World

BEIJING — China is calmly mapping out global leadership aspirations from trade to climate change, drawing distinctions between President Xi Jinping’s steady hand and new US President Donald Trump, whose first days have been marked by media feuds and protests.

Just days ahead of Trump taking office, a self-assured Xi was in Switzerland as the keynote speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos, offering a vigorous defence of globalisation and signalling Beijing’s desire to play a bigger role on the world stage.

Even on the thorny issue of the South China Sea, Beijing did not rise to the bait of White House remarks this week about “defending international territories” in the disputed waterway. Instead, China stressed its desire for peace and issued a restrained call for Washington to watch what it says.

“You have your ‘America first’, we have our ‘community of common destiny for mankind’,” Retired Major General Luo Yuan, a widely read Chinese military figure best known for his normally hawkish tone, wrote on his blog this week.

“You have a ‘closed country’, we have ‘one belt, one road’,” he added, referring to China’s multi-billion dollar new Silk Road trade and investment programme.

And while China has repeatedly said it does not want the traditional US role of world leadership, a senior Chinese diplomat accepted this week it could be forced upon China.

“If anyone were to say China is playing a leadership role in the world I would say it’s not China rushing to the front but rather the front runners have stepped back leaving the place to China,” said Zhang Jun, director general of the Chinese foreign ministry’s international economics department.

Stepping up

That message was reinforced this week when Trump formally withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, distancing America from its Asian allies. Several remaining TPP members said they would now look to include China in a revised pact, or pursue Beijing’s alternative free trade agreements.

“At many important multilateral forums, China’s leader has put forward Chinese proposals, adding positive impetus to world development,” Su Xiaohui, a senior researcher at the foreign ministry-backed China Institute of International Studies, wrote of the US TPP decision in the overseas edition of the People’s Daily.

“In the economic integration process of the Asia Pacific, compared to certain countries who constantly bear in mind their leadership role, what China pays even more attention to is ‘responsibility’ and ‘stepping up’,” Su said.

China’s hosting of an international conference on its “One Belt, One Road” initiative in May is one opportunity for Beijing to showcase its leadership of global infrastructure and investment. 

A diplomatic source familiar with preparations said China was likely to hold it at the same glitzy convention centre used to host the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in 2014, setting the stage for Xi’s most high profile diplomatic event of the year.

“China’s pretty much inviting everyone,” the diplomat said.

Another area where China is keen to be seen as leading the way is climate change. Trump has in the past dismissed climate change as a “hoax” and vowed during his presidential campaign to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Li Junhua, head of the Chinese foreign ministry’s department of International Organisations and Conferences, said the world was worried about climate change and whether countries would honour their Paris commitments. 

“As far as China is concerned, my president has made it extremely clear, crystal clear, China will do its part,” Li told reporters. 

Learning process

It’s not always been this way. China has been through a long, tough learning process to become a more responsible power.

In 2013, China, angered with Manila over the long dispute on the South China Sea, only stumped up meagre aid to the Philippines after it was hit by Super Typhoon Haiyan, prompting rare dissent in the influential Chinese state-run tabloid the Global Times that Beijing’s international image would be hit. 

It also will not be plain sailing. On certain key core issues including the self-ruled island of Taiwan, China will not back down.

In its first official reaction to Trump taking office, China’s foreign minister urged his administration to fully understand the importance of the “one China” principle, which Trump has called into doubt and under which Washington acknowledges China’s position of sovereignty over Taiwan.

China also expects that under the Trump administration it will be left alone on one issue that has long dogged ties with Washington — human rights.

The WeChat account of the overseas edition of the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily noted with approval on Saturday that Trump’s inaugural speech neither mentioned the words “democracy” nor “human rights”.

“Perhaps looking back, these things have been hyped up too much” by US politicians, it added.

BEIJING — If Donald Trump’s hawkish new administration follows through on threats and tries to cut Beijing off from artificial islands in the South China Sea, it could face a stiffer pushback than many imagine, experts say.

The US president and his team have made much of their desire to put Beijing in its place, including in the strategically vital waterway, which China claims almost entirely and where it has reclaimed — and fortified — thousands of acres of land, according to the Pentagon.

Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, told his confirmation hearing that the US needs to send a clear signal that China’s access to the islands is “not going to be allowed”.

Observers quickly pointed out that the full-scale blockade this would require was likely to provoke a military response from Beijing — a response that might be enough to make the US think twice.

While Beijing may have a poorer and less well-equipped military, it is stocking its arsenal with submarines, anti-ship missiles and other weapons tailor-made to neutralise Washington’s most valuable naval assets, they say.

“Beijing knows that it cannot win a conventional frontal conflict with the US,” with its vastly superior military, Valerie Niquet of French think tank Foundation of Strategic Research told AFP. 

Instead, it is developing “capacities that would restore its freedom to manoeuvre by pushing Washington to hesitate before a potentially costly intervention in Asia”.

 Flexing muscles 

China’s island building programme in the South China Sea has irked neighbours — many of whom also have claims to parts of the sea — and caused global concern.

Beijing has ignored international condemnation over its construction of airstrips and installation of anti-aircraft batteries on one-time reefs.

It has dismissed an international arbitration court that ruled last year there was no basis for its claims over the South China Sea.

Former US President Barack Obama occasionally sent warships and planes through the area in so-called “freedom of navigation” exercises, but critics say he did not do enough to prevent China gaining a substantial foothold.

Trump, who threaded anti-China rhetoric throughout his election campaign, has indicated he is going to be a lot firmer.

“If those islands are, in fact, in international waters and not part of China proper, yeah, we’ll make sure we defend international interests from being taken over by one country,” the new White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said Monday. 

Beijing is flexing its military muscle in response to the warnings. 

Three days after Trump’s inauguration, China’s navy announced the delivery of the CNS Xining destroyer, nicknamed the “carrier killer” for its large load of anti-ship and land attack cruise missiles.

Beijing also possesses DF-21 and DF-26 anti-ship missiles that could secure it “a credible denial of access” against the US Navy, a source with knowledge of Chinese military activities told AFP.

While the US has around a dozen aircraft carriers, Beijing has just one: the second-hand, Soviet-built Liaoning. A second is under construction.

The Liaoning conducted its first live fire drill in December before heading to the South China Sea.

China’s naval capacities “might not be enough to decisively destroy hostile modern navies, yet they are enough to deny or impede their access to some extent,” Noboru Yamaguchi of the International University of Japan told AFP. 

‘Bring China more respect’ 

While China has made significant progress in developing its military over the past two decades, it remains far behind the US, whose military budget is three times higher, at nearly $600 billion. 

“Most analysts agree that it is 20 or 30 years behind the US in terms of military capabilities,” said James Char of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. 

A major Achilles heel for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is that it has not fought a real battle since a war with Vietnam in 1979, and has a questionable mastery of modern military techniques, according to some Western experts. 

And while the West has NATO as a channel through which to share military experiences, China has no similar outlet, despite periodic joint exercises with other countries such as Russia. 

As Niquet sees it, “Beijing must play a delicate balancing game so as not to go too far in their threats and provoke an American intervention” with unthinkable consequences.

So far, China is playing it cool in the face of Washington’s rhetoric, with the foreign ministry largely avoiding any statements that might raise the temperature.

But “there certainly exists the worst-case probability of a destructive showdown” over access to China’s artificial islands, an editorial in the state-run China Daily warned Wednesday.

And “if there is to be ‘war’ in the South China Sea it will be because of actions by the US military”.

LONDON — The British government must win parliament’s approval before starting talks to leave the EU, the supreme court ruled on Tuesday, in a landmark judgement and setback for Prime Minister Theresa May.

The legal case has revived divisions within British society after last June’s referendum which saw 52 per cent vote to leave the European Union after a bitter campaign that split the country.

May had wanted to start the Brexit process — invoking Article 50 of the EU treaty — without a vote in parliament, but she failed to overturn a high court ruling that said lawmakers must be consulted.

“The supreme court rules that the government cannot trigger Article 50 without an act of parliament authorising it to do so,” Supreme Court President David Neuberger said in London.

A majority of the 11 judges agreed that withdrawing from the EU meant there would have to be changes to Britain’s domestic laws, and therefore the national parliament had to be involved.

‘Nothing’ changes in timetable 

May’s government insisted “nothing” would change the timetable for triggering Article 50 by the end of March and promised draft legislation “within days”.

“I trust no-one will seek to make it a vehicle for attempts to thwart the will of the people or frustrate or delay the process,” Brexit Minister David Davis warned MPs in a defiant statement.

“There can be no turning back. The point of no return was passed on June 23 last year,” he said.

But the main opposition Labour Party and the Scottish National Party (SNP) have said they will table amendments to any government legislation to start Brexit, which could potentially cause a delay.

Scottish independence? 

While Tuesday’s ruling was a blow to the prime minister, the judges also said lawmakers in semi-autonomous Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales had no legal right to be consulted in the process.

Scottish First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon had argued that since Scotland voted to stay in the EU, it should not be taken out “against its will” and has warned it is “very likely” she will have to call a referendum on independence.

“It is becoming clearer by the day that Scotland’s voice is simply not being... listened to,” she said.

“Is it better that we take our future into our own hands? It is becoming ever clearer that this is a choice that Scotland must make.”

The lead claimant in the supreme court case, investment fund manager Gina Miller, hailed the ruling as a victory for parliamentary democracy.

“No prime minister, no government can expect to be unanswerable or unchallenged,” said Miller, who has been forced to hire bodyguards because of the death threats she has received since starting her case.

In an indication of the high tensions over the ruling, senior Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith — a former party leader — lanched a scathing attack, calling the supreme court “self-appointed”.

“I’m disappointed they’ve decided to tell parliament how to run its business,” he said.

Opposition amendments 

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said his party would not “frustrate” the process for invoking Article 50 but would seek to amend the legislation.

“Labour is demanding a plan from the government to ensure it is accountable to parliament throughout the negotiations and a meaningful vote to ensure the final deal is given parliamentary approval,” he said.

The party wants provisions included in the bill urging the government to negotiate tariff-free access to the EU’s single market and agree to abide by EU-level protection of workers’ rights.

May has said she wants to leave the single market in order to restrict immigration and negotiate a new customs deal with the EU, but will seek “maximum possible access” for British companies.

She has also said Britain will incorporate all existing EU legislation and then parliament will get to choose which laws to adopt, repeal or amend.

May has promised to give both Houses of Parliament a vote on the final deal.

Robert Hazell and Alan Renwick from University College London’s Constitution Unit said: “Few doubt that the government will get an Article 50 bill through.”

“How easy a passage it receives will depend largely on the Labour Party,” they said.

SEOUL — South Korea's culture ministry apologised on Monday for a blacklist of artists which excluded them from government support, admitting there was a systematic effort to sideline critics of scandal-plagued President Park Geun-hye.

The apology was the clearest admission yet of the blacklist of cultural and media figures critical of the impeached leader that has led to the arrests of her former chief of staff and the culture minister at the weekend for abuse of power.

"It is distressing and shameful that the ministry, which should have been the bulwark for freedom of artistic expression and creativity, has caused questions of fairness in assisting culture and arts with a list of artists to be excluded from public support," Vice Culture Minister Song Soo-keun said.

The blacklist, part of which was seen by Reuters, contains the names of thousands of actors, writers, film directors and others.

It includes acclaimed film directors like Cannes award winner Park Chan-wook, Venice Film Festival top prize winner Kim Ki-duk and actors Moon So-ri and Song Gang-ho. None was immediately available for comment.

Faced with a political crisis earlier in her term, the government and state entities used the blacklist as "guidelines" to penalise artists and censor content, a special prosecutor's office investigating an influence-peddling scandal said last week.

Park's former chief of staff, Kim Ki-choon, and Culture Minister Cho Yoon-sun, who was the first sitting Cabinet member ever to be arrested before she resigned from her post at the weekend, are charged with abuse of power and perjury.

Both have denied the existence of the list, or in playing a role in drawing it up, although Cho later said she had heard of such a list.

The presidential Blue House has also denied that a blacklist exists.

Park was impeached by parliament in December after accusations that she colluded with long-time friend Choi Soon-sil to pressure big businesses to donate to two foundations set up to back the president's policy initiatives.

The special prosecutor's office said on Monday it planned to investigate other conglomerates after finishing its probe of Samsung Group, the largest, whose leader has been named a suspect in the graft scandal surrounding Park.

Prosecution office spokesman Lee Kyu-chul did not elaborate on when the investigation into Samsung may end or what other conglomerates the office planned to investigate.

Lee also said the office may question more Samsung officials, but it was not clear whether he meant those who already had been called for questioning.

Park, 64, remains in office but has been stripped of her powers while the constitutional court decides whether to uphold the impeachment.

Park has been accused by legal authorities and lawmakers of putting pressure on the entertainment industry in retaliation for satirical and other attacks, echoing the dark days of oppression under her father, dictator Park Chung-hee.

Yoo Jin-ryong, who was the first culture minister under Park, spoke out last year about the existence of the blacklist and pressure from the presidential office to remove senior officials singled out as being uncooperative.

WASHINGTON — The White House vowed on Sunday to fight the news media “tooth and nail” over what officials see as unfair attacks on President Donald Trump, setting a tone that could ratchet up a traditionally adversarial relationship to a new level of rancor.

A day after the Republican president used his first visit to CIA headquarters on Saturday to accuse the media of underestimating the crowds at his inauguration, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus expressed indignation at the reports and referred to them as “attacks”.

 “The point is not the crowd size. The point is the attacks and the attempt to delegitimise this president in one day. And we’re not going to sit around and take it,” Priebus said on “Fox News Sunday”.

 Priebus complained about a press pool report that said the bust of Martin Luther King Jr had been removed from the Oval Office. The report on Friday night was quickly corrected but Trump called out the reporter by name at the Central Intelligence Agency on Saturday, as did spokesman Sean Spicer later in the day.

“We’re going to fight back tooth and nail every day and twice on Sunday,” Priebus said.

The chief of staff also repeated Spicer’s accusations that the media manipulated photographs of the National Mall to show smaller crowds at Friday’s inauguration.

Aerial photographs showed the crowds for Trump’s inauguration were smaller than in 2009, when Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, was sworn in.

The unexpectedly high turnout for Saturday’s Woman’s March on Washington outpaced the inauguration turnout. The Washington subway system reported 275,000 rides of as of 11am (1600 GMT) on Saturday.

The subway system said 193,000 users had entered the system by 11am on Friday, compared with 513,000 at that time during Obama’s 2009 inauguration.

PESHAWAR/DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — An explosion in a busy vegetable market killed at least 21 people on Saturday in Pakistan's remote northwestern tribal region, an official said, in an attack jointly claimed by the Pakistani Taliban and a branch of the sectarian militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

About 40 others were wounded in the blast in Kurram region, near the border with Afghanistan, said Sajid Hussain Turi, member of the National Assembly from the region.

"We received 21 bodies of the local tribal people killed in the blast," Turi said, adding that there would be a mass funeral followed by a demonstration over the attack.

Spokesmen for the Pakistani Taliban and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Al Alami said the two groups coordinated the attack together.

Mohammad Khurassani, a spokesman for the Mehsud faction of the Pakistani Taliban, said the attack was to avenge Tuesday's killing of the leader of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Asif Chotoo, by police in the eastern province of Punjab.

Ali Bin Sufyan, spokesman for LeJ's Al Alami faction, told Reuters his group had coordinated the attack with the Pakistani Taliban. The Al Alami militants in the past have claimed to have coordinated attacks with Middle East-based Daesh's branch in Pakistan, including the November bombing of a Muslim shrine that killed 52 people, but the group also allies with the Taliban.

Reports differed on the cause of the explosion.

Turi said a homemade bomb had been planted in a pile of tomatoes and exploded as people gathered in the market in Parachinar, Kurram's main town, early on Saturday morning.

Taliban militants have been active around Parachinar in the past, ad the town has also suffered sectarian tension between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

Another Kurram official, Sabzali Khan, said early reports had suggested that a suicide bomber was responsible for the blast.

An eyewitness, Ashiq Hussain, said he saw bodies strewn around the market and wounded people crying out for help.

"There was no ambulance, and people had to carry the injured in cars and private pickup trucks to the hospital," Hussain told Reuters.

A statement from Pakistan's military said army helicopters had been dispatched to evacuate the wounded.

ROME — Several children were among the missing Thursday after a devastating avalanche buried an Italian mountain hotel with more than 25 people believed to be trapped inside.

The prospects of anyone being rescued alive from the ill-fated Hotel Rigopiano looked bleak with rescue efforts hampered by heavy snow that had blocked access roads to the remote site.

The three-storey building was hit by a two-metre high wall of snow late on Wednesday afternoon.

The first rescue workers only reached the remote site in the early hours of Thursday and it was midday by the time a snow plough and the first mechanical excavation equipment got there. 

As some 35 firemen and sniffer dogs combed the rubble, officials said one body had been recovered and the location of another one identified by early afternoon.

"We are trying to recover bodies," said fire service spokesman Luca Cari. Asked if there was any hope of survivors, he told AFP: "You never know."

He added: "The building was basically run over by the avalanche leaving it buried.

"I saw mattresses that had been dragged for hundreds of metres, which shows how big the search area is. There are tonnes of snow, tree trunks and all kinds of detritus."

Italian television showed images of piles of masonry and rubble in the entrance area of what they dubbed a “coffin hotel”.

Wife and children missing 

The region was hit by four seismic shocks measuring above five magnitude in the space of four hours on Wednesday, when at least one person was confirmed to have died. Quake experts said the tremors almost certainly triggered the snowslide.

The four-star hotel's guests had been assembled on the ground floor awaiting an evacuation following the quakes that was delayed by snow-blocked roads when the avalanche struck.

The building was moved some 10 metres off its foundations by the force of the hurtling wall of snow.

Local officials confirmed two guests who were not inside when the avalanche struck had been rescued. They were suffering from hypothermia but not in any danger.

One of them, identified as Giampiero Parete, 38, was quoted by friends in Italian media as saying his wife and two children, aged 6 and 8, had been inside the hotel.

Officials said there had been 20 guests staying and seven or eight staff on duty at the hotel on the eastern lower slopes of the Gran Sasso mountain.

The first mountain police on the scene got there by helicopter with others following on skies.

They were quoted as saying there were no signs of life inside the building while one of their commanding officers told reporters: "There are many dead."

Ambulances were blocked for hours by two metres of snow in the nearest village, Farindola, some nine kilometres  away, according to the civil protection agency.

Waiting for Godot 

The hotel was located at an altitude of 1,200 metres around 90 kilometres east of the epicentres of Wednesday's earthquakes, all near Amatrice, the town devastated in an August quake in which nearly 300 people died.

A region dominated by Gran Sasso, a majestic 2,912 metres peak, has numerous small ski resorts popular with day-trippers from Rome and urban centres on Italy's east coast.

The one person confirmed dead Wednesday was a man found buried under the debris of a building in Castel Castagna, a small town to the north of Farindola.

The quakes affected an area that straddles the regions of Lazio, Marche and Abruzzo which is home to many remote mountain hamlets.

Although many residents had been evacuated from their homes after last year's quakes, there were fears for families who had decided to stay and are now cut off.

Guido Castelli, the mayor of the Marche town of Ascoli said his staff were trying to check on around 1,000 people in cut-off hamlets.

"It is like Waiting for Godot," he said.

Some 130,000 homes were without electricity overnight as a result of quake-damage to pylons and other infrastructure.

Schools in the affected region have been closed until next week to allow structural safety checks to be carried out.

Italy is prone to earthquakes but has rarely suffered so many in quick succession.

Since the Amatrice disaster, there have been nine shocks measuring more than a five magnitude and a total of 47,000 registered aftershocks.

Italy straddles the Eurasian and African tectonic plates, making it vulnerable to seismic activity when they move.

WASHINGTON — Despite a flurry of last-minute releases from Guantanamo Bay, President Barack Obama is set to fail in his eight-year quest to close the infamous military detention centre.

One of his first acts as president in 2009 was to issue an executive order to shut the controversial jail within a year, but it is clear it will remain open when he leaves office on Friday.

“I don’t anticipate that we will succeed in that goal of closing the prison, but it’s not for a lack of trying,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told his final media briefing on Tuesday.

Obama’s successor, President-elect Donald Trump, has vowed not just to keep Guantanamo open, but to boost the number of terror suspects housed there — even raising the prospect of US citizens being sent to the facility.

“We’re gonna load it up with some bad dudes, believe me, we’re gonna load it up,” Trump said while campaigning last year. He separately said “it would be fine” if US terror suspects were sent there for trial.

On Monday, 10 former detainees — eight Yemenis and two Afghans — were sent to Oman, bringing the remaining Guantanamo population to 45, down from 242 when Obama took office.

Several more have been cleared for transfer, and a US official told AFP to expect a “handful” more by Friday — despite Trump’s call this month for “no further releases”.

 But dozens of inmates will remain in indefinite detention on day one of the Trump presidency.

“President Obama’s legacy on Guantanamo isn’t just about those he transfers, it’s also about those he leaves behind,” Elizabeth Beavers, a senior campaigner with Amnesty International USA, told AFP.

“There is a risk that the prison could become permanent, with those remaining at risk of torture or other ill-treatment.”

 Of the 45 men still at Guantanamo, nine are cleared for transfer and another 26 remain in legal limbo — the so-called “forever prisoners” who have not been charged with anything but are deemed too dangerous to release.

The other 10, including the alleged plotters of the September 11, 2001 attacks, are going through a glacially slow military prosecution at Guantanamo. 

They are due in a Guantanamo military court next week for yet another pre-trial hearing.

Extremist ‘recruitment tool’ 

Obama struggled to find a solution to the vexed question of what to do with the forever detainees, and it is uncertain they could be convicted in a civilian court.

The outgoing president had tried to transfer many detainees abroad and bring the most high-value ones to the United States, but funding was blocked by Republicans and even some in his own Democratic Party pushed back against closure plans. 

An oft-cited reason for keeping Guantanamo open is the recidivism rate. About 30 per cent of detainees released are suspected or confirmed to have re-engaged against US interests, though the rate dropped sharply among those released under Obama.

Guantanamo first opened in early 2002, hastily erected on a grassy hillside on America’s naval base in Cuba, where detainees would be out of the reach of federal US courts. 

The men arrived in orange jumpsuits, shackled and blindfolded — and sometimes were trundled around the outdoor prison camp on gurneys that looked like giant wheelbarrows. 

Some had been kidnapped by foes in Afghanistan and sold to the Americans for a bounty, often on the basis of slim or made-up evidence.

The cages they were held in have long since been shut and modern, high-security facilities erected to replace them at a cost of millions of dollars. 

Obama repeatedly said the controversial prison served as a “recruitment tool” for terrorist organisations and was a waste of money — it currently costs about $7 million to keep each detainee there per year.

He has laid the blame for Guantanamo’s continued use squarely at lawmakers’ feet.

“I have not been able to close the darn thing because of the congressional restrictions that have been placed on us,” he said last year.

‘For the duration’ 

Countries receiving former detainees must give guarantees they will be monitored and participate in rehabilitation programmes.

Six former Guantanamo inmates were resettled in Uruguay in 2014, but the men floundered in the Spanish-speaking nation and one went on hunger strike to demand being sent elsewhere. 

“They are rebuilding their lives in Uruguay, but among the six, at least five are struggling,” Christian Mirza, who heads the case for the Uruguay government, told AFP.

Retired General James Mattis, who is set to become Trump’s defence secretary, last week said America retains the legal right to capture enemy combatants and hold them as prisoners “for the duration of a war”.

“Long-term detention is appropriate when an unprivileged enemy belligerent poses a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States,” he told lawmakers last week.

But how many new inmates will actually end up in Guantanamo is tough to predict.

Obama widely expanded the use of drones in counterterrorism operations and if US agencies have solid intelligence on a terror suspect, they now tend to simply send a drone to kill him.

EDINBURGH — The British government’s plan for leaving the European Union is “economically catastrophic” and Scotland must have the option of voting for independence if its views on Brexit are rejected, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said on Tuesday.

Sturgeon, who leads the pro-independence devolved government, was speaking after British Prime Minister Theresa May signalled Britain would quit the European Union single market and impose immigration limits whilst seeking fair trade deals across the globe.

Sturgeon said Scots, who voted by a clear majority against leaving the EU in last June’s referendum, were now more likely to want independence.

She has submitted a series of proposals on Scotland’s position to the UK government, including the option of Scotland maintaining its EU single market links from within the UK.

Many see that as impractical but the Scottish government argues that as Brexit is unprecedented, a creative approach should be considered.

Sturgeon said she wanted evidence that Scotland’s voice was being taken into account by the government in London.

“The UK government cannot be allowed to take us out of the EU and the single market — regardless of the impact on our economy, jobs, living standards and our reputation as an open, tolerant country — without Scotland having the ability to choose between that and a different future,” she said.

“With her comments today, the prime minister has only succeeded in making that choice more likely.”

Ruth Davidson, leader of May’s Conservative Party in Scotland, said Sturgeon should back off the threat of independence.

“[Sturgeon’s] Scottish National Party should have the good grace to accept that many of its own demands — including the protection of workers’ rights, the protection of rights for EU citizens in Britain and cross-border cooperation on tackling crime — have been recognised by the UK government,” she said.

The Scottish government is due to meet UK counterparts on Thursday in London as part of negotiations for Brexit.

DACHA SUU, Kyrgyzstan — A cargo plane attempting to land in thick fog crashed on Monday into a village near Kyrgyzstan's main airport and killed at least 37 people, with authorities blaming "pilot error". 

A massive section of the aircraft's tail billowed smoke as rescuers searched for victims among the wreckage in the village of Dacha-Suu, home to the majority of the victims.

"According to preliminary information, the plane crashed due to a pilot error," Kyrgyz Deputy Prime Minister Muhammetkaly Abulgaziev said at a briefing broadcast on state television.

A minimum of 37 people, including the plane's four pilots, were killed and the toll may rise, said a spokesman for the emergency services, Muhammed Svarov. 

The plane, operated by a Turkish cargo airline, was attempting a landing at the Manas airport in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek in thick fog. 

Crushed cars, shattered homes and huge chunks of burnt debris littered the village, which was hit by the plane at around 7:30 am (0130 GMT), as many residents were still at home in bed.

"Our grandson said something was burning," Tajikan, a Dacha Suu resident who identified herself only by her first name, told AFP. 

"We heard a roar and [what felt] like an earthquake. Many people were sleeping, everything around was burning. One of the parts of the aircraft fell on our neighbour's house. She and her whole family died," the pensioner said. 

Zumriyat Rezakhanova, another resident of Dacha Suu, said the plane fell "right on the homes" where residents were sleeping. 

"My sister's home is badly damaged. Luckily she and her family survived," Rezakhanova told AFP. 

'Deeply saddened' 

The flight was travelling from Hong Kong to Istanbul via Kyrgyzstan's capital Bishkek.

One of the plane's black boxes was recovered from the crash site, the government said a statement without specifying how long it would take to decipher it. 

International aviation experts and representatives of the company who flew the plane, ACT Airlines, will arrive at the crash site on Tuesday, Abulgaziev said at a late briefing, adding that search operation will resume in the morning in areas where the largest pieces of the plane fell.

The Turkish cargo airline, said in a statement that its Boeing 747-400 was involved in the crash. 

ACT Airlines said it was "deeply saddened" by the crash and noted that "the cause of the accident is unknown".

 Boeing, the plane's manufacturer, meanwhile extended its "deepest condolences" over the crash and offered to assist Kyrgyz authorities with the investigation. 

Elmira Sheripova, a spokeswoman for the emergency services ministry, told AFP that 17 houses had been "completely destroyed" by the plane.

The country's Manas airport has since reopened despite air authorities initially saying that the hub would remain shut until the evening. 

Prime Minister Sooronbai Jeenbekov was heading a specially-appointed government commission to probe the crash and the country's state prosecutor also opened an investigation. 

Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev cancelled his visit to China to return to Bishkek, according to Kyrgyz media.

Authorities said the country will observe a day of mourning on Tuesday.