TBILISI, Georgia,
Oct. 3--The European Union called on Russia on Tuesday to lift economic sanctions on Georgia or risk deepening the crisis between the ex-Soviet neighbors sparked by a spying row.
“We do hope that Russia very, very soon lifts these sanctions because sanctions do not, particularly in this case, lead anywhere,“ EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner told Reuters in an interview.
Russia cut rail, air, sea and postal links to Georgia in response to the arrest in Tbilisi last week of four Russian soldiers on spying charges. Georgia released the four on Monday in what it termed a goodwill gesture.
But Moscow has so far ignored Western appeals for it to reciprocate to defuse the tension and a Kremlin spokesman said on Tuesday that the measures would “continue for a while“.
“It all depends on the general attitude of the Georgian government and their foreign policy towards Russia,“ he said.
“We still hope that wisdom will dominate in the Georgian leadership but we haven’t seen this wisdom yet...we want a constructive and neighborly attitude“.
But he added: “Russia is a very big, a very strong and a very serious country. You have to take this into account.“
Flights and trains from Moscow to Tbilisi were cancelled early on Tuesday as the measures began to bite.
The Russian parliament is due this week to debate a draft law that would allow officials to ban cross-border money transfers, which could be a huge blow for Georgia’s economy.
Almost a sixth of Georgia’s national income comes from cash sent home by relatives working in Russia, who number about one million, according to central bank estimates.
It was unclear though if any new Russian regulations could stop money being sent via third countries.

MOSCOW, Oct. 3--Russia warned the United States on Tuesday against basing elements of a planned missile defense system in Poland, saying this would undermine strategic stability and require a “corresponding“ response from Moscow, AFP quoted Interfax news agency as saying.
“This could have a negative impact on strategic stability, regional security and the relations between states,“ Interfax quoted ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin as saying in an interview.
“Such a new situation objectively requires corresponding measures from us,“ Kamynin said.
He did not specify what those measures would be. Russia, however, announced earlier this year that it was supplying Belarus--an ex-Soviet republic wedged between Russia and Poland--with its sophisticated S-300 anti-aircraft defense system.
The United States has for years been planning and testing elements of a new global anti-missile defense system that would combine space-based elements capable of detecting hostile missile launches with ground-based rockets that would track and destroy those missiles.
Washington has consistently stated that the objective of the planned system is to protect the United States and allies from ballistic missile launches from what it terms “rogue“ states and has insisted that it is not aimed against any other party.
With equal consistency however, Moscow has made clear its deep unease at the planned US system. Most recently, the chief of staff of Russia’s armed forces, General Yuri Baluyevsky, warned that the planned US system could ignite a new Cold War-style arms race.
“First of all, we take a critical view of this plan,“ Kamynin told Interfax.
“On such issues, we cannot be satisfied simply with assurances that ’there are no plans’ for US and NATO anti-missile defense in Europe to be directed against Russia,“ the ministry spokesman added.
Poland, once a close ally of Moscow that has become a key defense partner for Washington over the past decade, has mad no secret of its willingness to consider deployment on its territory of elements of the planned US system.

Turkish soldiers from the NATO-led international peacekeeping force arrive at the site of a suicide bomb attack in Kabul, Sept. 17. (Reuters File Photo)

BRUSSELS, Belgium, Oct. 3--NATO must send more troops to south Afghanistan to kickstart reconstruction which has been hampered by an upsurge in violence there, lawmakers from alliance nations urged on Tuesday.
“More boots on the ground are needed in the southern part of Afghanistan to provide sufficient stability for sustained reconstruction,“ said the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, a grouping of parliamentarians from across the alliance, reported Reuters.
“The situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated in recent months. The increasing cost in human lives ... demonstrates that this war is not yet won,“ it said in a statement, adding that “a failed Afghanistan will also be a failed NATO“.
The NATO Parliamentary Assembly describes itself as a forum for building public and parliamentary support for NATO. Its recommendations to the alliance are not formally binding.
The 26-member military alliance has acknowledged it underestimated Taliban resistance in the south, where British, Dutch and Canadian soldiers have taken heavy casualties in what has been the toughest ground combat in NATO’s 57-year history.
NATO countries have yet to plug troop shortfalls identified by commanders in its 20,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), due on Thursday to complete its plan to take control of peacekeeping across all of Afghanistan.
The move into east Afghanistan, the only area not already covered by ISAF, is only possible because the United States agreed to transfer 12,000 of its troops from the separate US-led coalition there to NATO command.
“In view of NATO’s commitment to extend security throughout the country...member countries must decide to redouble their efforts to provide the assets required to achieve this goal,“ the lawmakers said.
Poland, Bulgaria and Romania have indicated in recent weeks that they will send some more troops to the mission, but others such as Spain, Italy, France and Germany have declined to deploy troops to the south.

BEIJING, Oct. 3--A group of foreign rights activists, lawyers and academics have written an open letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao urging him to reverse a worsening crackdown on voices of dissent in China, AFP said.
The letter, received here Tuesday via e-mail from US-based Human Rights Watch, called on Hu to ensure that the civil rights of social justice campaigners in China were protected.
“We note with concern the sharp increase in official retaliation against such advocates and their families through persistent harassment, banishment, detention, arrest and imprisonment,“ the letter said.
“We note, too, the frequent use of state secrets charges to discourage social activism.“
The letter said several recent cases, including the jailing of New York Times researcher Zhao Yan, had cast doubt on the government’s pledges that citizens could trust the legal system to address legitimate grievances.
“It is urgent that China’s central leadership not look the other way when local courts and law enforcement officials ignore China’s laws and legal procedures with impunity,“ the letter said.
The letter highlighted the case of Zhao, who in August was sentenced to three years in jail on a fraud charge, a verdict he is appealing.
He was convicted after the court rejected a much more serious charge that he had leaked state secrets to the New York Times.
Zhao’s sister said he was jailed for fraud only to silence him after the state secrets charges could not be upheld.
The letter also raised the case of prominent human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who was detained in August.
The state-run Xinhua news agency said at the time that he was being investigated for unspecified “criminal activities,“ although authorities have not made any official comment and his location remains unknown.
“All Mr. Gao’s activities were peaceful and legal,“ the letter said, before raising the plight of other activists and lawyers who had been jailed or placed under house detention.
“These incidents, taken together, suggest that those who try to make Chinese officials more accountable, whether through journalism, legal activism, or other peaceful and internationally recognized channels, will be prosecuted through a legal system that lacks impartiality and denies them basic guarantees of fairness,“ the letter said.

An African Union soldier stands guard in the village of Gos Beina during an AU patrol south of the town of Al-Fasher in Darfur, June 10. (AFP File Photo)

CAIRO, Egypt, Oct. 3--Sudan is opposed to the unlimited extension of African Union (AU) peacekeeping troops in Darfur, Reuters quoted a Sudanese official saying.
He was reacting to comments by the top UN envoy to Sudan who was reported as saying last week that Khartoum--which has rejected the deployment of UN peacekeepers in Darfur--might instead accept a prolonged and reinforced AU force.
“Sudan agrees that the African Union troops stay until the crisis is over, but not indefinitely,“ the official, who is an aide to Mohamed Al-Dabi, the Sudanese president’s top Darfur representative, told Reuters by telephone.
“No foreign force left any country without a timeframe set for its departure,“ the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said. He said a comment by UN envoy to Sudan Jan Pronk, reported in the local media, that the AU force’s mandate be extended indefinitely, “complicates the matter.“
UN officials were not immediately available for comment.
The Sudanese aide was speaking as top officials from the European Union and AU met in Addis Ababa to discuss ways of bolstering peacekeeping in Darfur, where a three-year conflict has killed roughly 200,000 people and displaced millions others.
Sudan has resisted international pressure to allow some 20,000 UN troops to replace a poorly funded, ill-equipped AU force of 7,000 in Darfur, in western Sudan.
President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir has likened UN peacekeepers to an invasion force bent on regime change in Khartoum. Analysts say his government is also worried that some officials could be arrested on war crimes charges.
The mandate for African forces in Darfur expires at the end of the year.

YANGON, Myanmar, Oct. 3--Myanmar’s military junta has accused five students who led a nationwide pro-democracy uprising in 1988 of terrorism and intent to cause “internal commotion“ as justification for their arrest last week, Reuters reported.
In their first commentary on the arrests, state-run newspapers said on Tuesday Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi, Htay Kywe, Min Zeya and Pyone Cho were brought in for questioning “in order to prevent internal unrest and instability and terrorism“.
The New Light of Myanmar, a junta mouthpiece, made a link between their alleged efforts to “cause internal commotion and commit terrorist attacks“ and Washington’s successful push to put the generals on the United Nations Security Council agenda.
The five student leaders were key figures in the national protests against military rule in the former Burma that resulted in the deaths of several thousand demonstrators after troops intervened.
Min Ko Naing--Myanmar’s highest-profile political prisoner after opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi--spent nearly 16 years behind bars before his release in November 2004. Ko Ko Gyi was freed in 2005 after nearly 14 years in prison.
They and Htay Kywe were arrested on Sept. 27, the 18th anniversary of the founding of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party, which won a landslide election victory in 1990 only to be denied power by the army.
Min Zeya and Pyone Cho were arrested on Sept. 30.
Friends and colleagues of the five launched a signature campaign calling for their immediate and unconditional release, as well as that of Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for around 11 of the last 17 years.

TOKYO, Oct. 3--North Korea said on Tuesday it would conduct a nuclear test in the future but would never use atomic weapons first and remained committed to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, Pyongyang’s KCNA news agency reported.
Analysts say the reclusive state, which shocked the region in July with a series of missile tests, has enough fissile material to make at least six to eight nuclear bombs but probably lacks the ability to make a weapon small enough to mount on a missile, Reuters said.
Any nuclear tests would probably be seen as a move to grab attention and force the United States into direct talks.
“The US daily increasing threat of a nuclear war and its vicious sanctions and pressure have caused a grave situation on the Korean peninsula in which the supreme interests and security
of our state are seriously infringed upon and the Korean nation stands at the crossroads of life and death,“ North Korea’s foreign ministry said in a statement carried on KCNA.
Referring to what it called a new measure to “bolster its war deterrent for self-defense“, Pyongyang said: “Firstly, the field of scientific research of the DPRK (North Korea) will in the future conduct a nuclear test under the condition where safety is firmly guaranteed.“
It added that North Korea would never use nuclear weapons first and would “do its utmost to realize the denuclearization of the peninsula and give impetus to the world-wide nuclear disarmament and the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons.“
Pyongyang accuses Washington of trying to topple its government through a crackdown on its finances.