"Palestinians are encouraged by the commitment President Obama and his administration have shown to Middle East peace," Saeb Erakat, a Fatah member and the Palestinians’ top official said on Friday.

Erekat said the establishment of a viable Palestinian state and a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem would make the region more secure and stable.

But, he warned "the peace process lives on borrowed time," saying it would not survive another round of failed negotiations.

"Israel’s failure to implement its obligations under existing agreements has eroded its credibility, while its continued settlement activities are undermining the very viability of the two state solution," Erakat said.

Hamas reaction

Hamas, however, called the meeting a continuation of Abbas’ "way of begging" to the US and the "Zionist entity."

Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, said the meeting would "accomplish nothing but more pressure on Abbas."

He said the US administration would fail to take "any action on the ground" to halt Israeli "aggressions" and realise Palestinian rights.

In the meeting on Thursday Obama called for a stop to Israeli settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and emphasised the two-state solution.

However, Benyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, refused to openly endorse the two-state solution during a meeting with Obama on May 18.

He also rejected the US and Palestinian demand for an absolute freeze in settlement activity.

Netanyahu promised not to build new settlements, but vowed to continue construction in existing ones to accommodate for "natural growth."

Palestinians differ on US promises

Pakistani forces have undertaken their most concerted offensive against an expanding Taliban insurgency that has raised fears for the nuclear-armed U.S. ally’s stability and the safety of its nuclear arsenal.

The focus of the fighting has been the former tourist destination of Swat, 120 km (80 miles) northwest of Islamabad, which the Taliban virtually took as the government alternated between inconclusive military action and peace pacts.

But tension has also been rising in South Waziristan, an al Qaeda and Taliban stronghold, with military officials saying an offensive was likely there after Swat is secured.

The United States and the Afghan government have long been pressing Pakistan to root militants out of South Waziristan and other enclaves on the Afghan border, from where the Taliban direct their Afghan war.

Militants attacked a paramilitary force camp in Jandola, 80 km (50 miles) east of Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, late on Saturday, security officials said.

“Militants came in force and attacked a paramilitary camp and fighting lasted for eight hours. At least 40 militants were killed while four soldiers died,” said an intelligence official in the region who declined to be identified.

A military spokesman said the militants had been pushed back after a heavy exchange of fire. Up to 15 militants and three soldiers were killed, he said.

There was no independent confirmation of the casualty estimates.

Militant violence in Pakistan has surged since mid-2007, with attacks on the security forces, as well as on government and Western targets.

There have been eight bomb attacks in various towns and cities since the offensive in Swat and neighboring districts began in late April and the Taliban have threatened more.

EXODUS

The offensive in Swat has sparked an exodus of about 2.4 million people, according to government figures, and the country faces a long-term humanitarian crisis.

Bomb attacks in cities and the plight of the displaced could undermine public support for the offensive but for now, analysts say, the authorities are determined to defeat the Taliban in Swat.

The army said on Saturday it had regained full control of Mingora, the main town in Swat, and a top Defense Ministry official said on Sunday the military operation could be over in a two or three days.

“Only five to 10 percent of the job is remaining and hopefully within two to three days, the pockets of resistance will be cleared,” Syed Athar Ali, secretary of defense for Pakistan, said at a regional defense meeting in Singapore.

Military spokesman have been cautious about predicting how long the offensive would last, saying there was still resistance in the valley.

“It’s very difficult to give a timeline,” said chief military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas. “It’s a very big area so nobody’s in a position to give any timeline for the operation.”

On Sunday, the military urged civilians to leave the town of Charbagh, about 15 km (10 miles) north of Mingora, and lifted a curfew there and in Mingora to allow people to get out.

Pakistan is vital for U.S. plans to defeat al Qaeda and cut support for the Afghan Taliban.

The United States, which is sending thousands of reinforcements into Afghanistan, has been heartened by the offensive in Swat.

Pakistan battles Taliban; Swat offensive near end

North Korea ramped up tensions this week with a series of provocations rarely seen since the 1950-53 Korean War, including war threats, missile launches and a nuclear test that puts it closer to having an atomic bomb.

The joint command for the 28,500 U.S. troops that support South Korea’s 670,000 soldiers has raised its alert a notch to signify a serious threat from North Korea, the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

It is the highest threat level since the North’s only other nuclear test in October 2006.

North Korea looks certain to face fresh sanctions for defying a U.N. resolution by exploding a nuclear device for a second time, Western diplomat said, with a vote in the 15-nation Security Council expected next week.

North Korea could be set for further provocations that include additional short-range missile tests off its west coast, the South’s Yonhap news agency on Wednesday night quoted an unnamed government source as saying.

Analysts said the North’s saber-rattling might be partly aimed at firming leader Kim Jong-il’s grip on power and helping him draw up succession plans in Asia’s only communist dynasty after a suspected stroke in August raised questions over his rule.

Weapons experts point out that while North Korea is pushing hard to develop a nuclear arsenal, it does not have an effective way to attack with an atomic warhead or bomb.

Security Council powers have agreed in principle that North Korea must face sanctions, Western diplomats said on Wednesday.

Possible steps include a ban on importing and exporting all arms and not just heavy weapons, asset freezes and travel bans for North Korean officials, and placing more firms on a U.N. blacklist.

The measures would expand on sanctions approved by the council after Pyongyang’s 2006 nuclear test, penalties that have been widely ignored and left unenforced.

The diplomats said cargo inspections were also possible, although China, worried about instability in its neighbor and the closest Pyongyang can claim as a major ally, is reluctant.

U.S. officials have urged China to pressure North Korea to step back from nuclear brinkmanship and return to stalled disarmament talks. But many Chinese analysts say Washington overstates Beijing’s sway over Pyongyang, as well as their government’s willingness to use that influence.

"Undoubtedly, China also wants a swift and united response, but it probably won’t give the United States all it wants. China has its own worries," said Shi Yinhong, an expert on regional security at Renmin University in Beijing.

MILITARY ON ALERT

North Korea, which has only become poorer since Kim took over in 1994, has been punished for years by sanctions and is so destitute it relies on aid to feed its 23 million people, but that has not deterred it from provocations.

The U.S. Air Force will deploy 12 advanced F-22 Raptor fighters in the coming days to a base in Okinawa, Japan. The move had been planned in advance and was not related to recent rumblings from Pyongyang, a U.S. Forces Japan spokesman said.

The South’s largest newspaper Chosun Ilbo quoted defense sources as saying the South has been preparing for contingencies such as artillery or missile strikes near a contested sea border off the west coast of the peninsula.

A spokesman for the North’s military on Wednesday said the country could not guarantee the safety of the South’s vessels in those Yellow Sea waters that have been the site of deadly naval skirmishes between the states in 1999 and 2002.

The spokesman also said South Korea’s decision to join a U.S.-led anti-proliferation initiative this week was a declaration of war making the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War invalid. Its military would also attack if the South inspects its ships.

Seoul’s financial markets, which had fallen in the wake of the nuclear test, rose on Thursday although traders said investors were still nervous about what further steps the North might take to raise tension in the economically powerful region.

North Korea kept up its steady string of strident rhetoric, saying in its official media that "a minor accidental clash could lead to nuclear war."

"As circumstances show, provocations of war on the part of the U.S. and South Korea have gone well beyond the risky level. It’s a matter of time when a fuse for war is triggered," the North KCNA news agency reported a commentary in a state newspaper as saying.

U.S., South Korea raise military alert on North

The Sri Lankan Government has blocked access to aid workers trying to help the nearly 300,000 civilians displaced by the army’s victory over the Tamil Tigers, raising the prospect of a humanitarian catastrophe.

In the capital, Colombo, President Rajapakse announced the “complete defeat” of the rebels yesterday as state television showed pictures of what was said to be the corpse of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the Tigers’ leader. Mr Rajapakse vowed in an address to the nation to press ahead with a “homegrown political solution” to end ethnic divisions between the majority Sinhalese population and minority Tamils.

As he spoke, an estimated 80,000 people — mostly Tamil, many of them sick, malnourished or suffering from battlefield wounds — were making their way on foot from the war zone In the north to government-run camps that are already swamped. The UN is not being allowed any access to them, The Times has learnt.

Accounts of conditions inside the camps — gained from testimony recorded covertly by aid workers — and the journey to them are horrifying.

Preema, a Tamil woman, arrived at the 400-hectare (990-acre) Menic farm camp on Sunday. She had left Mullaivaikal, the centre of the fighting, where the Tigers had made their final stand before being defeated, days before, after being shelled heavily.

She set out with her husband, mother and two children, to wade through the Nandikadal lagoon — a waterway strewn with mines — in a desperate attempt to reach safety.

There were deep craters where the lagoon had been bombed and people often drowned, she said. A man offered to carry her ten-year-old daughter. Preema never saw them again. Her husband was taken away later by government troops at a checkpoint in Oomanthai, where refugees are being forced to strip before being allowed to pass, after admitting that he had worked for the Tigers. Her mother died in the lagoon.

“Everything is lost,” said Preema, holding her son, 7. “Please help me find my daughter. Not knowing anything is making me crazy.”

Inside one camp, Nandani, 76, described being forced to stand for up to five hours a day queueing for food.

Kala, a middle-aged woman, spoke about the constant indignities of her new life. “I do not have underwear. I am unable to use the Kotex that the Red Cross handed out,” she said, holding a packet of sanitary towels she had been given before the organisation’s access to the camp was restricted.

Kothai, another woman, said: “There is a bad distribution system within the camp. Every time it is the same people that get \. Men crowd around and push the women and children aside.”

Government officials did not answer requests for comment. Access for aid agencies to another 200,000 refugees already in the internment camps — which the Government call “welfare villages” — has been severely restricted since Sunday, preventing the administration of basic care.

Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, is due to travel in Sri Lanka on Friday to offer help to rebuild the ravaged northeast of the country and urge the Government to reach out to the Tamil population.

“These people have endured one of the cruellest military sieges of modern times — daily shelling over several months,” an international aid worker said. “They need urgent help.” There are fears that the camp populations — especially children — will be hit by contagious diseases. Chickenpox, hepatitis A and dysentery outbreaks have been reported. Medical facilities are said to be woefully inadequate.

There are also concerns that the suffering will radicalise previously moderate Tamils, especially amongst the community’s international diaspora, which had been a key source of funding for the Tigers.

Most Sri Lankans are delighted by the defeat of the Tigers, a terrorist force that fought for 26 years for an independent Tamil homeland, propagating a war that left at least 70,000 dead. Many Tamils were against the rebels after they recruited child soldiers and terrorised their own people.

Tamils in the camps describe being fired on by both sides in the conflict.

Vavathan, 59, said that Tiger troops had forcibly recruited children as young as 15 in the conflict zone, even in the final stages when it was clear that they had lost the conflict. “The war was over, why were they still taking the children?” she asked.

There were doubts over the sincerity of Mr Rajapakse’s pledge to build bridges between the Sinhalese and Tamil minority. He has seldom brooked dissent, his opponents say.

Sri Lanka on brink of catastrophe as UN aid blocked

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The claim on Saturday came after battles which left scores of people dead and provoked the government to threaten to break off ties with neighbouring Sudan.

Idriss Deby Itno, the Chadian president, renewed his accusations that the Union of Resistance Forces (UFR) is being backed by Sudan, warning that diplomacy between the nations could be cut.

The Chadian government says at least 225 UFR fighters and 22 soldiers were killed in the clashes south of the main eastern city of Abeche on Thursday and Friday.

Adoum Younousmi, Chad’s defence minister, said on Saturday: “It is a decisive victory.”

‘Khartoum involvement’

Deby, speaking at the presidential palace on Saturday, said: “The government must re-evaluate relations between Sudan and Chad, and envisages – if the situation does not evolve positively – the rupture of these relations.

“To this end, Sudanese cultural centres must be closed and schools financed by Sudan must be taken over by the Chadian government. Teachers who are really intelligence agents ought to return home.”

Deby himself took power in a putsch launched from Sudan in 1990. Khartoum rejects the accusations of involvement with the UFR.

South of Abeche, in the town of Am-Dam, government forces showed off their booty and prisoners to journalists, who also saw dozens of bodies and burned-out vehicles.

But a UFR source claimed that their forces were still massed southeast of Abeche and are intent on taking the capital, at least 600km to the west.

Adam Mustafa Ibrahim, the governor of Abeche, told Al Jazeera: “Security forces are on alert; they are patrolling the borders and control the situation.

“We do not pay attention to rumours, but if there is solid information regarding rebel movements, we will attack them as we have before.”

The fighting looks to have ended a peace accord signed by Khartoum and Ndjamena two weeks ago – the latest in a series of deals, none of which has had any longevity.

International criticism

The UN security council on Friday condemned the UFR incursion into eastern Chad from Sudan.

All 15 ambassadors agreed to a non-binding statement that “condemns the renewed military incursions in eastern Chad of Chadian armed groups, coming from outside”.

The UN statement also stressed that “any attempt at destabilisation of Chad by force is unacceptable”.

The European Union (EU) and African Union (AU) have spoken out against the UFR offensive.

Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, called on “the armed groups coming from Sudan in the east of Chad … to renounce violence and begin negotiations with the Chad government.”

Meanwhile, Ramtane Lamara, the AU’s peace and security commissioner, condemned “all kinds of anti-constitutional change of government, and acts of destabilisation”.

Chadian opposition fighters have sought to overthrow Deby for more than three years.

The UFR is led by Tiimane Erdimi, Deby’s nephew, who once held the brief of oil affairs in the government.

However, a split occurred within Deby’s inner circle over how to deal with the conflict in Darfur in Sudan leading to the rebellion.

Deby and many of his senior military officers hail from Sudan and have relatives living in Darfur.

About 300,000 Darfuri war refugees are camped in eastern Chad along with about 187,000 Chadians who have been uprooted by fighting in Chad and Darfur.

Chad claims victory over rebels war-news.net

Ban spoke to President Mahinda Rajapaksa on the telephone Tuesday night amid heavy international pressure for a humanitarian cease-fire in the conflict. Rajapaksa has brushed off such calls, saying a truce would give the rebels a chance to regroup.

The government has cornered the remaining rebel fighters — along with tens of thousands of civilians — in a narrow coastal strip in the north and stands on the brink of victory after a nearly quarter-century civil war.

Speaking to reporters in New York, Ban said he asked Rajapaksa for “a humanitarian pause in the fighting” to allow aid into the conflict zone and urged the government to stop using heavy weapons in areas heavily populated by civilians.

“I repeat: Protecting civilians and respecting international humanitarian law, must be priority one. The world is watching events closely, including for violations of international law,” he said.

The government pledged last week to stop using artillery fire and air strikes, but health officials in the war zone say such attacks have continued.

Ban also said the Tamil Tigers should let the estimated 50,000 civilians trapped by the fighting out of the war zone and to stop forcibly recruiting fighters from their ranks.

“Above all, there is an urgent need for the two sides to bring the conflict to a peaceful and orderly end,” he said.

The appeal came as a British parliamentary delegation finished a two-day tour of the country and a Canadian Cabinet minister also visited. Last week the British and French foreign ministers traveled here to personally press for a humanitarian truce.

The intense fighting since the end of January has killed about 6,500 civilians, according to a U.N. document compiled last month. Hundreds of more civilians have been reported killed since then.

During the phone conversation, Rajapaksa invited Ban to visit the country and personally assess the situation, according to a statement from the president’s office. U.N. spokesman Gordon Weiss said no decision had been made on such a visit.

The rebels said in a statement Tuesday that civilians trapped in the war zone were facing starvation and accused the government of blocking food deliveries. Health officials in the area have also said the elderly and children were suffering and dying in increasing numbers because of lack of food.

Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said the government had delivered enough food and accused the rebels of grabbing the supplies for themselves.

Reporters and independent observers are barred from the war zone making the government’s claims difficult to verify.

The rebels have been fighting since 1983 for a separate state for minority Tamils, which have suffered decades of marginalization at the hands of governments controlled by the Sinhalese majority.

UN calls for cease-fire in Sri Lanka civil war

The military said in a statement that it had “maintained a high professional and moral level” during the 22-day war, which ended Jan. 18, though it faced “an enemy that aimed to terrorize Israeli civilians whilst taking cover” among Palestinian civilians and “using them as human shields.”

Israel mounted its attack on Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, with the stated purpose of preventing rocket fire on southern Israel from Gaza. But the offensive set off international outrage and condemnation as the Palestinian death toll grew, as United Nations facilities and medical teams came under fire and as allegations emerged of improper use of white phosphorus weapons.

This month, the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed an internationally renowned judge, Richard J. Goldstone, to lead a high-level mission to investigate allegations of war crimes during the Gaza war.

Though Mr. Goldstone, a former judge in South Africa and a former United Nations chief prosecutor for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, has said he will investigate possible violations by both Israel and Hamas, officials in Jerusalem have said it is unlikely that Israel will cooperate with the mission.

Gaza health officials said more than 1,300 Palestinians died during the war, but Israel disputes Palestinian claims that most of them were noncombatants. By the Israeli military’s count, 1,166 people were killed, of whom 295 were noncombatants, 709 were what it called Hamas terrorist operatives and 162 were men whose affiliations remain unidentified.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza put the number of dead at 1,417: 926 civilians, 236 combatants and 255 police officers. Israel says that about 400 Gazans die of natural causes every month, possibly accounting for the discrepancy in numbers.

Thirteen Israelis were killed during the fighting, among them 10 soldiers and 3 civilians.

Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, the Israeli military’s deputy chief of staff, told reporters on Wednesday that the army “discovered a small number of mistakes, not many, among the dozens of incidents we investigated, and we have already examined them and learned lessons from them.”

General Harel added that the army had “not found a single case of an Israeli soldier deliberately hurting innocent Palestinian civilians, whether from the land, air or sea.” If any such case was discovered, he said, it would be treated with the full severity of the law.

Describing the mistakes as “unfortunate” and ascribing them to “intelligence or operational errors,” the military said such incidents “were unavoidable and occur in all combat situations, in particular of the type which Hamas forced” on the army “by choosing to fight from within the civilian population.”

Three separate investigations whose conclusions were presented on Wednesday dealt with specific events that were brought to the army’s attention by the news media or other means. Two others examined general subjects, namely the use of weapons containing phosphorus and the destruction of infrastructure and buildings by ground forces.

In one case, where Israeli shells killed up to 40 Palestinians outside a United Nations school in the Jabaliya refugee camp, north of Gaza City, on Jan. 6, the soldiers were responding, according to the military, to mortar shells fired by militants in the vicinity of the school. Israel says that 12 to 17 Palestinians were killed, 5 of whom were militants.

Soon after the shelling, however, Palestinian hospital officials in the Jabaliya area told a reporter for The New York Times that 40 people had been killed, among them 10 children and 5 women. At a mass funeral in Jabaliya the next day, the reporter was unable to count the bodies in the press of the mourning crowd but described seeing the bodies of the children laid out in a long row on the ground. One of the mourners, Huda Deed, said she had lost nine members of her extended family, ages 3 to 25.

Another case investigated by the military involved the Daia family, 21 of whom were killed when their home, in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, was hit in an Israeli strike on Jan. 6. Expressing regret for the attack, a senior military official said the army had intended to hit the house next door, which was a weapons storage site; the Daia home was struck because of an “operational error.”

Israel has already come under heavy criticism for its use of white phosphorus in heavily populated Gaza. White phosphorus is a standard, legal weapon in armies, long used as a way to light up an area or to create a thick white smoke screen to obscure troop movements. But it can cause horrific burns, so using it against civilians, or in an area where many civilians are likely to be affected, can be a violation of international law.

Last month, Human Rights Watch issued a report citing six cases of improper use ofwhite phosphorus by Israel and calling them evidence of war crimes.

The military said it used two types of munitions containing white phosphorus, incendiary shells for marking and range-finding, which it said were used in limited quantities, and nonincendiary types of munitions used to create smoke screens. But officials said that both types were used in open areas only, in accordance with the limitations of international law.

The military noted that these investigations, conducted by officers with the rank of colonel, were not a replacement for the central operational army investigation of the entire campaign, which will be concluded by June.

The findings are not exhaustive. For example, the case of the Samouni family, some 30 of whose members were killed when the building in which they had sought shelter in Zeitoun was hit on Jan. 5, remains unresolved. Maj. Avital Leibovich, a military spokeswoman, said that the case was still being examined, and that it was not yet clear if the Samounis were killed by Israeli fire.

Israeli and international human rights groups rejected the Israeli military’s internal investigations as inadequate. Human Rights Watch called Wednesday’s statement by the military “an insult to the civilians in Gaza who needlessly died.” The army leadership, the group said, is “apparently not interested, willing, or able to monitor itself.”

NYTimes.com

In the third day since troops blasted through a massive earthen wall built by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and unleashed the exodus, the military said 81,420 people had been registered for onward transit to refugee camps.

The massive civilian presence in a 17 square km (6.5 sq mile) area had been the last crucial defence for the Tigers, who have refused repeated calls from the United Nations, Western governments and neighbouring India to release them.

Sri Lanka’s government has meanwhile rejected LTTE and international calls for a truce, saying it cannot allow a group designated as a terrorist organisation by more than 30 countries to use the time to rearm, as it has done in the past.

By Wednesday morning, troops had captured about a third of the remaining Tiger-held area, which had been an army-declared no-fire zone until soldiers marched in and turned it into the conflict’s final conventional battlefield after people fled.

“Confrontations are taking place. Whenever we come across LTTE cadres, we are fighting them. The rescue operation is continuing,” military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.

Defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella later told a media briefing troops had taken control of about a third of the area, after seizing the centre of the north-south strip of coast and dividing the remaining rebel fighters into two pockets. Nanayakkara said 153,000 civilians have fled LTTE areas so far this year.

UN CONFIRMS EXODUS

The United Nations confirmed this week’s outflow.

“It is 60,000 plus and counting, and we have heard various reports of up to 110,000 coming out,” said U.N. spokesman in Colombo, Gordon Weiss. He cautioned the reports were preliminary and not confirmed.

So far, only 7,500 had reached refugee centres away from the front in Jaffna and Vavuniya towns, while the rest were in transit, he said.

Aid agencies have warned refugee camp conditions could quickly turn bad with the populations doubling, but Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has ordered extra food and reliefs supplies to be sent.

On Tuesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross had said the war zone situation was “catastrophic”, with several hundred killed since Monday and at least 50,000 more remaining at risk with limited food, water and medical care.

The United Nations and others have accused the LTTE of forcing people to stay in the war zone or making them fight, and the government of shelling civilian areas. Both deny the accusations.

Senior U.S. diplomat Michael Owen urged Sri Lanka to allow the international community to monitor what was happening and assure help for trapped civilians.

“The 26-year-old conflict is at a decisive point and we see the potential for major developments witin the next 48 hours,” he told reporters in Washington on Tuesday.

The military operation to rescue the civilians began on Monday and gathered speed on Tuesday after the LTTE ignored a noon deadline to surrender, despite being massively outgunned by a military built up to wipe them out and end the war.

A senior LTTE official hours later said the group would never surrender nor give up its drive to create a separate state for Sri Lanka’s minority Tamils, which has percolated since the early 1970s but erupted into full-blown civil war in 1983.

After the conventional end of the war, Sri Lanka will face the challenges of healing divisions between the Tamil minority and Sinhalese majority, and boosting a $40 billion economy suffering on many fronts including a weakening rupee .LKR.

Sri Lanka is seeking a $1.9 billion International Monetary Fund loan to ease a balance of payments crisis and boost flagging foreign exchange reserves.

But the government’s war successes have driven the Colombo Stock Exchange .CSE to two-month highs. (For more Sri Lanka coverage, click on [ID:nSP493680]; for a graphic see: here. jpg) (Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed in WASHINGTON; Editing by Jerry Norton)

Sri Lankan war in endgame, 81,000 escape rebel zone

A third Thai soldier died in hospital following Friday’s clashes, which rattled relations between the neighbours just days before a regional summit that was supposed to focus on the global economic slowdown.

Military officials from both sides met over lunch in disputed territory near the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple on Sunday, while Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen was set to meet Thai officials later in the capital Phnom Penh.

"We held the meeting in order to make the situation return to normal and to make sure there’s no more gunfire. We have agreed to stay on our sides of the border," Cambodian Major General Srey Doek said after the talks.

His Thai counterpart, Major General Kanok Netrak Thavesanak, said that in future both sides would "communicate to solve problems. Sometimes there are misunderstandings."

Troops could be seen chatting and some even stowed away their weapons but they said they remained ready to fight after their clash, the biggest burst of violence over the territory since four people died there in October.

However journalists were barred from entering the so-called Eagle Area, which has seen the most violence, because the Cambodian military said it remained too tense.

Decades of tensions over ownership of the site started to boil over after Cambodia successfully applied for United Nations world heritage status for the ruins in July.

Kanok, the Thai officer, said an official from his country would meet later with Hun Sen.

"A Thai official is going to meet with the Cambodian prime minister today and they will talk about the clashes that happened two days earlier," Cambodian cabinet spokesman Phay Siphan told AFP.

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva meanwhile said that the issue would come up when he meets his Cambodian counterpart at a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its regional partners in Thailand next week.

"This will be raised in next week’s meeting to find a solution to the problem," Abhisit said in his weekly television broadcast, adding that the two countries would "resume the talking process as soon as possible."

Pre-arranged talks on the border situation, the latest in a series that have been held over the past six months, are also set to go ahead as planned on Monday and Tuesday in Phnom Penh.

The Thai and Cambodian leaders both sought to play down the latest crisis on Saturday, saying that it was the result of a misunderstanding and that the two countries were not at war.

"It’s like next-door neighbours — when their chickens fight, the owners get into a dispute too," Hun Sen said.

But while tensions had noticeably eased at the border on Sunday, Cambodian soldiers said they would fight to the death to protect the ancient temple perched on a forested cliff overlooking green swathes of countryside.

"We are not afraid of Thai soldiers. Everything happened because Thai soldiers want to take our temple and land," said Cambodian soldier Chum Chuon.

Friday’s violence damaged a government office and destroyed a local market.

Hundreds of Cambodians who lost their homes in the fighting were evacuated to a school 20 kilometres (12 miles) away and were being provided new plots of land further from disputed territory.

In 1962 an international court awarded the ruins to Cambodia, but the most accessible entrance is in Thailand and the two countries still dispute ownership of the surrounding land.

The border in the area is poorly defined, partly because it is heavily mined after decades of conflict in Cambodia.

Cambodia, Thailand in talks after border clashes

“The projectile launched from North Korea today appears to have passed over towards the Pacific,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement.

North Korea has said it was putting a satellite into space and but regional powers say Pyongyang is testing a missile designed to carry a warhead to U.S. territory.

Pyongyang said its rockets would drop booster stages to the west and east of Japan.

North Korea has only once tested the rocket, known as the Taepodong-2 missile, in 2006 when it flew for 40 seconds and then exploded.

The first stage booster earlier dropped into the Sea of Japan.

Japan says N.Korea rocket appears to pass over Japan