Defeated presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka to face coup attempt charge as row over election result takes dramatic turn

The defeated candidate in last month’s tense presidential election in Sri Lanka, General Sarath Fonseka, was arrested today at his office in Colombo and is to be charged with attempting a military coup to overthrow the government.

The sudden arrest of the 59-year-old former chief of Sri Lankan armed forces and the architect of their bloody but successful campaign against the Tamil Tigers last year, sparked fears of a widespread crackdown on opponents of the incumbent president, Mahindra Rajapakse.

A government spokesman confirmed that Fonseka had been arrested, saying he had been detained for “committing military offences”.

Later government minister Keheliya Rambukwella said Fonseka would be tried in a military court on charges of conspiring against the president and planning a coup while army chief.

“When he was the army commander and chief of defence staff and member of the security council, he had direct contact with opposition political parties, which under the military law can amount to conspiracy,” Rambukwella said.

“He’s been plotting against the president while in the military … with the idea of overthrowing the government,” he added.

Fonseka’s wife is reported to have confirmed the detention of her husband following an increase in the number of security forces deployed outside the hotel he used as an office during the day.

Allies of Fonseka described his arrest during the course of a p­lanning meeting with political allies. Rauff Hakeem, leader of the Muslim Congress party, told Reuters that the general had been “dragged away in a very disgraceful manner in front of our own eyes”.

Fonseka appears to have resisted arrest. Mano Ganeshan, an opposition member of parliament, said the general was “forcibly carried away” after having objected to being arrested by military police rather than civilian officials.

“He was humiliated and disgraced in the way he was handled. We were just flabbergasted,” Ganeshan said.

Fonseka, who has repeatedly alleged that the elections were fraudulently won by Rajapakse, was planning to campaign in parliamentary polls due to be held by April.

Speculation about the detention of the general had mounted over the weekend with Sri Lankan newspapers reporting on Sunday that Rajapakse had sought legal advice from government lawyers about trying his political rival in a military court.

Hours before his arrest, Fonseka, who himself has been accused of a range of human rights abuses during the fighting against the Tamil Tigers last year, had said he was prepared to give evidence at international tribunals investigating the 25-year-long civil war. “I am definitely going to reveal what I know, what I was told and what I heard. Anyone who has committed war crimes should be brought into the courts,” the BBC reported him as saying.

• Democrats fear Republicans will win seat held since 1974
• President’s poll ratings fall further amid health care impasse

The Democratic party faces another election test after the death yesterday of John Murtha, a congressman dubbed by his colleagues the “king of pork”.

Murtha, aged 77, had been in the House of Representatives since being elected to his Pennsylvania district in 1974.

The fear in the party is that Republicans will notch up another victory when a special election is held, probably May.

The Democrats have been panicking since losing Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat to the Republicans last month.

Murtha’s nickname referred to so-called pork barrel politics – bringing government spending to bear in a representative’s own district.

His death came on a day that saw Barack Obama’s poll ratings fall further. A Marist poll found that only 44% of voters surveyed approved of his job performance, down 2% on December. More alarming for Democratic strategists, 57% of independents disapprove of his performance.

Murtha’s death will have a neglible impact on the arithmetic of the House, where the Democrats have an overwhelming majority, unlike in the Senate. But another defeat in the spring would add to the sense of panic among Democrats in the run-up to the Congressional mid-term elections in November.

Murtha’s office said he had died in hospital after complications following gallbladder surgery. He had been in hospital for several months.

His election in 1974 marked him out as the first of those to have served in Vietnam to make it into Congress.

He was popular on the left as one of the first senior Democrats in 2005 to turn against the Iraq war. But he was also one of the leading exponents of ‘pork-barrel’ politics, a practice that has long been reviled outside Washington and is one of the reasons for the present levels of disenchantment.

Murtha, as chairman of the House defence appropriations sub-committee, added ‘earmarks’, special spending projects to help his district, to defence bills, hence the King of Pork.

Scandal hovered over him throughout much of his career.

Murtha faced a tough race for re-election in 2008 after sabotaging his own campaign by referring to some of voters in Pennsylvania as “racist”.

One of the reasons for the turnaround in Democratic fortunes is opposition to Barack Obama’s health reform plan.

The president will make a fresh push this month to get his troubled health reform package through Congress by meeting both Democrats and Republicans, hoping to find common ground.

The half-day discussion at Blair House, opposite the White House, will be broadcast live on television to counter public criticism that too many deals in Washington are made behind closed doors.

Obama announced the meeting during a CBS television interview on Sunday evening. “I want to consult closely with our Republican colleagues … to ask them to put their ideas on the table. I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward,” he said.

The Republican leader in the House of Representatives, John Boehner, welcomed the move as “a real, bipartisan conversation”, but added: “The problem with the Democrats’ healthcare bills is not that the American people don’t understand them; the American people do understand them and they don’t like them.”

The Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, welcomed the meeting, but suggested he was unlikely to compromise, calling for the Democrats’ bill to be shelved.

The move buys the Democrats a few more weeks while they debate among themselves whether to push forward with the bill or abandon it. The version of the bill passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve would extend health care to 30 million more Americans.

• Minister to make key decision on major crop
• Broad alliance takes on Monsanto subsidiary

A fierce row over the future of the humble aubergine, staple ingredient of fiery brinjal curries for tens of millions of Indians, will reach a climax on Wednesday with a key government decision on the possible future commercial cultivation of genetically-modified strains of the plant. If permission is given, the aubergine will become the first GM foodstuff to be grown in India.

The decision will be taken by the environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, who pledged last year to end the heated argument over whether aubergines modified with a gene from the soil bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis should be distributed to Indian farmers.

An alliance of voices ranging from environmentalists to leftwing politicians and Hindu extremists have called on Ramesh to deny permission for the commercial cultivation of the Bt Brinjal strain, named after the bacteria and the local word for aubergine.

“It will open the gate,” said Leo Saldanha, an environmental campaigner in the southern city of Bengalooru. “It raises huge legal and cultural issues.”

The decision Ramesh takes will reveal how far “India was willing to allow the farmer to be subordinated to corporate interests”, he said.

Ramesh told one of the many rowdy meetings he has attended as part of a public consultation exercise that trying to reconcile the opposing camps had “turned [his] hair grey”.

Aubergine is a major crop in India, where it has been cultivated for thousands of years. Though not native it is seen as an integral part of culture and diet, particularly of the poor.

Backers claim the modified aubergines would cut crop losses due to insect damage by more than half and drastically reduce pesticide use. They argue also that extensive animal testing has shown that the bacterium introduced into the aubergine, though toxic to boring insects, would not be harmful to humans.

Campaigners question the evidence, and argue that commercial interests have overly influenced the regulatory process. They say the 2,000-odd varieties of aubergine cultivated in India would be threatened if Bt Brinjal was introduced. “It is a hugely important decision, not just for India, for the whole world,” said Dr Shiva Vandana, director of a network of groups campaigning against GM foods in India, and a key figure in the development of international biosafety treaties. “The question is whether or not public opinion will be listened to.”

The seeds have been developed by Indian scientists but will be marketed by the Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company, an Indian firm partly owned by the US multinational Monsanto – the cause of much criticism and controversy.

The southern state of Kerala, run by an alliance of opposition leftwing parties, has already banned GM crops on the grounds that they are a threat to biodiversity.

Last week, the state’s Marxist chief minister, VS Achuthanandan, claimed GM foods would lead to the “colonisation of the food sector.

“We shouldn’t be a part of a system that will destroy traditional seeds and crops and allow [multinational corporations] to infringe on the agriculture sector,” he said.

Hindu nationalists from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have also taken up the aubergine’s cause. Mohan Bhagwat, a senior RSS official, told a public meeting in Bengalooru last weekend that Bt Brinjal was “untested” and “dangerous” andits introduction would only benefit “the multinationals”. He likened the new aubergines to “terrorist infiltrators” sent by foreign powers to destabilise India.

Government scientists have, however, told ministers that Bt Brinjal poses no threat. “Our experts examined the science behind Bt Brinjal and concluded that it is absolutely safe. The only thing that hasn’t been done is human testing,” Dr Maharaj Kishan Bhan, a senior research scientist at the ministry of science and technology said. “You can take a philosophical view that all GM foods are bad ‑ but from a scientific point of view I would say it is fine.”

Irish National Liberation Army and Official Republican Movement say they have put their weapons beyond use

Two Irish republican groups which fought a bitter feud in the 1970s have united to disarm their illegal arsenals.

The Official Republican Movement (ORM), a faction of the Official IRA, revealed today that it had put its weapons beyond use. Its statement came just under an hour after the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) announced it had decommissioned its weapons.

The INLA was responsible for more than 120 deaths during the Troubles, including the assassination of Margaret Thatcher’s friend and ally Airey Neave MP in 1979. It was born out of a split within the Officials over the latters’ decision to call a ceasefire in 1972.

In 1975 the INLA and the Official IRA were engaged in a violent feud that claimed several lives. The Officials later murdered the INLA’s founder, Seamus Costello, who was leader of the Irish Republican Socialist Party.

The INLA and the ORM have worked with the same Irish trade union contacts in their moves towards disarming. Peter Bunting, Northern Ireland secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, confirmed today that he had been one of the conduits between the INLA and General John de Chastelain’s decommissioning body. Bunting told the Guardian that he had seen a large quantity of guns, bullets and explosives.

The INLA’s announcement was made by former prisoner Martin McMonagle in Belfast. “We make no apology for our part in the conflict,” he said. “We believe conditions have now changed in such a way that other options are open to revolutionaries to pursue and ultimately achieve our objectives.”

He added: “We can also confirm that the INLA has disarmed through a joint facilitation group consisting of local, a national and an international organisation. This was done in accordance with international standards. We hope that this will further enhance the primacy of politics and that it will in time unite and advance the working-class struggle in Ireland.”

Gerry Kelly, Sinn Féin minister at Stormont, welcomed the moves and called on all other republican groups to do the same. “There is no support for, or appetite for, armed actions within the republican community,” he said. “The INLA has recognised this.”

Sources in the Official Republican Movement, which was formed in 1996, confirmed that it had also engaged with the decommissioning body to put its arms beyond use. It said it had worked with the same trade unionists to move its weapons into the hands of De Chastelain.

As well helping the two republican organisations to decommission, the trade union link has been used to build contacts across the sectarian divide. Former INLA, ORM and IRA activists hold talks with their loyalist counterparts in the trade union movement’s offices in central Belfast about forming cross-community projects and lowering sectarian tensions.

Laura Chinchilla wins 47% of the vote and will be Latin America’s fifth woman president when she takes office

Costa Rica has elected its first female president in a landslide victory, marking another political milestone for women in Latin America.

Laura Chinchilla, from the centrist ruling party, won 47% of the vote in a crowded field in yesterday’s poll, further eroding the region’s reputation as a bastion of machismo and patriarchy.

“Wives and working women continue overcoming barriers to make a greater Costa Rica,” the 50-year-old said in her acceptance speech. “All the women and also the men who have accompanied us have made it possible that a daughter of this country can today be president.”

Chinchilla is the fifth woman to be elected president in Latin America in the past two decades, a sign of slowly growing female economic and political clout after centuries of subservience.

She followed Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner, elected in 2007, Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, elected in 2006, Panama’s Mireya Moscoso, elected in 1999, and Nicaragua’s Violeta Chamorro, elected in 1990.

Chinchilla, married and mother to a teenage son, is a protege of President Óscar Arias, a Nobel peace laureate and veteran political operator who has consolidated Costa Rica as one of central America’s most stable, prosperous economies.

She stepped down as vice-president last year to run as his successor and promised to keep the ruling National Liberation party’s free market policies of expanding trade deals and wooing investment.

“I am thankful for the good work of the outgoing government and thankful our country is again moving forward and refuses to allow this advance to stop,” Chinchilla told cheering supporters.

A social conservative who opposes gay marriage and abortion, she campaigned under the slogan “Laura: firm and honest,” and said her priority would be to combat drug-fuelled violent crime. Opponents had cast her as a hypocritical Arias puppet who was soft on criminals. One rival, Otto Guevara, took a televised polygraph test to show he was more honest. Another, Luis Fishman, ran on the slogan that of all the candidates he was the “lesser evil”.

Despite or perhaps partly because of such tactics, Chinchilla won in all seven provinces, a rare feat, and easily surpassed the 40% needed to avoided a run-off.

She will not have an easy ride. Environmentalists oppose the president-elect’s commitment to open-pit mining, trade unions resent a free trade deal with the US and opposition parties may have enough votes in congress to impede her fiscal and energy policies.

Girls and women are getting better education and jobs across Latin America but patriarchy remains entrenched, according to a recent poll taken in 18 countries. Some 36% of respondents said women should stay at home rather than work, the same proportion as in 1997.