Myanmar's new FM

Myanmar's new FM to attend ASEM summit

Myanmar's new foreign minister, Maj. Gen. Nyan Win, leaves for Vietnam on Wednesday to attend an Asia-Europe summit meeting, diplomatic sources said. Nyan Win and labor minister Tin Winn will lead the Myanmar delegation at the two-day summit, which starts on Friday, the sources said on condition of anonymity. It will be the foreign minister's second trip abroad since he was appointed to the post in a major Cabinet shakeup two weeks ago. Last week, Nyan Win attended the United Nations General Assembly in New York. -- AP

Iran declares range missile

Iran declared on Tuesday it had ballistic missiles with a range of 2,000 km and could produce ones with a greater range, an announcement likely to add to international concerns over its weapons capabilities. "Today, we have the power to send our missiles up to 2,000 kilometers, and experts know that once a country has made such a step, all further steps are accessible," former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was quoted as saying by the official news agency IRNA. Steady progress made by Iran's ballistic missile program is a major cause for concern for the international community, already alarmed over the country's suspect nuclear activities. "We have today the ballistic technology and if we had not limited our progress, we would have been even more advanced," Rafsanjani told a conference on Space and National Security. --AFP