MOSCOW: Militants in the post-Soviet region are attempting to obtain nuclear materials for use in attacks, Russia’s security services chief said on Wednesday. “We have information showing that terrorists are continuing attempts to gain access to nuclear materials (and) biological and chemical components,” Alexander Bortnikov said at a press conference in Yekaterinburg, the RIA Novosti news agency reported. “We are constantly paying attention to this problem,” he said. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has worked with security forces of other countries in the post-Soviet CIS region to prevent a number of attacks, Bortnikov said. “A number of joint special operations allowed us to foil the plans of terrorists to carry out acts on the territories of CIS countries,” he said. Security forces are investigating the case of a man who attempted to carry out 12 attacks in Moscow, he said. “Last year, we managed to intercept a channel of supply to Moscow of 15 kilogrammes of TNT and hexogen and detain an agent who planned to carry out 12 terrorist attacks in Moscow. He has been charged.”

YANGON: Wen Jiabao arrived in Yangon on Wednesday for a two-day visit, marking the first trip to military-ruled Myanmar by a Chinese prime minister in 16 years. Wen arrived at Yangon International Airport amid tight security, ahead of Myanmar’s first elections in two decades, scheduled for later this year. The two countries are expected to sign contracts, including ones related to the energy sector and hydropower projects, a Myanmar official said. China is the junta’s key ally and trade partner, and an eager investor in the isolated state’s sizeable natural resources. In November its top oil producer began construction of a pipeline across Myanmar. But ties between the two countries frayed last August when fighting between Myanmar’s isolated ruling junta and rebel ethnic armies in the remote northeast drove tens of thousands of refugees into China. Analysts said Beijing would be concerned about further instability on its Western border and that the issue was likely to come up at the talks during Wen’s visit. Wen was due to attend a ceremony at a school before visiting the famed Shwedagon Pagoda. On Thursday he was expected to go to administrative capital Naypyidaw to meet Senior General Than Shwe and other senior military officials. He was then expected to attend an inauguration ceremony at Myanmar International Conference Centre in Naypyidaw which was built and funded by China, before returning to Yangon to fly back out of the country. The Myanmar regime has been attempting to co-opt ethnic groups into becoming junta-backed forces ahead of elections, which critics have dismissed as a sham due to laws that have effectively excluded opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), was dissolved last month after refusing to re-register as a political party, a move which would have forced it to expel its own leader because she is serving a prison term. The NLD won the last national polls in 1990 by a landslide but the ruling generals refused to recognise the result. Suu Kyi has spent much of the past 20 years in jail or house arrest.

SARAJEVO: Growing cooperation between former Yugoslav republics may prove vital in bridging a wide ethnic divide still hobbling Bosnia 15 years after war, the region’s top international envoy said on Tuesday. “Compared to six months ago, we have now an incredibly good climate for regional cooperation, but, what’s even more, regional reconciliation,” said Valentin Inzko, the international High Representative who has the power to fire Bosnian officials and overturn laws seen as a threat to the peace process. “We are speaking now of a different region, or a different era, and in this regard, as far as regional cooperation and reconciliation is concerned, we have arrived in the 21stcentury.” Inzko, an Austrian diplomat, spoke to Reuters as European Union and Balkan foreign ministers started arriving in Sarajevo before a summit on the region’s future set for Wednesday. Even as all of the emerging Balkan states aspire to join the EU, with many already in or hoping to join Nato too, Bosnia has proved an especially difficult piece of the puzzle, a country which could potentially delay the whole region’s progress. Croatia is well on its way to becoming an EU member and Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia have applied for membership. Yet Bosnia remains an international protectorate under Inzko’s oversight, with animosity between its Serb and Croat-Muslim halves hindering investment and development. Inzko said Muslim Bosniak, Catholic Croatian and Orthodox Serb leaders in Bosnia, where national elections are due in October, will find it harder to appeal to voters along national lines if the region’s countries are getting along better. “The regional situation has relaxed and once the regional situation has relaxed, it is difficult to use nationalist rhetoric,” Inzko said, speaking of local Bosnian politicians. Presidents of four ex-Yugoslav republics met in Sarajevo last weekend and pledged to make a fresh start in their relations and work closely on the path to the EU. The meeting followed steps by Croatian and Serbian reformist leaders to heal the wounds of the 1990s wars that followed the breakup of federal Yugoslavia. Bosnia saw the heaviest fighting with 100,000 dying in 1992-95. The Serbian parliament in March passed a resolution apologising for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in which Bosnian Serb forces killed 8,000 Muslims. Bosnia’s presidency chairman Haris Silajdzic, a Muslim, then said he was ready for his maiden post-war visit to Belgrade. Croatian President Ivo Josipovic expressed regret to Bosniafor Zagreb’s wartime role in fuelling ethnic divisions and honoured victims of each community during his Sunday trip to the Serb Republic, the first ever by a Croat president. Inzko said the international presence, including 2,000 EU peacekeepers, in Bosnia would likely diminish dramatically in the next two or three years. “The international community would be very happy if there was more ownership, you know, more feeling or purpose, more sense of urgency in the region,” he said. “We really want these countries to take their own destinies in their own hands.”