Philippines

Report: N. Korea sold arms to terror group

North Korea sold more than 10,000 rifles and other weapons in 1999 and 2000 to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the largest pro-Al-Qaida extremist group in the Philippines, according to Southeast Asian security sources.

Between 1999 and 2002, North Korea also attempted to sell submersible vessels to the MILF, which is fighting for independence for Mindanao in the southern Philippines, the sources said.

North Korea’s submersible infiltration craft are believed to be capable of carrying suicide bombers and other insurgents to coastal areas near targets. Security authorities in Southeast Asia have heightened their level of alert and are sharing information about North Korean arms smuggling operations, the sources said.

Security authorities uncovered the MILF’s weapon purchases after confiscating documents in November last year from the Mindanao-based Muslim rebel faction and other evidence.

Cuba

Contacts re-established with European nations

A year and a half after freezing relations with European diplomats, Cuba has called a truce, reestablishing contacts with eight embassies after a European Union commission recommended dissidents no longer be invited to National Day celebrations in Havana.

Monday’s announcement comes as the EU has initiated efforts to normalize ties with Cuba, which deteriorated sharply when European diplomats began showing support for 75 political prisoners by inviting dissidents to embassy receptions.

Although the EU continues to call for the release of the remaining imprisoned dissidents, a European commission of experts on Latin America last month recommended the embassies stop inviting both dissidents and Cuban officials to their National Day celebrations for the next six months.

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said official contacts with Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Greece, Portugal and Sweden would resume immediately.

Argentina

Mayor’s resignation sought after blaze

Thousands of Argentines angered over perceived security lapses in a nightclub fire that killed 183 people, many of them teenagers, marched through capital streets Monday to demand the resignations of key city officials.

Holding pictures of the victims, families and friends of those killed in the Dec. 30 fire marched on government offices, chanting slogans against the Buenos Aires mayor and calling for toughened fire safety codes in the city’s nightclubs.

City officials on Monday revised the death toll downward from 188 to 183.

Demonstrators staged two marches during a weekend of burials, charging that the Buenos Aires Mayor Anibal Ibarra’s government had not properly regulated nightclub safety.

Many in the crowd of about 4,000 on Monday said that Ibarra should be held accountable and that new citywide reforms be imposed on all clubs.

Peru

Rebels call off deal to surrender

The leader of an armed nationalist group that violently seized a remote Peruvian police station, taking 10 officers hostage and allegedly killing four others, said Monday the group would not turn over its weapons as promised because the government violated the terms of surrender.

Former army Maj. Antauro Humala, who on Saturday led about 100 gunmen to overrun the police station in Andahuaylas, said security forces surrounding the town of 35,000 people were still shooting at his group in violation of the deal.

The attackers, who want to establish a nationalist indigenous movement modeled on the ancient Incan Empire, demanded that President Alejandro Toledo resign.