Tsunami : A major reconstruction plan needed for South Asia

If a tsunami were to strike Northern Europe, killing
more than 100,000 people from Ireland to Sweden, does
anybody think it would take President Bush 72 hours to
speak up about the tragedy and call leaders of the
devastated countries?

In fairness to the vacationing president, the full
magnitude of the natural disaster in the Indian Ocean
wasn't apparent immediately after the undersea
earthquake and the ensuing tsunami struck a week ago
today. Still, there is no disputing that the first
response of the American president and government, seen
as omnipotent in much of the world, was lackadaisical
and stingy. When Bush finally spoke Wednesday, Spain's
pledge of relief funds was nearly double that of the
U.S., and even that U.S. contribution ($35 million) came
only after heavy criticism of Washington...

...
If conservatives in the president's own party balk at a
multibillion-dollar Marshall Plan for South Asia, Bush
shouldn't hesitate to employ his favorite marketing
ploy: Peg the effort to the war on terror by pointing
out the strategic importance of the region. Indonesia,
the most severely affected nation, also happens to be
the world's largest Muslim country, where most practice
a moderate form of the religion but the government
battles extremists...

entire editorial on :
http://www.latimes.com/
(need to register at first)

Tsunami : Asia aid from EU coordinated by France

France was given the responsability by the European
Union "to coordinate the whole aid from Europeans" to
help the countries of Asia, announced Interior
Minister Dominique de Villepin. The Minister for Health
Philippe Douste-Blazy will go on January 2nd in the
evening to Sri Lanka "to initiate an airlift there
between the zone touched by the tsunamis and France".

France will send the helicopter carrier Jeanne d'Arc and
the frigate George Leygues to Asia on Monday to provide
medical aid to the countries hit by the tsunamis,
Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said on Sunday in
an interview with the Journal du Dimanche.

"The urgency is to avoid a health disaster," the
minister said, announcing that the two warships as well
as an Airbus 310 carrying 12 tonnes of water purifying
material and medication would be sent on Monday.

The ships would have medical teams (16 doctors on the
Jeanne d'Arc), an operating theatre and five
helicopters.

In the same paper, Interior Minister Dominique de
Villepin announced the setting up on Sunday of a field
hospital in Sumatra staffed by 70 paramedics, and a
mission to identify victims by specialised teams from
the police and gendarmerie in Thailand and Sri Lanka.

On European co-ordination, the minister said the French
were "the first in Colombo" and "we are the most
numerous, that is why the European Union gave us this
essential task."

"I hurt in my heart" French baker helping Tsunami victims

Far from the tsunami-ravaged beaches of southeast Asia,
a village baker in France's Champagne region is taking
action to play at least a small part in helping the
victims.

Christian Carle, 41, has since Wednesday contributed
Euro 1 (US$1.36) from the sale of every seasonal
«Galette des Rois» pastry to the Red Cross for disaster
relief, he said. After local radio and national TV
reported his campaign, Carle said he has barely slept,
and phone calls from supporters around the country
haven't stopped.

«I sold 150 galettes in a day this week, more than in an
entire month last year,» Carle said Saturday from his
bakery in the village of Germaine, population 560, east
of Paris. His is one of the many spontaneous acts of
support, small and large, from people, governments and
humanitarian agencies worldwide for the tens of
thousands of tsunami victims.

Since learning about the disaster only on Wednesday _
admittedly a late jump _ Carle said he has collected
about Euro 300 (US$408) in his campaign. «It has been
incredible. Some people have given 20, 30, or 40 euros,
and they didn't even buy a galette!» he said by phone.

Some customers traveled from 20 kilometers (12 miles)
away, he said. A trained optician, Carle said if he can
work it out, he would like to do more: like taking a
month off and contributing his skills to humanitarian
groups in the tsunami-ravaged region.

«I hurt in my heart for those 5-year-olds who lost their
parents,» the father of two said. «We can't forget these
people.

South Asia tsunami, devastation and deadly diseases!

After the devastation wreaked by the seas, a deluge from
the skies deepened the misery for tsunami-stricken
areas, triggering flash floods in Sri Lanka that sent
evacuees fleeing and increasing the threat of deadly
disease.

Foreign military forces began one of their biggest
relief missions ever with the death toll likely to hit
150,000. A magnitude-5.9 aftershock shook Sumatra early
Sunday as the world's aid efforts shifted into high gear
in ways big and small: elephant convoys working in
Thailand, global assistance reaching US$2 billion with a
fresh pledge of US$500 million from Tokyo, and
aid-bearing American helicopters touching down in
Indonesia to the joy of tsunami survivors.

The confirmed death toll from the quake and tsunamis
that hit a week ago Sunday passed 123,000, and the
United Nations has said the estimated number was
approaching 150,000. Thailand said it expects its death
toll to reach 8,000. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan
decided to visit Indonesia, the hardest hit nation,
where the official death toll stood at more than 80,000,
but officials said it could reach 100,000. Annan will
attend a conference Thursday in Jakarta on organizing
relief.

«We mourn, we cry and our hearts weep to witness
thousands of victims sprawled everywhere,» said
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, touring
the damage on Sumatra island, which bore the brunt of
both the quake and the waves. Hungry Indonesians
welcomed a dozen American Seahawk helicopters sent from
the USS Abraham Lincoln as they landed in Banda Aceh and
other parts of Sumatra island's devastated northwest
coast, bringing relief supplies including temporary
shelters. Also, a flotilla of cargo planes carrying U.S.
Marines and water purifying equipment headed to Sri
Lanka.

A day after U.S. President George W. Bush upped the U.S.
pledge to US$350 million, Japanese Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi announced Saturday that his country
would contribute up to US$500 million to relief efforts.
«The carnage is of a scale that defies comprehension,»
Bush said in his weekly radio address, announcing a
proclamation calling for U.S. flags to be flown at
half-staff this week in honor of the dead. Secretary of
State Colin Powell was also heading for the region.

But the dollar (euro) figures were an abstraction for
survivors whose hearts were broken once again by water.
At one refugee camp on the grounds of the airport of
Banda Aceh, hundreds of people spent a wet night
shivering under plastic sheets. Mothers nursed babies
while others tried to light a fire with damp matches.
«With no help we will die,» said Indra Syaputra. «We
came here because we heard that we could get food, but
it was nonsense. All I got was some packets of noodles.»
The rains pummeling the corpse-littered city were
creating the conditions for cholera and other waterborne
diseases to spread. Boxes of aid at Banda Aceh's airport
soaked up water, making it difficult for workers loading
cartons of water, crackers and noodles onto delivery
vehicles.

More amazing stories of survival emerged. The Indonesian
Red Cross in Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province,
reportedly dug out a survivor from the ruins of a house
where he had been buried since the tsunami struck. The
rescuers heard Ichsan Azmil's cries for help. After he
was pulled out Friday, he asked for water and was taken
to a hospital for treatment of cuts and bruises. On
India's remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, a woman who
fled the killer waves gave birth Monday in the forest
that became her sanctuary. She named her son «Tsunami.»
Even art became part of the folklore of resilience.

In the historic port town of Galle, Sri Lanka, several
Buddha statues of cement and plaster were found
unscathed amid collapsed brick walls in the center of
the devastated city. To many residents, it was a divine
sign. «The people are not living according to religious
virtues,» said Sumana, a Buddhist monk in an orange robe
who sheltered himself from the sun under a black
umbrella. In eastern Sri Lanka, flash floods forced the
evacuation of about 2,000 people already displaced by a
tsunami that killed nearly 29,000 people on the tropical
island.

Several roads leading to Ampara _ one of the hardest hit
towns _ were flooded, preventing relief trucks from
arriving, said Neville Wijesinghe, a senior police
officer. Bureaucratic delays, fuel shortages, impassable
roads and long distances also blocked supplies. In
addition to the deaths, 5 million people were homeless.
The hunt for loved ones dragged on with tens of
thousands still missing. Among the missing were some
3,500 Swedes and 1,000 Germans, and hundreds of others
from Scandinavia, Italy and Belgium. Aftershocks rattled
the region, sending panicked Sumatrans into the streets.

Geologists said a 6.5 quake rattled Sumatra at around
lunchtime Saturday, centered 250 kilometers (155 miles)
southwest of Banda Aceh. Smaller quakes hit West Java
and southern Sumatra earlier. There were not reports of
casualties from those tremors or the latest one early
Sunday, which was centered north of Sumatra.
Seismologists said strong tremors of up to magnitude 6.1
also struck the Andaman and Nicobar islands, where the
exact number of tsunami casualties was not known but
feared to be in the thousands. Hunger and disease were
the biggest threats in the archipelago, which the Indian
government has largely been keeping off-limits to
foreign aid agencies. «There is starvation. People
haven't had food or water for at least five days.

There are carcasses. There will be an epidemic,» said
Andaman's member of Parliament, Manoranjan Bhakta.
Island officials say at least 3,754 people were missing
amid crumbled homes, downed trees and mounds of dead
animals. V.V. Bhat, chief secretary of the islands, said
the missing could not be presumed dead because they
could have survived in coconut groves that dot the
islands. In the Thai resort of Phuket, five elephants,
normally used to haul logs in forests, were being sent
to pull heavy debris in areas that are too hilly or
muddy for vehicles. Thailand's official death count was
4,812, with over half of them foreigners. Prime Minister
Thaksin Shinawatra has warned the figure is likely to
reach 8,000. Many people have blamed the high number of
casualties on bureaucratic bungling and poor
communication systems. Thaksin said the government will
investigate why tsunami warnings largely failed to reach
officials and tourist resorts.

Western health officials headed to devastated areas
across Sri Lanka after officials warned about possible
disease outbreaks among the 1 million people seeking
shelter in camps. «Our biggest battle and fear now is to
prevent an epidemic from breaking out,» said Health
Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva. «Clean water and
sanitation is our main concern.»

Japan: second largest USA weapons buyer

Japan imported more arms from the United States under
the Foreign Military Sales program than any other Asian
country last year, according to data published by the
U.S. Defense Department's Defense Security Cooperation
Agency. In terms of money spent, Japan was the United
States' largest arms buyer after Greece.

According to the data, Japan spent 1.3 billion dollars
(about 135 billion yen) on U.S. arms last year. Japan
also made deals worth a further 800 million dollars,
making it the third-largest prospective buyer of U.S.
arms in the world after Poland and Egypt. Between 1996
and 1999, Japan was the United States' third-largest
arms buyer in Asia, but since 2000, it has ranked
second.

Amid a realignment of the U.S. armed forces in Asia,
U.S. arms exports to South Korea and Taiwan have
decreased, while those to Japan have increased, making
Japan the top Asian importer of arms. Weapons sold under
the program include those rated highly restricted that
cannot be traded through commercial channels. Japan has
tentative deals to purchase weapon components such as
early-warning aircraft and surface-to-air missiles.
(YomiuriShimbun, conservative)

Asia to see limited impact on economies of tsunami disaster

Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) said Sunday's
earthquake and tsunami disaster around the Indian Ocean
is unlikely to have a significant negative impact on
Southeast Asian countries' economies in 2005. 'The
impact, on average, on GDP growth in 2005 is likely to
range in the 0-0.75 pct point range, which in our view
is unlikely to reduce the attraction of Southeast Asia
and India as an investment destination,' CSFB said in a
note. CSFB said that Thailand is likely to to be the
most severely affected, followed by Indonesia, India,
and Malaysia.

One reason for the limited impact of the disaster is
that the manufacturing sector is likely to be unscathed,
'while key service sectors such as banking, utilities,
and business services are likely to remain resilient',
CSFB said. Additionally, construction activity will
'receive a boost from re-building activities in the
infrastructure and tourism sectors', CSFB added.

The main sectors that will be hit in terms of output in
2005 are likely to be tourism, fisheries and
plantations, CSFB said. CSBF also warned that the
'large-scale destruction of property, availability of
clean water supply and medical attention for the victims
may spread to an epidemic-like scenario over the next
six to twelve months. This may have a more systemic
effect in terms of tourism flows to Asia and pose
downside risks to our assessment on GDP growth,' CSFB
said. For Thailand, CSFB said that the affected
provinces account for around 2.5 pct of the country's
GDP. 'Assuming that tourism to these provinces drops by
50 pct over the next 12 months, we anticipate the impact
on overall GDP growth to be in the region of 0.5 pct
points,' CSFB said.

For Indonesia, CSFB said that the direct impact on the
country's GDP growth from the disaster is likely to
shave less than 0.2 pct points off its forecast of 5.1
pct year-on-year growth for 2005. Among the countries
hit by the disaster, CSFB said that Malaysia is likely
to be the least impacted, and it is maintaining its GDP
growth forecast of 5.5 pct year-on-year.

Latest News: NY Times:

"Jan Egeland, the United Nations' emergency relief
coordinator, said Wednesday that the death toll from the
tsunamis had risen above 80,000, though that number
could still rise.

While the disaster affected countries from Malaysia to
Somalia, the greatest devastation appears to have
occurred in the Indonesian province of Aceh, where more
than 45,000 deaths have been reported. But large parts
of the province remain virtually cut off."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/30

Thousands killed by earthquake and tsunami in south Asia

Sea surges kill thousands in Asia More than 11,500
people have been killed across southern Asia in massive
sea surges triggered by the strongest earthquake in the
world for 40 years, acccording to Sunday nigth datas.

The 8.9 magnitude quake struck under the sea near Aceh
in north Indonesia, generating a wall of water that sped
across thousands of kilometres of sea.

More than 4,100 died in Indonesia, 4,300 in Sri Lanka
and 2,900 in India.

Casualty figures are rising over a wide area, including
resorts in Sri Lanka and Thailand packed with
holidaymakers.

Exact numbers of people killed, injured or missing in
the countries hit, are impossible to confirm.

Hundreds are still thought to be missing from coastal
regions and, in Sri Lanka alone, officials say more than
a million people have been forced from their homes.

Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga declared a
national disaster and the military has been deployed to
help rescue efforts.

Hundreds of fishermen are missing off India's southern
coast, and there are reports of scores of bodies being
washed up on beaches.

In Indonesia, communications remain difficult,
particularly to the strife-torn region of Aceh where the
main quake, early on Sunday morning, was followed by
nine aftershocks. Reports speak of bodies being
recovered from trees.

A national disaster has also been announced in the
low-lying Maldives islands, more than 2,500km (1,500
miles) from the quake's epicentre, after they were hit
by severe flooding.

The Indian-owned Andaman and Nicobar islands, much
nearer the epicentre, were also badly hit.

Casualty reports could not be officially confirmed, but
a police chief told reporters 300 people had died and
another 700 were feared dead.

Waves forced out from the earthquake are even reported
to have reached Somalia, on the east coast of Africa.

And as far away as the Seychelles, nine people were
reported missing as a two-metre surge struck.

Resort 'wiped out'

International aid agencies have called for a rapid
response to the emergency to avert further deaths.

The European Union immediately pledged 3m euros (£2.1m)
to disaster relief efforts.

Messages of condolences have poured in from around the
world.

US President George W Bush offered aid to affected
nations and expressed sorrow for the "terrible loss of
life and suffering".

Harrowing reports of people caught in the devastation
and dramatic tales of escape are emerging.

Jayanti Lakshmi, 70, had gone shopping with her
daughter-in-law in Cuddalore, southern India. Ms Lakshmi
returned to find her son and twin grandsons dead in
their hut.

"I wish I had died instead of the others, my
daughter-in-law would have a life. I can't bear to watch
her pain," she said.

All of us fear the final death toll, and in particular
are worried that many tourists who went out on boat
trips this morning have not returned Charles Dickson,
Phuket, Thailand

In Thailand, hundreds of holiday bungalows are reported
to have been destroyed on the popular Phi Phi island.

Resort owner Chan Marongtaechar told AP: "I am afraid
there will be a high figure of foreigners missing in the
sea, and also my staff."

Indonesia's location - along the Pacific geological
"Ring of Fire" - makes it prone to volcanic eruptions
and earthquakes.

Sunday's tremor - the fifth strongest since 1900 - had a
particularly widespread effect because it seems to have
taken place just below the surface of the ocean,
analysts say.

Bruce Presgrave of the US Geological service told the
Reuters news agency: "These big earthquakes, when they
occur in shallow water... basically slosh the ocean
floor... and it's as if you're rocking water in the
bathtub and that wave can travel throughout the ocean."

Experts say tsunamis generated by earthquakes can travel
at up to 500km/h.

DISASTER TOLL :
Sri Lanka: 4,300 dead
Indonesia: 4,185 dead
India: 2,900 dead
Thailand: 310 dead
Malaysia: 28 dead
Maldives: 10 dead
Bangladesh: 2 dead

System might have reduced Tsunami damage

The catastrophic death toll in Asia caused by a massive
tsunami might have been reduced had India and Sri Lanka
been part of an international warning system designed to
warn coastal communities about potentially deadly waves,
scientists say.

Some 5,300 people in India and Sri Lanka were among the
more than 11,000 people killed after being hit by walls
of water triggered by a tremendous earthquake early
Sunday off Sumatra.

The warning system is designed to alert nations that
potentially destructive waves may hit their coastlines
within three to 14 hours. Scientists said seismic
networks recorded Sunday's massive earthquake, but
without wave sensors in the region, there was no way to
determine the direction a tsunami would travel.

A single wave station south of the earthquake's
epicenter registered tsunami activity less than 2 feet
high heading south toward Australia, researchers said.

The waves also struck resort beaches on the west coast
of the Thailand's south peninsula, killing hundreds.
Although Thailand belongs to the international tsunami
warning network, its west coast does not have the
system's wave sensors mounted on ocean buoys.

The northern tip of the earthquake fault is located near
the Andaman Islands, and tsunamis appear to have rushed
eastward toward the Thai resort of Phuket on Sunday
morning when the community was just stirring.

"They had no tidal gauges and they had no warning," said
Waverly Person, a geophysicist at the National
Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo., which
monitors seismic activity worldwide. "There are no buoys
in the Indian Ocean and that's where this tsunami
occurred."

The tsunami was triggered by the most powerful
earthquake recorded in the past 40 years.

The earthquake, whose magnitude was a staggering 9.0,
unleashed walls of water more than two stories high to
the west across the Bay of Bengal, slamming into coastal
communities 1,000 miles away. Hours after the quake,
Sumatra was struck by a series of powerful aftershocks.

Researchers say the earthquake broke on a fault line
deep off the Sumatra coast, running north and south for
about 600 miles or as far north as the Andaman and
Nicobar islands between India and Mynamar.

"It's a huge rupture," said Charles McCreary, director
of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center near Honolulu.
"It's conceivable that the sea floor deformed all the
way along that rupture, and that's what initiates
tsunamis."

Tsunamis as large and destructive as Sunday's typically
happen only a few times in a century.

A tsunami is not a single wave, but a series of
traveling ocean waves generated by geological
disturbances near or below the ocean floor. With nothing
to stop them, these waves can race across the ocean like
the crack of a bullwhip, gaining momentum over thousands
of miles.

Most are triggered by large earthquakes but they can be
caused by landslides, volcanoes and even meteor impacts.

The waves are generated when geologic forces displace
sea water in the ocean basin. The bigger the earthquake,
the more the Earth's crust shifts and the more seawater
begins to move.

Most tsunamis occur in the Pacific because the ocean
basin is rimmed by the Ring of Fire, a long chain of the
Earth's most seismically active spots. Marine geologists
recently have determined that under certain conditions,
the U.S. East Coast and other heavily populated
coastlines also could be vulnerable.

In a tsunami, waves typically radiate out in directions
opposite from the seismic disturbance. In the case of
the Sumatra quake, the seismic fault ran north to south
beneath the ocean floor, while the tsunami waves shot
out west and east.

Tsunamis are distinguished from normal coastal surf by
their great length and speed. A single wave in a tsunami
series might be 100 miles long and race across the ocean
at 600 mph. When it approaches a coastline, the wave
slows dramatically, but it also rises to great heights
because the enormous volume of water piles up in shallow
coastal bays.

And unlike surf, which is generated by wind and the
gravitational tug of the moon and other celestial
bodies, tsunamis do not break on the coastline every few
seconds. Because of their size, it might take an hour
for another one to arrive.

Some tsunamis appear as a tide that doesn't stop rising,
while others are turbulent and savagely chew up the
coast. Without instrumentation, so little is known about
this tsunami that researchers must wait for eyewitness
accounts to determine its characteristics.

"It was a big tsunami, but it is hard to say exactly how
many waves there were or what happened," McCreary said.

In the hours following an earthquake, tsunamis
eventually lose their power to friction over the rough
ocean bottom or simply as the waves spread out over the
ocean's enormous surface.

The international warning system was started in 1965,
the year after tsunamis associated with a magnitude 9.2
temblor struck Alaska in 1964. It is administered by the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Member states include all the major Pacific rim nations
in North America, Asia and South America, was well as
the Pacific islands, Australia and New Zealand. It also
includes France, which has sovereignty over some Pacific
islands, and Russia.

However, India and Sri Lanka are not members. "That's
because tsunamis are much less frequent in the Indian
Ocean," McCreary said.

The warning system analyzes earthquake information from
several seismic networks, including the U.S. Geological
Service. The seismic information is fed into computer
models that "picture" how and where a tsunami might
form. It dispatches warnings about imminent tsunami
hazards, including predictions how fast the waves are
traveling and their expected arrival times in specific
geographic areas.

As the waves rush past tidal stations in the ocean,
bulletins updating the tsunami warning are issued. Other
models generate "inundation maps" of what areas could be
damaged, and what communities might be spared.

Not all earthquakes generate tsunamis. The warning
center typically does not issue warnings for earthquakes
below magnitude 7.0, which are still unusually powerful
events

Japan rational versus anti-rational?

"As Sakai Taichi (former head of the Economic Planning
Agency) and others have argued, rationally thinking
economic and other leaders where opposed to the
irrational, anti-modern kind of nationalism supported by
the gunbu (Japan's military) in the thirties. Numerous
observers have stated that over the past few years
nationalism is on the rise in Japan, and that Koizumi
wants to make up for lack of support within his own
party (and elsewhere) by playing up to nationalist
feelings.

Obviously the current situation cannot be compared to
the thirties, but it is still worth thinking about
whether it is appropriate to see a split in Japan's
larger community between the business community and some
other, anti-rational, nationalistic community. If that
is the case, the business community seems to be less
influential than has so often been argued. Or perhaps
some political/economic leaders want to play it both
ways?"

Kurt W. Radtke, Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies,
Waseda University on NBR Forum ©.
japanforum@lists.nbr.org

Nuclear Threats Against North Korea. "The US did the same" according to Bruce Cumings!

Nuclear Threats Against North Korea Consequences of the
'forgotten' war, by Bruce Cumings; Le Monde Diplomatique.

The media claim that North Korea is trying to obtain and
use weapons of mass destruction. Yet the United States,
which opposes this strategy, has used or threatened to
use such weapons in northeast Asia since the 1940s, when
it did drop atomic bombs on Japan.

THE forgotten war -- the Korean war of 1950-53 -- might
better be called the unknown war. What was indelible
about it was the extraordinary destructiveness of the
United States' air campaigns against North Korea, from
the widespread and continuous use of firebombing (mainly
with napalm), to threats to use nuclear and chemical
weapons (1), and the destruction of huge North Korean
dams in the final stages of the war. Yet this episode is
mostly unknown even to historians, let alone to the
average citizen, and it has never been mentioned during
the past decade of media analysis of the North Korean
nuclear problem.

Korea is also assumed to have been a limited war, but
its prosecution bore a strong resemblance to the air war
against Imperial Japan in the second world war, and was
often directed by the same US military leaders. The
atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been
examined from many different perspectives, yet the
incendiary air attacks against Japanese and Korean
cities have received much less attention. The US
post-Korean war air power and nuclear strategy in
northeast Asia are even less well understood; yet these
have dramatically shaped North Korean choices and remain
a key factor in its national security strategy.

Napalm was invented at the end of the second world war.
It became a major issue during the Vietnam war, brought
to prominence by horrific photos of injured civilians.
Yet far more napalm was dropped on Korea and with much
more devastating effect, since the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea (DPRK) had many more populous cities
and urban industrial installations than North Vietnam.
In 2003 I participated in a conference with US veterans
of the Korean war. During a discussion about napalm, a
survivor who lost an eye in the Changjin (in Japanese,
Chosin) Reservoir battle said it was indeed a nasty
weapon -- but "it fell on the right people." (Ah yes,
the "right people" -- a friendly-fire drop on a dozen US
soldiers.) He continued: "Men all around me were burned.
They lay rolling in the snow. Men I knew, marched and
fought with begged me to shoot them . . . It was
terrible. Where the napalm had burned the skin to a
crisp, it would be peeled back from the face, arms, legs
. . . like fried potato chips."

[Click the title to read the article]

Japan tougher tone on North Korea

Japan threatened retaliation against North Korea such as
cutting off economic ties unless the communist state
returned Japanese people it has kidnapped or gave a
"sincere response" on their fate.

Japan said it would send a "strong protest" to North
Korea accusing it of handing over false evidence to
prove the deaths of eight Japanese people it abducted
during the Cold War.

"We will have to take a serious response this time if
North Korea does not sincerely respond," said Chief
Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda, the Japanese
government spokesman.

"We strongly demand that North Korea immediately send
home the survivors. The Japanese government demands the
sincere response of North Korea."

A recent poll found that nearly two-thirds of Japanese
people want economic sanctions against North Korea,
despite warnings by the communist state that it would
consider the move an act of war.

Japan has already suspended food aid to North Korea.

Koizumi has previously indicated that sanctions -- which
could take the form of banning remittances by North
Koreans in Japan or barring Pyongyang's ships from
docking at Japanese ports -- would be a last resort.

In a sign that he still favors a cautious approach,
Koizumi declined to set a deadline for North Korea to
respond to the protest, which will be submitted through
diplomats in Beijing.

"We are not thinking about it at present," Koizumi said
of imposing a deadline.

Hosoda, asked whether Japan was presenting North Korea
with an ultimatum, said: "I don't see it that way."

The United States, South Korea (news - web sites) and
China have all warned Japan to be careful with North
Korea amid moves to bring the cash-strapped but heavily
armed country back into six-nation talks on ending its
nuclear program.

In line with world concerns, North Korea threatened to
boycott the nuclear talks unless Japan is excluded from
the negotiating table.

"It has become difficult for (the North) to sit down
with Japan at the six-way talks as Japan acts without
faith and morality," the North's Central Television
Broadcasting Station said late Thursday, in a report
monitored by South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

North Korea, which fired a missile over Japan in 1998,
has admitted kidnapping 13 Japanese people to train the
regime's spies in Japanese language and culture.

North Korea has released five and, to Japan's
skepticism, says eight others are dead.

The most famous victim is Megumi Yokota, who was a
13-year-old girl returning home from school when she was
whisked away in 1977.

North Korea said Yokota killed herself out of depression
and last month gave a visiting Japanese delegation human
remains purported to prove it, along with evidence said
to show seven other kidnap victims were dead.

When Japan said the ashes' DNA did not match Yokota's,
North Korea accused Tokyo of "cooking up" evidence and
asked for the remains back, saying the Japanese woman's
North Korean husband wanted them.

Yokota's father Shigeru Yokota called Friday for a
tougher approach by the government.

"We want the government to set an early deadline for
North Korea's response," he told reporters.

Kayoko Arimoto, whose daughter Keiko Arimoto was
kidnapped in 1983 by North Korean agents in Copenhagen,
said North Korea's false evidence was "so ridiculous I
can't find words to express it."

"None of the negotiations and discussions have resulted
in any progress," she said.