Asia-Cast

Asia Cast for Sunday 13th April

In this Bulletin…

- South Africa’s president calls for patience in Zimbabwe;
- Taiwan’s VP meets with Hu Jintao; and
- Malaysia’s PM may step down.

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South African President Thabo Mbeki has told reporters that Zimbabwe’s election stalemate is not a crisis and its electoral commission must be given time to release the results of a presidential poll held two weeks ago.

Mbeki held an hour-long meeting with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, hours before regional leaders meet in Zambia to discuss the two-week-old crisis.

The Harare talks were the first between Mugabe and his powerful neighbour since Zimbabwe’s elections on March 29. Mbeki has been mediating between Mugabe and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) since last year.

Mugabe will not attend Saturday’s Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Lusaka, called by Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa to help end the impasse over Zimbabwe’s disputed elections and prevent the crisis from turning violent.

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Taiwan’s Vice-President-elect, Vincent Siew yesterday met with China’s President Hu Jintao in the highest-level contact between the two governments since their post-civil war split in 1949.

The meeting, on the sidelines of a business conference on China’s Hainan island, was short but correspondents say it represented an important signal that both sides now want to improve relations, after several years of worsening ties.

Mr Siew is the running-mate of Ma Ying-jeou, who won a convincing victory in Taiwan’s elections in March, and has vowed to improve the island’s standing with its much bigger neighbour once he takes office on 20 May.

Experts say the meeting could mark a watershed in relations which had been severely strained during the eight-year administration of Taiwan’s independence-leaning President Chen Shui-bian.

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Chinese President Hu Jintao took a hard line on Saturday during meetings with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd saying the matter is an internal affair that impacts Chinese sovereignty.

Hu’s comments to Mr. Rudd came a day after China intensified attacks on overseas critics, blasting a U.S. House resolution on Tibet as “crude interference” and labeling a leading Tibetan exile group a terrorist organization.

Hu spoke to Rudd at a meeting on the sidelines of a regional economic forum in the southern province of Hainan. He addressed the issues of exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama — whom Beijing blames for fomenting the unrest — and the anti-government protests that broke out in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa last month.

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After intense pressure from within his own party and from critics, Malaysia’s embattled Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi has signalled he would support a transition of power to his deputy.

The move comes after the government suffered its worst ever showing in last month’s general election.

Mr Abdullah has spent the past few weeks since the election repeatedly resisting calls for his resignation – but did admit that he is partly to blame for the disastrous poll results.

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Nepal’s Maoist party have won 14 out of 24 seats declared so far, after Thursday’s elections.

The party is also ahead in many other seats, for which partial results are coming through as the count proceeds.

The polls, for an assembly to re-write the constitution, are the first to test the Maoists at the ballot box after their 10-year guerrilla campaign.

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After a week of unrest resulting from soaring food prices, Haiti’s fragile government appeared in trouble as opposition senators planned to fire the prime minister.

Leaders of a group of 16 senators who set a deadline for Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis to step down said they scheduled a hearing in the Senate for Saturday for a no-confidence vote.

The unrest is Haiti’s worst since the election of Preval two years ago brought a measure of stability to a country wracked by decades of dictatorship, military rule, political upheaval and gang violence.

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And now for our daily update on the NTDTV Divine Performing Arts “New Year Spectacular” show.
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Tomorrow the Divine Performing Arts Spectacular will open in Adelaide.

Senator Gary Humphries attended the Chinese Spectacular at the Canberra Theatre, and spoke with the Epoch Times afterward about his impressions of the show.

He said it was a spectacularly enjoyable show and that the richness of the storyline makes it a very spectacular and rich show to watch.

He said he thought that it also describes a side of Chinese culture which many western theatregoers haven’t experienced in a long time and that it is important to see this kind of cultural offering available to Western audiences.

For more information about the Divine Performing Arts world tour, please visit: www.divineperformingarts.org

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“Asia Cast… keeping you across the top headlines from Asia and the World.”