World

KABUL — The United Nations on Saturday urged Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah to return to the electoral process after he dropped out earlier last week, accusing the organisers and the president of fraud.

Abdullah withdrew by declaring his camp would regard any outcome as illegitimate and recalling his observers from the vote count for last week’s run-off election. He also invited the UN to intervene.

“We believe that the task ahead of us is to have the candidates re-engage fully in the electoral process,” UN deputy chief Nicholas Haysom told reporters in Kabul.

“We would want to emphasise that there is no other way of electing a legitimate leader.”

The run-off had pitted Adbullah against Ashraf Ghani, neither of whom gained the 50 per cent of the vote needed to win outright in the first round of elections on April 5.

Abdullah’s withdrawal has intensified longstanding concerns about a struggle for power along ethnic lines, casting doubt on Afghanistan’s attempt to transfer power democratically for the first time in its history.

While the vote count is continuing, Abdullah’s withdrawal has heightened tension across the country. At least one deadly gun battle erupted between rival supporters this week.

The election comes as most foreign troops are planning to leave Afghanistan by the end of the year. The fragile state of the society they will leave behind was underscored on Saturday by a suicide bombing aimed at a government official.

Ghani’s team has said it is in favour of any process that increases the transparency of the electoral bodies but wants the election to remain under local control.

“We respect the role of the UN... but any solution should be Afghan-led, and shouldn’t affect the work of the Independent Election Commission and Complaints Commission,” said spokesman Abbas Noyan.

The commissions were heavily criticised in the first round for lacking transparency. Both candidates say they failed to properly adjudicate cases of fraud, allowing hundreds of thousands of fake votes to be included in the final tally.

However, Afghan officials and diplomats alike want candidates to give the electoral bodies a chance to prove they have reformed. A statement by President Hamid Karzai on Friday backing Abdullah’s call for UN intervention was met with dismay by those advocating the institutions be respected.

“He has lost his marbles,” said one Afghan official on condition of anonymity, who said he was seriously worried the electoral process would collapse.

Abdullah’s supporters have organised protests in the capital this week and there are fears that demonstrations could turn violent and take on an ethnic dimension. Most of Abdullah’s supporters are Tajiks, the second-largest ethnic group. Ghani’s are mainly Pashtun, the largest group in Afghanistan.

So far, protests have been small, but they have taken on a nasty tone. Several hundred people gathered near the airport on Saturday, for example, where they chanted “we will defend our vote to the last drop of blood”, and brandished banners with slogans like “Death to Karzai” and “Death to Ghani”.

The tone of the debate on social media and in public has alarmed the UN, among others. It has urged the candidates and the public to behave responsibly, and avoid inciting ethnic divisions.

“Should any violence emanate from the demonstrations it could set back the process, make the task of trust-building more difficult,” Haysom said, “It could lead to a spiral of instability”. He called the use of social media to inflame divisions “disturbing”.

ANDRIYIVKA, Ukraine — A ceasefire announced by Ukraine’s new president had barely begun when residents of Andrivka, caught in the crossfire between government and rebel forces in eastern Ukraine, heard mortar fire.

“Nothing has changed,” said Lila Ivanova, head of the village council in Andriyivka.

“The ceasefire was supposed to come into force at 22:00 yesterday. Mortar fire began shortly after, followed by bursts of automatic gunfire. This morning started with cannon shots. It’s continuing now,” said 57-year-old Ivanova.

Andriyivka has an unenviable location. The village of 1,400 inhabitants is caught in the crossfire, just 600 metres from the frontline of the Ukrainian army and not much further from the pro-Russian separatists holed up in the rebel bastion of Slavyansk.

“This morning, the Ukrainian artillery fired in the direction of the Slavyansk train station. It was cannon fire — nowadays I know how to tell the difference,” said Ivanova. While she speaks, a few shots ring out from Ukrainian guns mounted on the hillside that overlooks the village.

The roofs of around a dozen houses have been destroyed by these barrages.

“A neighbour was killed by one bombardment a few days ago. I found shrapnel in my vegetable garden and my house and the windows were broken,” Ivanova continued.

The locals have learned to adapt to the chaos since the fighting began on May 2.

“When a helicopter hovers overhead, we now know that the bombardments will resume and we must be careful. It means that they have brought munitions to the Ukrainian forces stationed next to the village,” she added.

‘Can’t escape your destiny’ 

Curiously, not one local has bothered to reinforce their windows to avoid being injured by shattering glass.

“You can’t escape your destiny,” was the philosophical response of one resident, Vera Alexandrovna.

But daily life is tough. There has been no gas or electricity for two months since the fighting started.

“We cook on fires over bricks. We live on what we had stored in the basement and what grows in the garden. Fortunately, we have wells to provide water,” said Alexandrovna.

The locals say the Ukrainian forces prevent any technicians arriving in the village to restore water or electricity.

At the edge of the village, around 200 metres from the hillside cannons, lies small Orthodox church. Father Alexander, who has come from a neighbouring village to say mass, is also sceptical about the ceasefire that Ukraine’s new president, Petro Poroshenko, declared on Friday.

“Ukrainian President Poroshenko announced that a truce should be called,” he said. “But in fact, barely an hour later, they started with the artillery fire, heavy machineguns and people were killed.”

BANNU, Pakistan — Around 30,000 people fled a major military offensive against the Taliban in a Pakistani tribal area Wednesday, after authorities eased a curfew in a sign the campaign is likely to intensify.

The military has deployed troops, tanks and jets in North Waziristan on the border with Afghanistan, in a long-awaited crackdown on the Taliban and other militants in the tribal area.

Adding to the pressure on the insurgents, two US drone strikes hit compounds in the area early on Wednesday.

The military eased a curfew in parts of North Waziristan to let civilians leave, indicating a new and more intense phase of the anti-militant drive in which ground forces will play a greater role.

Tens of thousands of people had already fled the operation, which the military says has killed more than 200 militants, and a fresh exodus is under way.

“Some 30,000 people arrived in Bannu from Mir Ali town of North Waziristan since this morning,” Arshad Khan, director general of the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) Disaster Management Authority, told AFP.

Khan said 92,000 people have now fled North Waziristan since the military began air strikes against the Taliban last month.

Most have gone to the town of Bannu, just across the border from North Waziristan in neighbouring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and a traditional haven for those fleeing violence in the tribal area.

Registration points and camps have been set up to deal with the influx of people, but most prefer to travel on to stay with relatives in other areas.

A senior security official in northwest Pakistan told AFP the curfew was lifted to let people flee before a more concerted ground operation.

“Miranshah and Mir Ali have already been cordoned off. Ground troops will move in after civilians move to safe places,” the official said.

“First, ground troops will enter in major towns and will then move towards the suburban areas,” after strengthening their positions.

“We will then go to the villages and to the mountains,” he added, saying the operation would continue until every militant had been eliminated.

A second security official in the northwest confirmed the details.

At least five suspected militants were killed in two separate US drone missile strikes in North Waziristan, according to local officials.

Strikes in the tribal area a week ago ended a nearly six-month pause in Washington’s controversial drone campaign against militants in Pakistan.

Coming just days before the launch of the full-scale Pakistani military operation, they also triggered talk of collaboration between the US and Pakistan.

Pakistan condemned the strikes and said it regarded them as “a violation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

“These strikes also have a negative impact on the government’s efforts to bring peace and stability in Pakistan and the region”, the foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

Islamabad has previously described drone attacks in similar terms, although leaked documents have shown cooperation on them with the US in the past.

The number and identity of those killed in the military operation cannot be verified, and some residents who have fled the area spoke of civilian casualties from aerial bombing before the offensive officially began on Sunday.

Aziz-ur-Rehman, a 42-year-old teacher at a school in Mir Ali, fled the town riding on the bonnet of a truck.

“It’s like doomsday for people in Mir Ali, where death is everywhere since Saturday,” he told AFP, accusing the military of killing numerous civilians.

“They start the day with artillery shelling early in the morning. Gunship helicopters come for shelling during the day and jets strike at around 2:00-2:30 in the night.”

He said the onslaught killed two children in his neighbourhood and left a third girl badly wounded.

VIENNA — He is believed to top the list of elusive Iranian officials the UN nuclear watchdog wants to query. Exiled foes of the Islamic state cite him as the mastermind of clandestine efforts to design an atomic bomb. Tehran is mum about him, while denying having any nuclear arms agenda.

Probably living under tight security, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh did not join this week’s talks in Vienna between Iran and six world powers directed at striking a deal by late July to end a decade-old dispute over Tehran’s nuclear aspirations.

But Western officials and experts think the shadowy military figure played a pivotal role in suspected Iranian work in the past to develop the means to assemble a nuclear warhead behind the facade of a declared civilian uranium enrichment programme.

They say shedding light on his alleged activities is critical for understanding how far Iran advanced and ensuring they are not continuing now, which the West wants any settlement with the Islamic republic to guarantee.

But that will be easier said than done: An aura of deep mystique surrounds a man who rarely — if ever — seems to surface in public. Few outside Iran know with any certainty what he looks like, let alone have met him.

“If Iran ever chose to weaponise [enrichment], Fakhrizadeh would be known as the father of the Iranian bomb,” said a Western diplomat who is critical of Iran’s nuclear programme but is not from any of the powers now negotiating with Tehran.

Iran says it is refining uranium only for a planned network of nuclear power plants, not as fuel for nuclear bombs and dismisses such allegations as fabrications by Western enemies.

The UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has long wanted to meet Fakhrizadeh as part of a protracted investigation into whether Iran carried out illicit nuclear weapons research.

Showing no sign it will heed the request, Iran several years ago acknowledged Fakhrizadeh’s existence but said he was an army officer not involved in the nuclear programme, a diplomatic source with knowledge of the matter said.

There was no immediate comment from Iran or the IAEA.

Multiple passports, support of Khamenei 

A high-ranking Iranian source, however, described Fakhrizadeh as “an asset and an expert” dedicated to Iran’s technological progress, and enjoying the full support of its most powerful man, clerical Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The source added that Fakhrizadeh had three passports and travelled a lot, including in Asia, to obtain “the latest information” from abroad, but would not elaborate. Western security sources say Iran has been adept in obtaining nuclear materials and know-how from the international black market.

The assassinations of four Iranian scientists associated with the nuclear programme between 2010 and 2012 may have stiffened Tehran’s unwillingness to give the IAEA access to Fakhrizadeh — for fear this could lead to information about him and his whereabouts leaking. Iran accused its arch-adversaries the United States and Israel of being behind the killings.

A landmark IAEA report in 2011 identified Fakhrizadeh as a central figure in suspected Iranian work to develop technology and skills needed for atomic bombs, and suggested he may still have a role in such activity.

Believed to be a senior officer in the elite Revolutionary Guards, Fakhrizadeh was the only Iranian the report identified.

‘Most-wanted list’ 

“If the IAEA had a most-wanted list, Fakhrizadeh would head it,” Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the non-proliferation programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank in London, said.

He was also named in a 2007 UN resolution on Iran as a person involved in nuclear or ballistic missile activities.

“Dr Fakhrizadeh is considered to be the leader of Iran’s nuclear weaponisation programme that existed before 2003,” said Gary Samore, until last year the top nuclear proliferation expert on US President Barack Obama’s national security staff.

“The IAEA would like to interview him about his past and current activities,” he said.

A senior Western official said the possibility that Iran may be continuing secret work related to atomic bomb research while negotiating with the powers was hardly a surprise.

Pressing ahead with the talks was all the more important, the official said, because Tehran must end any bomb-related activity to get the sanctions relief it seeks. “They want something and we need something in return.”

One intelligence source from an IAEA member state said Fakhrizadeh seemed to be a “very qualified manager” inspiring loyalty among those working for him.

The Iranian official commented: “He is a very modest person who supports the team working for him.”

An exiled Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), in May issued a report with what it said was a photograph of Fakhrizadeh, with dark hair and the customary beard stubble sported by backers of Iran’s Islamic leadership. It was not possible to independently verify it. A NCRI spokesman said it was “not very recent” but gave no detail.

The NCRI said Fakhrizadeh was born in 1958 in the holy Shi’ite Muslim city of Qom, is a deputy defence minister and a Revolutionary Guards brigadier-general, holds a nuclear engineering doctorate and teaches at Iran’s University of Imam Hussein. It said he was the head of a secretive body which it called “the command centre” behind atomic bomb-related activity.

“The information is consistent with the mainstream view that Fakhrizadeh ran and may still be running some kind of programme, where the parts look related to nuclear weaponisation development,” nuclear expert David Albright said.

Transparency key
issue in talks

The NCRI exposed Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy water facility at Arak in 2002. But analysts say it has a mixed track record and an agenda of regime change in Iran.

Tariq Rauf, a former senior IAEA official who is critical of the UN agency’s inquiry, said the NCRI might be trying to stymie the negotiations between Iran and the powers.

“I would doubt that nuclear weapon-related work is still going on,” Rauf, now at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), said in an e-mail to Reuters.

The IAEA has for years been investigating what it calls the possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme. Iran says the allegations are false but has offered to help clarify them since pragmatist Hassan Rouhani became president last year.

However, Western officials say Iran should step up the pace of cooperation with the Vienna-based UN agency and that this is crucial for the chances of a successful outcome of the separate negotiations between Iran and the global powers on curbing the nuclear programme and lifting sanctions on Tehran, a deal that would head off the risk of a new Middle East war.

“Interviewing Fakhrizadeh is critical. If not, there will always remain strong suspicions that Iran is hiding a capability to build nuclear weapons,” Albright said.

Nuclear yields, nuclear triggers

Citing information from member states and other sources, the IAEA’s 2011 document painted a picture of a concerted weapons programme that was halted in 2003 — when Iran came under increased Western pressure — but some activities later resumed.

They included alleged computer studies regarding nuclear yield calculations and a nuclear trigger — activities that may have been carried out after 2003, some as late as 2009.

Around 2002-03, the IAEA said, Fakhrizadeh was the executive officer of the so-called AMAD Plan, which according to its information conducted studies related to uranium, high explosives and the revamping of a missile cone to accommodate a nuclear warhead.

More recently, he became head of a body called the Organisation of Defensive Innovation and Research, according to intelligence from one unidentified country cited by the report.

“The Agency is concerned because some of the activities undertaken after 2003 would be highly relevant to a nuclear weapon programme,” added the IAEA document.

A source familiar with intelligence information on the issue said Fakhrizadeh appeared to have objected to the decision by the leadership to shelve bomb research over a decade ago, indicating that he was personally committed to the project.

“There is no chance that Iran will make him available. They will argue that it would expose him to danger and he may well be on a real hit list,” Fitzpatrick said.

ANKARA — Former army chief Kenan Evren, 96, who came to symbolise the military’s dominance over Turkish political life, was sentenced to life in jail on Wednesday for leading a 1980 coup that resulted in widespread torture, arrests and deaths.

The sentencing of general Evren, even if age and sickness spare him from jail, marked a strong symbolic moment in Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s taming of an army that had forced four governments from power in four decades. Hundreds of officers were convicted in 2012 over an alleged plot to topple him.

Evren, who also served as president after three years of military rule, never expressed regret for the coup. He said it saved NATO member Turkey from anarchy after thousands were killed in street-fighting by militant left-wingers and rightists.

“Should we feed them in prison for years instead of hanging them?” he asked in a speech in 1984, defending the hanging of political activists after the army take-over.

Fifty people were executed, some 500,000 were arrested and many disappeared in a country which, bordering the Soviet Union, was on the front line of the Cold War.

Too frail to attend court sessions, Evren was sentenced to life in prison along with former Air Force chief Tahsin Sahinkaya, 89. Both were accused of setting the stage for an army intervention, then conducting the coup.

Some critics argued nationalist militants or US agencies engineered street clashes to justify army action on September 12, 1980, a charge echoed in a 2012 conspiracy trial dubbed Sledgehammer. Officers then were accused of plotting to bomb mosques and trigger a conflict with Greece to pave the way for a coup against Erdogan, viewed warily by the military for his Islamist past.

However, a ruling by Turkey’s top court on Wednesday that the rights of 230 officers were violated in the case could open the way now for a retrial, and a move to conciliation between the prime minister and the generals, nicknamed “Pashas” in a nod to Turkey’s Ottoman past.

‘Pashas’

Evren and Sahinkaya participated in the hearings via video links from military hospitals in Ankara and Istanbul. Media reports said the two former commanders would be stripped of their ranks as a result of the ruling.

Oral Calislar, a columnist for Radikal newspaper, was jailed for four years and spent another four as a fugitive after his arrest in 1980 for leading a legal left-wing party.

“This is the first time those who have staged a coup have been convicted. We had other coups, but those responsible continued to run the country with impunity,” he said.

The generals were long considered ultimate guarantors of the country’s secular constitution, a constant presence overshadowing political parties and leaders.

Their last successful intervention was in 1997 when they forced Turkey’s first Islamist-led government from office through a combination of political pressure and display of military power but without seizing power outright.

That government was backed by the man who as prime minister has drawn on huge personal popularity to purge the officer corps and diminish the role of the military in political decision-making bodies. That process now appears irreversible, though Erdogan is accused by political enemies of increasingly authoritarian conduct.

A 2010 amendment to the constitution, drafted by technocrats under Evren, lifted barriers to the trial of Evren and Sahinkaya.

Erdogan, who served a brief prison sentence himself for Islamist activity not long before he took office in 2003, is expected to seek the presidency in an August election in a move which is expected to consolidate his power.

Throughout the trial, Evren largely maintained a silence, watching proceedings by video link from his hospital bed. On Wednesday, he again declined to speak on his own behalf.

“It is not important whether they go to jail. What matters is that those behind the coup are held responsible for all of the uprooted lives and dozens who were executed,” Calislar said.

It is unclear whether Evren and Sahinkaya will serve their sentences in prison due to their poor health.

MADRID — From folk in the street to politicians and sportsmen, Spaniards all want their new king to do something for the country. They just can’t agree on where he should start.

Nearly everyone admits that Prince Felipe is “well prepared”, groomed to reign since childhood by his father King Juan Carlos. But prepared for what?

After years of economic grief, corruption and separatist tensions, change is on the agenda for King Felipe VI, as he will be known after his swearing-in on Thursday.

“He is a good king, very well prepared, but his job is not going to be easy. Spain is in a mess,” said Antonio Molina, 60, who sells cold drinks at a kiosk near the old Royal Palace in Madrid.

“What does he have to change? I don’t think even he knows.”

Come together 

Some say he must bridge the divisions of the old two-party system and modernise Spain’s 1978 constitution. Others want him to help the millions of poor and unemployed.

With the Catalonia region vowing to vote on independence in November and rising nationalist parties in the Basque Country, many are looking to Felipe to unify Spain.

“He has to bring together Spain in all its diversity and get the best political consensus he can,” said Enrique Martin, 71, strolling in the sunshine near the palace.

“He has an enormous responsibility but I think he will do as his father did: try to be the king of all the Spanish. I am sure he will manage it. He is very well prepared.”

Some say Felipe must polish the monarchy’s image, tarnished by scandals. Juan Carlos outraged Spaniards in 2012 by going elephant-hunting during a recession. Felipe’s sister Cristina risks being put on trial for alleged tax fraud.

“He has to renew the monarchy after all that has happened,” Molina said.

Adapt, or else

The system of parliamentary monarchy that Juan Carlos helped deliver is facing upheaval. The two big old political parties saw their share of the vote slip in last month’s European elections.

After Juan Carlos announced his abdication, crowds marched in the streets demanding a referendum on whether to have a king at all.

“Will Felipe do anything good for us? I don’t know. They haven’t even given us a chance to decide,” said Paula Aciego, 22, strolling with friends near the palace.

“The people are starting to get discontented and say, ‘Listen, we want change’. Felipe must adapt or he’ll find he’s got a big change coming.”

But analysts say reform in a democracy is a job for judges and politicians, not for a king.

“Right now the Spanish want him to do just about everything: sort out Catalonia, sort out unemployment,” said Cote Villar, a royal specialist at the daily El Mundo.

“They hope this new face will also be the new face of Spain’s institutions, which are in crisis. But at the end of the day he is just the king of a parliamentary democracy, who cannot do much.”

Managing expectations 

Juan Carlos played an active role in Spain’s transition to democracy, helping see off an armed coup attempt in 1981.

Public figures widely praised his record when he announced his abdication — even Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal, who trusted that Felipe would follow his father’s example and “do it very well”.

“He is very prepared,” Nadal said.

But royal-watchers warn that Felipe has less of a chance than his father did to shape history.

“The king does not have the power to change anything. But he can unite people,” said Jose Apezarena, author of a book on Felipe.

In his first public remarks after his father announced an end to his 39-year reign, Felipe urged Spaniards to work together for a better future.

He said that could be done “by uniting our desires”, but did not elaborate.

“He is a big breath of fresh air,” Villar said. “But there is a big risk of disappointment.”

MADRID, Spain — Spain’s future King Felipe VI, a tall, blue-eyed former Olympic yachtsman, ascends the throne Thursday rising in popularity despite scandals that battered the reputation of his father and elder sister.

In the first royal succession since the Spanish monarchy was re-established after the death of General Francisco Franco in 1975, Felipe, 46, is being touted as the symbol of a much-needed new generation.

When he stands on the palace’s front balcony as the new king alongside his queen, the glamorous 41-year-old Letizia, the royals are no doubt hoping that Spaniards massed below will be cheering on a new reign with a fresh slate.

Felipe’s 76-year-old father, King Juan Carlos, who walks with a cane after repeated hip operations, fell foul of public opinion in 2012 when he took a luxury African elephant-hunting in the midst of Spain’s recession.

His elder sister, 49-year-old Princess Cristina, has been named a tax crime suspect in a judicial investigation into her husband Inaki Urdangarin’s allegedly corrupt business dealings.

Rising popularity 

But as others in the family suffered a sharp plunge in popularity and as polls show most Spaniards would like a referendum on the very future of the monarchy, Felipe’s approval rating has actually climbed.

Indeed, a poll taken after King Juan Carlos announced his abdication on June 2 showed 76.9 per cent of respondents had a good or very good opinion of the prince.

The new king and queen — a modern, attractive couple with two blonde-haired daughters, eight-year-old Leonor and seven-year-old Sofia — are certain to be fodder for the world’s media.

“He has to bring together Spain in all its diversity and get the best political consensus he can,” said Enrique Martin, 71, strolling in the sunshine near the palace.

“He has an enormous responsibility but I think he will do as his father did: try to be the king of all the Spanish. I am sure he will manage it. He is very well prepared.”

Felipe was schooled for his future role as monarch in the three branches of the armed forces and studies abroad and he comes across as a solid, studious personality.

Wants to serve Spain 

“His goal, his only goal, is to serve Spain. It has been deeply ingrained in him that he must be the country’s main servant,” his mother Queen Sofia once said.

His mission is to guarantee the future of the monarchy, which was restored in 1975 on the death of dictator General Francisco Franco.

Once considered Europe’s most eligible bachelor, Felipe wed former television presenter Letizia Ortiz in a glittering ceremony in Madrid’s Almudena Cathedral in 2004 after several previous romantic dalliances, including one with a Norwegian lingerie model.

Ortiz, a divorcee, was the first commoner to come in line for the Spanish throne.

The family’s lifestyle has at times appeared relatively modest for a pair of royals, with Felipe and his wife spotted at movie theatres in the centre of Madrid and in shopping malls.

Born in Madrid on January 30, 1968, he is the only son of Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia.

He has two older sisters, Elena and Cristina, but under the 1978 constitution Felipe enjoys direct right of ascendency to the crown as the sole male heir.

In 1977, when he was nine years old, he was named Prince of Asturias, the title given to the heir to the Spanish throne. That title passes to his eldest daughter, the new Princess of Asturias, the moment Felipe takes the crown.

An attempted coup 

King Juan Carlos kept Felipe at his side in the Zarzuela palace on the night of February 23, 1981 when soldiers seized parliament, firing shots over the heads of lawmakers, in a bid to establish another military regime.

“I wanted him to see what one has to do when one is king,” Juan Carlos explained later.

Juan Carlos appeared on live television in full military regalia and ordered the coup plotters back to their barracks, a move that cemented his image as the guarantor of Spain’s young democracy.

During a televised interview in January 2013, Juan Carlos called Felipe “the best prepared Prince of Asturias in Spanish history” .

Felipe completed one year of studies in Canada prior to three years’ military training at the academies of Spain’s army, navy and air force, when he learned to fly a helicopter.

After his military training, he studied for a law degree at the Autonomous University of Madrid before following a two-year master’s programme in international relations at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

Like his father, he is also a keen sailor and appeared in Spain’s Olympic squad at the 1992 Games in Barcelona, carrying the country’s team flag.

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan — Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said Monday an ongoing military offensive against the Taliban will usher in peace as militants vowed revenge and warned foreign firms to leave the country.

The army has deployed tanks, ground troops and jets in the troubled North Waziristan tribal area a week after an attack on Karachi airport killed dozens, marking the end of the troubled peace process.

The military encountered relatively little resistance Monday, feeding observers’ doubts about the effectiveness of the operation after many local and foreign fighters slipped across the border to Afghanistan ahead of the long-expected offensive.

The Pakistani Taliban has vowed to hit back against the government, with major cities bracing for revenge attacks by tightening security at key installations and ordering soldiers to patrol the streets.

Sharif was elected last year vowing to bring an end to the Taliban’s insurgency through dialogue, but told parliament on Monday the militants had failed to uphold their side of the bargain by ending violence.

Pakistan’s allies, particular the United States, have long called for an operation in the mountainous tribal territory to flush out groups like the Haqqani network, which use the area to target NATO troops in neighbouring Afghanistan.

“On the one hand we were talking to them in a peaceful manner and on the other side they were spreading fire and blood from courtrooms in Islamabad to Karachi airport,” Sharif said.

“We have decided to make Pakistan as a land of peace. I believe that this operation would be the beginning of an era of peace and tranquility,” he added.

“We will no longer allow Pakistan to be a sanctuary for terrorism at any cost.”

Earlier the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) warned foreign countries to stop doing business with the government and supporting its “apostate army”.

“We warn all foreign investors, airlines and multinational corporations that they should immediately suspend their ongoing matters with Pakistan... otherwise they will be responsible for their own loss,” TTP spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said in a statement.

“We will burn your palaces in Islamabad and Lahore,” he said, referring to the government.

Little resistance

Air force jets have been pounding suspected militant hideouts in the region since Sunday and have been joined by tanks and infantry engaging in heavy artillery strikes.

The military on Monday suffered its first casualties, losing six soldiers to a bomb blast at the village of Ghulam Khan, according to an official statement. Three others were injured.

An AFP reporter in North Waziristan’s main town of Miranshah said tanks were now stationed in the bazaar.

But firing was occurring only intermittently and there appeared to be relatively little resistance.

The militants’ death toll so far stands at 177, according to the military. The figures cannot be verified independently.

In the town of Bannu 10 kilometres from the border with North Waziristan, hundreds of military trucks with mounted machineguns were on their way to the combat zone, as were oil tankers and a military field hospital.

Some 62,000 people have fled the region so far for other parts of Pakistan according to official data, with “hundreds of thousands” eventually expected to leave, said Arshad Khan, a relief official who was overseeing the construction of two refugee camps.

Thousands of others have fled across the border into Gorbaz district in Afghanistan’s Khost province, said Mobarez Mohammad Zadran, a spokesman for the provincial governor.

“The Afghan government has assisted with food and non-food items,” he added

The military operation, named ‘Zarb-e-Azb’ after a sword the Prophet Mohammad used in battle, is the latest by the military against insurgents since Pakistan joined the US-led “war on terror” after 9/11.

Several analysts said troops would likely gain control of the territory relatively quickly, partly because of the exodus across the Afghan border.

Doubts remain about whether the offensive would lead to lower levels of militant violence.

WASHINGTON — US air traffic controllers are still working schedules that make it likely they will get little or no sleep before overnight shifts, more than three years after a series of incidents involving controllers sleeping on the job, according to a government-sponsored report released Friday.

The report by the National Research Council also expressed concern about the effectiveness of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) programme to prevent its 15,000 controllers from suffering fatigue on the job, a programme that has been hit with budget cuts.

The 12-member committee of academic and industry experts who wrote the report at the request of Congress said FAA officials refused to allow them to review results of prior research the agency conducted with the US space agency examining how work schedules affect controller performance.

The FAA-NASA research results “have remained in a ‘for official use only’ format” since 2009 and have not been released to the public, the report said.

The committee stressed its concern that controllers are still working schedules that cram five eight-hour work shifts into four 24-hour periods. The schedules are popular with controllers because at the end of last shift they have 80 hours off before returning to work the next week.

An example of the kind of schedule that alarmed the report’s authors begins with two consecutive day shifts ending at 10pm followed by two consecutive morning shifts beginning at 7am The controller gets off work at 3pm after the second morning shift and returns to work at about 11pm the same day for an overnight shift — the fifth and last shift of the workweek.

When factoring in commute times and the difficulty people have sleeping during the day, controllers are “unlikely to log a substantial amount of sleep, if any, before the final midnight shift”, the report said.

“From a fatigue and safety perspective, this scheduling is questionable and the committee was astonished to find that it is still allowed under current regulations,” the report said.

Responding to the report, the FAA said in a statement Friday that it is “adding limitations to its shift and scheduling rules”. The statement didn’t detail the limitations and FAA officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for clarification.

In 2011, FAA officials and then-Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood promised reforms after nearly a dozen incidents in which air traffic controllers were discovered sleeping on the job or didn’t respond to calls from pilots trying to land planes late at night.

In one episode, two airliners landed at Washington’s Reagan National Airport without the aid of a controller because the lone controller on the overnight shift had fallen asleep. In another case, a medical flight with a seriously ill patient had to circle an airport in Reno, Nevada, before landing because the controller had fallen asleep.

Studies show most night shift workers, not just controllers, face difficulties staying awake no matter how much sleep they’ve had. That’s especially true if they aren’t active or don’t have work that keeps them mentally engaged. Controllers on night shifts often work in darkened rooms with frequent periods of little or no air traffic to occupy their attention — conditions scientists say are conducive to falling asleep.

“We all know what happens with fatigue,” said Mathias Basner, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania medical school and the sleep expert on the committee.

After the 2011 sleeping incidents, the FAA stopped scheduling controllers to work alone on overnight shifts at 27 airports and air traffic facilities, and increased the minimum time between work shifts to nine hours.

Basner said the FAA was making no effort to determine whether there is a correlation between work schedules and controllers’ errors.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association defended the current scheduling, citing the 2009 study that hasn’t been publicly released. The union said in a statement that NASA’s research showed that “with proper rest periods”, the schedule “actually produced less periods of fatigue risk to the overall schedule”.

KIEV/DONETSK, Ukraine — Church bells rang out over Kiev’s Maidan square and hundreds of mourners bowed their heads in silence on Sunday, a national day of mourning, to honour 49 Ukrainian servicemen killed by pro-Russian separatists.

But some 600km away to the east in the city of Donetsk, heart of an armed insurgency against central rule by Kiev, there were few signs of mourning as people enjoyed a lazy stroll, sipped coffee in cafes and watched their children play.

Few events illustrate more clearly the bitter chasm that has opened up between east Ukraine and the rest of the country of 45 million. Heroes to some, the 49 killed when a missile hit their plane on Saturday were enemies to others.

“I feel desperate, like it’s a betrayal. I don’t know what I can do to help,” Volodymyr Radchenko, an engineer in his fifties, said on the Maidan, cradle of an uprising which ousted Ukraine’s Moscow-backed president in February.

Nearby, an Orthodox priest led prayers on a stage, flanked by men in black masks and camouflage fatigues.

Radchenko’s depressed mood and sense of helplessness are shared by many in Kiev, whose euphoria over Viktor Yanukovich’s overthrow as president has given way to dismay as Russia annexed Crimea in March and separatists rose up in the east in April.

“I’m very worried,” said choreographer Iryna Zhadan, starting to weep. “I cry and pray a lot for the dead soldiers.”

Worries about the future

More than 100 protesters were killed in clashes on and around the Maidan before their hate figure, Yanukovich, fell. Makeshift shrines have been erected around the square and some protesters are still camping out on its edges, worried about the fragile peace and the direction the country is taking.

Ukraine now has a pro-European leadership and a new president, Petro Poroshenko, who has intensified a military campaign in the east since being elected on May 25 but has also launched tentative peace talks with a Russian envoy.

He has promised a tough response to the shooting down of the plane which some say is needed to crush the separatists but others fear could lead to all-out war with rebels armed with tanks which Kiev and Washington say come from Russia.

Moscow denies backing the rebels. Facing the possibility of further Western sanctions, it disavows any plan for a military invasion to absorb mainly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.

But some Ukrainians still fear Russia and the West could fight a proxy war in Ukraine, and would rather let the rebellious regions of Donetsk and Luhansk go than face such a conflict.

“It’s awful. I just don’t understand why we need Donetsk and Luhansk,” said Lyudmila Shevchenko, a 60-year-old Kiev resident. “If they like it without us, let them live on their own and we won’t send our children to their deaths.”

The downing of the military plane as it came in to land at the airport outside Luhansk killed more government servicemen than any other incident since the conflict began.

It has increased tension as Moscow and Kiev try to agree how much Ukraine should pay for Russian gas before a Monday deadline for Kiev to pay $1.95 billion in debts or have its gas cut off, that could disrupt flows to the rest of Europe.

It also fuelled a violent protest at the Russian embassy in Kiev and a diplomatic spat over insulting comments by Ukraine’s foreign minister about President Vladimir Putin.

East does not mourn

But few sympathisers could be found in east Ukraine, where leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) ignored Poroshenko’s call for a day of mourning and did not arrange a minute’s silence to remember the victims.

“We could hold a day of mourning every day for the children and ordinary citizens who are dead because of the Ukrainians,” a DPR spokesman said. “In Kiev they’re mourning the deaths of soldiers who were coming here to kill innocent people — it’s unbelievable... If they don’t want soldiers to die, they shouldn’t have violated Luhansk airspace.”

In Donetsk, an industrial hub of one million people, there was as much discussion of the soccer World Cup in Brazil as of the shooting down of the plane. Many regard the Anti-Terrorist Operation, stepped up by Poroshenko, as driving a deeper rift between Ukrainians.

“They wanted a war, now they can have it. War brings casualties and they have to face that,” said Zina Demyanova, 60, an accountant.

Sergei, a 35-year-old waiter, described the downing of the plane as a “legitimate military victory”.

“I’m not sorry. I’m not mourning. We wanted to be acknowledged [by Kiev], the east [of Ukraine] wanted only that and they sent their killers instead,” he said.

A retired administrative clerk who gave her name only as Iryna was among the few questioned by Reuters in the east who said openly they regretted the loss of life on both sides.

“This [war] is nonsense, murder. I was crying last night, and I cry every day ever since this madness started because all these people have mothers and families, and children,” she said.

Others suggest few people are prepared to speak out against the rebels in the east because they are afraid.

“It’s a horrible day and I am honestly mourning. They killed 49 people in cold blood, people who came to protect their country from this backward lot,” said a student who gave her name only as Svetlana.

“You know, there are people in Donbass [the coal mining area of east Ukraine] who do not support this madhouse here and we are begging Kiev to rescue us.”