Suspect leads FBI to Nairobi hotel

NAIROBI, Aug 19 (AFP) — Mohammed Saddiq Howaida, the Arab suspect in the Nairobi bombing, which killed 247 persons, led FBI agents to a hotel here where the bomb was made, The Daily Nation reported today.

Howaida, who was deported here from Karachi after the August 7 blast, masterminded the attack on the US embassy, the paper said.

Without giving sources, the daily said the 800-kg bomb was made at the Hill Top Hotel in downtown Nairobi.

Fifteen armed Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents accompanied by the Kenyan police conducted a minute search of the hotel for two-and-a-half hours yesterday, arrested its manager and took away evidence, the newspaper said.

Howaida, described as the mastermind of the bombing, had five accomplices. Three died in the blast and the others were at large.

ISLAMABAD: Afghanistan’s Taliban militia today rejected a us call to hand over alleged Saudi terrorist Ossma Bin Laden and vowed to protect him “at all cost,” the Afghan Islamic Press reported.

“We will never hand Ossama over to anyone and protect him with our blood at all cost,” the Pakistan-based agency quoted Taliban chief Mulla Mohammad Omar as saying.

Omar slammed allegations that Bin Laden was behind the August 7 bombings in Nairobi and Dar Es Salam that killed 257 persons including 12 Americans.

“The us intelligence and investigation agencies find it convenient to blame Ossama to cover up their own failures,” he said.

Yesterday, us Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, speaking at a news conference in Nairobi, indicated that Taliban leaders should hand over Bin Laden if they hope to win recognition.

The renegade Saudi, living in exile in Afghanistan, has been cited as a leading suspect in the investigation of the twin bombings in East Africa.

“Bin Laden’s activities are inimical to those of civilised people in the world and the USA “Ms Albright said after paying a visit to the site of the bombing and to Kenyan victims in a hospital.

CAIRO: A group calling itself “Islamic international front for fighting Jews and crusaders” has issued new threats against the USA, the London-based Arabic language daily Al-Hayat reported today.

The paper said the group had sent a statement to its Cairo office saying that the “holy struggle operations” carried out recently against the USA would continue “until American forces withdraw from the land of Muslims.”

Al-Hayat said it had received the statement along with three other messages from the “Islamic army for the liberation of holy places”, which claimed responsibility for the devastating August 7 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The Islamic front statement referred to the Islamic army for the liberation of the holy places without specifying whether the two groups were linked, it said.

The paper said the front had issued its first statement in February in the form of a fatwa from several radical Islamic leaders, including Saudi-born Osama Bin Laden.

Laden, now based in Afghanistan, is widely suspected of having orchestrated the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

Lewinsky reappears before jury today

WASHINGTON, Aug 19 (AP, Reuters) — Prosecutors have called Monica Lewinsky back to the grand jury to respond to President Bill Clinton’s testimony about their “inappropriate” relationship, legal sources said.

Prosecutors, whom Mr Clinton rebuked for invading his privacy, pressed on. They summoned Lewinsky to return tomorrow to respond to elements of Clinton’s testimony, said sources familiar with the request, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In more than four hours of testimony, Clinton acknowledged an inappropriate relationship with Lewinsky but refused to detail specific sexual contact.

Former Presidential Adviser Dick Morris, who resigned during his own sex scandal in 1996, appeared before the same grand jury yesterday to tell about his five conversations with Clinton after the Lewinsky allegations became public in January.

Interviewed on FOX news, Morris said that in talking to Clinton on January 21, the President said: I just slipped up with that girl...I didn’t do what they said I did. But I did do something.” Morris said he was told by Clinton that “There would likely be gifts and messages on her answering machine.”

With his short address still reverberating through America, Clinton left with his family and dog Buddy for a 12-day vacation on the island of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. Daughter Chelsea walked between her parents, holding their hands and chatting. As they crossed the White House lawn to board a helicopter, they were greeted by a throng of supporters in Edgartown, on the island. The President celebrates his 52nd birthday today.

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton remains deeply in love and committed to her husband, a spokeswoman said, one day after Bill Clinton admitted to a sexual liaison with Monica Lewinsky.

“She is committed to her marriage and loves her husband and daughter very much. She believes in the President, and her love for him is compassionate and steadfast,” Hillary’s Press Secretary Marsha Berry said yesterday.

Berry said Hillary was unhappy that the affair was being aired so publicly.

“This has certainly not been the best day of her life, but she has a strong religious faith that she relies on,” Berry said. “She is uncomfortable with how her personal life has been made so public.”

US Vice-President Al Gore praised Bill Clinton yesterday, calling him a “great President” and urging Americans to leave the Lewinsky scandal behind.

Speaking from Hawaii, where he is vacationing with his family, Gore said he spoke to Clinton on Monday night after his public confession of an inappropriate relationship with Lewinsky.

“I want to again express my strong support for the President, his leadership of this nation and the programmes that have led this country to unprecedented prosperity,” Gore said in a statement released by the White House.

Leading Republicans have withheld judgement on President Clinton’s televised confession of sex with Lewinsky.

Some urged him to resign, but the majority said they would wait to see whether independent counsel Kenneth Starr came up with evidence of criminal misconduct.

Democrats said Clinton let them down by denying for months a sexual relationship with Lewinsky but also that it was now time for Americans to put the long sex scandal behind them.

US House Speaker Newt Gingrich said he could not judge Clinton until he had a report from Starr, special prosecutor investigating the relationship between Clinton and Lewinsky.

Henry Hyde, the Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said it was premature to speculate on how the House of Representatives would handle such a report.

“I think everyone would be best served if they would wait for judge Starr’s report to find out what all the facts are,” Gingrich said yesterday.

Hyde, whose committee could decide on impeachment proceedings, said once it heard from Starr his committee would then make “a fair, full and independent review of these facts in their proper context.” Until then, “we simply should not speculate about how the House would proceed,” he added.

Analysts say Democrats are worried the scandal will damage their chances at congressional elections in November. The Republicans are reluctant to let Clinton off the hook but they know that public opinion does not favour any attempt to drive the President out of office.

Paula Jones, the woman whose sexual harassment lawsuit sparked the White House sex scandal, has rejected President Clinton’s assertion that he never told anyone to lie about it.

Clinton’s relationship with Lewinsky first came to light during Jone’s lawsuit against the President, which was thrown out of court in April.

Jones is appealing the case and her attorneys said Clinton’s televised admission of an improper relationship with Lewinsky would prove that he lied under oath in the Jones case.

Jones alleged in her lawsuit that Clinton exposed himself and asked her for oral sex in a little rock hotel in 1991. He was Governor of Arkansas at the time and she was a state employee.

Clinton on Monday said his denial in the Jones case of a sexual affair with Lewinsky was legally accurate, but he admitted that he did not volunteer information and misled Americans about the relationship.

Missile export to Pak admitted

BEIJING, Aug 19 (PTI) — North Korea, suspected of exporting ballistic missiles to Pakistan and Iran, has admitted to the charge and demanded “compensation” from the USA to stop further proliferation, an American official said here today.

“North Korean officials said they would be glad to stop the proliferation of missiles if the US Government was willing to compensate North Korea accordingly,” Mr Peter Brookes, aide to the US House of Representative’s International Relations Committee (HIRC) Chairman, Mr Benjamin Gilman, said.

A four-member fact-finding HIRC team which returned from North Korea was told that the latter earned about $ 500 million a year from missile exports.

“However, our estimate is that North Korea earns $ 1.5 billion from missile exports,” Mr Brookes said, adding that the actions of North Korea were unacceptable to the team.

“We expressed our concern with North Korea on the destabilising role of these missiles in South Asia and in West Asia,” he said pointing to test-firing of Pakistan’s Ghauri, Iran’s Shehab-3 missiles, both of which are suspected to be of North Korean origin.

Shah mission to Iraq fails

NEW YORK, Aug 19 (PTI) — The UN special envoy today left Baghdad after he failed in his mission to convince Iraqis to resume cooperation with weapons inspectors in a bid to resolve the latest UN-Iraq stand-off.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s special envoy Prakash Shah said the stand-off between Iraq and the inspectors could be still solved through dialogue, though the Iraqi Government was standing by its decision to suspend cooperation with the arms inspectors announced on August 5.

In Baghdad, Mr Shah had held several unsuccessful rounds of meetings with Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz and other Iraqi officials to rescind Iraq’s decision halting cooperation with UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspectors.

Iraq said it would not resume cooperation with weapons inspectors unless the commission was restructured and its headquarters moved from New York to Geneva or Vienna to reduce what it said was the US influence over them.

Baghdad also wants an end to the sweeping UN sanctions imposed on it after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

UNITED NATIONS: The Security Council, meanwhile, appeared uncertain about how to respond to Iraq’s refusal to resume cooperation with the weapons inspectors.

The council despatched letters to the weapons inspectors supporting their mandate but gave little guidance as to whether they should push ahead with intrusive inspections.

After closed door consultations, council president Danilo Turk of Slovenia said time was not yet right to threaten Iraq with force, but Chinese representative Shen Guofang made it quite explicit that Beijing opposed any such move.

British Royals turn gentler

LONDON, Aug 19 (Reuters) — The year since the death of Princess Diana has seen marked changes in the way the members of the British Royal family present themselves to their subjects.

But suspicions remain that this may be little more than a public relations gloss designed to win back the popularity they lost in the final sad stages of the Princess’s life and in the immediate aftermath of her death.

Diana had long upstaged her apparently much more staid former husband, Prince Charles. After she was killed in a car crash in Paris August 31 last, the Royal family disappeared behind castle walls and seemed out of touch with the mood of a grieving nation.

When Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, hit out at the Royals in his oration at the funeral in Westminster Abbey, there was a feeling that something had better been done fast to repair the damage to the standing of British’s 1,000 year-old monarchy.

In a swipe at a Royal family that had deprived Diana of the style “her royal highness” after her divorce, Spencer said his sister “needed no Royal title to continue to generate her particular brand of magic”.

The effect on the thousands, listening outside the abbey and the millions watching on television was electric.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose Labour government had swept into office only months before, was quick to make clear that the monarchy must modernise or die.

“I personally think the monarchy is a tradition which we want to keep,” he said. “But the monarchy adapts and changes and will change and modernise with each generation.”

Charles (49), long an enemy of the Press that had painted him as dull alongside his glamorous wife, went out of his way to ingratiate himself with reporters covering his trip, with younger son Prince Harry, to South Africa last November.

During the trip, there was a photo-opportunity with the chart-topping pop group the Spice Girls and, just as importantly, approving stories saying, “the Prince of Wales comes out of Africa with a new image.”

Charles himself, while perhaps unsure of whether the time is yet ripe to introduce his beloved, Camilla Parker Bowles, onto the public stage, has been at pains to put his staid and dusty image behind him.

He has just unveiled a new architectural foundation to humanise Britain’s cities. The body will be “modern, but not modernist” and while respecting tradition will also “encourage innovation”, he said.

This is fairly strong stuff from a prince who once described London’s new and thoroughly modern British library as looking like an academy for the secret police.

If the heir to the throne has been brushing up his image, his mother, Queen Elizabeth, has also taken steps to look a bit more in touch with public opinion, something she acknowledged last December when she celebrated her 50th wedding anniversary.

‘Real’ IRA declares ceasefire

LONDON, Aug 19 (DPA) — The underground group of Irish nationalists that mounted Northern Ireland’s worst-ever terrorist bombing, the so-called Real IRA, declared a ceasefire early this morning after an appeal from the Irish Prime Minister, Mr Bertie Ahern.

In a statement issued in Dublin, the IRA splinter group said it was responding to the ‘Omagh tragedy’ and Mr Ahern’s last evening demand.

The Real IRA had admitted responsibility yesterday for the bombing, which killed 28 persons in the market town of Omagh on Saturday, the highest toll in any bombing in the three-decade history of the troubles.

The breakaway faction’s statement was passed to the Dublin office of the Belfast-based Irish newspaper by a caller using a recognised codeword.

Mr Ahern, on a visit yesterday to Buncrana in the north of the Irish republic for a memorial service for three young boys who were among the Omagh victims, demanded that dissident Republican groups declare an end to their campaigns of violence within 24 hours.

‘India, Pak pose threat to USA’

WASHINGTON, Aug 19 (PTI) - A Republican Congressman has clubbed India and Pakistan with China and the so-called “rogue states” like Iraq and Iran and said these countries pose long-term danger to the USA.

“The President (Bill Clinton) still closes his eyes to the arms race in China, India, Pakistan, Iran and other nations that are arming their war machines with missiles capable of hitting cities in the USA,” Republican member of the House of Representatives Committee on National Security Jim Ryan claimed yesterday.

On the other hand, he said in an article published in the Washington Times, as a result of the sharp budget cuts, the US defence forces were getting weaker and weaker.

Without naming any particular country as constituting a potential danger to the USA, Mr William R. Graham, a member of the Rumsfeld Commission, pointed out that North Korea, for example, reportedly conducted only one test launch before it deployed its medium-range Nodong missile and transferred the Nodong technology to Pakistan; whose Ghauri is believed to be either the rechristened Nodong missile or a Pakistani version derived from it.

“These are serious powers that know what they want. Their quest for missiles and weapons of mass destruction reflects a well-thought-out strategy to trump the western capability to project overwhelming conventional power into their regions,” they said.

USA trying to block arms’ sale to India

JERUSALEM, Aug 19 (AFP) — The USA has demanded that Israel halt negotiations for the sale of electronic weapons to India following Delhi’s recent nuclear tests, the Haaretz newspaper reported today.

The newspaper said Washington was seeking to block the deal even though the defense electronics gear was wholly made in Israel without any us technology.

Negotiations between Israel and India over the sale have been under way for a year and an Indian delegation recently visited Israel to examine the equipment, it said.

Indian ship Captain denies charges

COLOMBO, Aug 19 (PTI) — The Indian Captain of the bombed merchant vessel today said that his ship was hijacked by LTTE militants as it was approaching point Pedro Port in northern Jaffna peninsula and denied allegations that he changed its course to deliver dangerous cargo to the rebels.

Capt B.N. Karkera, who was released along with 16 fellow Indian crew members yesterday by the LTTE after four days of captivity, told newspersons here that he strictly adhered to the route given by the defence authorities and never deviated as alleged by the Sri Lankan Navy.

"In fact, Sri Lankan Air Force planes bombed the vessel despite repeated appeals over the radio by him not to do so as the LTTE kept him and some of the fellow crew men till few minutes before the planes began bombing," he said before boarding an Indian Airlines flight to Chennai.

"Watching my ship bombed from the coast I wept," he said.

The crew members had a narrow escape as the rebels brought them down minutes before the Sri Lankan Air Force plane began bombing the ship, Cap Karkera said, adding, they managed to escape by taking cover in LTTE bunkers near Mullaithivu.

He said the 6,500-tonne ship, "M.V. Princes Kash’ left Colombo early last week after obtaining all clearances, but heavily armed LTTE militants took over the vessel as it was approaching the point Pedro Port to deliver the cargo.

The ship was stopped after the LTTE radio warning was mistaken as that of the Sri Lankan Navy, he said, saying he realised that it was hijacked only after the gun-wielding militants boarded it.

The vessel was later brought back by the rebels to the Mullaithivu coast which was under their control, he said.

Replying to the Sri Lankan Government’s charge that the vessel deviated from the chartered course, the Captain said the LTTE men took command of the steering wheel once they took over.

Yeltsin rejects resignation
MOSCOW: The President, Mr Boris Yeltsin, has declined to accept the resignations of the Prime Minister, Sergei Keriyenko, and the Central Bank Chairman, Sergei Dubinin, following the devaluation of the rouble, commercial channel NTV reported on Tuesday. Mr Yeltsin had asked them to continue the task of rectifying the situation even as both Kiriyenko and Dubinin have assumed personal responsibility for the crisis, NTV said, quoting a highly placed Kremlin source. The President has, however, accepted the resignation of his top economic aide and deputy chief of the Kremlin Administration, Dr Alexander Livshits. — PTI

Moon’s atmosphere
WASHINGTON: Researchers have reported more about the moon’s wispy atmosphere, saying it contains small amounts of oxygen, silicon and aluminium. Although most people believe the moon has no atmosphere, it does have a very light one. Apollo astronauts who landed there in the 1970s identified helium and argon atoms, and sodium and potassium were later seen from earth. — Reuters

Mussolini’s hat
SCARBOROUGH: A hat once worn by Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini topped bids at an auction of the Italian leader’s effects more than half a century after his death. The black boat-shaped mutz hat was sold for $ 3,700 to a private bidder when it went under the hammer at an auction in Scarborough, northern England. It was among a historic collection of books, private papers and memorabilia taken from Mussolini’s personal library by a British pilot at the end of World War II. — AFP

Anne Frank diary
AMSTERDAM: World War II researchers have reported finding five missing pages of Anne Frank’s famed diary, in which the young Jewish girl harshly describes her parents’ marriage. The handwritten pages, previously not known to exist, were in the possession of a former employee of the Anne Frank Foundation, according to the foundation and The Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation. The man holding the pages said Anne’s father, Otto Frank, gave them to him shortly before his death in 1980. — AP

N-bomb project
WASHINGTON: Sandia National Laboratories of the USA has shut down a project to design a guided nuclear bomb reportedly planned for use against targets in ‘emerging nations’. A flight test scheduled for next month in which an unarmed prototype was to have been dropped from an airplane has been cancelled, Sandia vice-president Roger Hagengruber said. The target of the planned bomb were third world countries like India.

Non-toxic fuel
WASHINGTON: US navy researchers have developed a cheap, non-toxic rocket fuel that could cut costs dramatically for military satellite launchers and anti-ballistic missiles, Defense News reports. The new fuel technology could also lead to smaller, more reliable rocket engines, and a variant could be developed to power non-polluting turbines for ground vehicles. The researchers call the substance non-polluting hypergolic miscible fuel (NHMF). — PTI

Homicide list
LONDON: Big cities in the USA are far more dangerous than most European capitals, according to a Home Office survey of homicide rates. The government department compared cases of murder, infanticide and manslaughter per 1,00,000 persons in 29 North American and European cities and found US cities came out on top, the figures were published on Wednesday. Washington DC outranked all others with 69.3 homicides per 1,00,000 population. — AP