aid to 400,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon next month unless it receives urgent new funding. The cash shortage is part of a wider inancial shortfall that the organisation says is threatening its efforts to help nearly 1.3 million Syrian refugees and almost 4 million more people displaced inside Syria by the two-year conlict. "The speed with which the crisis is deteriorating is much faster than the ability of the international community to inance the Syrian humanitarian needs," Panos Moumtzis, the UN refugee agency's regional co-ordinator for Syrian refugees said. "We're afraid, if no more funds are made available urgently — and this is where we are at a breaking point - we will come to a point where we will have to start reducing aid, prioritising aid," he said in Geneva. In Lebanon, where authorities and aid groups are struggling to cope with a growing wave of refugees already equivalent to 10 per cent of the local population, the UN World Food Programme warned that it might be forced to cut back operations in May. "In one month, and with the current funding, more than 400,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon will no longer receive food assistance," WFP country operations head Etienne Labande said. All refugees currently receive food when they register and then get monthly food coupons worth $27 a month, Labande said, but any interruption in that support could lead to unrest in a country where sectarian tensions have already been aggravated by the Syrian crisis. "I am extremely concerned that without continued funding we will see increased tensions and further displacement in an already tense environment," Labande said. The United Nations said in mid-February that around 70,000 people had been killed in the uprising against President Bashar al Assad. Since then, violence monitors say more than 10,000 people have died. The ighting has also left whole districts of the Syria's historic cities in rubble. The Beirut-based UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia estimates that 400,000 houses have been completely destroyed, 300,000 partially destroyed and a further half million suffered some kind of structural damage, so that one in three Syrian homes has been scarred by the war. The United Nations says that so far only $400 million out of more than $1.5 billion pledged by international donors in late January to cover Syrian refugee needs for the irst six months of this year has actually been committed. It said last week the impact of the lack of funds would include a halt in 3.5 million litres of daily water deliveries to Jordan's Zaatari camp which houses more than 100,000 refugees, mostly children. — Reuters AMMAN — An Iraqi oficial said yesterday Amman and Baghdad have signed a deal to extend an $18-billion pipeline to the Red Sea city of Aqaba to export crude and supply Jordan with oil and gas. "The two countries have signed an agreement to build a 1,700-kilometre pipeline from Basra to Aqaba," Nihad Musa, director of State Company for Oil Projects, told Jordan's oficial news agency Petra in Amman. "The designs and technical studies, which are currently being conducted by a Canadian company, are scheduled to be done by the end of this year." Musa said Iraq "is serious about implementing the $18 billion project. It is important for the two countries." Under the deal, which is expected to be operational in 2017, "Jordan will get 850,000 barrels of oil as well as 3.53 billion cubic feet of gas a day," the Iraqi oficial was quoted as saying. The kingdom relies on imports for 95 per cent of its energy needs. A rise in fuel prices by up to 53 per cent in November prompted violent protests in which three people were killed and more than 70 injured. Kidnapped top aide of Libya premier freed TRIPOLI — A top aide to Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan kidnapped at the end of last month in a Tripoli suburb has been released, a source close to the cabinet said yesterday. "Mohammed Ali al Gattus, an adviser and head of the premier's ofice, was freed on Monday and is now with his close ones and in good health," the source said, asking for anonymity. "We don't at present have information on the kidnappers or their motives." Gattus was abducted on March 31 as he drove to the capital from Libya's third city Misrata. His car was found in Tajura, an eastern suburb of Tripoli, after he was apparently stopped at a fake checkpoint. Just hours before the abduction, the prime minister had said his cabinet was working under "very dificult conditions", and that "death threats" had been made against members of the government. Faced with rising instability, Libya's new authorities have promised to deal irmly with the militias that are a legacy of the armed uprising that overthrew veteran dictator Moamer Kadhai in October 2011. Tensions have been rising between the government and the militias for several weeks, after the launch of a campaign aimed at dislodging the armed groups from the capital. —AFP A partially destroyed building in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo yesterday. — AFP
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10, 2013 ASIA 7 China, Australian PM agree to annual talks BEIJING — Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard yesterday agreed to hold annual prime ministerial meetings, as Chinese money drives Australia's huge resource boom. Li and Gillard held talks at the ornate Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where the visiting leader was greeted with full military honours including cannon ired from nearby Tiananmen Square. Australia's economy has beneited from Chinese demand for resources including iron ore, and China is now its largest trading partner with two-way business in goods and services worth Aus$128 billion ($134 billion). "Our two sides have decided that the prime ministers will have regular annual meetings either in a bilateral format or on multilateral occasions," Li said, adding that yesterday's talks could be "regarded as the annual meeting mechanism". Gillard congratulated Li on his selection last month as premier. "I am illed with optimism about the way we will be able to work together to take the relationship between our two countries forward," she said. Australia, which has a longstanding military alliance with the United States, also engages in defence co-operation with China, with which it has conducted live-ire naval exercises. On Sunday, Gillard met President Xi Jinping at an annual conference of political and economic leaders on the southern island of Hainan. Cultural exchanges are also growing. China provides the greatest number of overseas students to Australia with 150,000 enrolments in 2012, and the second largest source of overseas visitors — 626,000 last year. USS Freedom arrives in Manila yesterday to join the Philippine and US military exercise dubbed Balikatan (Shoulder-to-Shoulder). — AFP Chinese boat runs aground on Tubbataha MANILA — A Chinese ishing boat has run aground on a World Heritage-listed coral reef in the Philippines, roughly 1,600 kilometres from China's nearest major landmass, authorities said yesterday. The vessel, with 12 crew members, was found stranded in the shallows of Tubbataha Reef in the Sulu Sea just before midnight on Monday, coast guard spokesman Lieutenant Commander Arman Balilo said. "This is a small ishing boat, but we are wondering how they strayed into Tubbataha. Apart from illegal entry, we are investigating them for possible poaching as well," Balilo said. Balilo said the boat was to be pulled off the reef yesterday and then towed to the nearby island province of Palawan, where the ishermen would be detained and questioned by authorities. Balilo said Chinese ishermen frequently strayed into Philippine waters, but this was the irst time in recent years that they had been detected as far south as Tubbataha. The grounding of the vessel comes as the Philippines and China are locked in a bitter dispute over competing territorial claims to the South China Sea. China claims nearly all of the sea, even waters approaching the coasts of the Philippines, Vietnam and other countries in Southeast Asia. The Philippines accused China of occupying a shoal, which is home to a rich ishing ground, near its main island of Luzon last year. The Philippines has asked a United Nations panel to rule that China's claims are invalid. However Tubbataha reef is in the Sulu Sea, which is further southeast and not claimed by China. The Sulu and South China seas are separated by Palawan, one of the Philippines' biggest islands. The reef is about 1,600 kilometres southeast of Hainan island, China's nearest major landmass. Balilo said he did not want to speculate how the Chinese ishermen reached Tubbataha. But one navy oficial said the ishermen likely sailed through the South China Sea and then a narrow strait at the southern tip of Palawan. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang gesture during a meeting in Beijing yesterday. — AFP Mekong study predicts crop shifts Helicopter Dynamic Pegassus perform an air show during a parade of the 67th anniversary commemoration of the Indonesian Air Force at an airbase in Jakarta yesterday. — AFP Bird lu outbreak spurs food fears SHANGHAI — China's bird lu outbreak is "devastating" poultry sales, an industry group said yesterday, as the H7N9 virus which has killed seven people triggered a new food safety scare. Since China announced over a week ago that H7N9 avian inluenza had been found in humans for the irst time, the number of people infected has risen to 24, almost half in the eastern city of Shanghai. Chinese authorities say they do not know how the virus is spreading, though it is believed the infection is passing from birds to humans. The World Health Organization (WHO) has said there is no evidence H7N9 is passing from person to person — a development that has the potential to trigger a pandemic. Authorities have advised the public to avoid live birds but offered reassurances that poultry and eggs that are still on sale are safe to eat if cooked properly. However, state media said that poultry sales have plunged in some areas of China, even regions that have so far recorded no human infections. "It's really a devastating blow to the market for broilers," said Qiu Baoqin, vice secretary general of China's National Poultry Industry Association. Broilers are young chickens sold ready for cooking. BANGKOK — A climate-change study on the Lower Mekong Basin says Laos' and Vietnam's central highlands can anticipate declines in production of robusta coffee and forecasts the cash crop will become more suitable for north-east Thailand. "For robusta coffee, we found overall the central highlands will have reduced suitability," said Jeremy Carew-Reid, the main author of Climate Change and Impact Study for the Lower Mekong Basin. "But other areas will open up, such as north-east Thailand, northern Thailand and parts of Laos with high elevation," Carew-Reid said. The study, sponsored by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), attempts to assess how climate change over the next 25- 30 years will impact livestock, isheries and important crops including rice, maize, coffee, rubber and soya. Based on statistical downscaling of existing global circulation models, the study produced new climate models for the region — comprising 187 provinces in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam — through which the Mekong River lows. The scientists identiied eight "hotspot" provinces that are expected to experience the most extreme variations in temperature, rainfall and loods, which could therefore experience the most drastic changes in food production. The hotspots include Chiang Rai and Sakon Nakhon provinces in Thailand, Khammouan and Champasak in Laos, Stung Treng, Mondulkiri and Kampong Thom in Cambodia and Kien Giang and Gia Lai in Vietnam. "We found that for rain-fed rice, for example, out of the eight hotspot provinces, seven will experience signiicant decreases in yields," Carew- Reid said. The Lower Mekong Basin is notoriously prone to weather extremes and high climate variability already. "The Mekong region is globally quite unique," said Tarek Ketelsen, the environmental systems engineer who did the climate change model for the study. "The Mekong Basin has two monsoon regimes; you've got snow melt and glacial buildup in the Tibetan- China part of the Mekong, and storms coming out of the Paciic in the lower part," Ketelsen said. The study anticapates a 4-degree increase in average temperature for the region by 2050, compared with the global average of 2 degrees, in the most optimal of forecasts by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). "If you look at the IPCC reports this area is a black hole," Carew-Reid said. "All the parameters are more extreme in this region - temperature, rainfall and looding." These extremes will be even more extreme in the eight designated hotspot provinces, especially rainfall. "We're forecasting 20-per-cent increases in rainfall in the southern hotspots," Carew-Reid said. More rain may be bad for areas that are already experiencing a lot of precipitation, such as central Cambodia, but it might be good for places such as north-east Thailand (called Isaan), which is now dependent on rainfed agriculture. "In the future when there is more rainfall in the region, Isaan is looking to be doing better than elsewhere," predicted Ketelsen. Not everyone is so sure. "Increasing rainfall doesn't necessarily mean better," said Suppakorn Chitwanon, a senior researcher at the South-east Asian centre of the Global Change SysTem for Analysis, Research and Training (START) in Bangkok. "You have to see if the rain comes at the right time, and whether it is distributed evenly," he said. Scientists are generally cautious about jumping to conclusions about the speciic impact of global warming 30 years from now. This raises questions about the next step of the USAID-backed project, which will involve taking the study's conclusions to village communities in the hotspot provinces to help them plan for the future. "If you talk to farmers about what is going to happen in 30 years, they will say, come back then and talk to my son," Suppakorn said. — dpa IAEA to inspect Fukushima Three Filipinos face death VIENNA — The UN atomic agency announced yesterday a visit to Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant to review efforts to plan and implement its decommissioning, two years after a major disaster there. The April 15-22 trip by the 12-member team of International Atomic Energy (IAEA) nuclear experts and international specialists is at the request of the Japanese government, a statement said. — AFP JAKARTA — Three Philippine men could face the death penalty in Indonesia after being caught trying to smuggle methamphetamine with a street value of $2.1 million into the country, an oficial said yesterday. The trio were arrested last week with the 15.3- kilogram drugs haul after arriving from Hong Kong at the main airport serving the capital Jakarta, customs oficial Okto Irianto told reporters. "They hid the crystal methamphetamine in 15 boxes of milk powder. Each brought ive boxes in their suitcase," he said. The trio, whose names were not released, allegedly carried the drugs — which the oficial said had a street value of $2.1 million — with them in their hand luggage. The men, one aged in his 40s, one in his 50s, and the third 61, admitted having previously smuggled drugs into other countries, according to Irianto. "They are professional couriers and this was their irst attempt to smuggle drugs into Indonesia," Irianto said. Police are quizzing them to ind out more details about the drug-smuggling gang they worked with. They could face the death penalty if found guilty under Indonesia's tough drugs laws, Irianto said. Foreigners are frequently arrested for attempting to smuggle drugs into Indonesia, including many on Bali who are held in the resort island's notorious Kerobokan prison. Thai bomb squad members inspect the site of a roadside bomb attack on a patroling police pick-up truck in southern province of Narathiwat yesterday. — AFP
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