World

BARCELONA/MADRID — Catalonia's secessionist leader on Monday faced increased pressure to abandon plans to declare the region independent from Spain, with France and Germany expressing support for the country's unity.

The Madrid government, grappling with Spain's biggest political crisis since an attempted military coup in 1981, made it clear on Monday it would respond immediately to any such unilateral declaration. 

A week on from a referendum on independence which the government did its utmost to thwart, more signs were emerging that the fraught situation was also taking its toll on the business climate of Spain's wealthiest region.

Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont is due to address the regional parliament on Tuesday afternoon, and the Madrid government is worried it will vote for a unilateral declaration of independence. 

Catalan officials say people voted overwhelmingly for secession in the ballot, which was declared illegal by the government and was marked by police violence against independence supporters.

But the issue has deeply divided the northeastern region itself as well the Spanish nation. Hundreds of thousands of unionists took to the streets of Barcelona at the weekend to protest against the region breaking away.

Buoyed by the show of support, Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said on Monday: "I'm calling on the sensible people in the Catalan government...don't jump off the edge because you'll take the people with you." 

"If there is a unilateral declaration of independence there will be decisions made to restore law and democracy," Saenz de Santamaria told COPE radio station.

Backing also came from European heavyweights Germany and France.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke to Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Saturday about the crisis, her spokesman said on Monday. She stressed her support for Spain's unity but also encouraged more dialogue.

France said it would not recognise Catalonia if the region unilaterally declared independence. Doing so would lead to Catalonia's automatic exit from the European Union, it said.

"This crisis needs to be resolved through dialogue at all levels of Spanish politics," France's European Affairs Minister Nathalie Loiseau said.

The European Union has shown no interest in an independent Catalonia, despite an appeal by Puigdemont for Brussels to mediate in the crisis.

New elections?

Under Catalonia's referendum law, deemed unconstitutional by Madrid, a vote for independence in the assembly on Tuesday would start a six-month process that would envisage divorce talks with Spain before regional elections and a final act of separation.

Rajoy has not ruled out the so-called "nuclear option" of removing Catalonia's government and calling new regional elections if it claims independence.

He gained some political cover for such a move on Monday when opposition Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez said in Barcelona he would "support the response of the rule of law in the face of any attempt to break social harmony".

Sanchez stopped short, however, of explicitly saying his party would back dissolving the regional parliament, a possibility written into the 1978 constitution.

Losing Catalonia, which has its own language and culture, would deprive Spain of a fifth of its economic output and more than a quarter of exports. A stream of Catalonia-based firms and banks have moved their legal bases outside the region.

The boards of Catalonia-based infrastructure firm Abertis , telecoms company Cellnex and property group Inmobiliaria Colonial will meet on Monday to discuss moving, sources said. 

Banks Caixabank and Sabadell have already resolved to leave the region.

The crisis has also reopened old divisions in a nation where the right-wing dictatorship of General Francisco Franco is a living memory easily revived by strong displays of nationalism.

Among many moderate Spaniards there is widespread opposition to a breakaway, including in Catalonia. Regional authorities say about 90 per cent of those who voted in the referendum backed secession, but turnout was 43 percent, with most unionists boycotting it.

Sunday's demonstration in the Catalan capital helped calm Spanish markets on Monday, along with comments on Friday from credit rating agencies Moody's and DBRS that they expected Spain to remain united. Spanish borrowing costs fell to a one-week low and the main share index touched a week high.

Puigdemont appeared resolute in a television interview on Sunday, saying the region's referendum law called for a declaration of independence in the event of a "yes" vote.

"We will apply what the law says," he told TV3.

Catalonia's high court asked for more security in case independence is declared, specifically drafting in the national police, who were called in to stop the referendum when the Catalan police force failed to act.

Madrid sent thousands of national police to the region to prevent the vote. About 900 people were injured when officers used rubber bullets and batons against voters in scenes that shocked Spain and the world, and escalated the dispute.

Under a blueprint for independence drawn up by the Catalan parliament last month, the high court would be turned into a new supreme court of Catalonia.

Puigdemont said on Sunday he had not been in contact with the Madrid government for some time because it refused to discuss independence. 

"What is happening in Catalonia is real, whether they like it or not. Millions of people have voted, who want to decide. We have to talk about this," he said.

Rajoy has said repeatedly he will not talk to the Catalan leaders unless they drop their plans to declare independence.

BERLIN — Two weeks after winning elections with a reduced majority, German Chancellor Angela Merkel took a first step on Sunday toward forming a government by trying to unite her conservative camp which is bitterly divided over refugee policy.

Merkel met for private talks with her Bavarian CSU allies led by Horst Seehofer, who blames her open-door policy that has brought over one million asylum seekers since 2015 for the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party.

Beleaguered Seehofer — who after a vote drubbing faces internal challengers, and state elections next year — has revived his calls to cap the national refugee intake at 200,000 a year, a demand Merkel has consistently rejected as unconstitutional.

In an opening salvo Sunday, the CSU published a 10-point list of demands, including a refugee “upper limit”, a broad return to the conservative roots of the centre-right alliance, and a committment to “healthy patriotism”.

“We must fight the AfD head-on — and fight to get their voters back,” said the text published in mass-circulation Bild am Sonntag, which suggested that “conservatism is sexy again”.

The talks were expected to last deep into the night, with Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann conceding the situation was “not easy”, and a party colleague asking journalists whether they had “brought their sleeping bags”.

Merkel’s CDU too is nervous ahead of a Lower Saxony state poll next Sunday, where it is running neck-and-neck with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) — a party badly in need of a win after their bruising defeat in September 24 elections.

SPD leader Martin Schulz, gleefully watching the family squabbles in Merkel’s conservative camp, charged that the “madhouse” CDU-CSU dispute showed that “in reality, they are enemy parties”.

Odd bedfellows 

The emergence of the anti-immigration AfD, which scored 12.6 per cent, has stunned Germany by breaking a long-standing taboo on hard-right parties sitting in the Bundestag.

Its success came at the expense of the mainstream parties, making it harder for Merkel to form a working majority.

Her best shot now — if she wants to avoid fresh elections that could further boost the AfD — is an alliance with two other parties that make for odd bedfellows, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the left-leaning Greens.

Such a power pact — dubbed a “Jamaica coalition” because the three party colours match those of the Caribbean nation’s flag — would be a first at the national level in Germany. 

In the talks to come, likely to take weeks, all players will fight for ministerial posts and issues from EU relations to climate policy. All must give a little to reach a compromise — but not too much, to avoid charges from their own party bases that they are selling out in a grab for power.

The smaller parties will seek to avoid the fate of Merkel’s previous junior coalition partners: both the FDP and SPD have suffered stunning losses after governing in the veteran chancellor’s shadow.

Poker games 

Until the high-stakes poker games between party chiefs result in a working government, Merkel will be restrained on the global stage and in Europe, where French President Emmanuel Macron is pushing for ambitious reforms.

EU and euro politics, in turn, are shaping up as another divisive issue.

Merkel and the Greens have cautiously welcomed Macron’s plans, but FDP chief Christian Lindner, who is eyeing the powerful finance minister’s post, has assumed a far more sceptical tone.

He rejects any kind of “transfer union” — code for German taxpayers’ money flowing to weaker economies.

Lindner has praised, however, Seehofer’s tougher stance on migration, declaring that refugee numbers “must be reduced”.

The Greens, for their part, reject an upper limit for refugees, want to stop deportations of rejected asylum seekers to war-torn Afghanistan, and favour steps to help Syrian refugees bring their families.

Even if these issues can be resolved, the Greens will also push their ecologist core demands in talks with the pro-business parties — including phasing out coal plants and fossil fuel vehicles.

The Greens’ co-leader Cem Ozdemir, voicing some impatience with the divided conservatives, warned that they “must not block the formation of a government for weeks”.

MADRID — Thousands of demonstrators rallied across Madrid on Saturday calling for Spanish unity and demanding action to resolve a volatile political crisis over plans by Catalan separatists to declare independence.

Madrid's central Colon Square was transformed into a sea of Spanish flags as several thousand people joined a "patriotic" march organised by activists to defend the unity of Spain. 

Hundreds of others, all dressed in white, gathered in a nearby plaza ouside Madrid city hall in a separate rally calling for dialogue to end the crisis, among them families with young children. 

The rallies followed days of soaring tensions after police cracked down on voters during a banned October 1 Catalan independence referendum, prompting regional leaders to warn they would declare unilaterally declare independence in days. 

"Rajoy, you wuss, defend the nation!" chanted one group of young, mostly-male demonstrators as they marched into Colon Square waving Spanish flags as well as one bearing the francoist Black eagle. 

"It's reached a turning point and we need to get actively involved in the defence of Spain's values as a nation," added 52-year-old Joaquin Penas, an off-duty cavalry colonel with a Spanish flag draped round his shoulders. 

If Catalonia were to declare independence "it would be like cutting off an arm", he told AFP, saying there was "a lot of concern" about the government's perceived lack of action to resolve the crisis. 

"I don't have much confidence in the government. It is not a very proactive government... [Prime Minister Mariano] Rajoy is anything but a leader. To be honest, he's awful."

 Tentative signs have emerged that the two sides may be seeking to defuse the country's worst crisis in a generation after Madrid offered a first apology on Friday to Catalans injured by police during the vote. 

But uncertainty still haunts the country as Catalan leaders have not backed off from plans to declare the region independent.

'A lot of fear' 

In Cibeles Square, hundreds of others people clapped and waved their hands in the air in a crowd which included many families with young children and babies but no flags.

Yurena Diaz, a 36-year-old doctor with her dog Quillo on a lead, said she was demonstrating "so that there would be dialogue before we lose ourselves, so they they try and sit down and talk". 

"There is a lot more tension and violence. Each time it gets worse. Such violence makes you afraid. It has generated a lot of fear and that's dangerous."

 Rajoy has vowed to block any independence move and has also rejected calls for mediation in a dispute that has drawn cries of concern all over Spain, and even from Barcelona and Real Madrid footballers.

"There has to be a commitment to dialogue," Jordi Cuixart, president of one of the grassroots groups driving the separatist movement, said on Catalan radio.

"We will never refuse that. But we... will continue to demand a commitment that the referendum law be fulfilled."

'Let's talk' 

The crisis has raised fears of unrest in the northeastern region, a tourist-friendly area of 7.5 million people that accounts for a fifth of Spain's economy.

Opponents of secession called for demonstrations around Spain on Saturday and in Barcelona on Sunday.

Another group called "Let's Talk" urged citizens to gather dressed in white in front of town halls, demanding dialogue to end the crisis under the slogan: "Spain is better than its leaders".

Friday saw the first signs the sides may be willing to step back from the brink in a political conflict that risks destabilising Europe.

After days of ill-tempered rhetoric, Madrid said it regretted the injuries caused in the October 1 crackdown and suggested Catalonia should hold a regional election to settle the crisis.

"I can do nothing but regret it, apologise on behalf of the officers who intervened," said the government's representative in Catalonia, Enric Millo.

Businesses and the government have kept up economic pressure on Catalonia however, with several big companies announcing moves to shift their headquarters to other parts of Spain.

Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont had been due to appear at the regional parliament on Monday but postponed it by a day, a spokesman said. 

It remains unclear what he plans to say, although some leaders hope he will use the opportunity to make a declaration of independence. 

On Friday, Catalonia's police chief and two prominent separatist leaders including Cuixart avoided being remanded in custody at a court hearing over sedition accusations.

Economic pressure 

If Catalonia declares independence, Spain could respond by suspending the region's existing autonomous status and imposing direct rule from Madrid.

The Catalan government on Friday published final results from the referendum indicating that 90 per cent of voters backed the idea of breaking away from Spain.

Turnout was 43 per cent.

Recent polls had indicated that Catalans are split on independence, though leaders said the violence during the referendum turned many against the state authorities.

With its own language and cultural traditions, demands for independence in Catalonia date back centuries but have surged during recent years of economic crisis.

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh — Bangladesh on Thursday announced it would build one of the world’s biggest refugee camps to house all the 800,000-plus Rohingya Muslims who have sought asylum from violence in Myanmar.

The arrival of more than half a million Rohingya Muslims from Buddhist-dominated Myanmar since August 25 has put an immense strain on camps in Bangladesh where there are growing fears of a disease epidemic.

A Bangladesh minister gave details of the mega camp as Myanmar’s army blamed Rohingya militants for setting fire to houses in troubled Rakhine state in recent days to intensify the exodus of the Muslim minority across the border.

Hard-pressed Bangladesh authorities plan to expand a refugee camp at Kutupalong near the border town of Cox’s Bazar to accommodate all the Rohingya.

Two thousand acres  of land next to the existing Kutupalong camp were set aside last month for the new Rohingya arrivals. But as the number of newcomers has exceeded 500,000 — adding to 300,000 already in Bangladesh — another 1,000 acres has been set aside for the new camp.

Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya, minister for disaster management and relief, said all the Rohingya would eventually be moved from 23 camps along the border and other makeshift camps around Cox’s Bazar to the new zone.

“All of those who are living in scattered places... would be brought into one place. That’s why more land is needed. Slowly all of them will come,” the minister told AFP, adding families were already moving to the new site known as the Kutupalong Extension.

The minister said two of the existing settlements have already been shut down.

This week Bangladesh reported 4,000-5,000 Rohingya were crossing the border daily after a brief lull in arrivals, with 10,000 more waiting at the frontier.

‘Extraordinary generosity’ 

The United Nations has praised Bangladesh’s “extraordinary spirit of generosity” in opening up its borders.

But UNICEF chief Anthony Lake and UN emergency relief coordinator Mark Lowcock said in an appeal for $430 million to provide aid that “the needs [of the Rohingya] are growing at a faster pace than our ability to meet them”.

“The human tragedy unfolding in southern Bangladesh is staggering in its scale, complexity and rapidity,” they said in a statement calling the Rohingya crisis “the world’s fastest developing refugee emergency”.

Rohingya who have made it to Bangladesh allege the spurt in arrivals follows a new campaign of intimidation by Myanmar’s army in parts of Rakhine which were still home to Muslim communities.

But the office of Myanmar army chief Min Aung Hlaing said blazes at seven houses in a Rohingya village in Buthidaung township early Wednesday were started by one “Einu”, an alleged militant from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA).

“ARSA extremist terrorist” Einu had been “urging people to run” across the border to Bangladesh, said the statement published on the office’s Facebook page.

The refugee crisis erupted after ARSA raids on Myanmar police posts on August 25 prompted a brutal military backlash.

The United Nations has said the Myanmar army campaign could be “ethnic cleansing” while military leaders have blamed the unrest on Rohingya.

While the worst of the violence appears to have abated, insecurity, food shortages and tensions with Buddhist neighbours are still driving thousands of Rohingya to make the arduous trek to Bangladesh.

Bangladesh has made the journey even more difficult with a clampdown on boats running refugees across the Naf river that separates the two countries.

Authorities have destroyed at least 30 wooden fishing vessels whose captains are accused of smuggling Rohingya and illegal drugs into the country, officials said Thursday.

The boatmen were caught in possession of about 100,000 “yaba” pills, an illegal stimulant popular in Bangladesh, said a border guard official.

SHAH PORIR DWIP, Bangladesh — Rohingya refugees arriving in Bangladesh amid a fresh exodus from strife-torn Myanmar have described whole villages being emptied and thousands marching to the border as security forces redouble efforts to drive remaining Muslims from their homes.

More than 500,000 Muslim Rohingya have fled ethnic bloodshed in Myanmar in the past month and numbers are again swelling, with Bangladesh reporting 4-5,000 civilians now crossing the border each day after a brief lull in arrivals.

An estimated 10,000 more have reportedly massed in Myanmar near a crossing point into Bangladesh, and are poised to join the hundreds of thousands of mainly Rohingya refugees eking out survival in wretched camps over the border.

The spike in new arrivals — prompted by what Rohingya say is a fresh drive to purge Muslims still in westernmost Rakhine state — casts doubt on a Myanmar proposal aired this week to start repatriating the persecuted minority.

Rakhine has been emptied of half of its Rohingya population in weeks, and more are on the move as insecurity presses them to leave villages that have so far been spared the worst of the violence ripping through the state.

Rashida Begum, who arrived in Bangladesh late Monday, said local officials assured the Rohingya community for weeks that they would be safe if they stayed back in their villages.

"[But then] the army came and went door to door, ordering us to leave," she told AFP of the military sweep in Maungdaw on Friday.

"They said they wouldn't harm us, but eventually they drove us out and burned our houses."

 Begum, 30, fled with her daughter to the coast, where hundreds of Rohingya waited to cross the Naf River dividing Myanmar and Bangladesh.

Myanmar state media said the fleeing Rohingya had left "of their own accord" despite assurances they would be safe.

"I wanted to stay in my village," Hasina Khatun, 25, told AFP in the coastal border town of Shah Porir Dwip.

"They [local officials] said 'don't go to Bangladesh. Everything will be fine'. We believed them, but nothing improved. Eventually we had to leave."

 Sumaya Bibi, a softly-spoken Rohingya teenager, described more than a thousand civilians hiding along the riverbank late Monday.

She said they boarded about 10 wooden fishing boats, many overloaded and carrying mainly women and children, and drifted under the cover of darkness across the Naf where they washed up on a remote beach.

Reports are difficult to independently verify due to reporting restrictions in Rakhine.

Fazlul Haq, a local councillor in the area, said the flow of boats that had almost stopped by late September had resumed in recent days, bringing scores of Rohingya families reporting threats and intimidation by the army.

The Bangladesh government said on Wednesday that coast guard and security forces had arrested 39 people accused of charging exorbitant fares to ferry fleeing Rohingya across the Naf in night-time raids.

An official told AFP that boat owners had been charging as much as $250 per head for the hours-long boat ride from Maungdaw to Shah Porir Dwip which normally costs around ten dollars.

The UN said Tuesday that 509,000 refugees had crossed into Bangladesh as of September 30.

'Burned to the ground' 

The influx began after August 25, when attacks by Rohingya militants spurred a ferocious Myanmar army crackdown that the UN says amounted to "ethnic cleansing".

Myanmar's government refuses to recognise the Rohingya as a distinct ethnic group and considers them illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

On Monday, a Myanmar minister proposed taking back hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, many of whom are at risk of disease in packed makeshift camps along the border, but offered no timeline.

Violence appears to have ebbed in northern Rakhine, although independent reporting is still blocked by an army lockdown, but fear has unsettled many of the Rohingya who remain.

Nurul Amin, who arrived Sunday after the military ordered his village to be evacuated, described a long column of Rohingya civilians growing in size as it snaked towards the coast.

"As we left, people from villages all around us started joining. They [the Myanmar army] weren't killing anyone, just burning houses," he told AFP.

Thick plumes of smoke could be seen from Bangladesh rising beyond the border on Tuesday. An EU delegation in Rakhine earlier this week urged an end to the violence after seeing "villages burned to the ground and emptied of inhabitants".

Amin said there were just "two, maybe three families in hiding, but no houses" in the villages surrounding his razed home in Maungdaw.

"They too will come in time," he said.

BRUSSELS — While European powers France and Britain are lobbying Washington to cool tensions since North Korea’s most powerful nuclear test a month ago, EU nations with embassies in Pyongyang are directly pressing the North Koreans. 

A group of seven European Union countries — the Czech Republic, Sweden, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, as well as Britain and Germany — held at least two formal meetings with North Korean officials in Pyongyang in September, three EU diplomats said. 

But they felt frustrated because the higher-level access that they had obtained in Pyongyang last year had fallen away, with only medium-ranking foreign ministry officials now attending the meetings, the diplomats said.

“There was a sense that we weren’t really getting anywhere because they sent these department heads,” said a Brussels-based diplomat who had been briefed on the meetings, which were described as “very serious” in atmosphere and tone. 

“They want to talk to the United States.”

 The White House has ruled out such talks, with President Donald Trump telling Secretary of State Rex Tillerson he would be “wasting his time” negotiating with the North Koreans.

The United States has no embassy in Pyongyang and relies on Sweden, the so-called US protecting power there, to do consular work, especially when Westerners get into trouble. 

In contrast to recent meetings, when North Korean officials met EU envoys in the Czech Republic’s embassy in 2016 to discuss issues including cultural programmes and regional security, a deputy foreign minister would attend, one EU diplomat said. 

For the small club of European Union governments with embassies in North Korea, that reflects Pyongyang’s anger at the EU’s gradually expanding sanctions that go beyond those agreed by the United Nations Security Council. 

It could have repercussions for broader EU efforts to help mediate in the nuclear crisis, according to the EU diplomats briefed by their colleagues in Pyongyang, as the bloc prepares more measures against North Korea.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who chaired talks on the historic 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, says the bloc is ready to mediate in any talks aimed at freezing North Korea’s missile and nuclear weapons programmes.

But at the same time, the European Union wants an oil embargo on Pyongyang that it hopes other countries will follow. 

Some EU governments are pushing to cancel North Korean work permits in Poland and other eastern European countries because EU officials believe workers’ salaries are deposited in bank accounts controlled by the regime in Pyongyang.

“The North Koreans are starting to see the EU as a US puppet, but we stress that we are an honest broker,” said a second EU diplomat. 

‘Keep it a secret’

Links with the EU embassies go back years. Communist Czechoslovakia was a leading supplier of heavy machinery to North Korea. As a Soviet satellite, Czechoslovakia established diplomatic ties with North Korea in 1948, along with Poland and Romania. 

The seven European embassies in Pyongyang are among only 24 foreign missions there, including Russia, China and Cuba.

The EU’s status as a potential broker relies, in part, on Sweden, which was the first Western European nation to establish diplomatic relations with the North in 1973.

Sweden is a member of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission, which was set up to oversee the 1953 armistice between North and South Korea, undertake inspections, observe military exercises and promote trust between the two sides.

Czechoslovakia was also a member of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission until the early 1990s. 

Sweden played a key role in the release of Canadian pastor Hyeon Soo Lim and of US student Otto Warmbier earlier this year. But Sweden has strongly backed the EU sanctions. 

The seven European embassies are limited in what they can say because North Korean staff, required by the government to work at the EU embassies, are expected to double as informants for Pyongyang, the diplomats said.

“Sanctions and pressure ... Sadly, we don’t have anything else,” said an EU diplomat in Brussels.

The joint meetings with the North Koreans, usually held at a single European mission, have been focused on the release of imprisoned Westerners, not big diplomatic initiatives.

But as efforts intensify to calm US and North Korean threats of war, they could still prove an important channel to pass messages between Pyongyang and Washington.

“In the best case, we could perhaps facilitate an opening of a diplomatic track between the North Koreans and the United States,” said Carl Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister and foreign minister from 2006 to 2014.

Bildt said anything the EU does must be kept secret.

“If the EU does something along these lines, the first thing the EU should do is not to talk about it. Talking about it is a pretty good way to ensure that one can’t do it,” he said.

No safety net

Mathieu Duchatel, a North Korean expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank that Bildt also now helps oversee, said the European Union could chair talks between China and the United States.

Washington and Pyongyang have no hotlines to prevent crises from spinning out of control and it is not clear what Beijing’s reaction would be if the United States intercepted a North Korean missile test, Duchatel said.

For now, Paris is in contact with White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, diplomats said, noting French President Emmanuel Macron’s budding relationship with US President Donald Trump. 

Lieutenant General McMaster and Kelly, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, have a soft spot for France born of their admiration for the French military, the diplomats said.

It is unclear if that translates into a direct impact on Trump’s thinking on North Korea, European diplomats said.

“They are trying to normalise Trump, but I don’t think Trump can be normalised,” said a senior French diplomat. “To get him to listen, heads of state need to speak to him directly.”

 Macron, who has ruled out a military option, has said he believes he could convince Trump to avoid armed intervention. Macron’s position is to keep repeating the mantra of patience and dialogue to Trump, diplomats said.

At first glance, it seemed Stephen Paddock, 64, was set for a quiet life in a desert retirement community near his beloved casinos where he bought a new home in 2015.

From there it was only an hour’s drive to Las Vegas, where he would embark on the worst mass shooting in recent US history. 

Public records point to an itinerant existence across the American West: A few years in coastal California, a few years in other parts of Nevada. Paddock had a hunting licence in Texas, where he lived for at least a few years. He got his pilot licence, and had at least one single-engine aircraft registered in his name.

In early 2015, he bought a modest two-storey home in a new housing development for retirees on the dusty edge of Mesquite, a small desert town popular with golfers and gamblers that straddles the Nevada border with Arizona. 

“It’s a nice, clean home and nothing out of the ordinary,” Quinn Averett, a Mesquite police department spokesman, told reporters on Monday. Some guns and ammunition were found inside, though nothing remarkable in a region where gun ownership is high. 

An hour’s drive southwest is Las Vegas, where Paddock would check into a 32nd-floor room last Thursday at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino with at least 10 rifles for a shooting spree that would kill least 58 people and hurt more than 500.

Eric Paddock, the shooter’s brother, said the family was “bewildered” as to what drove him to mass murder, saying in a telephone interview the family would release a brief statement through the sheriff’s office in Orlando, Florida, where some of the shooter’s relatives live.

He helped his brother move to escape Central Florida’s humidity to Nevada in order to be able to play more video poker two years ago, Eric Paddock told the Orlando Sentinel. The two were last in touch a few weeks ago, texting about power outages after Hurricane Irma hit Florida. 

A former neighbour named Sharon Judy in Viera, Florida, told the newspaper that Stephen Paddock was a friendly man who had described himself as a professional gambler. He showed Judy a picture of him winning a $20,000 slot-machine jackpot, she said.

Paddock had no criminal record other than a traffic infraction, authorities said.

Before moving to Mesquite, Nevada, he lived in another town called Mesquite in Texas. He was listed as the manager of an apartment complex called Central Park. A woman who answered the telephone for the complex referred questions to another manager, who did not respond to messages. 

Records as recently as 2015 list Paddock as single. Police and public records said he lived with Marilou Danley in the Nevada retirement community. Danley described herself as a “casinos professional”, as well as a mother and grandmother on social media websites. 

She was travelling outside the country, and police say she had no connection with the attack, CNN reported.

DHAKA — A Myanmar minister on Monday proposed taking back hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who fled to Bangladesh after a military crackdown, according to Dhaka’s top diplomat. 

But no details of the planned repatriation were given by Bangladesh Foreign Minister A.H Mahmood Ali, and there was widespread scepticism over whether any of the more than 800,000 Muslim Rohingya now in Bangladesh would return.

More than half a million have arrived over the last five weeks after militant attacks in Myanmar’s Rakhine state sparked violent reprisals which the UN has said could amount to ethnic cleansing in the Buddhist-dominated country.

The talks between Mahmood Ali and Myanmar’s Minister of the Office of State Counselor Kyaw Tint Swe came as UN representatives were given their first access to Rakhine since the trouble erupted on August 25.

UN officials, diplomats and aid groups were taken on a one-day visit organised by Myanmar authorities. They were flown by helicopter to Maungdaw, epicentre of the violence.

Mahmood Ali held what he called “friendly” talks in Dhaka with the representative of Myanmar’s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

“Myanmar has made a proposal to take back the Rohingya refugees,” the minister told reporters.

“The two sides have agreed to a proposal to set up a joint working group to coordinate the repatriation process.”

 Suu Kyi, who has been severely criticised for her failure to curb the military crackdown, said last month that Myanmar would take back “verified” refugees.

This would be done according to criteria agreed in 1993, when tens of thousands of Rohingya were repatriated, she said.

The Bangladesh minister gave no timeframe for repatriation and did not say whether Myanmar would also take back 300,000 Rohingya refugees who fled to Bangladesh during earlier violence.

He said refugees would be verified by the joint working group, but without UN involvement. 

“Bangladesh has proposed a bilateral agreement (with Myanmar) to help implement the repatriation,” he said.

There was no immediate comment from Suu Kyi’s representative, who was to return to his country on Monday.

Myanmar denies the Rohingya minority citizenship even though many have lived there for generations. It considers the Muslims as illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

No papers, no state

Myanmar’s insistence on verifying the Rohingya could prove a “stumbling block” to repatriation, according to Shahab Enam Khan, an international relations specialist at Jahangirnagar University.

“Myanmar has shown good initiative but their proposal is not adequate, particularly the verification is a non-starter,” he told AFP.

“The Rohingya fled to Bangladesh without any legal documents and it is difficult to prove their identity.”

 Mohammad Amin, who arrived in Bangladesh on Sunday with two neighbours in a rickety boat, said he would consider returning if their safety was guaranteed. 

“If they treat us as equals, we would go back,” he told AFP in a coastal town near the border.

Nurul Amin, a labourer who also arrived on Sunday by boat with six of his family members, said they fled after Buddhist mobs threatened them with violence if they did not leave.

“If they accept us as Rohingya, and said they would not harm us, we would return,” he told AFP at a refugee registration booth.

The refugees are packed into overcrowded UN and makeshift camps along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. Aid groups have warned that epidemics could easily spread in the desperate conditions.

It remains unclear where the Rohingya would go if they were returned to Myanmar. Many of their villages have been burnt to the ground in the reprisal operations.

In a speech to the UN General Assembly last month, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina proposed creating UN-supervised safe zones inside Myanmar.

Hasina accused Myanmar authorities of laying landmines on the border to prevent the Rohingya from returning and said the UN must find a solution to the crisis.

BARCELONA — Spanish riot police burst into polling stations across Catalonia on Sunday, confiscating ballot boxes and voting papers to try to halt a banned referendum on a split from Spain as Madrid asserted its authority over the rebel region.

The Mayor of the regional capital Barcelona Ada Colau issued a statement demanding "an immediate end to police charges against the defenceless population". Madrid said its police had acted in a proportionate manner.

Police broke down doors to force entry into voting stations as Catalans shouted "Out with the occupying forces!" and sang the anthem of the wealthy northeastern region. In one incident in Barcelona, police fired rubber bullets.

Officers in riot gear hit people with batons and forcibly removed would-be voters, including women and the elderly, from polling stations.

Catalan officials said over 460 people had been injured in the police crackdown and the Spanish interior ministry said 12 police had been hurt. 

Central government's representative in Catalonia Enric Millo, referring to police action, told a news conference: "We have been made to do something we didn't want to do." 

The referendum, declared illegal by Spain’s central government, has thrown the country into its worst constitutional crisis in decades and deepened a centuries-old rift between Madrid and Barcelona. 

It remained unclear what action the Catalan government might take. However much voting takes place, a “yes” result is likely, given that most of those who support independence are expected to cast ballots while most of those against it are not.

Despite the police action, hundreds-strong queues of people formed in cities and villages throughout the region to cast their votes. At one Barcelona polling station, elderly people and those with children entered first.

“I’m so pleased because despite all the hurdles they’ve put up, I’ve managed to vote,” said Teresa, a 72-year-old pensioner in Barcelona who had stood in line for six hours.

The ballot will have no legal status as it has been blocked by Spain’s Constitutional Court and Madrid for being at odds with the 1978 constitution. 

A minority of around 40 per cent of Catalans support independence, polls show, although a majority want to hold a referendum on the issue. The region of 7.5 million people has an economy larger than that of Portugal.

Large crowds

Differences were apparent in the conduct of the national Civil Guard and the regional police, Mossos. In Catalonia’s pro-independence heartland north of Barcelona, the Catalan force made little attempt to remove people from polling stations.

Organisers had asked voters to turn out before dawn, hoping for large crowds to be the world’s first image of voting day.

“This is a great opportunity. I’ve waited 80 years for this,” said 92-year-old Ramon Jordana, a former taxi driver waiting to vote in Sant Pere de Torello, a town in the foothills of the Pyrenees and a pro-independence bastion.

The Catalan government said voters could print out ballot papers at home and lodge them at any polling station not closed down by police.

Elsewhere, people were not able to access the ballot boxes. In a town in Girona province where Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont was due to vote, Civil Guard police smashed glass panels to open the door and search for ballot boxes.

Puigdemont voted in a different town in the province. He accused Spain of unjustified violence in stopping the vote and said it created a dreadful image of Spain.

“The unjustified, disproportionate and irresponsible violence of the Spanish state today has not only failed to stop Catalans’ desire to vote ... but has helped to clarify all the doubts we had to resolve today,” he said. 

Nicola Sturgeon, the pro-independence leader of Scotland, which voted to remain part of the United Kingdom in a 2014 referendum, said she was concerned by the images she was seeing from Catalonia.

“Regardless of views on independence, we should all condemn the scenes being witnessed and call on Spain to change course before someone is seriously hurt,” she said on Twitter. 

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel tweeted: “Violence can never be the answer! We condemn all forms of violence and reaffirm our call for political dialogue.” 

Stations raided

Around 70 polling stations had been raided by police, Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said. 

The aim of the raids was to seize referendum material and not to target people wanting to vote, another senior government official said.

A top-flight Spanish soccer match between Barcelona and Las Palmas was played without any supporters in the stadium because of the unrest.

“FC Barcelona condemns the events which have taken place in many parts of Catalonia today in order to prevent its citizens exercising their democratic right to free expression,” a statement on the club’s website said.

One analyst said the scenes being played out across Catalonia on Sunday would make it harder for Madrid and Barcelona to find a way forward.

“I think it is going to make the clash more intense and make it more difficult to find a solution,” said Antonio Barroso of Teneo Intelligence.

Puigdemont originally said that if the “yes” vote won, the Catalan government would declare independence within 48 hours, but regional leaders have since acknowledged Madrid’s crackdown has undermined the vote.

Markets have reacted cautiously but calmly to the situation so far, though credit rating agency S&P said on Friday that protracted tensions in Catalonia could hurt Spain’s economic outlook. The region accounts for about a fifth of the economy.

MARSEILLE — A suspected extremist knifeman killed at least two people at the main train station in the French Mediterranean port city of Marseille on Sunday before being shot and killed by soldiers patrolling there, local officials and police said.

“Two victims have been stabbed to death,” regional police chief Olivier de Mazieres told AFP, referring to the attack which occurred at 1:45pm (1145 GMT).

Local prosecutor Xavier Tarabeux said the knifeman had been killed by soldiers, while the Marseille police urged people in the city to avoid the area around Saint-Charles station in the bustling centre of the city.

The knifeman is believed to have shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest) before assaulting passers-by, a source close to the investigation told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The deaths came with France still on high alert following a string of terror attacks since January 2015, when extremist gunmen stormed the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, killing 12.

The government has since launched Operation Sentinelle, deploying about 7,000 troops across the country to guard high-risk areas such as transport hubs, tourist sites and religious buildings.

After the stabbings in Marseille, anti-terror prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into “killings linked to a terrorist organisation” and the “attempted killing of a public official”.

Attacks by extremists since 2015 have left 239 people dead in France, according to an AFP count before Sunday’s incident.

New anti-terror law 

After a rampage by the Daesh extremist group’s gunmen through Paris in November 2015, Francois Hollande, president at the time, declared a state of emergency which remains in place, giving security forces greater powers to use force and launch anti-terror raids.

Hollande’s successor Emmanuel Macron has vowed to end the state of emergency with a new and controversial security law that will make many of the provisions of the state of emergency permanent.

Despite criticism from rights groups, the lower house of parliament is set to vote on a first draft of the law on Tuesday.

French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb posted on Twitter that he would travel to Marseille immediately.

As well as the major terror atrocities in France in recent years — Charlie Hebdo, the November 2015 Paris assault and a killing spree in Nice in July 2016 — there have been a series of smaller incidents.

Attacks on police officers, soldiers or members of the public with knives, firearms or vehicles have sometimes been carried out by people with severe psychological problems.

The incident in Marseille came only days after the Daesh group released a recording of what it said was its leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi urging his followers to strike their enemies in the West.

France has deployed troops and its air force to the Middle East and is a leading partner in the US-led international coalition fighting the Daesh group in Iraq and Syria, where the extremists are being driven back.

In August, a man driving a van killed one person and seriously injured another after ploughing into a bus stop in Marseille, raising fears of another terror incident.

But doctors said later that the man had severe mental problems and discounted any terror link.