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Italian ambassador told the Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Sok An Thursday that Italy is to build a laboratory center in Siem Reap province and send professors to train Cambodian students to fix broken artifacts.

Ambassador Michelangelo Pipan told Sok An that Italy has been pleased with helping the Kingdom to restore the Pre Rup Temple over the last four years.

Pre Rup was the second temple mountain, after East Mebon which it resembles, constructed in the Angkor region by Rajendravarman II (944-968). In recent years Pre Rup Temple has been undergoing restoration financed through the Italy funds-in-Trust Project.

Italy has also expanded its project in Siem Reap province, the home of Angkor, to fix the staircase of more than 300 meters of Angkor Temple.

The well-known Italian professors, of the University of Palermo, are expected to arrive in October this year in Siem Reap, where they will train 20 Cambodian students from the Royal University of Fine Arts to learn about the artistic works and how to fix over 4, 000 Khmer artifacts, which have been collected and stored in the province.

The ambassador said that those students, who will attend the three-year training course, will be awarded master degree which is equivalent to the degree provided by Italian universities. They would be sent to study more in Italy in the future if necessary.

"I ask the Cambodian government to summit its request of any prioritized projects to the Italian embassy from there we will consider more assistance," Pipan told Sok An, who is also the Minister in charge of the Office of the Council of Ministers.

Sok An, in response, asked Italy to look to expand its assistance to preserve as well as preservation of the 900-year-old Khmer Preah Vihear Temple which was listed in July 2008 as a World Heritage Site.
 

Curfew- like restrictions in Muslim dominated areas of India-controlled Kashmir Thursday paralyzed life for third straight day, officials and locals said.

The restrictions have been imposed by authorities in a bid to impede violent protests in the region.

 

(Photo) Kashmiri protesters clash with Indian policeman after police stopped a protest march in Srinagar, summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, June 28, 2010. Thousends of people defied security restrictions and clashed with Indian peolice in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Monday, with two people were killed in separate incidents

Thousands of policemen and India's paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel in riot gear have been deployed across all the major towns including Srinagar city, the summer capital of India-controlled Kashmir to impose restrictions for the third consecutive day.

A group of women protesters this morning tried to break the restriction and march toward a Mosque in Srinagar in response to separatist call. However, the police impeded the march and chased away the women.

A large number of women police personnel were also deployed along with men to prevent the protest march.

On Wednesday no violence was reported barring some minor incidents. Officials said the day passed off without casualties.

The strict restrictions are in place in Sopre and Anantnag towns located toward northwest and south of Srinagar city. Both the towns witnessed killings in police and paramilitary shooting on protesters in previous days.
 

Lawyers of ousted former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra are separately campaigning to draw international attention to the suppression of the "red-shirts " protest by the Thai government, the Bangkok Post's website reported Wednesday.

 

(Photo) Ex-Prime Minister Thaksin

Noppadon Pattama, Thaksin's personal lawyer and close aide in Thailand, on Wednesday morning said that he was in Washington D.C., having been invited by academics, thinkers and media member.

In a video link to the opposition Puea Thai Party headquarters in central Bangkok, Noppadon claimed to have also met administrative and legislative figures in the United States, but declined to reveal their names.

Noppadon said he told people he met what happened in Thailand in the past two or three months and had convinced them that neither the protesters nor Thaksin were terrorists, as claimed by the Thai government.

Thaksin was ousted by the military coup in September, 2006, in accusation of massive corruption, and kept in exile since then. Thaksin returned to Thailand in February, 2008 to face corruption charges, but he later fled into exile again and was convicted in absentia.

With UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon's appointment of an experts panel to advise him on alleged human rights abuses during the final battles between Sri Lanka's government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009, the island country is at loggerheads with the UN.

Rejecting the allegations, the government said the appointment of an experts panel without Sri Lanka's consent is a violation of sovereignty and also prejudicial to Sri Lanka's own investigation by a committee appointed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The UN estimates over 7,000 civilians were killed in the last five months of the battle with the Liberation Tiger of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) while over 100,000 people died in the three-decade-old civil war.

Human rights groups, which urged Mr.Ban to call an investigation, claimed they have photographic and video evidence to prove the military executed Tamil Tiger rebels and bombed civilians indiscriminately.

But the government claims he was pressurized by the pro-LTTE Western countries influenced by the Tamil diaspora.

The International Crisis Group, an independent think tank, claimed grave human rights violations happened in the north during the final stage of the battle. The London-based Channel 4 TV station aired a video showing Sri Lankan soldiers executing surrendered LTTE rebels.

Human rights groups blamed both the military and the LTTE for war crimes but the Rajapaksa government vehemently denied any human rights violation during the closing months of the battle.