SEOUL – South Korea’s presidential office said on Saturday it was cooperating with prosecutors’investigation into key aides to President Park Geun-hye over allegations an old friend of hers enjoyed inappropriate influence over her.

Prosecutors’ request for presidential Blue House documents came ahead of an evening protest expected to draw thousands in central Seoul calling for Park’s resignation amid a scandal that has cast her presidency into crisis.

Park’s office said late on Friday she had ordered her senior secretaries to tender their resignations, and she will reshuffle the office in the near future. Her chief of staff separately offered to resign earlier, the office said.

The deepening crisis over allegations that Park’s friend, Choi Soon-sil, enjoyed inappropriate influence over her has sent her public support to an all-time low, with more than 40 per cent in an opinion poll saying Park should resign or be impeached.

Prosecutors are investigating two aides to Park who allegedly helped Choi get access to drafts of Park’s speeches and set up two foundations with about 50 billion won ($44 million) in contributions from conglomerates that she later benefited from, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.

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The ‘female Rasputin’ at centre of S Korean President Park Geun-Hye political scandal

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AFP

Reuters

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Opposition parties have demanded a thorough investigation but have not raised the possibility of impeaching the president.

A public apology from Park on Tuesday for giving Choi access to draft speeches during the first months of her presidency has done little to deflect demands that Park reveal the full nature of her ties with Choi and whether the friend enjoyed favours.

Up to 4,000 people were expected to attend a rally organised by a group of left-leaning civic groups later on Saturday in central Seoul, but the number could be larger as other citizens were likely to join, Yonhap said, citing a police source.

Park, in the latter part of a single five-year-term presidency, is the latest South Korean leader to become engulfed in scandal involving family or friends.

Civic groups and students have called for her to step down, and for criminal charges to be brought against her aides and others who helped release government documents to Choi.

NEW DELHI – India is offering to buy hundreds of fighter planes from foreign manufacturers – as long as the jets are made in India and with a local partner, air force officials say.

A deal for 200 single-engine planes produced in India – which the air force says could rise to 300 as it fully phases out ageing Soviet-era aircraft – could be worth anything from US$13-US$15 billion, experts say, potentially one of the country’s biggest military aircraft deals.

After a deal to buy high-end Rafale planes from France’s Dassault was scaled back to just 36 jets last month, the Indian Air Force is desperately trying to speed up other acquisitions and arrest a fall in operational strength, now a third less than required to face both China and Pakistan.

But Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration wants any further military planes to be built in India with an Indian partner to kickstart a domestic aircraft industry, and end an expensive addiction to imports.

Lockheed Martin said it is interested in setting up a production line for its F-16 plane in India for not just the Indian military, but also for export.

And Sweden’s Saab has offered a rival production line for its Gripen aircraft, setting up an early contest for one of the biggest military plane deals in play. “The immediate shortfall is 200. That would be the minimum we would be looking at,” said an air officer briefed on the Make-in-India plans under which a foreign manufacturer will partner local firms to build the aircraft with technology transfer.

India’s defence ministry has written to several companies asking if they would be willing to set up an assembly line for single-engine fighter planes in India and the amount of technology transfer that would happen, another government source said. “We are testing the waters, testing the foreign firms’willingness to move production here and to find out their expectations,” the person said.

China shows off new stealth fighter

OPERATIONAL GAPS

India’s air force originally planned for 126 Rafale twin-engine fighters from Dassault, but the two sides could not agree on the terms of local production with a state-run Indian firm and settled for 36 planes in a fly-away condition.

Adding to the military’s problems is India’s three-decade effort to build a single-engine fighter of its own which was meant to be the backbone of the air force. Only two of those Light Combat Aircraft, called Tejas, have been delivered to the air force which has ordered 140 of them.

The Indian Air Force is down to 32 operational squadrons compared with the 45 it has said are necessary, and in March the vice chief Air Marshal B.S. Dhanoa told parliament’s defence committee that it didn’t have the operational strength to fight a two front war against China and Pakistan.

Modi’s BJP wins election with landslide

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Reuters, AFP

JET MAKERS RESPOND

Saab said it was ready to not only produce its frontline Gripen fighter in India, but help build a local aviation industry base. “We are very experienced in transfer of technology – our way of working involves extensive co-operation with our partners to establish a complete ecosystem, not just an assembly line,” said Jan Widerström, Chairman and Managing Director, Saab India Technologies.

He confirmed Saab had received the letter from the Indian government seeking a fourth generation fighter. A source close to the company said that while there was no minimum order set in stone for it to lay down a production line, they would expect to build at least 100 planes at the facility.

Lockheed Martin said it had responded to the defence ministry’s letter with an offer to transfer the entire production of its F-16 fighter to India. “Exclusive F-16 production in India would make India home to the world’s only F-16 production facility, a leading exporter of advanced fighter aircraft, and offer Indian industry the opportunity to become an integral part of the world’s largest fighter aircraft supply chain,” Abhay Paranjape, National Executive for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Business Development in India said in an email.

US TOP SUPPLIER

Lockheed’s offer comes on the back of expanding US-India military ties in which Washington has emerged as India’s top arms supplier in recent years, ousting old ally Russia.

Earlier this year Boeing also offered India its twin-engine F/A-18 Hornets, but the level of technology transfer was not clear.

India has never previously attempted to build a modern aircraft production line, whether military or civilian. State-run Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL) has assembled Russian combat jets including the Su-30, but these are under licensed production. “We have never had control over technology. This represents the most serious attempt to build a domestic base. A full or a near-full tech transfer lays the ground for further development,” said retired Indian air marshal M. Matheswaran, a former adviser at HAL.

He said the Indian government would be looking at producing at least 200 fighters, and then probably some more, to make up for the decades of delay in modernising the air force.

YANGON – Allegations that Myanmar soldiers are killing, raping and torturing villagers in Rakhine, a restive region that is home to the persecuted Muslim Rohingya, must be independently investigated, rights groups said.

Northern Rakhine has been under a military lockdown since an attack on border guards three weeks ago left nine policeman dead.

The government has blamed the raids on Rohingya militants and a search for the culprits has seen more than 30 people killed and dozens arrested, according to official reports.

Stories of grave abuse by security officers – including sexual violence, summary executions and the torching of villages – have spiralled on social media but are difficult to verify with the army barring rights groups and journalists from the remote region bordering Bangladesh.

On Friday Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch joined calls for an impartial investigation into the allegations, which the UN has called “alarming and unacceptable”.

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Pressure on Myanmar over abuses of Rohingya minority in Rakhine

Source:

AFP

Reuters

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“If Myanmar’s security forces are not involved in any human rights violations as the authorities claim, then they should have no trouble granting independent observers access,” said Rafendi Djamin, Amnesty’s Southeast Asia and Pacific director.

Writing on Facebook Friday, government spokesman Zaw Htay dismissed an article in the Myanmar Times that described reports of a “mass rape” in a Rohingya village on October 19.

“There was information that some attackers were kept in that village. So security was taken very seriously and (the search team) was very careful about being safe and would not think to rape up to 5 women,” he wrote.

The government says the October 9 border raids were carried out by hundreds of Rohingya fighters linked to Taliban-trained Islamists.

If true, it would mark a troubling development in a religiously-split region where the stateless Rohingya have languished under years of repression but so far shown little interest in jihadist ideology.

Rakhine has sizzled with tension ever since waves of communal violence in 2012 killed more than 100 and pushed tens of thousands of people, mostly Rohingya, into destitute displacement camps.

Many in Buddhist-majority Myanmar insist the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and viscerally oppose any moves to grant them citizenship.

The recent upsurge in violence deepens and complicates a conflict that already posed a top challenge to a new civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who has disappointed rights groups by not coming out in stronger support of the Rohingya.

Dawn of a new era in Myanmar as Aung San Suu Kyi’s party takes over

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AFP, Reuters

South Korean prosecutors on Saturday (Oct 29) raided the homes and offices of senior advisers to President Park Geun Hye, as she struggled with a corruption and influence-peddling scandal involving a close family friend.

The crisis centred around Ms Park’s long-time confidante Choi Soon Sil has rocked her presidency, thanks largely to a lurid back-story involving talk of religious cults, shamanist rituals and corruption.

In Saturday’s raids, prosecutors confiscated computers and documents from the homes of a top presidential adviser and two other aides as well as a deputy culture minister, Yonhap news agency said.

They also searched some offices in the presidential Blue House complex, Yonhap said.

The move came ahead of a mass protest in Seoul, organised after it emerged that Ms Park had allowed Ms Choi, who has no official post or security clearance, to meddle in affairs of state.

Thousands of people were expected to turn out for the candle-lit demonstration and call on the president, whose popularity ratings have plunged to record lows, to step down.

Ms Choi is being investigated for using her ties to Ms Park to coerce money out of major conglomerates, but the real shock has been revelations that Ms Park had allowed Ms Choi to vet her presidential speeches and apparently advise her on crucial policy choices.

Ms Park has publicly apologised and late on Friday she told 10 of her senior advisers to tender their resignations ahead of a reshuffle of her presidential office.

Ms Choi, 60, is the daughter of shadowy religious figure Choi Tae Min, who headed a cult-like group and was a long-time mentor to Park up until his death in 1994.

Media reports have portrayed Ms Choi as a Rasputin-like figure with an inappropriate and unhealthy influence over Park that she inherited from her father.

Ms Choi left the country for Germany in early September as reports of her alleged influence-peddling began to emerge.

An early banner displayed at the venue for Saturday’s rally read “Choi come back, Park get out”.

Ms Choi’s lawyer said she was well aware of the “gravity” of the situation and was “willing to return home to be questioned and punished if she did anything wrong”.

Prosecutors have taken in two of Ms Choi’s close aides for questioning, including one who told reporters that Ms Choi had been behaving as Ms Park’s de facto regent.