World in brief: Taiwan’s president vows to ease tension

Nationalist Party leader Ma Ying-jeou took office as Taiwan’s president today, promising to seek greater economic cooperation with rival China and ease nearly six decades of tensions.

The inauguration of 57-year-old Ma represents a clear break from the eight-year presidency of Chen Shui-bian, whose confrontational pro-independence policies often led to friction with Beijing – and with the United States, Taiwan’s most important foreign partner.

In contrast to the independence bent of Chen’s Democratic Progressive Party, Ma’s Nationalists have never formally renounced a desire for eventual unification with China, from which Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949.

Fifty-nine years after their split, China still claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has repeatedly threatened to attack if the island makes its de facto independence permanent.

Rather than politics, Ma’s major emphasis has been seeking to tie Taiwan’s powerful but laggard high-tech economy more closely to China’s white-hot economic boom.

He has proposed beginning direct commercial flights across the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait and opening Taiwan’s doors to a massive influx of Chinese tourists.

Bogota, Colombia

High-ranked rebel leader surrenders

A high-ranking Colombian rebel leader has given herself up, the latest defection to suggest that the government’s efforts to strike at the group’s leadership is succeeding.

Analysts said the surrender of Nelly Avila Moreno, alias Karina, is a blow to the morale of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in whose ranks she fought for 24 years, earning a reputation as a fierce and resourceful leader.

Moreno’s surrender Sunday afternoon in southern Antioquia state brings to six the number of commanders who have surrendered, been killed or captured in the past year. Her partner Abelardo Montes, alias “Michin,” and a daughter also surrendered to undercover Colombian police.

Moreno, 40, was one of the most feared FARC commanders, and officials suspect her of having orchestrated mass murders and summary executions. Among the half-dozen criminal charges pending against her are murder, terrorism, drug trafficking and human-rights abuses.