Taiwan Probes Reports of Nuclear-linked Sales to Iran

TAIPEI: Taiwan said on Monday it would investigate reports that local firms had sold nuclear technology to Iran, which the West suspects aims to build bombs.

The Economic Ministry’s Import and Export Administration pledged the investigation due in part to a report in an English daily that said Iran had set up a nuclear-equipment smuggling network using Taiwan companies, administration director Chen Ching-chih said.

Other intelligence also pointed to a Taiwan-Iran link, he said. Iran obtained 100 transducers, tools that convert pressure into electrical signals that were made in Europe and sold to a company in Taiwan, the newspaper said, citing Western intelligence officials. It said Taiwan sold them onward to Iran.

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Taiwan Probes Reports of Nuclear-linked Sales to Iran was first posted on December 14, 2009 at 4:16 pm.

Sri Lanka President ‘War Criminal’, Try Him: Tamils

TORONTO: Sri Lankan Tamils in Canada have called for an international trial of the Sri Lankan president for allegedly ordering the killing of surrendering LTTE leaders during the ethnic war that ended in May.

Former Sri Lankan army chief and opposition presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka has alleged that Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa ordered troops to kill three top LTTE leaders when they raised white flags to surrender.

The defence secretary is the brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The killed Tamil leaders included LTTE Peace Secretariat head Seevaratnam Puleedevan, political wing head Balasingham Nandesan, and top military commander Ramesh and their families.

“From day one we knew that war crimes were being committed by the Sri Lankan army, but the international community asked us: where is the proof? Now the proof has come from the top army guy,” Canadian Tamil Congress spokesman David Poopalapillai .

“What more proof do world leaders and the international community now need to try the Sri Lankan president and his men for crimes against humanity?” he asked.

“Rajapaksa is a war criminal. He should be taken to The Hague to face trial for war crimes. No nation has violated the Geneva Convention as flagrantly as Sri Lanka. No nation ever killed the surrendering enemy.”

The Canadian Tamil leader said the international community should deal with the Sri Lankan president “in a similar way it dealt with Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.”

He said the Tamil diaspora around the world is writing to the UN, the International Court of Justice and world leaders to put the Sri Lankan president on trial immediately.

“We are drafting our petition and will send it soon to the world leaders, including Canada and India, to put Mahinda Rajapaksa and his men in the dock for war crimes,” he said.

Canada has the largest concentration of Sri Lankan Tamils outside Sri Lanka, with most of the 300,000-strong community concentrated in the Toronto area.

Though Canada banned the LTTE in 2006, the community staged vociferous rallies in Toronto and at the Canadian parliament to put pressure on Sri Lanka to stop the war against the LTTE.

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Sri Lanka President ‘War Criminal’, Try Him: Tamils was first posted on December 14, 2009 at 4:54 pm.

Sri Lankan LTTE Angry With China and India

New York: More than two months after the Tamil Tigers were decimated, Sri Lankan Tamils living abroad remain bitter about the support China and India extended to Colombo during the war.

The Tamil Diaspora is livid that Beijing provided tonnes of arms and ammunition to Sri Lankan security forces battling the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The anger against India is rooted mainly in New Delhi’s diplomatic backing to Colombo when it came under Western fire over human rights abuses.

On Monday, Sri Lankan Tamils staged a rally outside the Chinese mission to the UN to protest “China’s assistance to Sri Lanka towards ethnic cleansing and genocide of Tamils”.

Around 50 Tamil Americans from around the East Coast came out with placards that read: “China, Stop helping Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Cleansing of Tamils.”

The group chanted slogans like “China don’t fund Sri Lanka’s war crimes.”

The campaigners claim that Colombo’s attacks on Tamil areas were facilitated by Chinese weapons. Beijing supports abuses against the Tamils through economic and military assistance to Sri Lanka, they said.

The rally was organised by Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a NGO based in Maryland that is protesting against alleged atrocities committed by Sri Lanka.

A spokesman for TAG expressed dismay at New Delhi’s support for Sri Lanka’s military campaign that ended in the killing of LTTE founder leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and his top lieutenants in May.

“India has done an extreme form of treachery to the Tamils,” the spokesman said. “We need India to do justice to the Tamils.”

In May, India supported a resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva which commended the Sri Lankan government on its defeat of the Tamil Tigers and its efforts to address the needs of the displaced.

The resolution was slammed for ignoring the tactics used by the Sri Lankan army that led to massive human rights violations.

Brazil, Cuba, India and Pakistan blocking a stronger resolution that called for accountability.

The Tamil separatist campaign claimed over thousands of lives since July 1983. The end of the war was followed by accusations of human rights violations against the Sri Lankan authorities.

Human rights groups are also calling for the release of 280,000 displaced Tamil civilians living in relief centres which critics say are no better than “detention camps”.

TAG said it supports the goal of an “independent state” for Tamils through peaceful means and diplomacy.

“The violent form of struggle is dead in the new world order,” said its spokesperson, who asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the matter.

“We want an economic boycott from the one million strong Tamil Diaspora,” he added. “The struggle will continue in one form or the other.

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Sri Lankan LTTE Angry With China and India