A senior member of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori’s ruling party submitted his resignation from Parliament today to take responsibility for a bribery scandal, an official said. A senior member of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori’s ruling party submitted his resignation from Parliament today to take responsibility for a bribery scandal, an official said.
Masakuni Murakami, 68, delivered his resignation to upper house speaker Yutaka Inoue following allegations that the Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker had illicit ties with a small-business cooperative, said parliamentary official Katsushi Kumagai.Murakami’s resignation will be submitted to the current session of Parliament, where it must be approved by a majority of legislators.Murakami, who was to be questioned in Parliament next week over the ties, had assumed the post as leader of upper house LDP lawmakers in July 1999.He reportedly had long-standing ties with nationwide small-business cooperative KSD, whose founder, Tadao Koseki, was indicated last month for misusing the group’s financial resources.Koseki allegedly funneled a total of 1.5 billion yen (US$12.6 million) in political contributions through a KSD affiliate to the LDP between 1995 and 1999, according to news reports.Murakami is believed to have deepened his ties with KSD in 1992, when the affiliate campaigned in support of his election to the upper house. It was not immediately clear if he received money directly from KSD.The KSD scandal has rocked Mori’s already wobbly administration, which has seen its public approval ratings fall to just nine percent in recent polls.Takao Koyama, another LDP lawmaker, was arrested January 16 on suspicion that he received a bribe totaling several millions of yen (tens of thousands of dollars) from KSD.Koyama, formerly a secretary to Murakami, has denied the allegations.Fukushiro Nukaga, state minister in charge of economic and fiscal policy, has acknowledged that he received 15 million yen (US$126,050) in political contributions from KSD, but said he later returned the money.Nukaga at that time denied media speculation that he gave inappropriate political assistance to KSD.. The kidnapping last week of a Briton and two Danes in this remote forested area of Bangladesh could have been ended if another Briton, who was freed, had acted more decisively, the region’s most senior administrator alleged yesterday.

The kidnapping last week of a Briton and two Danes in this remote forested area of Bangladesh could have been ended if another Briton, who was freed, had acted more decisively, the region’s most senior administrator alleged yesterday.
The four European engineers working on a road in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, south-east Bangladesh, were abducted last Friday with their driver. A Briton, David Weston, was freed, with the driver, and sent back to obtain the ransom demanded – 90m takas (£1.2m).But Mobaidul Islam, divisional commissioner of Chittagong, claimed yesterday that Mr Weston’s dithering had robbed the army of a chance to end the kidnapping sooner.Sitting in a thatched hut close to where the hostages are believed to be staying, flanked by British and Danish diplomats, and army and police officers, Mr Islam toldThe Independent that after Mr Weston and the Bangladeshi driver were freed, “they stood on the road calculating the amount of the ransom for 25 to 40 minutes; an army patrol drove past but they didn’t stop it”.Instead, they drove 30 kilometres in their own car to the town of Rangamati, “and continued their calculations there”. Only when they realised, Mr Islam alleged, that the ransom was not $400,000, as they had thought, but $1.9m, did they call the police. “It was nearly four hours before the police learnt about it,” he said, “after 8.30pm on Friday night.”Mr Islam said that if Mr Weston had stopped the army patrol, the kidnapping could have been brought to a speedy end.Yesterday a government negotiating team, consisting of a tribal MP, the cabinet minister in charge of the region and an intermediary, set off to an undisclosed location to meet the kidnappers. Asked whether the ransom would be paid, Mr Islam said: “We do not encourage this sort of thing or no one will come to work in this area.

But we have cordoned [the kidnappers] in such a way that they are under constant pressure.”The consensus locally is that the kidnappers are from a fringe group, the United Popular Democratic Front (UPDF), which rejects the peace deal signed in 1997 by the government and indigenous tribes.The agreement ended a bloody 25-year insurgency by tribes fighting the loss of their land to Bengali settlers, who came here under government patronage. A former guerrilla leader, Ushatam Talukder, said yesterday: “I believe the UPDF is behind the kidnapping, though they won’t admit it. If they admitted it there would be political repercussions for them. Kidnapping is not appreciated in the political world.”Mr Talukder said the UPDF tried in May 1999 to blow up the car of the man who signed the peace accord, Shanti Larma, and another time abducted five colleagues. He said the group, of “very few” people, is based in the area of last week’s abduction “They have been taking money from businessmen to buy arms. At the time of the peace accord a few romantic young people made some confused demands for full autonomy – just a few people with no philosophy, no ideology.”But if they have no philosophy, they do have considerable daring.

Last Friday’s abduction took place 500 yards from a hill-top army camp. Yesterday, on the same road, a Bangladeshi television crew was robbed by three armed men “like commandos”, according to the television reporter with the crew.. North Korea has warned that it might scrap a moratorium on long-range missile tests to protest what it described as a “hardline” policy by the new US administration. North Korea has warned that it might scrap a moratorium on long-range missile tests to protest what it described as a “hardline” policy by the new US administration.
North Korea also complained that the United States had not upheld its end of a 1994 agreement under which Pyongyang froze its nuclear program, and threatened to drop that accord too.The angry statement from the North’s foreign ministry followed comments by senior Bush administration officials that they expected reciprocity from Pyongyang in dealings between the two countries.Koreans on both sides of the Demilitarized Zone interpreted those remarks as an indication that Washington might take a tougher approach toward Pyongyang in the wake of improved US-North Korean ties under former President Bill Clinton.After test-firing a rocket that flew over Japan in 1998, North Korea agreed to suspend missile tests in September 1999 as long as talks continued with Washington on resolving concerns over Pyongyang’s missile program. In turn, the United States eased some sanctions.”We promised not to test-fire long-range missiles during the duration of talks on the missile issue, but we cannot do so indefinitely,” the North said in a statement.”The new US foreign and security team is making a fuss by saying that it will take a hardline stance on us,” the ministry said. “But this is an attempt to reverse the past course of conciliatory and cooperative relations between us and the United States, and break our will with force.”North Korea also said it was unhappy with the slow progress of the construction of two nuclear power plants in the communist country under a 1994 agreement with the United States. A US-led consortium had planned to complete the reactors by 2003, but is several years behind schedule.As part of the deal, Pyongyang suspended its own nuclear program, which Washington feared was being used to develop nuclear weapons.”If the United States continues to fail to honour the agreement, we don’t feel that we should cling to it,” the North said.Pyongyang also dismissed Washington’s plans to push ahead with a missile defense system to counter potential threats from the North and other countries.

It described the policy as “nothing but a thief’s logic.”South Korea’s foreign and unification ministries declined to comment, saying only that they were reviewing the North’s statement.Relations between the two Koreas have improved dramatically since the South’s President Kim Dae-jung traveled in June to Pyongyang for an unprecedented summit with leader Kim Jong Il.The two sides have stopped border propaganda broadcasts, are working on the reconnection of a cross-border railway and have held two temporary reunions of separated family members A third round of reunions is scheduled for Feb. 26-28.A delegation of South Korean officials arrived today in Pyongyang for talks on flood control efforts along the Imjin River, which crosses the inter-Korean border, the North’s media reported.Washington, which backed the South in the 1950-53 Korean War, has been a firm supporter of Seoul’s policy of engaging the North in order to reduce tension on the divided peninsula.Kim Dae-jung plans to meet President Bush in Washington on March 7 to discuss North Korea policy.. Rescue workers have found the body of a Cabinet minister killed when a helicopter crashed into a river in Myanmar this week, the worst tragedy to hit the ruling junta during its 12 years in power, a government official said. Rescue workers have found the body of a Cabinet minister killed when a helicopter crashed into a river in Myanmar this week, the worst tragedy to hit the ruling junta during its 12 years in power, a government official said.
The body of Brig General Lun Maung, minister at the prime minister’s office, was recovered from the Salween River, where the Russian-made Mi-17 helicopter crashed in bad weather on Monday with 29 people on board.The search for 10 passengers still unaccounted for continues at the crash site near Pa-an, 160 100 miles south-east of Yangon, the capital.Six passengers are now confirmed dead, including army chief of staff, Lt Gen Tin Oo, the fourth-ranking general in the Myanmar regime.