theSun | FRIDAY JANUARY 16 2009
news without borders
Britain’s Miliband says
‘war on terror’ was wrong
LONDON: British Foreign Secretary David
Miliband said yesterday the notion of a “war on
terror” was “misleading and mistaken”, in an
outspoken critique of a key policy of outgoing
US President George W. Bush.
Writing in the Guardian, Miliband said the
phrase gave the idea of a unified enemy where
none existed, and also encouraged a primarily
military response to problems that top generals
admitted the West could not “kill its way out
of”. The article appears to be a comprehensive
attempt to discard what was a defining mission
of the Bush administration, which comes to an
end on Tuesday.
“The idea of a ‘war on terror’ gave the impres-
sion of a unified, transnational enemy, embodied
in the figure of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda,”
wrote Miliband, who is currently in India.
“The reality is that the motivations and identi-
ties of terrorist groups are disparate.” He added:
“The more we lump terrorist groups together and
draw the battle lines as a simple binary struggle
Madoff still out on
bail, aide targeted
NEW YORK: Accused swindler
Bernard Madoff (pix) was al-
lowed to stay in his Manhattan
penthouse and out of jail on
Wednesday, as regulators chased
down one of his top associates
and investors worldwide sued
over their losses.
A US judge upheld a magis-
trate’s ruling on a government
request to jail the disgraced
investment adviser, after being
charged with one of the biggest
frauds in Wall Street history.
Madoff, 70, was put under house arrest
and electronic monitoring in mid-December
to “prevent flight or harm” according to a
court order.
In Massachusetts, the state’s top securities
regulator sued to force a Madoff middleman
to testify. The middleman, Robert Jaffe,
missed a scheduled meeting with regulators
on Tuesday, providing a doctor’s note saying
that he was ill. Jaffe was said to have fun-
nelled billions of dollars to Madoff.
The global fallout continued from the
purported scandal that may have bilked as
much as US$50 billion (RM180 billion) from
wealthy, charities, universities and banks
around the world.
A Spanish law firm said it would sue in the
United States on behalf of investors in Latin
America, particularly Mexicans, Brazilians,
‘Fantasy Island’ star Ricardo
Montalban dead at 88
LOS ANGELES: Mexican actor Ricardo Montal-
ban (pix), best known for his role as Mr. Roarke
in the 1970s-80s popular television series Fan-
tasy Island, has died in Los Angeles, a city official
said. He was 88.
With mellifluous voice and distinctive Span-
ish accent, Montalban also stood out in US
television folklore as a Chrysler sponsor in the
1970s when he advertised the Cordoba’s “soft
Corinthian leather” interior, much
parodied by comics for years.
Montalban died at his home in
Los Angeles, city councilman Eric
Garcetti said. He did not provide
a cause of death. Montalban was
wheelchair-bound after a 1993
spinal operation, according to local
press reports. – AFP
Myanmar activist jailed
104 years: Official
YANGON: A Myanmar court has jailed a stu-
dent activist for 104 years, while the ruling
junta freed six people who campaigned for
the release of pro-democracy icon Aung San
11
between moderates and extremists, or good and
evil, the more we play into the hands of those
seeking to unify groups with little in common.”
Miliband rejected the notion that fighting
violent extremism could only be done by military
means. “As (US) General (David) Petraeus said to
me and others in Iraq, the coalition there could
not kill its way out of the problems of insurgency
and civil strife,” he wrote.
He argued that only cooperation between
states could break up terror networks, saying
if India and Pakistan could resolve their dispute
over Kashmir it would deny extremists in the
region one of their main calls to arms. Miliband
added that democratic countries must not aban-
don their values, citing the US military detention
camp at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba. “We must
respond to terrorism by championing the rule of
law, not subordinating it, for it is the cornerstone
of the democratic society,” he wrote. – AFP
Venezuelans and Argentines.
Separately, the law firm
also said it was representing a
group of Spanish investors with
exposure of €10.5 million (RM
50 million) to Madoff-related
funds and was preparing to seek
redress under Spanish law.
“All of them had a relation-
ship of trust with financial inter-
mediaries who told them where
to place their funds,” one of the
firm’s partners, Juan Ignacio
Peinado, said in the statement.
A Swiss bank jolted by the scandal said it
conducted repeated analyses of the hundreds
of millions of dollars it invested with Madoff,
contrary to a Wall Street Journal report.
The Union Bancaire Privee said in a state-
ment it made repeated due diligence visits
over the years, but like other investors, had
no inkling that it and its investors were vic-
tims of a fraud.
Meanwhile, Ireland’s financial regulator
is looking into two investment funds with
exposure to Madoff, including a pan-Euro-
pean fund known as UCITS, a spokeswoman
said.
After listening for an hour to arguments
from a prosecutor and Madoff’s lawyer, Judge
Lawrence McKenna quickly ruled from the
bench that he was not granting the govern-
ment’s request to jail Madoff. – Reuters
Suu Kyi, officials said yesterday.
Student activist Bo Min Yu Ko, who is in
his 20s, was sentenced at a court in the city
of Mandalay in the past week, the latest in
a wave of stiff prison terms handed down in
the military-ruled nation in recent months.
“He was sentenced for his political activi-
ties as he went to the border (with Thailand)
to contact an exile group,” said a Myanmar
official on condition of anonymity. – AFP
Cop in subway shooting
charged with murder
SAN FRANCISCO: A former police officer ac-
cused of shooting dead an unarmed black man
on the San Francisco subway has been charged
with murder, authorities said on Wednesday.
Johannes Mehserle, a former Bay Area Rapid
Transit agency police officer, was arrested on
Tuesday evening at a home near Lake Tahoe,
Nevada. He is being held in the New Year’s Day
shooting death of Oscar Grant, who was lying on
the ground after being pulled off a San Francisco
train by police investigating reports of fighting.
Mehserle resigned from the Bay Area Rapid
Transit (BART) police force on Jan 7, hours before
a protest in Oakland turned violent and resulted
in more than 100 arrests. – AFP