COLOMBO: Cash-Strapped Sri Lanka has asked its employees to donate a week's salary to boost its war effort against the LTTE but some trade unions have declined, officials said on Monday. They said the defence secretary had written to the heads of all ministries, departments and state-run corporations last week, seeking their cooperation to collect at least a week's salary as donations. Some trade unions and workers have opposed the move. The powerful Ceylon Bank Employees Union (CEBU) said they had decided against making ``further donations''.

BEIJING: In what is seen as a snub to French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, China has persuaded him to travel to the countryside to meet President Jiang Zemin, a Hong Kong newspaper reported today. Jospin, who begins a two-day official visit to China on Thursday, has been asked to alter his schedule and go to Hefei, capital of Anhui province, to meet Jiang, who will be inspecting the flood-hit area. Such high-levelmeetings normally take place in Beijing, the South China Morning Post said.

But diplomatic circles see the move as retaliation towards the French socialist party, which was in power when the sale of Mirage fighter jets to Taiwan was organised in 1992, the newspaper said.

``Jospin was then secretary-general of the party. They are forcing him to kow-tow because of the Mirage sales to Taiwan,'' the paper quoted a French analyst as saying.

Bangla action plan to beat future floods

DHAKA: Bangladesh, recovering from its worst floods this century, has drawn up a 40-million-dollar action plan to protect the country from future disasters, press reports said here on Monday. The plan, with help of foreign donors, was likely to be implemented from October and mainly focus on river dredging after experts reported many waterways were heavily silted, the Associated Press of Bangladesh (APB) news agency said.

Under a pilot project, 12 million cubic meters of soil will be dredged from a 21-km stretchof the Goral river connected to the Ganges, the report said.

Dhaka will provide 20 million dollars, while the rest will come from the Netherlands and Belgium, APB said, adding the World Bank was financing the river dredging study.

Bangla author defends Taslima Nasreen

DHAKA: In the first published appeal defending controversial author Taslima Nasreen's right to live in Bangladesh, eminent author Anwara Syed Haq has mounted a strident offensive against the fundamentalists. ``It is my fervent appeal to all of you to see to it that these fundamentalist groups under no circumstances could snatch away the rights and sovereignty of womenfolk centering Taslima,'' she said in an article in the leading Bengali daily Sangbad.

Nasreen returned to Bangladesh on September 14 following four years of self exile after her novel Lajja (Shame) attracted the ire of fundamentalists on whose pressure the police issued an arrest warrant against the doctor-turned-author.

Her whereabouts after returnare still not known though Bengali daily Bhorer Kagoj claimed quoting unidentified sources that she was hiding at an apartment in a posh Dhaka locality under round-the-clock security by a 20-member team.