After NATO meeting, Turkey warns Syria on border

Buoyed by support from his country's NATO allies, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Syrian forces Tuesday to stay clear of their troubled border or face a Turkish military response to any perceived threat, following the disputed downing of a Turkish warplane.

The Turkish leader's bellicose tone came as ambassadors from the NATO alliance, seeking to avoid a wider conflict, held emergency talks in Brussels at Turkey's behest. After the meeting, the NATO secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said the alliance considered Syria's actions in shooting down a Turkish warplane Friday "unacceptable."

In a unanimous statement, the NATO allies called the episode "another example of the Syrian authorities' disregard for international norms, peace and security, and human life."

Turkey is a member of the alliance.

"I would certainly expect that such an incident won't happen again," Rasmussen said at a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels. In Ankara, Erdogan said Turkey had revised its military rules of engagement toward Syria.

"Every military element that approaches the Turkish border from Syria in a manner that constitutes a security risk or danger would be considered as a threat and would be treated as a military target," he said to lawmakers in a speech attended by Arab diplomats.

In calling for the meeting in Brussels, Turkey said it was invoking Article 4 of the NATO treaty, which provides for consultations by the allies when one of them is threatened.

China denies South China Sea war preparations

China has denied it is increasing combat readiness in response to a tense territorial row with the Philippines in the South China

Sea which has dragged on for more than a month.

The stand-off erupted last month after Philippine authorities detected Chinese ships fishing near the Scarborough Shoal.

They tried to arrest the crew, but were blocked by Chinese surveillance vessels deployed to the tiny rocky outcrop in the South China Sea about 230 kilometres (140 miles) from the Philippines' main island of Luzon.

The two nations have stationed non-military vessels at the shoal since April 8 in an effort to assert their sovereignty over the area.

But China's defence ministry denied military units were getting ready for war, despite warnings in state media that China is prepared to fight to end the stand-off.

“Reports that the Guangzhou military region, the South China Sea fleet and other units have entered a state of war preparedness are untrue,” the ministry said in a brief statement on its website late Friday.

The Guangzhou military region in southern China has responsibility for the area.

It gave no source for the reports, but rumours on Chinese microblogs say China has ordered some military units up to level two of its four-level scale of war preparedness, one notch from the top which indicates full readiness.

China claims virtually all of the South China Sea, which is believed to sit atop huge oil and gas reserves, as its historical territory, even waters close to the coasts of other Asian countries.

The Philippines says the shoal is part of its territory because it falls within its exclusive economic zone.

On Friday, around 300 protestors demonstrated outside the Chinese embassy in the Philippines to denounce “bullying” by Beijing.

Chinese citizens responded by holding far smaller protests outside the Philippine embassy in Beijing on Friday and Saturday, but police have not allowed sustained demonstrations.

China worries protests could spark wider social unrest.

On Saturday, police hustled away a group of five people attempting to unfurl a banner outside the embassy, who were put in a van and then driven away, an AFP photographer witnessed.

One briefly held up a sign reading: “Philippine servants, get away from Huangyan Island” using the Chinese name for the Scarborough Shoal.

A Chinese state-backed newspaper on Saturday accused the Philippines of whipping up nationalism, but it added military conflict in the South China Sea was possible.

“Nationalism seems to echo just as strongly wherever you go around the South China Sea. The Philippines is showing prominent such behaviour,” the Global Times said in an editorial.

“It remains possible that military conflicts will ensue in the South China Sea, and when that happens China will certainly take firm action,” it added.

Taiwan, Brunei, Vietnam and Malaysia also claim parts of the sea. The rival claims have for decades made the waters one of Asia's potential military flashpoints.

The official Xinhua news agency late Friday urged the Philippines to negotiate a diplomatic solution to the dispute.

“The Philippine government is urged to use its vision and wisdom to handle the... dispute by peaceful diplomatic means to prevent harming bilateral relations in the long run,” it said.

Chinese authorities have ordered tour operators to suspend trips to the Philippines, and a Philippine official said Saturday that Chinese customs had impounded fruit imported from the Philippines, alleging pests, amid the dispute.

Sudan threatens to wage war against South Sudan

 KHARTOUM: Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir threatened on Wednesday to overthrow the "insect" government of South Sudan, amid global efforts to pull the rivals from the brink of all-out war after the South seized a key oilfield.

"Our main target from today is to liberate South Sudan's citizens from the SPLM ( Sudan People's Liberation Movement), and this is our responsibility before our brothers in South Sudan," Bashir said, adding that the southern government cannot be called a "movement".

"We call it an insect ... trying to destroy Sudan, and our main target from today is to eliminate this insect completely.

He spoke at a youth rally in support of troops who hope to reclaim Sudan's most important oil field, Heglig, from South Sudanese troops who seized it eight days ago.

"There are two choices: Either we end up in Juba or they end up in Khartoum. The old borders cannot take us both," Bashir said, predicting that the victory will be swift.

"In a few hours you are going to listen to good news from your brothers in Heglig," he told about 3,000 young people, some of them dressed in military gear.

"Heglig will not be the end. The end will be in Juba," the South's capital, said Bashir, whose audience sang songs about jihad, or holy war.

While Bashir forecast a swift victory, a foreign ministry official said Sudan is pursuing both military and diplomatic measures to get South Sudan out of the area.

"Military steps are underway ... and they are calculated measures," Omar Dahab, head of the ministry's crisis team, told a news conference.

"At the same time, they are taking into consideration the diplomatic and good offices efforts regarding the ending of the occupation.

"We have to end the occupation by hook or crook, by either way."

Sudan's military has released virtually no information about the situation on the ground but South Sudan has vowed to hold its positions in Heglig, despite air strikes.

Clashes broke out last month in the Heglig area and escalated last week with waves of aerial bombardment hitting the South and Juba's seizure of the oil centre on April 10.

The United Nations, the United States and the European Union have criticised the South's occupation of the north's most important oil field, equally denouncing Sudanese air strikes against the South.

Nigeria army says kills 11 Boko Haram insurgents

(Reuters) - Nigeria's army killed 11 suspected Boko Haram insurgents during a gun battle at a checkpoint in the Islamist sect's heartland of Maiduguri on Saturday, the field operations officer in the remote northeastern city said.

Nigerian forces are reeling from a sharp uptick of increasingly sophisticated and coordinated attacks by Boko Haram. Human Rights Watch says it has killed hundreds of people since launching an uprising against the government in 2009, including an attack on the city of Kano that killed 186.

"Eleven BH (Boko Haram) members have been shot dead by the JTF (joint military taskforce) in Maiduguri today, following a shootout with the sect members at a checkpoint in a stop and search operation," field operations officer Colonel Victor Ebhamelehe said told Reuters.

"One member of the sect who was wounded is receiving treatment at the hospital."

Boko Haram began as a clerical movement opposed to western cultural influences in Maiduguri, a dusty town in the northeast region bordering Chad, Niger and Cameroon, on the cusp of the Sahara. It has since spread to much of Nigeria's north and has become the top security threat in Africa's biggest oil producer.

Suspected sect members attacked a police station in Mandwari, in north Nigeria's Kano state, on Friday, police and witnesses said, leading to more than an hour of running gun battles that fatally wounded one policeman.

"We lost one of our men in the attack in Mandwari inside the city. He is a corporal and he died on the way to hospital. The gunmen were repelled," Kano police commissioner Ibrahim Idris told Reuters on Saturday.

In an audio tape posted on the Internet on Thursday, the purported leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, threatened to kill more security personnel and kidnap their families, and accused U.S. President Barack Obama of waging war on Islam, in an apparent effort to strike a chord with global jihadists.

He denied that the group, which is loosely modeled on the Taliban, had been responsible for most of the civilian casualties in last Friday's attack on Kano. Police say most of those casualities were shot dead by sect members.