APEC leaders' touchy palates

APEC leaders' touchy palates

THAILAND: Pity poor Vichit Mukura. He's the chef at Bangkok's plush Oriental hotel who has been working for a year on the preparations for Monday's slap-up gala dinner for the 21 leaders and their spouses attending the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai has personally tasted the delicacies, which include the country's signature dish -- spicy tom yam kung soup (served in carved pumpkins) -- and smoked barbecue duck red curry.

Some leaders have requested favorite Thai dishes. But others have been hard to please. The wife of Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong has specified no flour or cream, according to The Nation newspaper, while South Korea's first lady is not keen on peaches.

But it's the Chinese who must be making Vichit and his 42-chef brigade cry into their tureens. President Hu Jintao has said he doesn't want anything too spicy, while his wife is bringing her own food. -- Reuters

;AFP;HHR; ANPAi..r.. Aglance-RP-U.S.-Bush RP communists not to attack Bush JP/11/ASEAN

RP commies vow to let Bush live

PHILIPPINES: Communist guerrillas pledged on Friday on the eve of President George W. Bush's stopover visit to the Philippines that they will refrain from mounting an assassination attempt on the U.S. leader.

"If you are asking if we will mount a military action, after the military and the police warned that an NPA (New People's Army) team will assassinate George Bush, that is not among our plans today, tomorrow or in the coming days," Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) spokesman Gregorio Rosal said over DZBB radio, referring to his party's armed wing.

Bush is to make an eight-hour state visit to the Philippines on Saturday.

"It is true that George Bush is our enemy, but that step is not among the protest actions that we are eying," said Rosal.

The CPP and the 9,000-member NPA has been waging a 34-year Maoist campaign in this former U.S. colony. The U.S. State Department considers the CPP-NPA a "foreign terrorist organization".

Rosal urged Filipinos to join street protests against the "imperialist United States" and its "puppet" Philippines President Gloria Arroyo. -- AFP

;REUTERS;HHR; ANPAi..r.. Aglance-Politics-Cambodia Cambodian parties to hold talks JP/11/ASEAN

Cambodian parties to hold talks

CAMBODIA: Cambodia's three feuding political parties will hold face-to-face talks next week to try to resolve the stalemate following July's disputed general election, a government spokesman said on Friday.

The Cambodian People's Party (CPP) of Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who has been in power for nearly 20 years, came a clear first in the July 27 poll, but failed to win the two thirds majority of seats needed to run the country alone.

With the royalist FUNCINPEC and opposition Sam Rainsy parties refusing to join a Hun Sen-led coalition, the war-scarred southeast Asian nation has been without a government ever since.

A similar deadlock after the 1998 general election dragged on for months, culminating in mass riots on the streets of the capital. Several protesters were killed in clashes with riot police before the CPP and FUNCINPEC formed a coalition.

CPP spokesman Khieu Kanharith said the three parties would meet on Monday under the aegis of Cambodia's revered King Norodom Sihanouk to discuss the possible formation of a new government.

"The CPP's position is that we want to solve all the problems of the political crisis ahead of the King's birthday (Oct. 30)," he told reporters after a weekly cabinet meeting. -- Reuters