The Sri Lankan Government has blocked access to aid workers trying to help the nearly 300,000 civilians displaced by the army’s victory over the Tamil Tigers, raising the prospect of a humanitarian catastrophe.
In the capital, Colombo, President Rajapakse announced the “complete defeat” of the rebels yesterday as state television showed pictures of what was said to be the corpse of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the Tigers’ leader. Mr Rajapakse vowed in an address to the nation to press ahead with a “homegrown political solution” to end ethnic divisions between the majority Sinhalese …

Days after Israel blasted a United Nations report claiming the IDF had failed to take adequate precautions to ensure that UN installations and civilians in the Gaza Strip would not be harmed during Operation Cast Lead, a UN team set up to probe alleged war crimes announced plans to visit Israel and the Gaza Strip.
The fact-finding mission appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate rights violations during the Gaza war also renewed a call for Israel to support its investigation.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged Sri Lanka to stop using heavy weapons that risk civilian lives and to suspend its offensive against ethnic Tamil rebels so that desperately needed aid can be sent to the war zone.
Ban spoke to President Mahinda Rajapaksa on the telephone Tuesday night amid heavy international pressure for a humanitarian cease-fire in the conflict. Rajapaksa has brushed off such calls, saying a truce would give the rebels a chance to regroup.

John Solecki, the head of the UN refugee agency’s office in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, was found on Saturday night by the side of a road near Quetta, the provincial capital, with his hands and feet bound, pleading: “Help me, help me!”
Ethnic Baluch separatists had earlier claimed responsibility for the abduction and at one point threatened to kill Mr Solecki — the highest-profile Westerner to be kidnapped in Pakistan since Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded in 2002. News of Mr Solecki’s release came …

China has increased the number of short-range missiles aimed at Taiwan to about 1,500, officials and experts said yesterday, a sign of continued distrust between the two sides despite a recent warming of ties.
China expanded its arsenal last year even as tensions eased after the election of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) said.
“In this period of warmth, a war won’t break out, but don’t forget China still has 1,500 missiles aimed at Taiwan — more than 1,500 — and that’s not right,” Lai …

Security forces killed up to 25 people in Madagascar on Saturday when they opened fire on an anti-government protest outside the presidential palace, a senior police officer at the scene said.
Two weeks of civil unrest stoked by a power struggle between President Marc Ravalomanana and the sacked mayor of the capital, Andry Rajoelina, have killed some 125 people and worried multinational firms investing in the giant Indian Ocean island.

PARIS: A nationwide protest against Nicolas Sarkozy’s economic policies drew more than one million demonstrators into the streets of France on Thursday, in the biggest popular challenge to the president since he took office in 2007.
Organizers hailed the demonstrations – meant to highlight unemployment and declining spending power in a time of crisis – as a great success.

Mounting violence between rebel fighters and government troops along northern Sri Lanka has prompted U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to call for the safety of civilians as humanitarian groups try to provide aid to some 250,000 people trapped in the region.
“The secretary-general is deeply concerned about the safety and well-being of civilians caught in intensified fighting in the Vanni region of Sri Lanka,” a spokesman for Ban said in a statement Monday.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Israel’s invasion of Gaza has strengthened the hand of extremists and only a credible independent investigation into alleged wrongdoing can quieten growing Palestinian anger, a U.N. aid official said on Friday.
John Ging, head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza, called for new U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell to talk to ordinary people in Gaza as part of a “new track” in diplomacy.
U.S. President Barack Obama named Mitchell, a former U.S. Senator who helped settle the conflict in Northern Ireland, on Thursday to …

For the first time in three weeks a fragile peace prevailed in the shattered Gaza Strip yesterday, after Hamas responded to Israel’s unilateral ceasefire by announcing a week-long truce of its own.
The Palestinian group fired at least 15 rockets and mortars into southern Israel to show that it had not been crushed. It then gave Israel seven days to withdraw its forces and open Gaza’s border crossings to allow in desperately needed humanitarian aid.