GROWING

ASIA
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SATURDAY l FEBRUARY 18 l 2017 OMANDAILYOBSERVER
Japan to speed up
frigate build to
reinforce E China Sea
TOKYO: Japan plans to accelerate a
warship building programme to make
two frigates a year to patrol the fringes
of the East China Sea, where it disputes
island ownership with China,
three people with knowledge of the
plan said.
Japan previously was building one
5,000-tonne class destroyer a year,
but will now make two 3,000-tonne
class ships a year, beginning from the
April 2018 fiscal year, the people said,
declining to be identified as they are
not authorised to talk to the media. It
aims to produce a fleet of eight of the
new class of smaller, cheaper vessels,
which may also have mine-sweeping
and anti-submarine capability.
Naval shipyard operators including
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Japan
Marine United Corp (JMU) and
Mitsui Engineering and Shipbuilding
are expected to bid for the work, the
people said.
Japan and China dispute ownership
of a group of islands in the East
China Sea, about 220 km northeast of
Taiwan. In Japan, they are known as
the Senkakus, while China calls them
the Diaoyu islands.
Senior Japanese military officials
have said they are concerned that
China may seek to increase its influence
in the East China Sea around Japan’s
southern Okinawa island chain.
Japan provides military aid to Southeast
Asian countries including the
Philippines and Vietnam that oppose
China’s territorial claims in the neighbouring
South China Sea.
In a departure from normal procurement
practice, Japan’s Ministry
of Defense said in a report published
on Wednesday it will require the winner
of the — eight frigate — contract
to offer major portions of the build to
other bidders.
The change is meant to ensure naval
shipyards remain open.
In the past two years, JMU has
won contracts to build the larger Aegis-equipped
destroyers, raising some
concern among defence ministry officials
that rivals could shutter their
shipyards, one of the sources said.
“We need to ensure our ability to
build naval vessels at home,” the person
said. — Reuters
FLORAL DANCE
Ethnic Miao people perform a dance during a local festival in Kaili, Guizhou province, China. — Reuters
Pakistan crackdown on militants
after shrine attack, toll rises to 88
SEHWAN SHARIF: Pakistani security forces killed
dozens of suspected militants on Friday, a day after IS
claimed a suicide bombing that killed more than 80
worshippers at a Sufi shrine in the latest of a series of
attacks across the country.
The bombing at the famed Lal Shahbaz Qalandar
shrine in southern Sindh province was Pakistan’s
deadliest attack in two years, killing at least 88 people
and underlining the threat of militant groups like the
Pakistani Taliban and IS.
With authorities facing angry criticism for failing
to tighten security before the bomber struck, analysts
warned that the wave of violence pointed to a major
escalation in militants’ attempts to destabilise the region.
“This is a virtual declaration of war against the
state of Pakistan,” said Imtiaz Gul, head of the independent
Centre for Research and Security Studies in
Islamabad.
With pressure growing for action, Pakistan demanded
that neighbouring Afghanistan hand over
76 “terrorists” it said were sheltering over the border.
The bombings over five days have hit all four of Pakistan’s
provinces and two major cities, killing around
100 people and shaking a nascent sense that the worst
of the country’s militant violence may be in the past.
A series of military operations against insurgent
groups operating in Pakistan had encouraged hopes
that their leaders were scattered.
“But this has led to a degree of complacency
within our civil-military leadership that perhaps they
have completely destroyed these elements, or broken
their back,” Gul said.
If so, that impression has been shattered by the
events of recent days.
At Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, the white marble floor
was still marked by blood on Friday, and a pile of
abandoned shoes and slippers was heaped in the
Devotees react as they gather outside the closed gate of the shrine of 13th century Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz
Qalandar a day after a bomb blew up at the shrine in the town of Sehwan in Sindh province, some 200 km
north-east of Karachi on Friday. — AFP
courtyard, many of them belonging to victims.
Outside, protesters shouted slogans at police, who
they said had failed to protect the shrine.
“I wish I could have been here and died in the blast
last night,” a devastated Ali Hussain said, sitting on
the floor of the shrine.
He said that local Sufis had asked for better security
after a separate bombing this week killed 13 people
in the eastern city of Lahore, but added: “No one
bothered to secure this place”.
Anwer Ali, 25, rushed to the shrine after he heard
the explosion, and described seeing dead bodies and
chaos as people fled the scene.
“There were threats to the shrine. The Taliban
had warned that they will attack here, but authorities
didn’t take it seriously,” Ali said.
Sindh police chief A D Khawaja said on Friday
that the death toll had reached 88 people with scores
more wounded. Security forces in Sindh said they
killed 18 suspected militants.
On the same day, army and police raids in the
northwestern cities of Peshawar and Bannu killed
seven militants and another six were killed in shelling
on the border with Afghanistan. — Reuters
Malaysian forensics test
samples in N Korea killing
KUALA LUMPUR/JAKARTA:
Malaysian government scientists
were on Friday examining samples
from the autopsy of the half-brother
of North Korea’s leader.
Police were meanwhile questioning
two female suspects who
were arrested carrying Vietnamese
and Indonesian passports, as well
as a Malaysian man, as they attempted
to shed light on the murder
of Kim Jong-Nam.
Lab forensics received samples
from the post-mortem on Thursday
and will “conduct the analysis
as soon as possible”, Dr Cornelia
Charito Siricord of the science
ministry’s chemistry department
told national news agency Bernama.
Malaysia’s deputy prime minister
said on Thursday he believed
North Korea had put in a request to
claim the body through the police
and the hospital, and that Malaysia
was ready to comply once investigations
were completed.
Police obtained a seven-day remand
order for the two female suspects,
Selangor state police chief
Abdul Samah Mat said.
SHOCK AND DISBELIEF: The
family and former neighbours of
an Indonesian woman arrested
over the assassination of the North
Korean leader’s half-brother expressed
shock on Friday that “a
nice person” like her could have
committed such a crime.
The woman, Siti Aishah, was
detained over the killing of Kim
Jong-Nam. Indonesian Vice-President
Jusuf Kalla suggested that the
25-year-old Aishah, was a “victim”
of a “scam” who thought she was
taking part in a reality show involving
hidden cameras.
Malaysian police say that Jong-
Nam was preparing to board a
plane to Macau when he was
jumped by two women who squirted
some kind of liquid in his face.
In the Jakarta neighbourhood
of Tambora, where Aishah used
to live with her then husband, her
former father-in-law was horrified
on hearing the news of her arrest
over the dramatic murder.
“I was shocked — no way,” said
Tija Liang Kiong, 56. “There’s no
way such a nice person would do
that. I could not believe it because
she was a good person.”
“She was kind — if she was not
kind I would not marry her off to
my son,” he added. She married the
son after meeting him while working
for Kiong’s business.
They had a baby and went to
Malaysia to find work but got a divorce
in 2012, Kiong said.
Kiong said the child they had
still lives with his family and that
Aishah last visited her son on January
28. Indonesian immigration
authorities said she flew to Malaysia
from Indonesia on February 2.
— AFP
Kim Jong-Nam sought reform: Japanese author
TOKYO: The assassinated half-brother
of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Un
was a courageous man who sought to
reform his country, a Japanese journalist
who wrote a book about him said on
Friday.
Kim Jong-Nam, who was killed
on Monday at Kuala Lumpur’s international
airport, had regularly corresponded
with Tokyo Shimbun senior
writer Yoji Gomi.
“Even if it put him in danger,
he wanted to tell his opinions to
Pyongyang through me or other media,”
Gomi told reporters.
Gomi also said that Kim told him he
had never met his younger half-brother
who succeeded their father Kim Jong-Il
and allegedly ordered his assassination,
sending female agents to poison him,
according to South Korea.
Gomi’s relationship with Kim began
Kim Jong-Nam, who
was killed on Monday
at Kuala Lumpur’s
international airport,
had regularly
corresponded with
Tokyo Shimbun
senior writer Yoji
Gomi
when he spotted him at Beijing’s international
airport in 2004.
They began to regularly exchange
emails in 2010. Gomi also interviewed
Kim in Macau and Beijing in 2011 for a
total of seven hours.
Tokyo Shimbun senior staff writer Yoji Gomi (R) at a press conference entitled ‘Kim
Jong-Nam and his death’ at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo
on Friday. — AFP
The last contact was via an email received
in January 2012, just weeks after
the death of Kim’s father.
Gomi said that Kim wanted North
Korea to carry out economic reforms
similar to those pursued by China from
the late 1970s.
“He said that the only way that
North Korea could survive would be
to go through the series of reforms and
liberalisation that China had carried
out,” Gomi said.
“He was critical of the system that
was in place in North Korea,” Gomi
added.
“He said that power should not depend
on hereditary succession. That
was not appropriate for a socialist society.
The leader should be selected
through a democratic process.”
He did say, however that at their first
meeting, in Macau in January 2011,
Kim was visibly nervous, sweating and
fidgeting.
Gomi also said he found Kim to be a
polite “intellectual” with a sense of humour,
unlike his reputation as a playboy
gambler, though he acknowledged
he enjoyed drinking, especially in Tokyo’s
fancy restaurants.
“He said that there he was able to
enjoy singing and drinking with South
Koreans, North Koreans and regular
Japanese people, and he said he hoped
that someday walls throughout the
world would disappear like that.”
Kim is often remembered for a
failed attempt in 2001 to enter Japan on
a forged passport to visit Disneyland.
He was expelled in an incident that
was widely seen as an embarrassment
for his father and may have scotched
his hopes of succeeding him as the
first-born son.
But Kim told Gomi he did not believe
that was the reason behind his
father’s decision. In his book, Gomi
quoted Kim as saying that his father
grew angry and distant after he advocated
reform. — AFP