Bombed factory ‘not’ Laden’s
NEW YORK, Aug 27 — The Sudanese pharmaceutical factory which was destroyed by American Cruise missiles last week is owned by Saleh Idresse, a Sudanese who also has citizenship in Saudi Arabia, media reports said today.

207 massacred in Congo parish
ROME, Aug 27 — The death toll from massacres at Kasika parish and other villages near Uvira in the eastern Congo has risen to at least 207, the Italian missionary news agency Misna reported.

UN weapons inspector resigns
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 27 — In a far-reaching move, high-profile UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter resigned citing lack of UN and US support for his disarmament mission.

A ‘heavyweight’ PM in Russia
THE latest upheaval in Russia’s nervous ruling class had nothing to do with ideology or ability. It was all about weight.

UK Sikh leaders flay Labour MPs

LONDON, Aug 27 (PTI) — Sikh leaders and British MPs here took to task fellow Labour MPs for trying to whip up a motivated campaign on the alleged human rights violations in Punjab for vested constituency interests.

Mr Piara Khabra, a Sikh Labour member of Commons, and some Congress leaders from Punjab, including Mr Surinder Singla, crossed swords with another Labour MP Mr John MacDonald, for floating a human rights group on Punjab recently.

Mr Khabra, a special guest at a meeting thrown by the Indian Overseas Congress over the weekend to mark India’s 51st Independence Day, took fellow Commons members to task for supporting Pakistan and attacking India on the Kashmir issue.

At the meeting, presided over by the former Lok Sabha Speaker, Mr P.A. Sangama, Mr Khabra, accused these members of expounding falsehoods and spreading the propaganda of Pakistan, which was sponsoring terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab.

Mr Singla also lambasted Labour parliamentarians for carrying out a motivated and false campaign on human rights to mislead the Sikhs here.

He warned that as the Sikhs and the people of Punjab had seen through Pakistani designs in fanning and flaming terrorists in Punjab, they too risked meeting a similar fate here from the people of the Indian origin. Mr MacDonald, said he would visit Punjab next year to assess ground realities in the state.

Sainthood likely for Mother Teresa

ROME, Aug 27 (DPA) — Pope John Paul II has praised Mother Teresa, who died a year ago, as one of the formative figures of this century.

Millions around the world venerated the Catholic nun who dedicated her life to helping the poor and who was in 1979 awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her charitable work.

Now the Vatican is considering declaring Mother Teresa a saint.

But the involved process of canonisation cannot start before 2002, five years after her death — a waiting period designed to make the decision more objective and less emotional.

For now, Mother Teresa’s Calcutta diocese has the task of gathering documents about her life, which will be passed on to the Vatican for close investigation.

The process, introduced in the 10th century, aims to control canonisation and prevent abuse. The Pope will have the final word.

Saints do not have to be martyrs, like Saint Sebastian who was shot dead with arrows. But they must have special virtues and, in general, be known to have performed at least two miracles.

The first step is beautification, attesting the person in question a heroic degree of holiness.

The process towards declaring sainthood then often takes decades, but German cardinal Joseph Ratzinger believes it may be sped up in Mother Teresa’s case.

The Pope was also in favour of a quick canonisation but would nonetheless strictly observe the rules and maintain impartiality, he said.

Even “God’s servants’’ are allowed their weaknesses. The holy Theresia of Lisieux (1873-1897) admitted she often fell asleep during sermons and even prayer and had problems with spiritual exercises and the sacrament of penance.

The French nun was nonetheless a guiding figure for Mother Teresa. Both women saw holiness as a task for every human being. As Mother Teresa once said: “It does not matter how much we do, but how much love, honesty and belief we put into our actions.’’

Lockerbie bombing suspects: Libya
agrees to Hague trial

CAIRO, Aug 27 (AP) — Libya has accepted a US-British proposal to try two suspects in the 1988 bombing of a Pan AM flight in the Netherlands, the Libyan Foreign Ministry said yesterday.

A Ministry statement listed no conditions and did not say when the suspects Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah might be moved to the Netherlands or when the trial might start.

Libya announces its acceptance of the new position of the UK and the USA,’’ the ministry said.

The Libyans and the Western nations involved were all likely to see a trial in the Netherlands as a victory. Libya had demanded a trial on “neutral” ground, and had sought an end to the UN sanctions imposed in 1992, which the holding of the trial was expected to bring.

The USA and Britain see the agreement as an acceptance by Libya that its citizens should be called to account in the bombing, and should face trial under Scottish law.

In its acceptance of the proposal, Libya urged the UN to lift its travel sanctions against the country.

“Libya hopes that the governments of the USA and the UK are serious in their efforts to resolve this problem,” said the statement. This will be proven when the two governments impose no conditions which might block the trial.”

Washington and London had so far been insisting that the two men be extradited to the USA or Britain for trial. Libya kept rejecting the demand, arguing that a fair trial could not be guaranteed.

On Monday, the USA and Britain said they were ready to take up Libya’s repeated offer to let the two Libyans be tried at the Hague.

The USA said it would seek to expand the UN sanctions against Libya to include sales of oil if the two suspects were not handed over for trial at the Hague.

The USA and Britain said they would support moves in the Security Council to suspend the sanctions if the suspects were handed over.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has welcomed the proposal and hoped that the long-standing issue would be resolved soon.

The Netherlands has already confirmed that it had agreed to the trial at the Hague.

Libya said in its statement yesterday that it hoped the USA and British governments were “sincere in their desire to definitively solve this problem”.

“This will be proven when the two governments impose no conditions which might block the trial”, the statement said.

The Libyan announcement came after talks held by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi with Mr Osama al Baz, an adviser to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, in Tripoli yesterday.

Mr Mubarak had talks over the telephone with Col Gaddafi about the US-British offer. Mr Baz also handed over a letter from Mr Mubarak to Col Gaddafi, regional news agencies said.

The Libyan leader also talked to South African President Nelson Mandela and Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah over the telephone yesterday, the reports added. Under the US-British proposal, the trial in the Hague would be presided over by three Scottish judges, rather than a jury.

Israel tried to ‘kill Arafat 30 years ago’

JERUSALEM, Aug 27 (AP) — Inspired by an Oscar-winning psychological thriller about an assassination, Israel’s intelligence agency tried 30 years ago to brainwash a Palestinian into killing PLO leader Yasser Arafat, a newspaper has reported.

According to the Haaretz newspaper report yesterday, Mr Benjamin Shalit, then chief psychologist for the Israeli navy, got the idea from the 1962 film, “The Manchurian Candidate”, in which a US prisoner of war in Korea is brainwashed, programmed to kill and returned to the USA to assassinate a powerful politician.

Haaretz said Mr Shalit spent three months hypnotising a captured Palestinian faithful to Mr Arafat’s Fatah organisation to carry out the assassination.

Mossad agents then equipped the candidate with a small radio and sent him to Jordan to allegedly wait for instructions to be broadcast on the radio at an appointed time, giving him the go-ahead to kill Mr Arafat.

But higher-ups in the Mossad, apparently doubtful that the psychological route would yield results and anticipating the radio’s turnover to Mr Arafat, rigged the radio and planned to explode it by wireless remote at the appointed broadcast time.But both the radio and the psychology failed.

On Israel Radio, Ronen Bergman, the Haaretz reporter who wrote the story, said yesterday the candidate immediately reported his entire experience to Palestinian leaders in Jordan and showed them the radio. Mr Arafat listened to the radio, curious as to how the Mossad would try to contact the candidate. But the explosive device in the radio failed to detonate, the reporter said.

Bombed factory ‘not’ Laden’s

NEW YORK, Aug 27 (PTI) — The Sudanese pharmaceutical factory which was destroyed by American Cruise missiles last week is owned by Saleh Idresse, a Sudanese who also has citizenship in Saudi Arabia, media reports said today.

The USA had earlier said the plant was either financed or owned by Osama bin Laden whose training camps in Afghanistan were hit simultaneously with the plant. It quoted businessmen in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum to say Idresse had plenty of cash, sources of which were not very clear.

They said he had paid $ 27 million in cash for the Shifa plant which the USA contended also produced a chemical which could only be used for the production of deadly VX nerve gas. Sudan, however, maintained that it produced only life-saving drugs and other medicines.

The Times said Idresse was also “reported” to have invested in what Sudanese refer to as government “military complex”.

207 massacred in Congo parish

ROME, Aug 27 (AFP) — The death toll from massacres at Kasika parish and other villages near Uvira in the eastern Congo has risen to at least 207, the Italian missionary news agency Misna reported.

Five clerics and 32 other people, all Congolese, were among those killed at the Kasika Roman Catholic mission in the volatile South Kivu province on Monday.

According to Misna, the only two soldiers who figured among the victims were buried by members of Kasika Catholic Church yesterday.

Misna also reported that numerous other bodies remain unburied and suggested that the number of dead looked set to rise.

According to sources, the agency considered ethnic Tutsis, fighting to oust DRC President Laurent Kabila, responsible for the killings.

The rebel Congolese Democratic Rally (RCD) denied any responsibility for the killings yesterday saying that it “deplored” the massacre. The RCD is a political wing of the rebel forces who took up arms against Mr Kabila on August 2.

UN weapons inspector resigns

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 27 (AFP, AP) — In a far-reaching move, high-profile UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter resigned citing lack of UN and US support for his disarmament mission.

Mr Ritter’s shock decision yesterday was in a letter to UN Special Commission Chairman Richard Butler, who accepted his resignation timed during a new standoff with Iraq.

“The issue of immediate unrestricted access is in my opinion, the cornerstone of any viable inspection regime, and as such is an issue worth fighting for”, Mr Ritter said in his letter.

“Unfortunately, others do not share this opinion, including the Security Council and the USA”, he added.

He also said the current decision by the council and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to seek a “diplomatic” solution to the current crisis was “a surrender to the Iraqi leadership that has succeeded in thwarting the stated will of the United Nations”.

The tall, bespectacled former US marine leads UNSCOM’s inspection teams searching for concealed weaponry of mass destruction, and is the bete noire of the Iraqi authorities.

Iraq accuses Mr Ritter of being a US spy, a charge denied by UNSCOM. Mr Ritter was not available for comment on Wednesday and had left UN premises.

The move comes only two weeks after US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright pressed Mr Butler to call off intrusive inspections that could uncover proscribed weapons components and documents related to their concealment.

His departure comes at a time when inspections have been paralysed by Iraq’s August 5 decision to freeze cooperation with UN inspectors, who must certify that Iraq has destroyed its banned weapons before sanctions will be lifted.

A ‘heavyweight’ PM in Russia
from James Meek in Moscow

THE latest upheaval in Russia’s nervous ruling class had nothing to do with ideology or ability. It was all about weight.

For the anxious new boyars of business and politics, the contrast between the diminutive frame of Mr Sergei Kiriyenko, the outgoing Prime Minister, and the hefty paunch of the incoming Viktor Chernomyrdin was matched by the lightweight credibility of the youngster: when it came to the crunch, they feared, no one would obey him. And the crunch is now.

Whoever, becomes Russia’s next supreme leader, the message went, must have weight, authority, experience, ruthlessness. And since Sunday, Mr Chernomyrdin is the heaviest of them all.

“What we need today are heavyweights, “Mr Boris Yeltsin said. A radio commentator responded: “The President’s weight has been diminished.” President Yeltsin’s press spokesman intoned sadly: “In crisis conditions, there was no time to increase Mr Kiriyenko’s weight.”

What does it mean to have weight in Russia? In quiet times, it means the ability to squeeze concessions from the country’s increasingly oligarchic ruling layer of Governors, party leaders and businessmen. In times of crisis, such as now, it means the ability to protect them.

One well-informed newspaper Editor, Mr Vitaly Tretyakov, said the decision to sack Mr Kiriyenko was taken in principle last month, and that the choice of Mr Chernomyrdin to succeed him was made at the beginning of last week, after a political sumo bout between him and another “weighty” candidate, Mr Anatoly Chubais.

The question now is where will Mr Chernomyrdin throw his weight. As Mr Yeltsin’s annointed successor as President, with a carte blanche to form his own government and a serious bid in progress to win a permanent parliamentary majority for his policies, Mr Chernomyrdin is in a powerful position.

From a rank outsider in the presidential election stakes in 2000, he has vaulted ahead of General Lebed and Moscow’s Mayor, Mr Yuri Luzhkov. The three main national television channels support him.

Mr Chernomyrdin’s weight is less likely to be brought to bear in defence of the people that in defence of the ruling class — tycoons, politicians and Mr Yeltsin’s entourage.

Mr Chubais called the economic challenges ahead “absolutely new and dangerous without precedent... each day of delay will cost us very dearly.”

Mr Boris Nemtsov, a Deputy Prime Minister under Mr Kiriyenko, resigned recently and said he would not serve under Mr Chernomyrdin. “It is too difficult to carry out reforms... in the conditions of such an ugly market, where competition is non-existent, monopolies are rampant, where rules are few,” he said.
— The Guardian, London

7 charged for bid to kill Castro
WASHINGTON: Seven Cuban-Americans have been charged in Puerto Rico with allegedly plotting to murder Cuban President Fidel Castro, the US Justice Department said in its judgement, the department said the accused allegedly plotted to kill Castro while he was outside Cuba, mainly during a November 1977 Ibero-American summit on Margarita Island, off the coast of Venezuela. — ANI

Viagra deaths
WASHINGTON: At least 69 Americans who took wonder drug Viagra died in the first four months, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in a report. Eighteen of them died during or immediately after sexual intercourse within a further five hours of taking the drug. Another seven showed the symptoms which led to death, it said. During the period more than 3.6 million outpatient prescriptions were dispensed for Viagra, which was hailed on release in March as the long-awaited wonder drug for many. —Reuters

Jordan bans film
AMMAN: Jordan’s censors have banned a film based on the life of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser for scenes deemed to give a “bad image” of Jordan, the film’s distributor said. Mohammed al-Nayreb was quoted in Al-Rai newspaper on Wednesday saying that he had received a letter from the Department of Censorship, banning “Abdel Nasser” for “projecting a bad image of Jordan and its political role in the region”. The ban has not been officially confirmed. —AFP

‘Bionic’ arm
LONDON: A Scottish man was fitted with the world’s first fully-mobile electronic arm and said he planned to go paragliding. Scottish hotel owner Campbell Aird (47) received the “bionic” arm, developed by the Prosthetics Research and Development team at Princess Margaret Rose Orthopaedic Hospital in Edinburgh, on Wednesday. Aird, who has worn a prosthetic limb since his right arm was amputated 16 years ago because of muscle cancer, said he planned to go paragliding to test out the new arm. —Reuters

$ 2.3m to clone dog
FORT WORTH (Texas): An unidentified Texas couple are paying $ 2.3 million to have a local university clone their favourite dog Missy, reports said on Wednesday. Missy, an 11-year-old Husky-Collie mix, is the perfect dog, said the couple, who told news organisations they could not bear to be without her when she dies. The dog has undergone genetic testing at Texas A M University in Bryan, which has an extensive genetic and cloning research programme. —DPA

Tomato warriors!
BUNOL (Spain): It began with the ritual chant! “Tomatoes, tomatoes, we want tomatoes”. Then came the trucks. They rumbled into the square single file, dumping about 100 tonnes of the ripe, red produce into the streets for this town’s annual food fight. More than 30,000 persons spent an hour on Wednesday pelting each other with tomatoes, painting themselves and a town with thick red mush. Everybody stood ankle deep in red pulp. —AP

Kissing record
ALCALA DE HENARES (Spain): On the firing of a gun; an estimated 1,600 couples packed the Central Square of Spanish town and locked lips in a concerted effort to kiss their way to a world record. The couples in Alcala De Henares smooched for at least 10 seconds on Tuesday in a bid to outdo the US University of Maine’s record for gathering together 1,420 kissing couples on Valentine’s Day in 1996. The couples include the Mayor and his wife. —AP

Mudslide kills 17
GUATEMALA CITY: Seventeen persons died and three were injured in a mudslide north of the Guatemalan Capital, firefighter said. Rescue workers took the injured to hospital in Sana Elena, said a spokeswoman for the Santa Cruz Del Quiche Volunteer Fire Department. The mudslide occurred near the village of Santa Cruz Del Quiche, 150 km north of Guatemala City on Wednesday. —AFP