ENB TODAY 250308

Alleged EPDP member attempts extortion
A member of the EPDP who attempted to extort Rs.100,000 from a leading businessman in Mannar town this morning was taken into custody by Mannar police.
The suspect was detained for further questioning.

Sri Lankan PM in Israel on historic visit
Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake arrived in Israel(he is also the president of the Palestine solidarity community. Posted By: Roshan)for the first visit by a Sri Lankan premier to the country. During his four-day working visit, Wickramanayake is to meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Shimon Peres. He will also travel to the West Bank for talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Prime Minister in a historic visit to Israel Monday, 24 March 2008 Prime Minister, Ratnasiri Wickramanayake is now on a historic visit to Israel; the first ever visit to the country by a Sri Lankan premier.
Prime Minister Wickramanayake is scheduled to conduct a tour of Jerusalem today (24th) and is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President
Shimon Peres. He will also travel to the West Bank for talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Meanwhile, sources from Prime Minister Office told www.news.lk that the Prime Minister will also enter into a bilateral agreement with the Israel government on
matters pertaining to education, culture and trade.
The Prime Minister is scheduled to return to Sri Lanka on the 29th of March.
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ஈழம் மீது சிறிலங்காவின் குண்டுவீச்சு ''சிங்களம்''!
கோசொவோ மீது நேட்டோவின் குண்டு வீச்சு ''சுதந்திரம்''!!
Ninth anniversary of the NATO bombings aimed at creating an “independent Kosovo”Kosovo’s unilateral secession – masterminded by the US, NATO and key countries of the EU – is shedding a new light on the NATO bombing campaign, which started nine years ago, on March 24, 1999.
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Monday, March 24, 2008 Although its proclaimed goal was to prevent "humanitarian catastrophe", the bombings have led to the creation of a unilaterally-proclaimed "independent Kosovo".
Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said on the anniversary of the NATO bombing that the "brutal demolition" of the country during the war was intended to
pave the way for the creation of the world's first NATO state.
"The illegal construction of the enormous U.S. Bondsteel base and annex 11 of the Ahtisaari plan which establishes NATO as the ultimate government agency in
Kosovo reveal the true reasons why Serbia was so senselessly bombed and why a NATO state
(in Kosovo) was declared on February 17," Kostunica said.
NATO's Operation Allied Force, lasted for 78 days and ended with the Kumanovo Military-Technical Agreement between NATO and Belgrade authorities, as well
as the UN Security Council Resolution 1244, adopted on 10 June 1999.
The "humanitarian bombing", as it was labeled in the West, was considered as "aggression" by Yugoslavia. In international political circles, it was dubbed
"Madeleine's war" in reference to US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who had been the most hawkish supporter of the bombing.
Many saw it as a precedent for controversial military interventions in other parts of the world.
The bombing campaign was marred by controversies over:
Its illegality under international law: the bombing was triggered without a UN Security Council resolutionThe number of deaths: during the bombing campaign, estimates of the number of victims were highly inflated. The State Department on 19 April said that up to
500,000 Kosovo Albanians were missing and feared dead, later reducing the number to 100,000.
However, post-war assessment put the figures of a total number of dead and missing (including clashes between the KLA and the Yugoslav forces, NATO bombings
and civilian casualties) at between 4,000 and 10,000 people -- both Albanians and Serbs.
Nine Yugoslav political, military and police leaders were indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. On the Albanian side, the leader of the
KLA (and Kosovo's Prime minister in 2003-2004) Ramush Haradinaj was also indicted for war crimes. From the NATO camp, no one was charged. The refugee flows: NATO claimed that the reason for the refugee flows was a policy of "ethnic cleansing" by the Yugoslav forces. Belgrade argued that the refugee
flows began only after NATO started its bombings and were a result of a combination of factors, including bombings and the clashes between the KLA and the
Yugoslav forces. The total number of Albanian refugees and displaced was estimated at 800,000 people by the UNHCR. Tens of thousands of Serbs were displaced
towards central Serbia.The efficiency of the strikes: Operation Allied Force inflicted much less damage on the Yugoslav military than originally thought. Army barracks were evacuated and
mobile resources ingeniously camouflaged. Allied pilots bombed hundreds of decoy planes and tanks, dummy targets, heat simulators, fake bridges and airfields.
NATO had claimed that the Yugoslav Army had been decimated, but as it turned out after the war, most mobile Yugoslav Army assets survived unscathed. Only 12
tanks were subsequently confirmed destroyed by over 34,000 sorties of 1,100 NATO aircraft. The choice of targets: Controversial targets included urban areas, economic and infrastructure assets and everything that what was later labeled "collateral damage".
NATO bombs hit refugee columns of ethnic Albanians in Meja (78 dead) and Korisa (87 dead), an international Belgrade-Thessaloniki train in Grdelica (10 dead),
buses carrying Serb and Albanian civilians in Luzane (47 dead) and Savine Vode (17 dead), a refugee camp at Majino Selo (5 dead), the Serbian state television
building (16 dead), the Chinese Embassy (4 dead), a Belgrade hospital (3 dead), the downtown area of Aleksinac (12 dead), Surdulica (16 dead) and Novi Pazar
(14 dead), while hundreds of clusters bombs fell on Nis, Serbia's second city (12 dead)...In the later stages of the campaign, NATO targeted strategic targets such as bridges, factories and electricity plants in order to cause disruption and economic
damage.
The attacks against the chemical and the petrol industry caused substantial environmental damage and pollution, while the use of depleted uranium weapons was
highly criticized by environmental groups.
The total damage of the bombing is estimated at over $30 billion.
The bombings actually exacerbated, if not created, the refugee crisis; the Serbian army suffered minimum damage; Kosovo became more mono-ethnic than ever after
a campaign of unchallenged post-war violence against the Serbs.

Bush's failed Kosovo policy
Fighting in northern Kosovo this week between Serbs and NATO-led troops shows that the independence engineered by the Bush administration for the breakaway
Balkan province is not going according to plan.
(Robert M. Hayden, UPI) Friday, March 21, 2008 When U.S. officials encouraged the unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia by Kosovo's Albanians Feb. 17, we were told that an EU mission would
replace the United Nations in Kosovo, and everyone would then build a multiethnic, democratic society with respect for rights of the Serbs, a minority in the province
as a whole.
That is not happening.
The Serbs of northern Kosovo, where they are a majority, believe that they have little future in an Albanian state. They have resisted its imposition on them, mainly
through peaceful means, except for destroying the control posts on the border that they do not recognize despite U.S. insistence that they must.
The protests turned violent when U.N. police with NATO backing forcibly broke up the peaceful occupation of a government building Monday -- and the ensuing
fighting left hundreds of Serb civilians, U.N. police and NATO-led troops injured, some critically, and one U.N. policeman dead.
The EU mission cannot enter northern Kosovo and the United Nations was forced to pull out, leaving NATO troops to guard a border that has no status under
international law and that is rejected by the people living on both sides of it.
The problem is not that "Serb nationalists" are resisting "the West," as it is put by those U.S. journalists who honor the First Amendment by parroting the State
Department, but rather that the Bush administration has attempted to force a military solution to a political problem, in violation of the U.N. charter and the most basic
principles of international law.
This is not the first time they have done so, of course, and if the scale of violence in Kosovo is less than that in Iraq, the possibility of destabilizing another region --
this time the Balkans -- is just as grave.
Kosovo really was the birthplace of the Serbian nation 800 years ago, and was included in Serbia after the Ottoman Empire was forced out in 1912. But Albanians
also always lived there. Demographic changes in the 20th century (some caused by ethnic cleansing of Serbs from the region during Italian occupation in World War
II) led to a heavy ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo by the 1980s, and Serbia's continued control over the province required a police state.
But the Serbian hand in Kosovo was no heavier than Britain's rule of Ireland in the decades before Irish independence in 1923, or Israel's occupation of the West
Bank until the Oslo accords, or Turkey's continuing control over the Kurdish-majority regions in eastern Turkey. And these situations usually end when the governing
state realizes that maintaining control is too costly, in financial, political and even moral terms, and seeks a deal to permit withdrawal.
Such a deal could have been reached with Serbia, but neither the Clinton administration nor that of George W. Bush wanted one. Both saw Kosovo as an
opportunity for isolating Russia from the Balkans for the first time in more than a century, since Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic, never one of the world's great strategic
thinkers, had chosen to ally Serbia with, first, the Soviet Union and then with Russia. Further, with the apparent end of the Cold War, NATO needed a job, since the
alliance had been formed to keep the Soviet Union from invading West Germany. Attacking Serbia to "liberate" Kosovo was meant to transform NATO from a
purely defensive alliance into a more proactive or offensive one, contrary to NATO's own charter, but responding to a certain realpolitik.
The most basic principle of international law since World War II, however, and the most fundamental principle of the U.N. system, is that aggressive wars are banned
-- that was the justification the first George Bush gave for attacking Iraq after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and the whole world except for North Korea agreed
with him. But attacking a sovereign state in order to occupy part of its territory and ultimately change its borders is another story. Unfortunately for international law
and international stability, NATO's action against Serbia in 1999 was just such a war of aggression, waged without U.N. Security Council approval.
And it did not go as planned. As the State Department itself admitted in May 1999, once NATO attacked Serbia, Milosevic's forces turned what had been "selective
targeting of towns and regions" suspected of armed Albanian resistance into a campaign to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of Albanians. This is worth repeating -- the
1999 NATO war against Serbia was not in response to ethnic cleansing but rather provoked it, which then made it necessary to carry the war on for three months in
order to reverse the consequences of the NATO attacks themselves.
The 1999 war only ended when the Clinton administration went back to the U.N. Security Council that it had ignored in starting it. The resulting U.N. resolution
recognized Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo. Since Russia does not feel obligated to assist the United States in isolating it from the Balkans, that resolution cannot be
changed.
And rather than try to negotiate a solution, the Bush administration chose to try to impose one, in part to show the weakness of Russia.
But Kosovo is not recognized by most countries, or by the United Nations, or even by the European Union. Kosovo cannot achieve true independence unless and
until the Kosovo Albanians reach a deal with Serbia -- exactly the course of action that the Bush administration has made more complicated than ever. Meanwhile,
the whole system of international law is threatened, as is local peace in Kosovo and stability in the Balkans.
Kosovo can be settled if the Bush administration returns to the United Nations and engages in honest negotiation with the Serbs and the Russians. More
fundamentally, stability in the international system can only be restored when the United States once again honors the fundamental principles of international law that it
violated by attacking Iraq in 2003, and in recognizing Kosovo in 2008.

(Robert M. Hayden is professor of anthropology, law and public & international affairs and director of the Center for Russian & East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.)

Moscow blasts US for sending arms to “former terrorists”
Russia blasted the United States on Thursday, following President George W. Bush’s decision to authorize the arms supply to Kosovo security forces, blaming
Washington for arming former terrorists and pouring the oil on the already fragile situation in the volatile province.
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Friday, March 21, 2008 "They say the weapons will help fight terrorism. At the same time, it is namely former terrorists who are in power in Kosovo right now. How can you fight terrorism,
supplying weapons to former terrorists," Russian envoy to the NATO Dmitry Rogozin said.
Rogozin said that the Russia-NATO council would meet next week for extraordinary and informal meeting to discuss Washington's plans to supply weapons to
Kosovo.
The United Nations Development Program, UNDP, estimates that between 330.000 and 460.000 small arms have been hidden in Kosovo since the end of 1998-99
conflict, with just as many stashed in neighboring Macedonia.
However, the White House said the move would "strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace."
US officials argue that the presidential decree opens the way for arming the planned 2,500-strong Kosovo security force, which will be trained and supervised by
NATO in accordance with the status plan drafted by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari.
Serbia and Russia objected the move, saying that the creation of new security force in Kosovo contradicts the UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which bans the
creation of Kosovo army and forbids the export of weapons to the province.
"I would hate to think that these arms supplies aim to coerce Serbs and other ethnic minorities by force to stay within the borders of an illegally proclaimed state. I
don't believe this will add stability to the Balkans -- probably, it will just the other way round," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

Features
Kosovo's police force
March 6, 2008, 15:15 Serbs in Kosovo police turn backs on orders from PristinaHundreds of Serbian officers in Kosovo's police force are refusing to take orders from Pristina. They say they do not recognise the authority of the newly independent
state. Meanwhile, locals who remember Russian peacekeeping forces protecting the Serb population after the 1999 war are once again looking to Moscow for help.
Swedish soldiers in the Kosovo town of Grachanitsa are meant to be protecting the residents of Kosovo, but instead they're protecting the police. Locals say they're
nice guys, but they don't make them feel safe.
Normally this town is looked after by Serbian officers in the Kosovo police force. But after independence hundreds laid down their weapons and handed in their
badges.
They've been off work for 48 hours - refusing to take orders from Pristina - and are waiting for instructions from Belgrade or the United Nations.
The pressure is on for ordinary Serb citizens as well. They pray the violence they have witnessed in the past is never repeated.
Back in 1999 Russian soldiers were made part of the peacekeeping forces after the war. They stayed for three years, protecting the Serbian population.
Many Serbs remember the day when Russian troops came as a great celebration.
“We threw flowers at them and offered them rakia to drink,” recalls Nadezda Cvetkovic, adding she hopes Russians will return.
The head of the Serbian community in Kosovo sees the situation less personally.
“We would like to see Russian peacekeepers here, but primarily, I call on Belgrade to stop playing political games and establish one large national government soon,
and then invite Russia to set up permanent military bases in Serbia and Kosovo,” says Dr Marko Jaksic, President of the Serbian Municipalities of Kosovo.
Two weeks after Kosovo's declaration of independence, the situation there is far from settled. And with less than 30 countries having recognised the new state,
problems in the international arena remain as well.

Donors accused of failing Afghans
By Alastair Leithead BBC News, Kabul

Some $10bn (£5bn) in aid promised to Afghanistan has still to be delivered, aid organisation Oxfam has said. It also finds that two-thirds of aid is not spent through the government and 40% goes back to donor countries in consultant fees and expatriate pay.
Oxfam says the prospects for peace in Afghanistan are being undermined because what has been donated is not being used effectively.
Oxfam carried out the report on behalf of 94 aid agencies in Afghanistan.
"Western countries are failing to deliver" is the clear message of the Oxfam report for the umbrella group Agency Co-ordinating Body for Afghan Relief (Acbar).
It shows a disparity between what has been promised and what has been delivered.
And the way in which the money is used is also criticised.
'Poor security'
Different countries have different ways of spending.
Some countries channel donations through the government to help their civil service manage and decide on the funding of development programmes but two-thirds of
the international aid misses out the government altogether.
America is the biggest donor by far.
But a USAid official confirmed that since 2001 it had only spent two-thirds of the money it pledged - a shortfall of $8.5bn - blaming poor security for an inability to
get projects under way.
And the official said only 6% of the overall budget was spent through the Afghan government "to ensure US taxpayers' money could be accounted for" - implying a
lack of trust in the government system.
Disappointment
Acbar's director said too much was being spent on short-term projects as a lever to win people over as part of the military counter-insurgency strategy, at the
expense of longer-term development.
The Oxfam report points out that while the US military spends $100m a day, the average amount of aid spent by all donors combined has been just $7m a day since
2001.
The findings echo the feelings of Afghan people who had high expectations when the Taleban were removed from power.
They are now disappointed by a lack of tangible progress despite the billions of dollars they are told have been heading into the country.

Food prices rising across the worldStory
U.N. expects higher food prices for next 10 years
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- If you're seeing your grocery bill go up, you're not alone.
Protesters share a loaf of bread in Cairo, Egypt, while demonstrating against high food prices.
1 of 3 From subsistence farmers eating rice in Ecuador to gourmets feasting on escargot in France, consumers worldwide face rising food prices in what analysts call
a perfect storm of conditions. Freak weather is a factor. But so are dramatic changes in the global economy, including higher oil prices, lower food reserves and
growing consumer demand in China and India.
The world's poorest nations still harbor the greatest hunger risk. Clashes over bread in Egypt killed at least two people last week, and similar food riots broke out in
Burkina Faso and Cameroon this month.
But food protests now crop up even in Italy. And while the price of spaghetti has doubled in Haiti, the cost of miso is packing a hit in Japan.
"It's not likely that prices will go back to as low as we're used to," said Abdolreza Abbassian, economist and secretary of the Intergovernmental Group for Grains for
the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. "Currently if you're in Haiti, unless the government is subsidizing consumers, consumers have no choice but to cut
consumption. It's a very brutal scenario, but that's what it is."
No one knows that better than Eugene Thermilon, 30, a Haitian day laborer who can no longer afford pasta to feed his wife and four children since the price nearly
doubled to $0.57 a bag. Their only meal on a recent day was two cans of corn grits.
"Their stomachs were not even full," Thermilon said, walking toward his pink concrete house on the precipice of a garbage-filled ravine. By noon the next day, he still
had nothing to feed them for dinner.
In the long term, prices are expected to stabilize. Farmers will grow more grain for both fuel and food and eventually bring prices down. Already this is happening
with wheat, with more crops to be planted in the U.S., Canada and Europe in the coming year.
However, consumers still face at least 10 years of more expensive food, according to preliminary FAO projections.
Among the driving forces are petroleum prices, which increase the cost of everything from fertilizers to transport to food processing. Rising demand for meat and
dairy in rapidly developing countries such as China and India is sending up the cost of grain, used for cattle feed, as is the demand for raw materials to make biofuels.
What's rare is that the spikes are hitting all major foods in most countries at once. Food prices rose 4 percent in the U.S. last year, the highest rise since 1990, and
are expected to climb as much again this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
As of December, 37 countries faced food crises, and 20 had imposed some sort of food-price controls.
For many, it's a disaster. The U.N.'s World Food Program says it's facing a $500 million shortfall in funding this year to feed 89 million needy people. On Monday, it
appealed to donor countries to step up contributions, saying its efforts otherwise have to be scaled back.
In Egypt, where bread is up 35 percent and cooking oil 26 percent, the government recently proposed ending food subsidies and replacing them with cash payouts to
the needy. But the plan was put on hold after it sparked public uproar.
"A revolution of the hungry is in the offing," said Mohammed el-Askalani of Citizens Against the High Cost of Living, a protest group established to lobby against
ending the subsidies.
In China, the price hikes are both a burden and a boon.
Per capita meat consumption has increased 150 percent since 1980, so Zhou Jian decided six months ago to switch from selling auto parts to pork. The price of pork
has jumped 58 percent in the past year, yet every morning housewives and domestics still crowd his Shanghai shop, and more customers order choice cuts.
The 26-year-old now earns $4,200 a month, two to three times what he made selling car parts. And it's not just pork. Beef is becoming a weekly indulgence.
"The Chinese middle class is starting to change the traditional thought process of beef as a luxury," said Kevin Timberlake, who manages the U.S.-based Western
Cattle Company feedlot in China's Inner Mongolia.
At the same time, increased cost of food staples in China threatens to wreak havoc. Beijing has been selling grain from its reserves to hold down prices, said Jing
Ulrich, chairwoman of China equities for JP Morgan.
"But this is not really solving the root cause of the problem," Ulrich said. "The cause of the problem is a supply-demand imbalance. Demand is very strong. Supply is
constrained. It is as simple as that."
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao says fighting inflation from shortages of key foods is a top economic priority. Inflation reached 7.1 percent in January, the highest in 11
years, led by an 18.2 percent jump in food prices.
Meanwhile, record oil prices have boosted the cost of fertilizer and freight for bulk commodities -- up 80 percent in 2007 over 2006. The oil spike has also turned up
the pressure for countries to switch to biofuels, which the FAO says will drive up the cost of corn, sugar and soybeans "for many more years to come."
In Japan, the ethanol boom is hitting the country in mayonnaise and miso, two important culinary ingredients, as biofuels production pushes up the price of cooking oil
and soybeans.
A two-pound bottle of mayonnaise his risen about 10 percent in two months to as much as 330 yen (nearly $3), said Daishi Inoue, a cook at a Chinese restaurant.
"It's not hurting us much now," he said. "But if prices keep going up, we have no choice but to raise our prices."
Miso Bank, a restaurant in Tokyo's glitzy Ginza district, specializes in food cooked with miso, or soybean paste.
"We expect prices to go up in April all at once," said Miso Bank manager Koichi Oritani. "The hikes would affect our menu. So we plan to order miso in bulk and
make changes to the menu."
Italians are feeling the pinch in pasta, with consumer groups staging a one-day strike in September against a food deeply intertwined with national identity. Italians eat
an estimated 60 pounds of pasta per capita a year.
The protest was symbolic because Italians typically stock up on pasta, buying multiple packages at a time. But in the next two months pasta consumption dropped 5
percent, said farm lobbyist Rolando Manfredini.
"The situation has gotten even worse," he said.
In decades past, farm subsidies and support programs allowed major grain exporting countries to hold large surpluses, which could be tapped during food shortages
to keep prices down. But new trade policies have made agricultural production much more responsive to market demands -- putting global food reserves at their
lowest in a quarter century.
Without reserves, bad weather and poor harvests have a bigger impact on prices.
"The market is extremely nervous. With the slightest news about bad weather, the market reacts," said economist Abbassian.
That means that a drought in Australia and flooding in Argentina, two of the world's largest suppliers of industrial milk and butter, sent the price of butter in France
soaring 37 percent from 2006 to 2007.
Forty percent of escargot, the snail dish, is butter.
"You can do the calculation yourself," said Romain Chapron, president of Croque Bourgogne, which supplies escargot. "It had a considerable effect. It forced people
in our profession to tighten their belts to the maximum."
The same climate crises sparked a 21 percent rise in the cost of milk, which with butter makes another famous French food item -- the croissant. Panavi, a pastry and
bread supplier, has raised retail prices of croissants and pain au chocolat by 6 to 15 percent.
Already, there's a lot of suspicion among consumers.
"They don't understand why prices have gone up like this," said Nicole Watelet, general secretary at the Federation of French Bakeries and Pastry Enterprises. "They
think that someone is profiting from this. But it's not us. We're paying." Food costs worldwide spiked 23 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to the FAO. Grains
went up 42 percent, oils 50 percent and dairy 80 percent.
Economists say that for the short term, government bailouts will have to be part of the answer to keep unrest at a minimum. In recent weeks, rising food prices
sparked riots in the West African nations of Burkina Faso, where mobs torched buildings, and Cameroon, where at least four people died.
But attempts to control prices in one country often have dire effects elsewhere. China's restrictions on wheat flour exports resulted in a price spike in Indonesia this
year, according to the FAO. Ukraine and Russia imposed export restrictions on wheat, causing tight supplies and higher prices for importing countries. Partly because
of the cost of imported wheat, Peru's military has begun eating bread made from potato flour, a native crop.
"We need a response on a large scale, either the regional or international level," said Brian Halweil of the environmental research organization Worldwatch Institute.
"All countries are tied enough to the world food markets that this is a global crisis."
Poorer countries can speed up the adjustment by investing in agriculture, experts say. If they do, farmers can turn high prices into an engine for growth.
But in countries like Burkina Faso, the crisis is immediate.
Days after the riots, Pascaline OuÄedraogo wandered the market in the capital, Ouagadougou, looking to buy meat and vegetables. She said a good meal cost 1,000
francs (about $2.35) not long ago. Now she needs twice that.
"The more prices go up, the less there is to meet their needs," she said of her three children, all in secondary school. "You wonder if it's the government or the
businesses that are behind the price hikes."
IrÇene Belem, a 25-year-old with twins, struggles to buy milk, which has gone up 57 percent in recent weeks.
"We knew we were poor before," she said, "but now it's worse than poverty." ====================