STOCKHOLM: Professor Amartya Sen smiles with his arm around the shoulder of his wife, Emma Rotchild Sen, after their arrival at Arlanda Airport in Stockholm on Saturday afternoon. Professor Sen will receive the Nobel Prize for Economics at the Nobel festival on Thursday. — AP/PTI

Lockerbie case: Annan hopeful of suspects’ handover
DJERBA (Tunisia), Dec 6 — The UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan said after meeting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi that the Libyans were “serious” about a deal over the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing and he hoped they would soon agree to hand over the two suspects wanted for trial in the West.

Militant faction for Punjabi unity
VANCOUVER, Dec 6 — A militant Sikh outfit active during the bloody turmoil in Punjab has called for unity of all Punjabis living all over the world to not only resolve their own disputes but also help reduce tension in South Asia.

LTTE terrorist body: Canada
COLOMBO, Dec 6 — Following in the US footsteps Canada has declared the LTTE a terrorist organisation along with some Indian Sikh extremist outfits, media reports said here today.

• Lankan minister escapes attack
• 12,000 flee from North Lanka

Hyde asks White House for details
WASHINGTON, Dec 6 — The US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Mr Henry Hyde has sought justification from the White House for its last-minute request for more time to defend President Bill Clinton at impeachment hearings next week.

Taliban release 118 prisoners
KABUL, Dec 6 — Fighting across Afghanistan’s northern provinces continued to subside today as 118 prisoners held by the Taliban arrived at Red Cross offices in Kabul en-route home, aid workers and officials said.

Stalemate in talks on N-inspections
NEW YORK, Dec 6 — The four-day meet between North Korea and the USA, which is being held to pave the way for US access to Koreas underground nuclear programme, has so far failed to yield any result after the second day yesterday.

Cambodia gets nod for UN seat
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 6 — Cambodia’s new coalition government has won approval from a key UN committee to retake the country’s seat at the UN General Assembly, and is expected to return to full membership soon.

Yeltsin ‘ready’ to return
MOSCOW, Dec 6 — Russian President Boris Yeltsin is ready to return to work, his spokesman has said, nearly two weeks after the President was hospitalised with pneumonia.

Supermodel Naomi surrenders
TORONTO, Dec 6 — British supermodel Naomi Campbell has surrendered to the Toronto police, charged with assaulting a former employee in September.

Security needs must be met first: India

NEW YORK, Dec 6 (PTI) — India’s legitimate security needs must be addressed to clear political hurdles in way of joining the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the Prime Minister Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Principal Secretary, Mr Brajesh Mishra has said.

Indians cutting across party lines want sanctions, slapped on New Delhi in the wake of its nuclear tests, to be eased, and the freedom to maintain a credible nuclear deterrence, the New York Times quoted Mr Mishra as saying.

Referring to the US move to resume lending to Pakistan while keeping a similar ban on India in place, he said, 'The discriminatory attitude creates an unhelpful atmosphere in India and problems for a smooth dialogue with the USA.'

The paper quoted the new Information and Broadcasting Minister Mr Pramod Mahajan, as saying that joining the treaty was not an easy thing, 'especially for a government which enjoys paper-thin majority and has its own domestic problems.'

In the interview granted before he became a Union Minister, Mr Mahajan had said: "The USA has to give something to this government so it can say, ‘Look what we got for it."

Criticising the USA’s discriminatory attitude, Mr Mahajan said, "If you made a law that you will hang someone for murder and then you say, ‘I won’t hang him because he’s thin but I’ll hang him because he’s strong,’ what kind of law is that? A murder is a murder."

Mr Mani Shankar Aiyar of the Congress also said that the US Government’s insistence on determining the place of nuclear weapons in India’s defence strategy was creating problems for the Indian Government.

'The USA continues to say, "We will unilaterally dictate the role of nuclear weapons in your defence strategy". It becomes difficult for any Indian Government to sign a piece of paper for something that the US Government wants that is not perceived to be for Indian security."

The interviews were part of a story analysing the results of recent elections to four states.

Sharif-Clinton talks a fiasco: opposition

ISLAMABAD, Dec 6 (PTI) — Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s recent meeting with US President Bill has drawn flak from the opposition, dubbing it as a "total failure".

The fresh opposition offensive on Sharif came as the USA rejected Pakistan’s pre-condition of the solution of Kashmir issue for signing the CTBT.

Sharif faced embarrassing situation at home when Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth said the USA was confident that Islamabad was close to signing and ratifying the treaty.

As the reports of the actual outcome of the much-hyped Clinton-Sharif talks is gradually trickling in here, the 21-month-old Sharif government is facing more attacks from the opposition for failing to extract anything from President Bill Clinton during the meeting at the White House on December 2.

The latest revelation that the United States of America has even rejected Pakistan’s pre-condition of the resolution of the Kashmir issue for signing the CTBT has been received with a shock here as the media reports claimed that the USA even believed that Pakistan was likely to sign even the NPT.

While Sharif stayed in America and was reportedly planning trips to Disney Land and Niagara Falls, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto launched fresh attack on him saying "it seems Nero is fiddling while Pakistan is burning."

The press briefing by Inderfurth at Washington yesterday was given wide publicity here by the leading newspapers as he categorically said the USA does not accept the Kashmir problem as a pre-condition for signing the CTBT and expressed his opinion that Sharif’s linking of Kashmir with the CTBT might be due to his domestic compulsions.

Benazir in a statement yesterday dubbed the Clinton-Sharif meeting as "total failure" and said as predicted it was, "nothing more than a photo opportunity."

She slammed Sharif for not accepting her earlier proposal of signing the CTBT immediately after the nuclear blasts saying "Pakistan lost the golden opportunity to win international goodwill and support at a time critical for it."

"Nuclear proliferation is too important an issue for Nawaz Sharif to understand," Benazir said.

Former president and now head of the Millat Party, Farooq Leghari, also said Sharif’s visit to the United States of America was a "total failure of a secret sell-out."

"No Prime Minister or President in Pakistan history has gone to Washington and demonstrated such trite diplomacy," Leghari said in a statement.

Cricket-star-turned-politician, Imran Khan, also said Sharif had insulted the whole nation by begging before President Clinton for various issues.

"The Prime Minister has traded our national pride by begging president Clinton for lifting of sanctions and financial assistance, for which the nation and history will never forgive him," Khan, who is the chief of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf party, said in a statement.

Clashes in West Bank towns

RAMALLAH (West Bank), Dec 6 (AP) — Palestinians threw stones and Israeli troops responded with rubber bullets and tear gas in scattered clashes that injured 25 Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers yesterday.

The clashes came as Palestinians launched a campaign of protests to call for the release of so-called security prisoners, an escalating dispute that has threatened to derail the new Middle East peace accord, Seven protesters were arrested.

In addition to the street protests, 2,500 Palestinian prisoners began a hunger strike yesterday to press for their early release.

Under the Wye River Peace Agreement, Israel agreed to free 750 Palestinian prisoners by the end of January. In a first stage last month, it freed 250 prisoners, most of them common criminals.

Instead, the Palestinians are demanding the release of hundreds of prisoners jailed for anti-Israel activity.

The prisoner issue is highly emotional because almost everyone in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has had a relative arrested at some point during the 30-year Israeli occupation.

Yesterday’s protesters dispersed after hours of clashes on the outskirts of Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus and the Israeli settlement of Ariel. Israeli paramilitary police also fired tear gas to disperse dozens of stone throwers in traditionally Arab East Jerusalem, five Israeli buses were stoned, and two bus drivers were slightly injured from broken glass, the police said.

Meanwhile, a week before US President Bill Clinton is to arrive for a three-day visit, supporters of a radical Palestinian faction burned US flags in the West Bank town of Hebron to protest the Wye River land-for-security Agreement. About 1,000 Palestinians took part in the demonstration sponsored by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The West Bank village of Beta was put under a curfew by the Israeli Army last night after Molotov cocktails were thrown at a military vehicle passing through the town, said Col Fahed Deyab, who heads the Palestinian side of a joint security post in the area.

In Ramallah, the Palestinians’ top negotiator on prisoners expressed regret over a statement by the Clinton administration. On Friday, the US State Department had said the Israelis have “done what they said they would do ... concerning prisoner releases.’’

GAZA CITY: The PLO executive committee has begun preparing for a mid-December gathering in Gaza city under the auspices of US President Bill Clinton. The meeting should confirm pledges that the Palestinians no longer seek Israel’s destruction.

However, a new crisis with Israel was already shaping up at a time when the current one was still unresolved.

Under the Wye river peace agreement, the Palestine National Council, the Palestinians’ Parliament-in-exile, and various Palestinian groups are to meet on December 14.

On that day, the PNC and the other groups are to “reaffirm” a letter to Mr Clinton in which Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat declares that clauses of the PLO founding charter calling for Israel’s destruction are null and void.

Israel has maintained that the PNC was required to take a vote by a show of hands. The Palestinians have said the Wye agreement does not call for a vote.

“There will be no vote in this meeting,” Zakaria Agha, a PLO executive committee member, said after the last evening meeting.

After the PNC session, five per cent of the West Bank is to be transferred from sole Israeli control to joint jurisdiction.

David Bar-Illan, a senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, yesterday suggested that there would be no handover of land without a PNC vote.

STOCKHOLM (Sweden): Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat laid out his vision for final negotiations on peace in the region striking a notably conciliatory tone but avoiding specifics on the issues that have stalled the current peace process.

Referring frequently to “the logic of peace,” Mr Arafat said yesterday both Palestinians and Israel must refrain from violence.

“There can be no alternative to resolving the disputed issues between the two sides except through negotiations,” he said, and cautioned against “unilateral actions that may threaten or undermine the outcome of the negotiations.”

He appeared to tone down chances for the Palestinian action that especially concerns Israel — the possibility that Mr Arafat will declare an independent Palestinian state on May 4, the end of the five-year interim period set forth in the Oslo peace deal.

While insisting on Palestinian independence, Mr Arafat said, there can be no just solution without the agreement of the existence of two states ... coexisting by mutual agreement and acceptance.’’

Lockerbie case
Annan hopeful of suspects’ handover

DJERBA (Tunisia), Dec 6 (Reuters) — The UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan said after meeting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi that the Libyans were “serious” about a deal over the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing and he hoped they would soon agree to hand over the two suspects wanted for trial in the West.

Mr Annan, who failed to secure a clear-cut agreement on a hand over although he had said he wanted to settle the Lockerbie issue “once and for all” during his one-day visit to Libya yesterday, attributed the delay to the complex decision-making process in the north African country.

“They need to get the Congress and the people involved. I hope that their own internal discussions on an issue that is that sensitive and had gone on for so long will be concluded fairly shortly,” he told reporters on the plane that flew him back to the Tunisian resort island of Djerba last night.

“They are serious and will require some time...So I hope that in the not-too-distant future we will be able to give the families some good news and that they can put this issue behind them,” he added.

Libya has agreed to hand over the two suspects - indicted in the USA and Britain for planting a bomb aboard a Pan Am airliner which exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988 — for trial in a special Scottish court in the Netherlands.

But it has refused British and US demands that the two alleged intelligence agents — Abdel Basset Ali Mohammed Al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah — serve their sentence in Scotland if convicted for the bombing which killed 270 persons.

Militant faction for Punjabi unity

VANCOUVER, Dec 6 — A militant Sikh outfit active during the bloody turmoil in Punjab has called for unity of all Punjabis living all over the world to not only resolve their own disputes but also help reduce tension in South Asia.

Ajit Singh Khaira, Jaspal Singh and Joginder Singh Bal, three Britain-based members of the Panthic Committee of the Wassan Singh Zaffarwal group, emphasised that the problems of Punjabis were common, irrespective of the religion and region to which they belonged.

“We must rise above religious divisions as Punjabis and unite to collectively find peaceful solutions to our problems,” they said in an interview to The Link newspaper here.

The leaders were here to attend the funeral of Indo-Canadian Times editor Tara Singh Hayer who was murdered on November 18. Iqbal Singh, a British researcher, also accompanied them.

The appeal marks a welcome turnaround from previous separatist ideology and assumes significance since the Sikh leaders in Britain, like Jagjit Singh Chauhan, had a major role to play in Punjab’s separatist movement for Khalistan.

According to the visitors, the message of ‘Punjabiat’ is well documented in the Guru Granth Sahib which contained compositions not only of Sikh Gurus but also of Hindu and Muslim ‘bhagats’ (devotee poets) and saints. Khalsa Panth, they said, is not just religion but covers all aspects of life concerning all Punjabis. They urged Punjabis in Canada and other countries to take an active part in whatever is happening in their lives and help resolve disputes not only overseas but also back in Punjab.

They pointed out that Punjabis in Britain, the USA and Canada can present a new perspective to resolve these conflicts. In this context, they congratulated Canadian Punjabis for raising the issue of ‘Hukamnamas’ (edicts) imposed on them by the Akal Takht.

Terming the Khalsa Panth, founded by the tenth Sikh Guru Gobind Singh three centuries ago, as a democratic religion, they said it is the fundamental right of the people to challenge and change a law or “Hukamnama” which is imposed on them ‘undemocratically”.

Challenging the excommunication of late Hayer from the Panth by the Akal Takht earlier this year, they said no member of the Khalsa movement can be excommunicated from membership of the Panth as it was a God-given right.

Condemning Hayer’s murder, the British group said he laid down his life defending democracy, civil liberty and the right of free speech and expression. — IANS

LTTE terrorist body: Canada

COLOMBO, Dec 6 (PTI) — Following in the US footsteps Canada has declared the LTTE a terrorist organisation along with some Indian Sikh extremist outfits, media reports said here today.

Over 50 organisations, including the LTTE and some Sikh extremist outfits, were currently being investigated by the Canadian Government, Sunday Times said.

These militant outfits continued to exploit the local ethnic communities through propaganda, misinformation and intimidation, the report said quoting director of Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CISIS) Ward Elecock.

Testifying before a special committee of the Canadian Senate, Mr Elecock said local Tamil organisations were providing logistical support to the LTTE.

He also listed several other groups, including extremist organisations from Punjab, and said that with perhaps the singular exception of the USA there are more global terrorist groups active in Canada than any other country in the world.

Lankan minister escapes attack

COLOMBO, Dec 6 (PTI) — A Sri Lankan minister leading the military drive against the LTTE had a narrow escape today in a mortar bomb attack which killed four security personnel.

The Deputy Defence Minister, Mr Anurudha Ratwatte, who is also the energy minister of the island nation, was leaving the town of Oddusuddan when mortar shells started bombing the area, defence sources said.

A visibly shaken Mr Ratwatte later told reporters here "the mortar shells exploded everywhere and we could hardly manage to reach to the helipad."

Forty-two soldiers, including a senior army officer were injured in today’s LTTE onslaught. The condition of six was reported to be critical, the sources said.

The minister was accompanied by the chiefs of three services — army, air force and navy — besides top brass of the police, the sources said, adding that four of Mr Ratwatte’s inner security ring were also injured.

The sources said the LTTE fired nearly six mortar shells in a very short span of time when Mr Ratwatte, the de facto head of armed forces, was still in the town.

The minister and others were on a visit to the newly captured town Oddusuddan, captured by the army a few days ago.

12,000 flee from North Lanka

COLOMBO, Dec 6 (DPA) — More than 12,000 civilians fled their homes in northern Sri Lanka after troops captured Oddusudan in a fresh offensive against Tamil rebels, civilian sources said today.

The sources said many of those on the run were refugees who had been resettled in the area after being displaced during previous military operations.

A military spokesman, Major I.N.K. Dewage, confirmed that troops were fanning out around Oddusudan, but said rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were using mortars against them.

The offensive was launched on Wednesday after a previous military push to recapture a strategic land route to the northern part of the peninsula was abandoned.

The government has imposed strict censorship on news related to the offensive. A government spokesman admitted that civilians were being displaced, but said he had no official figures.

Hyde asks White House for details

WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (Reuters) — The US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Mr Henry Hyde has sought justification from the White House for its last-minute request for more time to defend President Bill Clinton at impeachment hearings next week.

Mr Hyde said he would make "a sincere effort" to accommodate the request for as much as four days, but added: "our final decision must be guided by what is reasonable."

"I have instructed my staff to contact the President’s attorneys to request specific information regarding proposed witnesses...I also hope this last-minute flurry of possibly redundant witness requests is not intended to delay this inquiry," he said in a written statement yesterday.

Mr Hyde originally had set just one day next week for White House lawyers to present their defence of the President before the committee voted on Friday on articles of impeachment.

The proceedings stem from independent counsel Ken Starr’s investigation into whether Mr Clinton committed perjury to conceal a sexual affair with intern Monica Lewinsky and other matters.

The White House request may postpone the committee vote and delay until next year a full house vote when the new Congress, with its narrower Republican House majority, takes over.

Taliban release 118 prisoners

KABUL, Dec 6 (AFP) — Fighting across Afghanistan’s northern provinces continued to subside today as 118 prisoners held by the Taliban arrived at Red Cross offices in Kabul en-route home, aid workers and officials said.

Militia authorities said the prisoners were released as a goodwill gesture for Ramadan, adding that they were ex-servicemen from rival forces who were kept in the infamous Puli Charkhi jail in Kabul.

However, all the prisoners examined by the International Committee for the Red Ross (ICRC) appeared elderly and frail, an aid worker said.

"I don’t think there’s anyone here under the age of 65," the aid worker told AFP, "they’re all look very weak."

Last month, when the Taliban released 100 opposition prisoners from the same prison opposition commander Ahmad Shah Masood said the freed men were only civilians captured from cities, not the frontlines.

Separately, sources said fighting in northern provinces where rebellions had been reported since last Wednesday appeared to have eased.

"There has been no reports of fighting from our end," a spokesman for a non-government organisation said.

"Although it does appear that Masood has made some gains in Kunduz province,"he added.

Stalemate in talks on N-inspections

NEW YORK, Dec 6 (Oana-Yonhap) — The four-day meet between North Korea and the USA, which is being held to pave the way for US access to Koreas underground nuclear programme, has so far failed to yield any result after the second day yesterday.

Emerging from a five-hour meeting held yesterday at the US Permanent Representative office to the United Nations here, Korean vice-foreign minister Kim Gye-Gwan said the two sides were yet to reach an agreement of free access of the USA to Korea’s Kumchangni facility.

North Korea, while insisting that the site is for civilian purposes proposed that the US inspection team visit the Kumchangni facility only once and pay $ 300 million in reparations if the site is found to have nothing to do with a nuclear programme. The USA, however, refused the proposal.

SEOUL: In an unrelated development South Korea has grounded all 200 Nike-Hercules missiles for a check following last week’s accidental firing of one that left seven people injured, military officials said today.

“Military and civilian experts have launched a special investigation into all Nike-Hercules missiles deployed by South Korean troops,” a Defence Ministry officials told AFP.

“Investigators suspect the ageing US-made missile may have functional problems”.

American Indians reclaim heritage
From Michael Ellison in New York

NATIVE American Indians won a symbolic victory last week — their second in a month — by halting the sale of tribal art they consider to be sacred.

Nineteen objects were withdrawn at Sotheby’s in New York after Indian tribes protested that their cultural heritage should not be sold into private hands.

Another three of the 600 lots went to buyers who said they would hand them over to the relevant tribes. These were a Plains ceremonial club, a Yurok ceremonial dance apron and a 16th or 17th-century Aleut wooden mask.

Allison Young, cultural heritage director of the Aleutian /Pribilof Islands Association, said: “There are no words to describe the joy the people in the region will feel when they see the ancestral object.”

But Edmund Carpenter, an anthropologist who believes that the objects should stay in private ownership, said he was saddened by what had happened. “Disgust is too positive. It’s a sad scene.” Mr Carpenter, who fears that the tribes will not look after the artefacts properly, opposes a 1990 law which returns many items to the Native Americans but makes no provision for their care.

Some of the art was withdrawn after fears arose that they might breach a 1916 act that makes it illegal to sell the feathers of migratory birds. Sotheby’s holds two sales of Native American art each year and last had trouble in 1994 when the Iroqouis tribe claimed that a collection of face masks was fake.

The wooden Eskimo mask was bought for US$46,000 by Anne Bleeker Corros, of California, who plans to return it to the Aleuts. “It’s a personal thing,” she said. “I feel it’s important for native Americans to receive these things back, especially those of ceremonial and spiritual value.”

Anne Rockefeller Roberts, president of the Fund of the Four Directories which gives grants to Indian causes, bought the dance apron for $11,500 “because this is an object that the Yurok nation has identified as sacred”.

The ceremonial club, which the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux tribes of Montana had wanted withdrawn, went for $7,475.

A month ago Native America Indians finally became a political force when they won a referendum in California to extend casino gambling in the state.

Leonard Malatere, who works at the Native American Educational Services College, in Chicago, said: “Twenty, twenty-five years ago the Indian people were still going through a culture shock, ashamed of their identity.
— The Guardian, London

Cambodia gets nod for UN seat

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 6 (AP) — Cambodia’s new coalition government has won approval from a key UN committee to retake the country’s seat at the UN General Assembly, and is expected to return to full membership soon.

The Credentials Committee’s decision will end a 15-month vacancy of Cambodia’s seat stemming from strongman Hun Sen’s July 1997 ouster of co-prime minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh in a violent coup.

Rival Cambodian diplomats loyal to Mr Hun Sen and Mr Ranariddh presented competing claims to the committee after the coup. The panel deferred its decision in September 1997, keeping the seat vacant.

The committee deferred a second time in October, after Mr Ranariddh and his political allies disputed Mr Hun Sen’s narrow victory in a July election and blocked the formation of a new government.

Yeltsin ‘ready’ to return

MOSCOW, Dec 6 (AP) — Russian President Boris Yeltsin is ready to return to work, his spokesman has said, nearly two weeks after the President was hospitalised with pneumonia.

What spokesman Dmitri Yakushkin didn’t say yesterday, however, was exactly when Mr Yeltsin will return.

Since his hospitalisation on November 22, Mr Yeltsin has hovered in the deep background of Russia’s political discourse, largely unseen and unheard. His place at the centre of national affairs has been taken by his Prime Minister, Yevgeny Primakov.

In announcing Mr Yeltsin’s imminent return, Mr Yakushkin tried to restore some lustre to the President’s image, depicting him as an active, well-connected executive even from his hospital bed — an image few Russians are likely to believe anymore.

Supermodel Naomi surrenders

TORONTO, Dec 6 (Reuters) — British supermodel Naomi Campbell has surrendered to the Toronto police, charged with assaulting a former employee in September.

Campbell (28), accompanied by her lawyer, arrived yesterday at a downtown police station where she was finger-printed and photographed.

The police said a 39-year-old former employee complained that Campbell assaulted her in a Toronto hotel on September 9. Following an investigation, detectives decided to charge Campbell with assault causing bodily harm.

AP adds: Campbell is accused of assaulting Georgina Galanis while in Toronto to film a movie, the police said.

Galanis’s court papers said Campbell also struck her in the neck and slammed her against a wall.

Foreigners freed
MAE HONG SON: The Myanmar authorities have released three foreigners after detaining them for 17 days on suspicion of being spies for western countries. Thai border officials said on Saturday. Michael Raedeke, (40), from the USA, Joseph Frank, (34), from Canada and Kirk Rommeswikel from Germany were freed on Friday. — Reuters

Globetrotting cat
LONDON: Globetrotting Katie the cat has returned home after a trans-Atlantic adventure that began when she innocently nestled down in her master’s suitcase in London. The black and white Persian, who usually confines her travels to her own back garden, made the 5,150 km flight from London to Montreal in John Pearson’s luggage in the hold of a British Airways passenger jet. Now comes the boring part. Due to Britain’s strict anti-rabies regulations, the cat will have to spend six months in quarantine. — AP

Al Gore bereaved
WASHINGTON: Albert Gore Sr, father of US Vice-President Al Gore, has died, the White House said in a statement. He was 90. Gore Sr died on Saturday of natural causes at 3.45 a.m. (IST) at his home in Carthage, Tennessee, the statement said, the Vice-Presidents and his wife, Tipper, were at his beside. President Clinton, speaking abroad Air Force plane, called the Vice-President’s father a “remarkable man” and “the embodiment of everything public service ought to be. — AFP

Unending poverty
DHAKA: Bangladesh has made no headway in its efforts to eliminate poverty because of poor governance, political violence and widespread corruption, a report by the British Government has said. The report said, “Around half Bangladesh’s 125 million people are poor with lack of education and access to land being key determinants. “An additional 20 per cent are on the margins of poverty .” — Reuters

Pacts with S. Africa
JOHANNESBURG: India and South Africa on Saturday signed 13 agreements on trade, air services and other fields, giving a major flip to economic and bilateral ties between the two countries. The bilateral agreements were signed by Minister of State for External Affairs Vasundhara Raje and South African Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad at the three-day Indo-South African joint commission meeting which concluded in Pretoria. — PTI

Indian jailed
MOSCOW: A former medical student from India, Nallala James Anil Kumar, has been sentenced by a local court in north Russia to a five-and-a-half years’ prison term on charges of cheating, Itar-Tass has reported. The 25-year old, expelled from the Arkhangelsk Medical Academy in 1997 for failing to pay his fees, was living in Russia illegally. He had borrowed $ 40,000 US from several Indian students and refused to repay his debt forcing his creditors to launch a complaint. — PTI