Hurdles in Wye peace accord
CAIRO, Dec 15 — The troubled West Asia peace accord today faced new hurdles after Israel refused to commit itself to a date for the promised troop withdrawal from West Bank.
South Asian N-tests shook world: Annan
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 15 — UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said the world had been shaken by the May nuclear tests by India and Pakistan but did not elaborate on the tests while mentioning issues of war and peace in various places in the world.

Pak had ‘gone nuclear’ in ’83
ISLAMABAD, Dec 15 — Pakistan had “gone nuclear” in 1983 and the then President, Gen Zia-Ul Haq was “informed in writing” about the matter, according to the country’s top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadir Khan.

Benazir’s plea rejected
ISLAMABAD, Dec 15 — The Supreme Court today rejected former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s plea to transfer the cases against her and her husband Asif Zardari to the Sind High Court.

Most Americans for resignation, if trial voted
WASHINGTON, Dec 15 — Most Americans oppose the impeachment of President Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair but 58 per cent feel he should resign if the House of Representatives votes for a trial in the Senate.

ASEAN to admit Cambodia later
HANOI, Dec 15 — ASEAN leaders decided late yesterday not to admit Cambodia as their 10th member in time for their annual summit here.

31 die in attack on Kosovo
PRISTINA, Dec 15 — A tenuous stand-off between Serbian forces and separatist rebels in Kosovo exploded in violence yesterday in the worst clash since the October truce in which border guards killed dozens of guerrillas.

Iraq denies access to UN inspectors
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 15 — Despite Baghdad’s promise of full cooperation with UN Inspectors, Iraq for the second time denied access to a site related to its banned weapons programmes, a UN spokesman said yesterday.

Hurdles in Wye peace accord
Israel may not meet pullout deadline

CAIRO, Dec 15 (Reuters, PTI) — The troubled West Asia peace accord today faced new hurdles after Israel refused to commit itself to a date for the promised troop withdrawal from West Bank but President Bill Clinton said Israelis and Palestinians had agreed to take new steps to proceed with the Wye deal.

A three-way 90-minute meeting between President Clinton, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the Gaza-Israel border failed to break the deadlock over the further troop withdrawal.

The meeting broke up with no joint statement by the three leaders. Mr Clinton and Mr Netanyahu, speaking separately after the summit, gave no indication that Israel would honour the December 18 deadline laid down in the Wye accord for a second Israeli handover of occupied West Bank land to Palestinian self-rule.

“I have achieved what I came here to achieve,” Mr Clinton said after the morning meeting at Erez crossing, a military post between Israel and Gaza Strip under Israeli control.

“We now have to decide practical means to go forward and I think we are well on the way to doing that” Mr Clinton said on the final day of his three-day West Asia mission.

Mr Netanyahu said he would order further troop withdrawal if the Palestinians fulfilled their obligations under the Wye deal. Palestinians would have to confiscate illegal weapons, stop inciting violence against Israel, publicly drop plans to declare a state unilaterally in May and agree to Israel’s criteria for the release of Palestinian prisoners.

“When they do this, we will do what we are required to do,” Mr Netanyahu told reporters.

After his three-way summit, Mr Clinton told reporters that the two sides had agreed to set up an “informal channel” to tackle the issue of Israel’s release of Palestinian prisoners.

Palestinians have been protesting against Israel’s refusal to release Palestinian prisoners. However, Mr Netanyahu said no prisoner who had killed Israelis would be released.

A steering committee on several specific issues covered by the land-for-security accord would meet today and “I anticipate that there will be agreement at the end of this meeting,” the US President said.

Later Mr Clinton and his family visited Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, and was given a guided tour by Mr Arafat. He lit a Christmas tree near the Church of Nativity, the centre of Christmas celebrations in the city.

“We’re going to review what has happened here in the last couple of days, and then think about how to move forward,” US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told reporters late yesterday.

Ms Albright said she hoped Israel would carry out a further handover of West Bank land to Palestinians as close as possible to Friday, the day agreed in a land-for-security deal Clinton mediated in October.

But aides to Mr Netanyahu said the deadline was in doubt. Mr Netanyahu has frozen further land transfers until Arafat drooped an avowed intention to declare a Palestinian state in May, halts violence and incitement to violence, collects illegal arms and accepts Israeli terms for freeing Palestinian prisoners.

Leading Palestinians voted yesterday by a show of hands in Gaza city to reaffirm the nullification of the provisions of the 1960s PLO charter calling for Israel’s destruction.

JERUSALEM: Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed a vote yesterday by the Palestinians, cancelling anti-Israel clauses in their charter but said further actions were needed before his government would pursue implementation of the Wye river land-for-security deal.

He was responding to a vote by the Palestinian National Council (PNC), meeting in the presence of US President Bill Clinton in Gaza City, reaffirming the nullification of clauses in the Palestinian charter calling for the destruction of Israel.

“The Prime Minister said his government would continue to insist with the same firmness on the fulfilment of the other Palestinian commitments so as to ensure the implementation of the agreement and the advancement of the peace process,” said a statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office.

South Asian N-tests shook world: Annan

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 15 (PTI) — UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said the world had been shaken by the May nuclear tests by India and Pakistan but did not elaborate on the tests while mentioning issues of war and peace in various places in the world.

“The world has also been shaken by the nuclear tests in South Asia,” Mr Annan said speaking on issues of war and peace in Africa, the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq in his opening statement to the international media yesterday.

There was no other reference to South Asia during his entire 45-minute year-end meeting-with the Press.

He has also warned that unless the nations are prepared to make compromises and take courageous decisions to resolve issues of peace and security and economic and social crisis, the world could face serious problems in 1999.

The crises caused by conflicts, he said, took up an enormous amount of the organisation’s time and it might be tempting to leave the economic and social issues to others. “But I am convinced that we cannot afford to do that.”

“Unless we tackle the underlying distortions and imbalances in the global economy, unless we start to provide the kind of global governance, we must expect more conflicts and even more intractable ones. Economic and political security are, as always have been, closely interconnected,” he said.

Most Americans for resignation, if trial voted

WASHINGTON, Dec 15 (Reuters) — Most Americans oppose the impeachment of President Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair but 58 per cent feel he should resign if the House of Representatives votes for a trial in the Senate.

A new ABC News/Washington Post poll released late last night showed that 61 per cent of the 1,004 adults surveyed did not want their representative in Congress to vote for impeachment, compared to 38 per cent who did.

But if the White House loses the impeachment vote — only the second one in history on presidential articles of impeachment — a sizeable majority thinks Mr Clinton should quit rather than face a month-long trial in the Senate.

A separate CBS News/New York Times poll, also released late last night, showed that 64 per cent of the Americans oppose impeachment, and 50 per cent believe a last-minute compromise to censure or fine Mr Clinton will be worked out to avert a Senate trial.

A nervous White House yesterday tried to turn up public pressure on House leaders to allow a vote on censure as more Republicans said they would vote to impeach him.

Mr Clinton, in the Gaza strip to meet Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, told reporters that his impeachment was not in the public interest and he would make any “reasonable compromise” to end the crisis before Thursday’s vote in the House of Representatives.

Meanwhile, U.S. Vice President Al Gore yesterday said that there was wide agreement that President Bill Clinton’s conduct was “terribly wrong” but called on Congress to censure the President rather than impeach him.

“There ought to be a censure, not impeachment,” Mr Gore told reporters at an unrelated White House event,. “The Republican leadership is forcing this rejection of any compromise and forcing this vote that the American people do not want.”

The Vice-President dismissed Republican calls for Mr Clinton to resign, saying bluntly “that’s not going to happen,”.

Mr Gore also said he was not directly lobbying members of Congress ahead of Thursday’s expected House of Representatives vote on whether to impeach Mr Clinton.

Mr Gore said the Republican leadership of the House, in insisting that it would not permit a vote on censure, was defying the will of the people who did not want to see Mr Clinton impeached.

“It is not the right thing to do. It is not in keeping with the wishes of the American people, it is not following the wisdom of the American people and so I would hope that the leadership in Congress would reconsider (and) allow the compromise approach that the American people want,” he said.

First public execution in Pak tribal area

ISLAMABAD, Dec 15 (PTI)— In the first such instance of its kind, a Pak-based Islamic group, styled on the Taliban, publicly executed a person in a remote tribal area near the Afghan border for allegedly murdering his cousin, reports said here yesterday.

A young man, Khial Ghaffar, was shot dead by his own uncle before an estimated crowd of 2,000 yesterday in Khandezo village of Orakzai tribal area bordering Afghanistan, some 120 km south of Peshawar, the reports said.

Ghaffar, reportedly confessed to killing his cousin over a property dispute before a Shariah court, comprising local religious leaders, which sentenced him to death by firing.

Eyewitnesses said Ghaffar was brought blindfolded to the execution ground with his hands tied. He then asked the turbaned squad accompanying him to remove his blindfold and calmly walked to the execution spot.

His brother, Aziz, and uncle, Syed Ghafoor, chosen to carry out the task by the powerful local Ulemas, then opened fire from their Kalashnikovs killing him instantaneously.

Mullah Mohammad Rahim, head of the Tehreek-e-Tulaba (movement of students), later said Ghaffar’s brother and uncle were chosen as they were the closest relatives of the victim, Shandi Khan.

The execution is the first since premier Nawaz Sharif endorsed Taliban-style quick justice in a bid to appease Right-wing forces that oppose his rule. He later said he was misquoted after criticism in western media.

Rahim said Ghaffar had confessed his crime and named six of his accomplices. The families of the accomplices have been asked to produce them before the Shariah court.

The Tehreek-e-Tulaba, which came up three years ago, inspired by spectacular gains made by the Taliban across the border, has banned TVs, VCRs, music and other activities which could lead Muslims astray.

Significantly, Pakistan’s tribal areas, bordering Afghanistan, are semi-autonomous areas, which fall outside the jurisdiction of police and courts.

Pak had ‘gone nuclear’ in ’83

ISLAMABAD, Dec 15 (UNI) — Pakistan had “gone nuclear” in 1983 and the then President, Gen Zia-Ul Haq was “informed in writing” about the matter, according to the country’s top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadir Khan.

Laying the foundation stone of an institute of technology named after him near Mianwali in Punjab province today, the expert, who engineered Pakistan’s recent Chagai tests, said the letter to Gen Haq had said that the government could undertake a nuclear test at any time it wanted.

Referring to this year’s tests by his country, Mr Khan said entire India was now under the range of his country’s missiles, and that “our nuclear programme was much better than theirs (India).”

He claimed that the eyes of 57 Muslim countries were currently focused on Pakistan and expressed the hope that Islamabad would “come true to their expectations”.

The foundation stone of the institute was originally to be laid by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif but thick fog prevented his helicopter from landing near the institute.

Benazir’s plea rejected

ISLAMABAD, Dec 15 (UNI) — The Supreme Court today rejected former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s plea to transfer the cases against her and her husband Asif Zardari to the Sind High Court.

Declaring the Ehtesab Benches as high courts, the apex court directed that the cases be heard both at Karachi and Rawalpindi.

Ms Bhutto had filed an application seeking that her reference cases pending in the Lahore High Court has no jurisdiction over the assets in question, situated in Sind.

The court directed that the cases would be considered both by the Sind High Court at Karachi and the Lahore High Court at Rawalpindi.

ASEAN to admit Cambodia later

HANOI, Dec 15 (AP) — ASEAN leaders decided late yesterday not to admit Cambodia as their 10th member in time for their annual summit here.

But they tried to allow Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has lobbied hard during a two-day state visit, to save face by saying that his country definitely will be allowed to join and telling their Foreign Ministers to arrange it all at an unspecified date.

The decision also gives Vietnam, Mr Hun Sen’s biggest backer, a small coup by allowing it to host the ceremony.

“We have decided to admit Cambodia as the 10th member of ASEAN and for the Foreign Ministers to organise a special ceremony in Hanoi,’’ Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Manh Can told reporters.

31 die in attack on Kosovo

PRISTINA, Dec 15 (AP) — A tenuous stand-off between Serbian forces and separatist rebels in Kosovo exploded in violence yesterday in the worst clash since the October truce in which border guards killed dozens of guerrillas.

The pre-dawn clash, along Kosovo’s south-western border with Albania, resulted in Yugoslav army troops killing 30 ethnic Albanians and wounding 12 who were trying to enter the country illegally, the Serb-run media centre reported.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which sent a team to the site, confirmed 31 persons had been killed, including one woman. Nine persons were captured.

In other violence, OSCE sources said unidentified assailants opened fire in a Serb-run bar in the western Kosovo city of Pec, killing four Serbs and wounding five others. The government-owned Tanjug news agency said two masked “terrorists”, using the authorities term for Albanian rebels, entered the bar and sprayed it with automatic weapons fire.

Iraq denies access to UN inspectors

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 15 (AP) — Despite Baghdad’s promise of full cooperation with UN Inspectors, Iraq for the second time denied access to a site related to its banned weapons programmes, a UN spokesman said yesterday.

The incident occurred on Friday when a Baghdad-based chemical monitoring team was denied entry to a warehouse which had been inspected many times previously.

Iraqi officials barred inspectors on grounds that it was the Muslim Sabbath.

“In deference to local religious sensitivities, inspectors have limited Friday missions, but maintain the right to go any time, any place, 24 hours a day,” said Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for the UN Special Commission, known as UNSCOM, which is charged with verifying the destruction of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

Algerian PM quits
ALGIERS: Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia resigned on Monday, according to a presidential statement. Major opposition parties had demanded Ouyahia’s dismissal, accusing him of having failed to stop what they call widespread cheating in favour of the main Ruling National Democratic Rally (RND) party in the local elections of 1997. Foes also held him responsible for the government’s failure to end rampant armed violence involving Islamist militants. — Reuters

Tintin comic
PARIS: France’s communist party, shaking off another taboo from its hardline past, has said it will reprint parts of a fiercely anti-communist book showing comic hero Tintin discovering the early excesses of Stalinism. The party’s newspaper L’Humanite said on Monday that it would mark the 70th anniversary of Tintin, the Belgian boy reporter, and one of Europe’s best-known cartoon characters, with a special report asking whether he may have been right about Stalinism after all. “Tintin au pays des Soviets” (Tintin in the country of Soviets) was so crudely critical of Moscow that it was never reprinted in the highly successful hardcover series. — Reuters

Eavesdropping case
LOS ANGELES: A tabloid journalist pleaded not guilty to federal charges of eavesdropping on an angry cell phone call between actor Tom Cruise and his wife Nicole Kidman and then selling the tape to a weekly newspaper. Eric Ford, 27, is charged with one count of intercepting a wire communication and two counts of disclosing the information. He could face a possible 15 years in prison if convicted. Ford allegedly used a modified scanner to pick up a cellular phone call between Cruise and Kidman, then sought to sell the tape to the British tabloid News of the World and to Globe Communications, publishers of the US tabloid The Globe. — Reuters

Couple seeks asylum
LONDON: A couple is seeking refuge in Britain after their marriage across rival tribes led to rioting and killings in Pakistan, a British newspaper has reported. Kanwar Ahsan, 30, and Riffat Afridi, 19, who come from rival tribes, have formally asked the British Government for help after receiving 6,000 death threats, The Sunday Telegraph said. The Telegraph said a bounty of £ 5,000 ($ 8,250) had been put on their heads. Ahsan, a clerical worker from the Mohajir community and Afridi, a member of a powerful family of the Pathan tribe, met four years ago and eloped in February after an illicit friendship. — AP

Iranian writers
TEHERAN: Several Iranian secularist writers have gone into hiding after a string of mystery deaths and disappearances among their colleagues that threatens President Mohammad Khatami’s reform efforts. Firouz Gouran, Editor of the banned monthly Jame’eh Salem, or Healthy Society, said on Monday that many of his colleagues had either left their homes or adopted special security measures. “This has spread panic everywhere,” Gouran told Reuters. The bodies of three secularist intellectuals have been found in recent days in what friends and family members say were suspicious circumstances, a fourth is missing and feared dead. — Reuters

Border fencing
DHAKA: Bangladesh on Monday said that it was opposed to any Indian move to fence the Indo-Bangla border as “it is not in the interest of improvement of bilateral ties between the two neighbours.” “It is not a good omen for bilateral ties and also not conducive to present initiatives of creation of a South Asia free trade area,” Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abdus Samad Azad told reporters. — PTI