World

WEST POINT, United States — President Barack Obama mounted a defiant defence of his global leadership Wednesday, rebuking critics who see him as weak but warning that not every global threat justifies a US military response.

In a major speech at the West Point military academy, Obama denied US power had ebbed under his watch, after he withdrew troops from Iraq and as he does the same in Afghanistan.

He also pledged to ramp up support for Syrian rebels, vowed to stand up to Russia over Ukraine and promised to make drone strikes against terror suspects more transparent.

He vowed to hold China accountable to international “rules of the road” in the South China Sea and elsewhere.

“To say that we have an interest in pursuing peace and freedom beyond our borders is not to say that every problem has a military solution,” Obama said.

Backbone of that leadership

“Since World War II, some of our most costly mistakes came not from our restraint, but from our willingness to rush into military adventures — without thinking through the consequences,” Obama said, in an apparent reference to the Iraq war, which he has branded a disaster.

The president’s speech came with his foreign policy, which was once seen as a political asset, under assault from critics who believe he is being outmanoeuvred by strongmen like Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping.

“Here’s my bottom line: America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will. The military ... is, and always will be, the backbone of that leadership.”

Obama was particularly exercised by those who complain he should have deployed the US military in Syria or made a more robust strategic response to Russia’s annexation of Ukraine, or who complain that he has left Iraq or Afghanistan to fend for themselves.

“Tough talk often draws headlines but war rarely conforms to slogans,” Obama said.

“But US military action cannot be the only, or even primary, component of our leadership in every instance.

“Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail,” Obama told a graduation ceremony at the college.

“And because the costs associated with military action are so high, you should expect every civilian leader — and especially your commander in chief — to be clear about how that awesome power should be used.”

Obama said he was “haunted” by the deaths of American servicemen under his watch — including some who attended previous commencement ceremonies he had given at West Point.

Obama also made an implicit defence of his decision to call off military strikes on Syria at the last minute last year to punish chemical weapons strikes.

Critics at home and abroad warned that the decision left dangerous questions about whether Washington would stand up to “red lines” elsewhere in the world.

Barrel bombings 

“I would betray my duty to you, and to the country we love, if I sent you into harm’s way simply because I saw a problem somewhere in the world that needed fixing, or because I was worried about critics who think military intervention is the only way for America to avoid looking weak,” he told the graduates.

Obama has been under increasing pressure to do more to support Syrian rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad and offer some relief to civilians reeling under strikes including barrel bombings carried out by the regime.

“As frustrating as it is, there are no easy answers — no military solution that can eliminate the terrible suffering anytime soon,” Obama said.

“As president, I made a decision that we should not put American troops into the middle of this increasingly sectarian civil war, and I believe that is the right decision.

“But that does not mean we shouldn’t help the Syrian people stand up against a dictator who bombs and starves his people.”

Obama said that he would work with lawmakers to ramp up support for the opposition, but did not give details, amid reports the US military will begin openly training rebel forces. The CIA is believed to be carrying out a covert programme to train and arm some rebels.

Washington has been loath, however, to send game-changing weapons like anti-aircraft missiles to rebel forces which it fears could fall into the hands of extremists.

Obama also said that terrorism remained the biggest national security threat to the United States and unveiled a new $5 billion fund to equip and train allies on the front lines of the struggle against terrorism, for instance in Africa.

He also defended his decision to leave nearly 10,000 troops in Afghanistan for a year after combat troops leave at the end of this year, and to gradually reduce the presence to a detachment of troops at the US embassy in Kabul by the end of 2016, just before he leaves office.

DONETSK, Ukraine — As the fighting becomes more ferocious in eastern Ukraine, Chechnya’s Moscow-backed leader is denying that he has sent in some of his famously ruthless troops to help the pro-Russia insurgents battling government forces.

Scores of rebel fighters have been killed this week around the major eastern city of Donetsk, and Ukrainian border guards have reported at least one gunbattle as they blocked groups of armed men trying to cross into Ukraine from Russia. Ukraine and the West have accused Moscow of fomenting the unrest, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied sending any troops or intelligence agents to help the insurgents.

Still, fighters who looked like Caucasus natives have been seen among the pro-Russia rebels who have seized government buildings, declared independence from Ukraine and are fighting government forces.

In a statement posted Wednesday on his Instagram, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said two-thirds of the 3 million Chechens live outside his province in Russia’s North Caucasus mountains, so he can’t “know where each of them goes”.

But he said it was possible that some pro-Russia Chechen fighters went to Ukraine on their own.

“If someone saw a Chechen in the zone of conflict, he’s there on his own,” he said.

Kadyrov’s forces, known for their warrior spirit and deadly efficiency, helped Russia win a quick victory in a 2008 war with neighbouring Georgia. The 37-year-old leader has vowed unswerving fealty to Putin and has hailed his policy in Ukraine.

In the most furious battle yet, rebels in Donetsk tried to take control of the city airport Monday, but were repelled by Ukrainian forces using combat jets and helicopter gunships. Dozens of men were killed and some morgues were overflowing Tuesday. Some insurgent leaders said up to 100 fighters may have been killed.

The city remained tense Wednesday, with Ukrainian fighter jets flying overhead. Some gunshots were heard.

In Slovyansk, a city 90 kilometres north of Donetsk that has seen constant clashes over the past few weeks, residential areas came under mortar shelling Wednesday from government forces. A school was badly damaged and other buildings were hit. Residents told The Associated Press that several people were wounded.

Kadyrov, a former rebel who fought Russian forces in the first of two devastating separatist wars, switched sides during the second campaign when his father became Chechnya’s pro-Moscow leader. Following his father’s death in a rebel bombing, Kadyrov rebuilt the region with generous Kremlin funding and squelched the rebel resistance with his ruthless paramilitary forces, which have been blamed for extrajudicial killings, torture and other abuses.

Putin praised Kadyrov last week after he negotiated the release of two Russian journalists arrested by Ukrainian forces and accused of assisting the rebels. The Chechen leader has not said how he got the journalists freed, but has directed threats at Ukrainian authorities.

“If the Ukrainian authorities want so much to see ‘Chechen units’ in Donetsk, why go to Donetsk if there is a good highway to Kiev?” he said in Wednesday’s statement.

However, he added that he fully supports Putin’s policy to help restore peace in Ukraine.

Putin has denied Ukraine’s allegations that Russia has sent its special forces to foment the mutiny. On Tuesday, Russia’s Federal Security Service rejected the Ukrainian claim that a convoy of vehicles loaded with weapons attempted to break through the border and engaged in a gunbattle with Ukrainian border guards.

Russia, which annexed Crimea in March, has ignored the requests of eastern insurgents to join Russia following controversial independence referendums. The Kremlin also welcomed Ukraine’s presidential election and said it was ready to work with the winner, billionaire candy magnate Petro Poroshenko, trying to deescalate the worst crisis in relations with the West since the cold war and avoid a new round of Western sanctions.

“It’s necessary to use the situation after the election to immediately end using the military and launch a broad all-Ukraine dialogue involving all regions and political forces,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday.

Russia has supported a plan by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe that calls for ending hostilities and opening a political dialogue. It has sought to cast the rebels’ actions as a response to the heavy-handed use of force by the central government.

Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said Ukrainian military action in the east was “pushing the situation into a deadlock, making it increasingly difficult to organise a dialogue”.

He said the Kremlin hadn’t received a letter from the insurgents asking Russia for assistance.

Ushakov said Putin will visit Paris on June 5, where he would meet with French President Francois Hollande and then travel to Normandy the next day for the 70th anniversary of the allied landing in Normandy. It will be Putin’s first meeting with President Barack Obama and other Western leaders since the start of Ukraine’s crisis.

Ushakov said there are no plans for any formal meetings but Putin would likely have informal contacts with the other leaders.

BANGKOK — Thailand’s junta Wednesday freed leaders of the “Red Shirt” movement allied to the ousted government, as social media users reacted with alarm to rumours of a “block” of Facebook.

Since seizing power last week the military has summoned more than 250 people, curtailed liberties under martial law and imposed a nightly curfew as part of a series of measures that have sparked dismay among rights groups.

A fugitive former Cabinet minister arrested by soldiers who swooped on a press briefing a day earlier was brought before a military court Wednesday to acknowledge charges of denying an order to report to the junta and of “provocation”, police said.

If convicted, ex-education minister Chaturon Chaisang could be imprisoned. He had used a press conference to criticise the coup minutes before being detained.

Analysts say the move to detain political figures from across the kingdom’s bitter divide is aimed at quelling potential opposition to the May 22 coup.

After an outcry on the Internet, the army interrupted national television to deny it had blocked Facebook after the site briefly went down and caused panic online.

“Surely that would be suicide. Whole country would protest,” one user wrote on Twitter of the rumours the site was under siege in the kingdom.

Some users were unconvinced with the junta’s denial, speculating that it could have been a trial run for a possible blackout in the future, or a warning shot to social media users not to criticise the coup.

Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are hugely popular in the country, and have been used by anti-coup protesters to organise small protests against the military regime.

Despite warnings by the army of a widening crackdown on dissent, protesters have been gathering in Bangkok in small but vehement rallies against the military takeover, while rival pro-coup rallies have also sprung up.

 ‘Treated well’ 

But in a possible sign that the army is more confident about its grip on power, key members of the Red Shirt protest group were released Wednesday after nearly a week in detention.

The movement’s chairman, Jatuporn Prompan, said they were “treated well”.

“What we have been most concerned about is that the losses [of life] in 2010 should not happen again in 2014 — we should learn the lessons,” he said, referring to a bloody military crackdown on their rallies against a previous government that left dozens dead.

The army has said people who have been detained and released since the coup must sign a document promising to cease political activity.

Senior members of their rival protest movement as well as former premiers Yingluck Shinawatra and Abhisit Vejjajiva have also been held and since released.

Dozens of people are still being detained under broad army powers enabling the new government to hold people without charge for up to seven days.

Those freed “cannot travel overseas and must refrain from expressing political opinions that can cause confusion”, said army spokeswoman Sirichan Ngathong.

Thailand is no stranger to military intervention in politics, with 19 actual or attempted coups in its modern history.

The country has been rocked by increasingly severe political division and street protest for a decade.

The unrest centres on Yingluck’s elder brother Thaksin Shinawatra — a telecoms tycoon-turned-politician who was ousted by the military in an earlier coup in 2006.

The path towards the army takeover began late last year when anti-Thaksin forces launched protests in Bangkok calling for Yingluck’s government to be thrown out as they sought to rid Thai politics of the influence of the family, which they accuse of corruption.

At least 28 people died and hundreds more were wounded in violence linked to the rallies.

RINNEGOM/The Netherlands — In the Netherlands’ northwestern province of Rinnegom, more than 1,000 sheep grazed freely on 750 hectares of a farm; here they were not raised for dairy products but solely for landscape management and nature preservation.

In Lanscape Rinnegom (Dutch “landschapsbeheer Rinnegom”) farmers use herds to create a species rich vegetation through helping seeds spread in the area.

“Our sheep are neither for producing milk, cheese and meat nor for wool, hides and skins, but solely for landscape management and nature preservation,” Marijke Dirkson, the sheepherder, told journalists, who were part of a recent media tour organised by Holland Branding, Netherlands Enterprise Agency.

The idea is simple. Sheep graze in allocated and fenced areas in the forest and then through their manure they help spread seeds in the area, Dirkson explained. 

“Deposition of nitrogen has broken the natural cycle — that’s why it is important to break this development and get rid of nutrients — to go back to the original state of the natural habitat… Next generations will find the results of our actions today — the shepherds and their sheep herds who formed the landscape,” she added.  

With her job best described as “ecological landscape manager”, Dirkson said that nature management is based on three pillars: System of balancing variables; keeping focus, isolation by creating distance; and geographical spread of activities. 

“All is being practised in the landscape here.”

Lanscape Rinnegom is part of “Sheep Grazing” initiative, or “schapenbegrazing” in Dutch, involving 15 operating companies specialised in nature management, animal well-being and social coherence, according to Dirkson. 

She also said that the clients of “schapenbegrazing” are mainly governments, and water and land management organisations.

DONETSK, Ukraine — Ukrainian aircraft and paratroopers killed more than 50 pro-Russian rebels in an assault that raged into a second day on Tuesday after a newly elected president vowed to crush the revolt in the east once and for all.

The unprecedented offensive throws a challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has said he reserves the right to defend Russian speakers under threat, but whose past assertions that Kiev is led by an illegitimate “junta” were undermined by the landslide election victory of billionaire Petro Poroshenko.

Reuters journalists counted 20 bodies in combat fatigues in one room of a city morgue in Donetsk. Some of the bodies were missing limbs, a sign that the government had brought to bear heavy firepower against the rebels for the first time.

“From our side, there are more than 50 [dead],” the prime minister of the rebels’ self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic, Alexander Borodai, told Reuters at the hospital.

The government said it suffered no losses in the assault, which began with air strikes hours after Ukrainians overwhelmingly voted to elect 48-year-old confectionery magnate Poroshenko as their new president.

Putin demanded an immediate halt to the offensive. Moscow said a visit by Poroshenko was not under consideration, though it has said it is prepared to work with him.

Until now, Ukrainian forces have largely avoided direct assaults on the separatists, partly because they fear tens of thousands of Russian troops massed on the border could invade.

But Poroshenko and his government appear to have interpreted his victory as a clear mandate for decisive action. He won more than 54 per cent of the vote in a field of 21 candidates, against 13 per cent for his closest challenger.

Poroshenko and other leaders in Kiev may have calculated that the election, by bestowing legitimacy on the authorities, makes it harder for Putin to justify intervention.

Putin said in recent weeks he would withdraw troops from the border. A NATO military officer said most of them were still there, although some showed signs of packing to leave.

Helicopter, paratroopers

The new Ukrainian government assault began even as Poroshenko was holding his victory news conference in Kiev. After rebels seized the Donetsk Airport on Monday, Ukrainian warplanes and helicopters strafed them from the air, and paratroopers were flown in to root them out.

Shooting carried on through the night, and on Tuesday the road to the airport bore signs of fighting. Heavy machinegun fire could be heard in the distance in mid-morning.

On the airport highway, a truck — the kind that rebels have used to ferry dozens of fighters across the region — had been torn apart by machinegun fire. Blood was sprayed across the road and splattered on a billboard seven metres above.

“The airport is completely under control,” Interior Minister Arsen Avakov told journalists in the capital Kiev. “The adversary suffered heavy losses. We have no losses,” he added.

“We’ll continue the anti-terrorist operation until not a single terrorist remains on the territory of Ukraine,” First Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Yarema said on the margins of a government meeting.

Borodai, the self-proclaimed rebel prime minister, also said the airport was now under government control.

Inside the city of a million people, where normal life had previously carried on despite the crisis, there was a new climate of fear. Firefighters battled to put out a blaze at a hockey stadium torched during the night.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said a team of four of its monitors — a Dane, an Estonian, a Turk and a Swiss — had gone missing after approaching a road checkpoint near Donetsk on Monday. In early May, pro-Moscow rebels held a team of seven OSCE monitors for eight days.

Scale of victory

The battle marks the first time the government has unleashed the full lethal force of its aircraft and ground troops directly at the Donetsk rebels, a group of local volunteers and shadowy outsiders led by a Muscovite that Kiev and Western countries say works for Russian military intelligence.

Moscow says the rebellion is purely local and it has no control over the fighters.

In his victory news conference, Poroshenko promised to invigorate the government’s stalled “anti-terrorist” campaign, saying it ought to be able to put down the revolt within hours, rather than months. He also said there could be no negotiations with rebels he compared to terrorists, bandits and pirates.

Ukraine’s future has seemed in the balance since Putin responded to the overthrow of a pro-Russian president in Kiev in February by declaring that Russia had the right to defend Russian speakers and swiftly annexing Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.

Moscow’s consistent message has been that the government in Kiev, which took power after President Viktor Yanukovych fled an uprising by pro-European demonstrators, was an illegitimate “fascist junta” and Russian speakers were in danger.

But that argument was undermined by the victory of Poroshenko, who served in cabinets under both Yanukovych and his anti-Russian predecessors, and campaigned on his reputation as a pragmatist capable of bridging the deep east-west divide that has been Ukraine’s greatest weakness since independence.

Poroshenko became the first candidate to win a presidential election with more than half of the vote in a single round since 1991, when Ukrainians first voted to secede from Moscow’s rule.

Although separatists managed to prevent a tenth of voters from reaching polls by blocking the election in two eastern provinces, his margin of victory left little room to question his legitimacy. He was helped by calls from potential rivals for voters to unite behind the frontrunner.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday Putin had called for an end to the Ukrainian military campaign and for dialogue between Kiev and the separatists. Putin was speaking in a telephone call with Italy’s prime minister, his first reported comments on Ukraine since Sunday’s election.

‘New Russia’

The separatists have repeatedly pleaded for Putin to send his forces to aid them. Since the annexation of Crimea, Putin has turned the protection of Russians in other former Soviet republics into a central theme of his rule. Last month he began referring to eastern Ukraine as “New Russia”.

But in the run-up to the election his words had become more accommodating. On the eve of the vote, he promised to accept the will of the Ukrainian people. On Monday, before the scale of the latest military assault became clear, Moscow said it was prepared to work with Poroshenko, although it also called for him to call off the military campaign.

Western countries say they do not trust Putin’s promises not to interfere, saying he announced repeatedly he would withdraw his troops from the border without doing so.

The United States and European Union have imposed limited sanctions on a few dozen Russian individuals and small firms but have said they would take much stronger action, including measures against whole swathes of Russian industry, if Moscow interfered in Sunday’s Ukrainian election.

In another sign of confidence since Poroshenko’s election, Kiev pressed a claim on Tuesday for more than $1 billion from Russia’s natural gas export monopoly Gazprom, for gas it said Moscow had “stolen” when it annexed Crimea.

Russia has threatened to switch off Ukraine’s gas from June 3 unless it pays Gazprom upfront for supplies. Moscow wants to charge Kiev far more for gas than it charges European countries. A gas cut-off could hit onward shipments to Western Europe, some of which transit Ukraine.

NEW DELHI — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered a blunt warning to old adversary Pakistan on his first day in the job on Tuesday, telling his counterpart in a rare meeting that Islamabad must prevent militants on its territory from attacking India.

Despite the directness of his message, both sides said Modi’s meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in New Delhi was cordial and they agreed to try to restart peace talks between the nuclear-armed rivals.

They also agreed to pursue normalising trade ties, which have been held hostage to distrust between their countries after fighting three wars since independence from Britain in 1947.

Modi, 63, invited Sharif and several other South Asian leaders for his swearing-in ceremony on Monday. Unprecedented in India’s history, the invitations were seen as a reflection of Modi’s eagerness to play a prominent role on the global stage following a stunning election victory for his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

After Tuesday’s 50-minute meeting between Modi and Sharif, India said the new prime minister had underlined “concerns relating to terrorism”.

“It was conveyed that Pakistan must abide by its commitment to prevent its territory and territory under its control from being used for terrorism against India,” Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh told a news conference.

Modi also pressed for speedy progress of trials in Pakistan of people accused of masterminding a 2008 commando-style attack on the city of Mumbai in which 166 people were killed.

‘A new page in relations’

The BJP has long advocated a tough stance on Pakistan, and Modi has been seen as a hardliner on issues of national security. In that respect, Modi’s invitation to Sharif was a surprise and raised hopes for a thaw in relations, which have been particularly frosty since the Mumbai attacks.

Responding later, Sharif sounded a conciliatory note, describing the meeting as a historic opportunity to turn “a new page in our relations”. However, he rebuffed assertions that Pakistan was a launch pad for militants to attack India.

“We have to strive to change confrontation to cooperation: engaging in accusations and counter-accusations would be counter-productive,” he said.

Modi also held talks with Hamid Karzai, outgoing president of Afghanistan, a country over which India and Pakistan are vying for influence as Western troops prepare to withdraw.

Karzai told Indian TV that, according to information given to him by a Western intelligence agency, the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) was responsible for an attack last week on India’s consulate in the western Afghanistan city of Herat.

The LeT, which has also been blamed for the Mumbai attack, has long targeted Indian interests and New Delhi has accused Islamabad of shielding, or working with, the group.

“They wanted to cause embarrassment to both Afghanistan and India around that inauguration of the new prime minister,” Karzai told Times Now.

Karzai, who has presented India with a wish-list of weapons to tackle Islamist Taliban militants after the departure of foreign forces, said some on the list had already been offered and he was confident that Modi would consider the rest favourably.

Pakistan took three days to decide whether to accept Modi’s invitation, a signal that there were sharp differences on the matter in a country where the military has traditionally called the shots on security and foreign policy.

Still, the two leaders were seen shaking hands and laughing together on Monday, and in the briefings later there was no mention of the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, over which their countries have gone to war twice.

New finance minister aims for growth

The low-caste son of a tea stall-owner, Modi won India’s first parliamentary majority this month after 25 years of coalition governments, giving him ample room to advance economic reforms that started more than two decades ago but stalled in recent years.

In its first meeting on Tuesday, Modi’s Cabinet set up a high-powered team packed with members of the intelligence services to uncover the vast proceeds of corruption that are squirrelled away abroad and out of the taxman’s reach.

Modi handed the job of reviving economic growth to Arun Jaitley, an urbane corporate lawyer and close party colleague.

“We have to restore back the pace of growth, contain inflation and obviously concentrate on fiscal consolidation itself,” the new finance minister told reporters.

Public finances are in dire straits as government spending has outpaced revenues. The new administration will immediately need to take a decision on cutting subsidy spending which is threatening a budget blow-out and a sovereign ratings downgrade.

Jaitley, a student leader who was jailed during a period of emergency rule in 1975, will also be handling the important defence portfolio for the transition.

Modi, who built his reputation as an economic moderniser by putting his home state of Gujarat on a high-growth path, has moved to streamline the Cabinet towards a more centralised system of governing.

Several government ministries have been clubbed under one minister, aimed at breaking decision-making bottlenecks widely blamed for dragging down economic growth. The new administration has 45 ministers compared with 71 in the outgoing government.

“I am sure the political change itself sends a strong signal to the global community and also domestic investors,” Jaitley said. “I think over the next few months by expediting decision-making processes, I am sure we will be able to build that.”

BJP chief Rajnath Singh will be interior minister, charged with the task of ensuring internal stability and calming the anxieties of India’s religious minorities who see his party and its hardline Hindu affiliates as pursuing a partisan agenda.

Modi himself has been dogged by allegations that he did not do enough to protect Muslims during an upsurge of violence in 2002. He has denied the charge and a Supreme Court-ordered investigation acquitted him of any responsibility.

NEW DELHI — Narendra Modi was sworn in as India’s prime minister in an elaborate ceremony at New Delhi’s resplendent presidential palace on Monday, after a sweeping election victory that ended two terms of rule by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.

Millions of Indians watched the inauguration live on television as the 63-year-old Hindu nationalist leader, once thought of as too divisive to lead the world’s largest democracy, took his oath along with his Cabinet members in the palace’s forecourt.

The low-caste son of a tea stall-owner, Modi has given India its first parliamentary majority after 25 years of coalition governments, which means he has ample room to advance reforms that started over two decades ago but have stalled in recent years.

Many supporters see him as India’s answer to the neo-liberal former US President Ronald Reagan or British leader Margaret Thatcher. One foreign editor has ventured Modi could be so transformative he turns out to be “India’s Deng Xiaoping”, the leader who set China on its path of spectacular economic growth.

‘A glorious future’

Modi invited leaders from across South Asia to his swearing-in ceremony, including Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from arch-rival Pakistan, an unprecedented gesture that was as much a show of his determination to be a key player on the global stage as a celebration of his stunning election victory.

Even before his inauguration, Modi made waves on the global stage, where once he was treated by many with suspicion — and by some as a pariah — for Hindu-Muslim violence that erupted 12 years ago in Gujarat, the western state he ruled.

He has spoken with the presidents of the United States and Russia, and he has become one of only three people that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe follows on Twitter. The US administration denied Modi a visa in 2005, but President Barack Obama has now invited him to the White House.

In a message released to fellow Indians and citizens of the world, Modi said the election had delivered a mandate for “development, good governance and stability”.

“Together we will script a glorious future for India. Let us together dream of a strong, developed and inclusive India that actively engages with the global community to strengthen the cause of world peace and development,” he said.

The pomp and ceremony unfolded as the summer evening closed in at Rashtrapati Bhavan, a colonial-era sandstone mansion with 340 rooms in the heart of New Delhi. Looking on were some 4,000 guests, ranging from members of the defeated Nehru-Gandhi family to top industrialists, Bollywood actors, Hindu holy men and the leaders of several neighbouring countries.

Modi supporters exploded fireworks in celebration a few blocks away at the headquarters of his Bharathiya Janata Party (BJP) after the new prime minister was sworn in.

The BJP and its allies swept elections this month, ousting the Nehru-Gandhi’s Congress Party in a seismic political shift that has given his party a mandate for sweeping economic reform.

Modi kicked things off on Sunday with an announcement that he would streamline the Cabinet, a move to a more centralised system of governing aimed at breaking decision-making bottlenecks widely blamed for dragging down economic growth.

Modi said he would appoint super ministers in charge of several departments to make ministries coordinate better.

Arun Jaitley, 61, is the front runner to be named finance minister, party sources said. One of the top corporate lawyers in the country and a close Modi aide, Jaitley served in a previous BJP administration as commerce minister.

Diplomatic gesture

Pakistan’s Sharif said after arriving in Delhi that South Asia’s bitterest rivals now have an opportunity to turn a page in their history of troubled relations.

He said the nuclear-armed neighbours, which were traumatically separated at the end of British rule in 1947 and have fought three wars since, should together rid their region of the instability that has plagued them for decades.

“We should remove fears, mistrust and misgivings about each other,” he told the Indian news network NDTV.

The BJP has long advocated a tough stance on Pakistan, with which India has a major territorial dispute in Kashmir and Modi has been seen as a hardliner on issues of national security.

In that respect, Modi’s decision to invite Sharif for his inauguration and bilateral talks on Tuesday came as a surprise, and raised hopes for a thaw in relations between the rivals, which have been particularly frosty since 2008 attacks on the city of Mumbai by Pakistan-based militants.

Vikram Sood, former head of India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, told Reuters that inviting all the leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was “an astute” diplomatic gesture.

“This augurs well for the region, and an improvement of relations all over the region is possible if these moves are followed by other steps, bilaterally and multilaterally,” he said.

As a gesture of goodwill following their invitations, Pakistan and Sri Lanka released hundreds of Indian fishermen jailed for straying into their neighbours’ territorial waters.

India is the biggest South Asian nation, but friendships with neighbours have soured in recent years, allowing China to fill the gap.

China has built a port in Sri Lanka and is involved in upgrading another in Bangladesh, besides military and civil assistance to long-time ally Pakistan, heightening Delhi’s anxieties of being boxed in.

“Modi has appreciated the much-neglected fact that foreign policy begins at the nation’s borders,” wrote foreign policy analyst C. Raja Mohan in the Indian Express. “As a realist, however, Modi should be aware that major breakthroughs are unlikely amid the current flux within Pakistan.”

KIEV/DONETSK, Ukraine — Ukraine launched air strikes and a paratrooper assault against pro-Russian rebels who seized an airport on Monday, as its newly elected leader rejected any talks with “terrorists” and said a robust military campaign in the east should be able to put down a separatist revolt in “a matter of hours”.

Ukrainians rallied overwhelmingly in an election on Sunday behind Petro Poroshenko, a political veteran and billionaire owner of chocolate factories, hoping the burly 48-year-old can rescue the nation from the brink of bankruptcy, civil war and dismemberment by its former Soviet masters in the Kremlin.

Monday’s rapid military response to separatists who seized the airport in Donetsk was a defiant answer to Moscow, which said it was ready for dialogue with Poroshenko but demanded he first scale back the armed forces’ campaign in the east.

Even as the fighting was getting under way, Poroshenko held a news conference in Kiev where he said the government’s military offensive needed to be “quicker and more effective”.

“The anti-terrorist operation should not last two or three months. It should last for a matter of hours,” he said.

As for the rebel fighters: “They want to preserve a bandit state which is held in place by force of arms,” he said. “These are simply bandits. Nobody in any civilised state will hold negotiations with terrorists.”

Gunfire and explosions could be heard as a warplane flew over Donetsk’s Sergei Prokofiev International Airport, hours after truckloads of armed rebel fighters arrived and seized a terminal. Thick black smoke rose from within the perimeter.

The government said its jets had strafed the area with warning shots and then struck a location where rebels were concentrated, scattering the fighters before paratroops were flown in to face them.

After three hours of fighting, a Reuters photographer saw three Ukrainian Mi-24 helicopter gunships fire rockets and cannon at the terminal concrete and glass terminal. More plumes of black smoke shot up into the air as the helicopters fired at targets on the runway. The gunships threw out decoy flares as fighters shot at them from the ground.

The airport serves a city of 1 million people that the rebels have proclaimed capital of an independent “people’s republic”, and where they succeeded in blocking all voting in Sunday’s election.

Their attempt to seize the airport may have been intended to prevent Poroshenko from travelling there: he has said his first trip in office would be to visit the restive east.

Preliminary results, with 80 per cent of the vote counted, gave Poroshenko 54.1 per cent of the vote — towering over a field of 21 candidates with enough support to avert a run-off. His closest challenger, former premier Yulia Tymoshenko, had just 13.1 per cent and made clear she would concede.

Poroshenko’s most urgent task is finding a modus vivendi with the giant neighbour that has seemed poised to carve Ukraine up since a popular revolt toppled a pro-Russian president in February.

He said Moscow’s “argument about legitimacy has disappeared” as he had also topped the polls among those who were able to cast ballots in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

“I hope Russia will support efforts to tackle the situation in the east,” Poroshenko said. He said he planned to meet Russian officials in the first half of June.

But he also showed no sign of heeding Moscow’s demand that he call off the operation against rebels in the east.

“Protecting people is one of the functions of the state,” he said, promising to invest more in the army. “The Ukrainian soldier should no longer be naked, barefoot and hungry.”

So far, Ukraine’s military forces have had little success against rebels who have declared independent “people’s republics” in two provinces of the eastern industrial heartland where about 20 people have been killed in recent days.

Ukrainian officials say they have held back from using full force in part to avoid provoking an invasion from tens of thousands of Russian troops massed on the frontier. Questions have also been raised about Ukrainian forces’ training, equipment and loyalties.

Monday’s fighting began after a Reuters photographer saw three truckloads bring dozens of armed men to the airport.

“The rebels are in the terminal. The rest of the airport is controlled by the Ukrainian national guard,” airport spokesman Dmitry Kosinov told Reuters before gunfire broke out.

The Ukrainian joint forces security operation in the region said a deadline for the rebels to surrender expired and two Sukhoi Su-25 jets carried out strafing runs, firing warning shots. A MiG-29 jet later carried out another air strike.

The militants then spread out across the territory of the airport, whose state-of-the-art main terminal was built for the 2012 European soccer championships held in Ukraine.

“Right now at the airport, paratroopers have landed and are cleaning up the area,” said a Ukrainian security spokesman.

‘New Russia’

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who last month described eastern Ukraine as “New Russia”, has made more accommodating noises in recent days. He promised at the weekend that Moscow would respect the will of Ukrainians, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov repeated that promise on Monday in saying Russia was ready for dialogue with Poroshenko.

Western countries put little faith in Putin’s promises, saying he has repeatedly announced he would pull troops from the frontier without doing so. They dismiss Russia’s denials it has aided the rebels, whose Donetsk force is led by a moustachioed Muscovite the EU says is a Russian military intelligence agent.

Even though separatists ensured that millions of Ukrainians were unable to vote in the eastern regions, Poroshenko’s sweeping margin of victory gives him a firm mandate that makes it harder for Moscow to dismiss him as illegitimate, as it did in the case of the interim leaders he will replace.

Many Ukrainians clearly rallied behind the frontrunner as a way to demonstrate national unity, three months after a pro-Russian president was ousted in a popular revolt and Moscow responded by seizing the Crimea peninsula, massing troops on the frontier and expressing sympathy with armed separatists.

A veteran survivor of Ukraine’s feuding political class, Poroshenko has served in Cabinets led by figures from both sides of Ukraine’s pro- and anti-Russian divide, giving him a reputation as a pragmatist who can bridge differences. That could shield him from the accusations of strident nationalism Moscow aimed at the interim leaders.

He threw his weight and money behind the revolt that brought down his Moscow-backed predecessor in February, and campaigned on a platform of strengthening ties with Europe.

Yet it remains unclear how the tycoon can turn firmly westward as long as Russia, Ukraine’s major market and vital energy supplier, seems determined to maintain a hold over the second most populous ex-Soviet republic.

“He has taken a heavy burden on his shoulders,” said Larisa, a schoolteacher who was among crowds watching the results on Independence Square, where pro-Western “EuroMaidan” protests ended in bloodshed in February that prompted President Viktor Yanukovich to flee to Russia. “I just want all of this to be over. I think that’s what everybody wants.”

In the eastern Donbass coalfield, where militants shut polling stations cutting off some 10 per cent of the national electorate from the vote, rebels scoffed at the “fascist junta” and announced a plan to drive out “enemy troops”.

More than 20 people were killed in the region last week.

Although Putin told an international audience at the weekend he was ready to work with a new Ukrainian administration, Russia could still use the gaps in the election in the east to challenge its legitimacy.

TEXEL/THE NETHERLANDS — To dive deeper into the realm of Dutch cheese one must abandon tasting imported cheese and Dutch lamp meat, and instead go to Texel or elsewhere in the Netherlands to gain a better understanding of the Dutch  livestock industry and dairy production. 

There in the flat green island of Texel, surrounded by the endless vista of the steel grey North Sea, the countryside or in the man-made meadows, sheep farming is more than an industry. It is a cultural heritage preserved in complete harmony with nature. 

These impressions emerged during a media tour organised May 11-17 by Holland Branding, a Netherlands Enterprise Agency.  The tour included several goat and sheep farms across the country, and to factories, slaughterhouses, laboratories and research centres. Journalists also met with farmers, traders, industrialists and cheese-making housewives.

Owners of the farms, with some dating back to the 19th century, are themselves the shepherds, traders and the professional cheese makers. 

In most cases, the farm is a family-run business.

Inside most of the farms visited, there is a modern or traditional factory for producing the Dutch cheese, or what the locals have named “Gouda”, storage for keeping the varied semi-hard cheese and also a small shop where the product is sold.

In Texel, known in the Netherlands and in Europe as the traditional sheep farming island, the stock is nearly as large as the 14,000 humans residing in the area. There are more than 11,000 lambs in the Texel meadows in the springtime, according to Holland Branding.  

The island has also named a famous white- faced sheep breed, that has historically been documented as among the most common in the world. 

The Texel sheep breed is characterised by broad shoulders, thick neck and short legs with no wool on the head or legs.  Texel sheep breeders are spread across the United Kingdom, Denmark, the United States, Brazil, Ireland and Italy, farmers said.

Passing De Waal on the way to Oosterend village on Texel, there is Family Tjepkema, a round 30-year-old family-run farm covering around 89 acres specialising in Texel sheep breeding. 

Koos Tjepkeman, owner of the farm with old buildings dating back to the 19th century, said that he has a total of 1,200 sheep, 60 per cent of which are used for meat and the rest for breeding. 

“Around 70-80 new-born lambs are sold to other farmers from Great Britain, Belgium and other European countries interested in raising Texel sheep.

“No sheep milk is produced at our farm. The milk is made out of the 320 cows we have,” said Tjepkeman.

He also said that a typical Texel sheep normally gives birth to two lambs that are kept with their mothers for some weeks before being separated. 

“Each lamb for breeding purposes is sold at 300 euros and for meat from 100-120 euros.”

“In recent years, we have frequently participated in shows and we have won champion’s titles on many occasions, both with rams we own and with breeding material from our farm,” said Tjepkeman.

In addition to being a cultural heritage passed on by ancestors, Tjepkeman said that sheep farming is a business he performs with pleasure and gratitude despite its arduous nature. 

In the Family Bakker farm, there are 300 Texel sheep and 20 Friesland sheep, all used for producing milk and cheese. The farm is located in the Hoge Berg area, a landscape reserve on the Texel Island. 

The Texel experience was concluded with a visit to the farm of the Stark family located very close to the island, there sheep and cows graze the man-made wet lands. 

The island’s traditional production of Texel cheese, better known as “Texelse Schapenkaas”, has been known throughout Europe for centuries.  It is a place that has been recognised as having the finest cheese, and has been called incomparable by many.

In Texel, sheep farming is not a career, instead it is a way of life that defines the people. 

BANGKOK — Thailand’s ruling junta warned protesters it would not tolerate any further rallies against its coup after tense standoffs Sunday between soldiers and angry crowds, and said demonstrators would be held for one or two days, but could be jailed for up to two years if they kept taking to the streets.

“We will give them a last chance today, but if they continue to rally we will use measures to deal with them,” Lieutenant General Apirat Kongsompong told a press conference.

 ‘I am not afraid of them’ 

Protests began outside a Bangkok shopping mall in the Chidlom area, where boisterous demonstrators brandished signs reading “Junta Out” and “F*** Coup” and pushed armed troops.

Minor scuffles broke out and at least two protesters were taken away by the troops, one bleeding, according to AFP journalists.

Demonstrators then made their way across the city to the Victory Monument cheered by onlookers, defying a junta call to avoid protests and a martial law ban on gatherings of more than five people.

“I am not afraid of them because the more we are afraid of them, the more they will stamp on us,” protester Kongjit Paennoy, 50, told AFP. “We want an election — to choose our own boss.”

The junta on Saturday announced it had disbanded the Senate and placed all law-making authority in the hands of army chief General Prayut Chan-O-Cha.

Civil liberties have been curbed, media restrictions imposed and most of the constitution abrogated.

Bangkok has seen several smaller outbreaks of protest against the junta since Prayut launched his takeover on Thursday.

Witnesses also reported demonstrations overnight in parts of the Shinawatra family’s northern power base, with rallies in the city of Khon Kaen and a heavy military presence in Thailand’s second largest city Chiang Mai.

The military intervention is the 19th actual or attempted coup in the kingdom since 1932.

It follows seven months of anti-government protests that derailed elections in February and sought to eradicate the influence of Yingluck’s divisive brother Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted from power by royalist generals in a coup in 2006.

He has been in exile since 2008 but critics said he still controlled supportive governments, including his sister’s, from overseas.

Political figures detained 

Those being held by the junta include politicians and leaders from both sides of the country’s warring protest movements.

Analysts see the latest developments as an ominous signal that the army is digging its heels in and may be unwilling to hand over power to a civilian government in the near term.

Thailand has been rocked by persistent and sometimes violent political turmoil for nearly a decade, with the protests preceding the latest coup leaving 28 people dead and hundreds wounded.

Yingluck was ousted by a court ruling earlier this month, but her embattled government remained in place till last week.

Thaksin or his allies have won every election this century, thanks to their strong support among the working class and communities in the north and northeast.

But he is reviled by parts of the elite, the Bangkok middle class and southerners — an alliance with wide influence in the establishment and army but little electoral success.

The tycoon-turned-politician posted his first public messages on Twitter since the coup on Sunday, saying he was “saddened” by the coup and urging the military rulers to “abide by international law and respect human rights”.

The military said Saturday that Prayut had sent a letter about his takeover to the revered but ailing king, Bhumibol Adulyadej. It said the king had “acknowledged” Prayut’s letter but stopped short of describing the response as an endorsement

The monarch, 86, commands great respect and his blessing is traditionally sought to legitimise Thailand’s recurring military takeovers.

The army on Sunday said it would begin paying off outstanding debts of 92 billion baht ($2.8bn) to farmers racked up in a controversial rice subsidy scheme under Yingluck’s government.

The scheme has weighed on the public purse as the economy stutters — shrinking 0.6 per cent year-on-year in January-March — amid falling consumer confidence and a tourist slump as the political crisis takes its toll.

Washington, long a key ally, has led international condemnation of the coup.

It has suspended $3.5 million in military assistance, cancelled official visits and army exercises and said its remaining Thai aid budget was under question.