Nepal Reds put off pullout decision
KATHMANDU, Dec 1 — Two weeks of political uncertainty ended in Nepal today as a key Communist faction decided not to withdraw from the Centre-Left ruling coalition.

Quebec party fails to make gains
TORONTO, Dec 1 — Belying pollsters’ projections, the ruling pro-secession Parti Quebecois failed to increase its strength in the legislature of Canada’s southeastern Quebec province in the election yesterday.

Prove plot, Anwar’s counsel told
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 1 — The judge in Anwar Ibrahim’s corruption and sex trial allowed the defence today to try to prove a high-level conspiracy against the sacked Malaysian Minister, granting Anwar’s lawyers scope he had earlier denied.

USA backs Chile on Pinochet
WASHINGTON, Dec 1 — The USA publicly waded into the controversy over whether Augusto Pinochet should go on trial in Spain, saying Chile’s opposition to the idea deserved great respect.

Handover of papers
Iraq fails to meet UN deadline

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 1 (AFP) — Iraq failed to meet a UN deadline yesterday to surrender a key document detailing Iraqi chemical weapons munitions, UN officials said.

Top UN weapons inspector Richard Butler, in a letter released here yesterday but dated on Friday, asked Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz to hand over the document to UN experts in Baghdad “by November 30”.

Butler wrote to Aziz following Iraq’s November 14 decision to resume cooperation with the weapons inspectors, requesting a series of documents and records pertaining to Iraqi arms of mass destruction.

He notably called for a document, found by a team of weapons inspectors in July in an Air Force headquarters safe, which Iraq had refused to hand over to the UN experts.

The document gives details of the bombs filled with chemical weapons and used during the Iran-Iraq war.

The inspectors believe that Iraq used fewer chemical munitions than previously admitted during the war — meaning that others remain unaccounted for.

Meanwhile, Iraq has delivered 1,500 supplementary pages on its plan for the distribution of food, medicine and other supplies, in a step toward implementation of a new phase of the UN oil-for-food programme, a UN spokesman has said.

UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida-e-Silva said yesterday the pages “were in the process of being printed out” and that UN officials hoped to send the plan to Secretary-General Kofi Annan by the end of the week.

Iraq submitted a distribution plan last Friday. It gave the additional pages to the UN office in Baghdad on Saturday. They contain a complete list of articles Iraq can purchase with funds raised from oil exports in the oil-for-food programme which began in December, 1996, and has continued in six-month increments.

BAGHDAD: Iraq has complained in a message to UN Security Council President Peter Burleigh that senior US officials had made “dangerous threats” against Iraq.

In his letter, Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf “warns against dangerous threats by senior US officials against Iraq, its security and its integrity”, the Iraqi News Agency (INA) said on Monday.

“These threats are a flagrant violation of the UN Charter and international legal principles,” the Iraqi minister wrote in the missive carried by the INA.

Sahhaf also asked the Security Council “to discuss and give priority to this dangerous matter”.

Crackdown in China, 6 rebels held

BEIJING, Dec 1 (AFP) — Six Chinese dissidents, including two high-profile opponents of the state, have been detained in a police crackdown on the fledgling China Democracy Party, sources said today.

The police detained Xu Wenli in Beijing and Qin Yongmin in Wuhan, central China, late yesterday, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre on Human Rights and the Democratic Movement in China said in a statement.

The two veterans of China’s dissident movement have been singled out by the police for their repeated demands to have the China Democracy Party legally recognised by the local authorities since its launch last July.

Three other members of the Wuhan chapter of the party, Chen Zhonghe, Lu Xinhua and Xiao Shichang, were detained, while a sixth dissident, Lai Jinbiao, also a party member, was taken away by the authorities in Hangzhou in eastern China.

“The police specified that Xu was being ‘detained’ and not just ‘questioned’,” she told AFP. “They told him that he was a ‘suspect’ but did not specify a crime.”

Under Chinese law, suspects may be detained for 30 days before being charged with any crime.

Impeachment probe broadened

WASHINGTON, Dec 1 (Reuters) — US House impeachment investigators dramatically broadened their inquiry of President Bill Clinton, seeking evidence related to the White House campaign fund-raising scandal.

House Judiciary Committee Republicans said yesterday that they would seek internal Justice Department memos calling for an independent counsel in the scandal and testimony from the memos’ authors, FBI Director Louis Freeh and former campaign finance task force head Charles Labella.

They also want to subpoena Clinton and Attorney-General Janet Reno for the memos and independent counsel Kenneth Starr for evidence related to a key figure in the campaign finance scandal, a committee aide said.

The panel was scheduled to vote on the subpoenas at a meeting after a hearing on the consequences of perjury.

“The committee is in receipt of information that indicates the Labella memo may contain allegations of criminal wrongdoing by the President,” the Republican aide said. “We are duty-bound to look at this material before we complete our task”.

Panel chairman Henry Hyde blasted Clinton for his evasiveness and lack of cooperation in the impeachment inquiry. Hyde said the committee would push ahead on its plan to vote on articles of impeachment.

“He has made it very clear he is going to stick with his reliance on bizarre technical definitions and legalistic defences,” Hyde said of Clinton’s responses last week to 81 questions about the Monica Lewinsky scandal, adding: “We will move forward based on the established record of corroborated evidence”.

Hyde said in a statement that Clinton had not challenged the truthfulness of the evidence. “Rather, his responses revealed a selective ability to recall information”.

Clinton broke no new ground in his answers, denying the central allegations of perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power in the Lewinsky affair but acknowledging he misled the public and top aides.

“The President made a good faith effort to respond to politically motivated questions,” White House spokesman Jim Kennedy said of Hyde’s charges.

Meanwhile, Clinton is unlikely to testify before the congressional panel considering impeachment charges against him for his efforts to conceal his affair with Monica Lewinsky, the White House said today.

“I don’t think it’s very likely that you’ll see the President appear before that committee,” the White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said, referring to the house judiciary committee.

NEW YORK (AFP): Film star Tom Hanks said he “regrets” donating $10,000 to President Bill Clinton’s legal defence fund in the light of the scandal that ensued, The New Yorker magazine has reported.

“We gave 10,000 bucks, very early on, in all honesty in the light of events, since it would be awfully hard to say now: oh, here, let me help you out with this problem,” he told the weekly on Monday.

The Oscar-winning actor and Hollywood democrat explained his donation to the fund, saying: “The other side has plenty of figures that pony up an awful lot of dough, too, so you try to fight fire with fire, or something.”

But the star discounted rumours that he had lined up a house and job with his production company for Clinton once he leaves office, the magazine said.

Rioters ignore calls for peace

JAKARTA, Dec 1 (AFP) - Indonesian Muslim and Christian leaders sought to cool religious strife after mosques were attacked in riots in eastern Indonesia, even as one church was attacked early today.

President B. J. Habibie, a Muslim, added his voice to the calls for calm.

“The President is asking all sides to avoid a recurrence of such incidents and urges the population to step up alertness and strengthen unity and cohesion among believers,” state secretary Akbar Tanjung quoted Habibie as saying.

“I call on all believers, to continue to be alert, especially in checking the veracity of any news so that they are not easily misled by rumours,” said Ali Yafie, chairman of the Indonesian Muslim Scholars Council (MUI), the country’s highest Islamic authority.

The popular leaders of the country’s strongest Islamic group, the Nahdlatul Ulama, Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid, also called for calm after receiving a visit by Jakarta’s Catholic archbishop Yulius Darmaatmaja and the bishop of Kupang, West Timor, Petrus Turang, late yesterday.

But despite the calls, a mob of more than 100 persons attacked a Protestant church in the small West Java town of Banjarsari, some 240 km southeast of here, early today.

Reuters add: Several mosques in the remote eastern Indonesian town of Kupang were torched yesterday as fresh civil unrest hit the archipelago after several days of calm, witnesses said.

A journalist from the Pos Kupang newspaper in the West Timor town of Kupang told Reuters on the telephone that several mosques had been set a fire, although details were unclear.

“There are several mosques on fire now,” said the journalist who did not want to be named. Unconfirmed reports in Jakarta said at least six mosques had been set on fire in the predominantly Christian town.

The latest unrest comes after several days of calm around the country following riots and violent protests last week.

Earlier, scores of Christian students virtually closed Kupang down as they protested against the rising religious and ethnic tensions in this diverse nation of more than 200 million people, the official Antara news agency reported.

Shops and schools were closed and by nightfall, witnesses said, troops had blocked roads in the town.

Nepal Reds put off pullout decision

KATHMANDU, Dec 1 (Reuters) — Two weeks of political uncertainty ended in Nepal today as a key Communist faction decided not to withdraw from the Centre-Left ruling coalition.

The Marxist-Leninist (ML) Party said it would give Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala “some time” to implement an agreement that brought the Communists to the cabinet in August, ML chief Sahana Pradhan said.

The ML asked Koirala in November to implement the pact by December 1, or risk seeing the Leftists quit his government. The ML accuses Koirala of failing to ask India to evacuate a security post in Kalapani, claimed by Nepal, and to review a 48-year-old treaty with India that defines ties between the two south Asian neighbours — key points of the power-sharing agreement.

Kalapani is a small stretch of land in west Nepal near its borders with India, which has had security post there for three decades.

The decision followed a request from Koirala yesterday asking the Communists to give him time to act on the agreement.

Mr Koirala appointed the ML, a hardline Communist faction, to his centrist government in August in a move to keep his powerful Communist rivals divided.

Quebec party fails to make gains

TORONTO, Dec 1 (IANS) — Belying pollsters’ projections, the ruling pro-secession Parti Quebecois (PQ) failed to increase its strength in the legislature of Canada’s southeastern Quebec province in the election yesterday.

Provincial Premier Lucien Bouchard, who heads the PQ, has clearly not got the “winning conditions” under which his party could hold a second sovereignty referendum. In a controversial 1995 referendum, Quebeckers had narrowly voted to remain part of Canada.

The PQ remains in power in the province, with the party’s strength exactly the same as in the previous Assembly — 75 out of 125. Pollsters had predicted that the PQ, which has been pushing for a more autonomous if not an independent Quebec, would rout arch rival the Liberal Party.

Analysts say the results show that while most Quebeckers may still not want to secede, English Canada has to begin to build bridges with Francophones in the province to avoid bitter feelings that could lead to the country’s break-up.

The Liberals, who run the federal government, improved their score by one, winning from 48 constituencies this time.

While the Liberals’ main source of support is from the Anglo-Saxons and the minorities in Montreal and adjoining areas, the party appears to have received some votes from Quebeckers of French origin, the majority of whom support the PQ.

The PQ received only 43 per cent of the votes polled and the Liberals surprisingly received support from 43.3 per cent of the electorate. A third party called the Action Democratique, which won only one seat, got 12 per cent of the votes.

Bouchard had joined the other nine premiers in signing a declaration at Calgary in Alberta province in August that called for a “social union” which envisages the federal government agreeing to play a minor role in health and education and provinces having the choice to opt out of its programmes with financial compensation from Ottawa.

Though anti-secession forces have been gloating since the results became known, analysts cautioned that while the PQ has not improved on its score, it has not suffered any reverses.

Prove plot, Anwar’s counsel told

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 1 (Reuters) — The judge in Anwar Ibrahim’s corruption and sex trial allowed the defence today to try to prove a high-level conspiracy against the sacked Malaysian Minister, granting Anwar’s lawyers scope he had earlier denied.

High Court Judge Augustine Paul permitted the defence to counter-attack after he had rocked the court by ordering one of the ousted Finance Minister’s lawyers jailed for three months.

Five of Anwar’s nine lawyers were absent from the trial today, a day after Augustine ordered defence counsel Zainur Zakaria imprisoned for contempt of court.

USA backs Chile on Pinochet

WASHINGTON, Dec 1 (Reuters) — The USA publicly waded into the controversy over whether Augusto Pinochet should go on trial in Spain, saying Chile’s opposition to the idea deserved great respect.

“The USA strongly condemned the abuses of the Pinochet regime when it was in power,” State Department spokesman James Rubin said.

LONDON (AFP) — The private London psychiatric clinic where former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet has resided since the end of October yesterday told him to leave, saying he was well enough to be discharged.

Keating, wife to split
CANBERRA: Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating and his Dutch-born wife Annita are to separate after 23 years of marriage. “We have decided amicably to separate after 23 years of deeply fulfilling and for the most part very happy marriage”, the Keatings said in a statement on Monday. They added that the decision was not made easier by the “often malicious rumours that have been circulated for the past two or three years” about their private lives. Mr Keating met his wife in 1971 in the first class cabin of an Alitalia flight to Bangkok when she was an air hostess and he an up coming politician. — Reuters

UK signs treaty
UNITED NATIONS: Amid the controversy over former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Britain has signed the treaty for an international criminal court that would try genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and aggression. A total of 61 states have signed the treaty to establish the court since it was approved at a Rome conference in July, signing at the same time as Britain were Lesotho, Burkina Faso, the Ivory Coast and Tajikistan. The court can be established after 60 states have ratified its statutes by adopting national legislation. This process is expected to take several years. — Reuters

Award for physicist
PARIS: The French Academy of Sciences has handed its top 1998 award to American physicist Leo Kadanoff, described as one of this century’s pioneers in theoretical physics. A Harvard graduate who teaches at Chicago’s James Franck Institute, Mr Kadanoff’s work has focused on superconductivity and the thermal protection of ballistic rockets. The academy of sciences said his work had “considerable influence” in areas as wide as applied mathematics, physics, mechanical engineering, cosmology, chemistry and polymers. — AFP

Portugal-Indonesia talks
JAKARTA: Tripartite talks on East Timor between Indonesia and Portugal will continue despite the recent tensions between representatives of the two countries at a senior officials meeting in New York, official sources said here. The next round of tripartite talks under the auspices of United Nations Secretary-General would begin soon, Foreign Affairs Minister Ali Alatas said on Monday. — Pool-Antara

3 film-makers rescued
MOSCOW: Three documentary film-makers trapped on a Siberian island for six weeks were rescued on Tuesday, the Moscow bureau of Japanese television company NHK said. Australian film-maker Rory McGuinness, NHK Producer Tatsuhko Kobayashi and Russian Scientist Nikita Ovsyanikov were airlifted to safety by a Russian helicopter. After an hours flight they landed at Pevek on the Chukotka peninsula at around 9.30 a.m. (IST), NHK said. — AFP