Holy books safe in fire
NEW YORK, Oct 22 — A Sikh temple in Connecticut was destroyed in a fire, but the holy books kept in the building were miraculously saved.

‘Hindus must wear yellow band’
KANDAHAR, Oct 22 — Under a rigid new social code imposed by the Taliban Islamic militia, nearly 50 Hindu families living in this southern Afghan city are required to wear a distinctive yellow piece of cloth.

Hun Sen backs out of talks
PHNOM PENH, Oct 22 — Cambodian strongman Hun Sen today said he had given up on a proposed summit to hammer out a coalition government as the country’s political deadlock deepened.

USA pays $ 50 m to save UN franchise
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 22 — The USA has paid $50 million to the United Nations but still needs to pay another $300 million to save its voting right in the General Assembly.

Exercises may affect Korean peace talks
GENEVA, Oct 22 — Delegates from South and North Korea, China and the US resumed talks today amid warnings from Pyongyang that the upcoming military exercises would hurt the meeting.

Sanctions waiver Bill is law

WASHINGTON, Oct 22 (IANS) — President Bill Clinton yesterday signed into law the Brownback legislation that arms him with the authority to waive the economic sanctions against India and Pakistan.

The legislation was part of a whopping $ 500 billion government spending Bill, already passed by the House and the Senate, that contained over 100 amendments.

Senior Administration officials, elated that they had obtained the sanctions waiver before Congress adjourned for the year, made it clear that the President would lift the sanctions against Delhi and Islamabad only if “substantial progress” is made in the nuclear nonproliferation talks with both countries.

The sanctions were imposed following the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan earlier this year.

“We now have the flexibility to waive the economically-oriented sanctions, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that we will be in any rush to lift these sanctions,” one senior State Department official said.

“The lifting of the sanctions,” according to the official, “will be contingent on substantial progress in our high-level discussions with both India and Pakistan on nuclear nonproliferation matters and also with regard to the bilateral dialogue between New Delhi and Islamabad.”

The Bill, along with the Brownback Amendment, which was riding piggyback on the Agricultural Appropriations Bill, had earlier been vetoed by Clinton on the grounds that it did not subsidise farmers sufficiently at a time of very low farm produce prices.

After Democrats successfully sustained the veto and the Republicans capitulated and agreed to add several billions of dollars, the entire Bill was resurrected and pushed through both Houses and sent to Clinton for signature before the lawmakers left town to campaign for the November Congressional elections.

The Brownback Amendment, named after Senator Sam Brownback, Republican, provides Clinton with a one year waiver to lift economic sanctions against India and Pakistan.

The waiver, however, does not vest the President with the authority to lift the embargo on the sale of defence related equipment,including dual-use technology, to India and Pakistan.

The one-year waiver granted to Clinton gives him the authority to give the green light to restart programmes and guarantees of the Export-Import Bank, Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Trade and Development Agency.

It also gives the administration the authority to support multilateral assistance — from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and Asian Development Bank to India and Pakistan.

Pakistan’s economy is in a shambles and it critically needs World Bank and IMF loans if it is to avoid defaulting on its international debt further. India’s economy is much more resilient and has been able to withstand the sanctions thus far, but senior government officials, including Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha who visited the USA last month, have acknowledged that if the sanctions continue, they could begin to bite.

India, in fact, during the World Bank-IMF annual meetings last month, requested the Bank to extend $3 billion in credits in the coming fiscal year. The US support is imperative for such assistance.

Senior officials said the waiver authority gave them a bargaining tool with both countries to pressure them into signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and other nonproliferation accords such as the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty currently being negotiated in Geneva.

Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Karl Inderfurth said earlier this month that neither India nor Pakistan should be under any illusion that such a waiver will automatically translate into a lifting of the sanctions against them.

“Signing and ratifying the CTBT remains a key requirement for the administration to make any move toward removing the sanctions against India and Pakistan,” Inderfurth had said.

“Also, finding a formula for a moratorium on fissile material production, pending conclusion of the Geneva talks,” is a necessary precondition, he added.

Administration officials noted that before the President lifted sanctions, he would have to consult Congress and provide lawmakers with reasons for taking such action.This would require Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to provide Congress with a report on the economic and national security interests of both nations that make the lifting of such sanctions a palliative.

Clinton has invited Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to Washington in December to discuss the country’s deteriorating economic situation and Administration sources believe that Islamabad at this meeting will acquiesce to signing the CTBT in return for Washington’s lifting of the sanctions.

W. Asia peace talks
Israel drops withdrawal threat

QUEENSTOWN (Maryland), Oct 22 (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last night dropped a threat to break up the West Asia summit and said the talks would be continued in search for an agreement.

"Israel wishes to achieve an agreement and hopes there is a similar desire on the Palestinians’ side," he said after a lengthy meeting with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on security guarantees.

While the US President, Mr Bill Clinton, remained at the White House, a team of American and Israeli officials met to revise the security provisions that would be part of a land-for-peace accord.

Mr Netanyahu praised the efforts of Mr Clinton and Ms Albright "to advance the goal of peace."

Israel’s threat to leave the talks forced US officials to draft new security proposals with Mr Netanyahu in order to rescue the summit.

US State Department spokesman James P. Rubin characterised the security proposals as a "rolling document," indicating it was still evolving. Asked specifically if the document was being revised, Mr Rubin said he wasn’t ruling out "nuances and details."

Mr Netanyahu had warned the Israelis were prepared to leave the talks if there was no substantial progress on security and the removal of anti-Israel clauses in the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s charter.

"If there will be substantial progress we will stay," Mr Netanyahu said. If not, we will go." Earlier, his spokesman told reporters, "we are packing our bags."

The Palestinians, meanwhile, said they would reject any new Israel demand. Ahmed Tibi, an adviser to Yasser Arafat, said.

"Internal politics" in Israel were blocking a land-for-peace accord.

He said the Palestinians had already made sufficient changes to their covenant.

Mr Netanyahu has been under tremendous pressure to resist a troop pullback from the West Bank. Hardliners in his government and leaders of the powerful Jewish settler lobby yesterday vowed to bring down the coalition government if he signed a deal.

In addition, dozens of Jewish settlers blocked major West Bank highways in protest, forcing Palestinians to use side roads.

A senior US official suggested Mr Netanyahu’s threat to leave did not reflect Israel’s real stance in the talks. "I wouldn’t think their private posture is quite as stark as their public posture," he said.

And Israel pushed backs its threatened deadline three times yesterday. "We are still going to give it a chance, No one is closing doors," said Dore Gold, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations.

Gold said Israel needed a concrete security plan in order to make this process safe for Israelis, safe ultimately for Palestinians, and safe for West Asia.

With the atmosphere souring on the seventh day of the talks, Israel and the Palestinians exchanged accusations on which side was responsible for the slow progress.

And yet, Mr Arafat telephoned 49th birthday congratulations to Mr Netanyahu and urged him to stay on and complete the agreement.

Tibi, his adviser, said he had delivered flowers to Mr Netanyahu on behalf of Mr Arafat.

Turning grave at a news conference in English, Hebrew and Arabic, Tibi said the Palestinians had already accepted the US recommendations. "We are waiting for a yes from the Israelis," he said.

Mr Rubin said a US document, combining understandings already reached between the two sides and US suggestions to bridge remaining differences, would be given to Israel and the Palestinians later in the day.

"We are at a key moment in the history of the West Asia peace process," he said.

Mr Rubin said the "intensity was only increasing" and that it was not clear whether Mr Netanyahu and Mr Arafat were ready to make the "hard choices’’ needed for an accord.

He said the document being prepared by the administration was designed to advance the security of both people "and reflected the criticality of the moment."

Asked whether the Israelis would leave the talks, Mr Rubin said: "We’re prepared to facilitate anyone’s departure. We’re not holding anyone against their will."

He said, however, that he did not know the Israeli plans.

Asma Jahangir quits Pak govt bodies

LAHORE, Oct 22 (ANI) — Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Chairperson Asma Jahangir and several other women, who were working with the government in meeting some of its international commitments in the field of women’s empowerment, have resigned from all government committees.

The resignations were submitted following a call by the women Action Forum in protest against the passage of the controversial 15th Amendment (Shariat) Bill, which they have termed unconstitutional and undemocratic.

A number of women organisations and individual activists had volunteered to work on different government committees, set up to suggest legal and administrative steps as a follow-up to the international Beijing conference on women’s empowerment and the United Nation Convention on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

Besides Asma Jahangir, other women who have quit the government committees, include Fareeda Shaheed, Khawar Mumtaz, Hilda Saeed, Tahira S Khan, Insha Hamdani, Neelam Husain, Fareeha Zafar, Nigar Ahmad, Shehla Zia, Shahtaj Qizalbash and Hina Jilani.

A joint press statement issued by them on Wednesday said: “The introduction of the 15th amendment to the Constitution makes it clear that the government is not serious about its commitments to either women’s rights or democratic process. The involvement of women and women’s organisations in committees on the CEDAW and other commitments now appears to be a mere formality that are being carried out only for the sake of avoiding international embarrassment”.

Holy books safe in US gurdwara fire

NEW YORK, Oct 22 (IANS) — A Sikh temple in Connecticut was destroyed in a fire that lasted several hours, but the holy books kept in the building were miraculously saved, temple authorities said.

“A miracle happened. We were able to save the books without any harm to them. The whole building was burned out, but the room where we had those books was intact,” said Mr Hargurpreet Singh, president of Guru Nanak Darbar Gurdwara.

The fire, which broke out last Tuesday in a windowless three-storey brick building located in downtown Ansonia housed the gurdwara, an opticians’s shop, an insurance agency and an electrical supply company. No one was on the second floor of the temple at that time.

He cajoled the officials to send a firefighter into the building, on a crane, to look for the books after the fire had been put out.

A spokesperson for the Ansonia Police Department said the cause of the fire had not been determined, but it is believed to have started in the basement.

The Sikhs of the area are planning to hold a prayer meeting to commemorate the saving of the books. “We are going to pray together and be thankful that our scriptures survived,” said Mr Manmohan Singh Bharara, general secretary of the Connecticut Sikh Association.

India can get rid of poverty: Amartya

WASHINGTON, Oct 22 (UNI) — Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize winner for Economics, has called for a “non-dogmatic approach” in dealing with India’s massive poverty, the alleviation of which, he feels, is “within our reach”.

“What is required is the acknowledgement of the seriousness of these issues rather than getting bogged down in some kind of dogmatic debate about whether you rely 100 per cent on market or reject market mechanism 100 per cent,” Prof Sen said in an interview broadcast over the Hindi Service of Voice of America last night.

Prof Sen, who won this year’s Nobel Prize for work on welfare economics, said elimination of poverty depended very much on the public policy. “I see poverty in terms of widespread illiteracy, poor healthcare system, incomplete land reforms, gender differences, deprivation of women and neglect of children,” he said.

He said, in his view, it was a question of being quite clear about the precise nature of the problem and methods to deal with it. “what are the objectives?” he asked and then went on to recommend an “open-minded” approach to do things that were needed to achieve them.

India has a higher ratio of malnourished and under-nourished children than even, perhaps, sub-Saharan Africa, he lamented.

Prof Sen believes that a good deal of use could be made of market mechanism. “it is a question, above all, of avoiding dogmatic policy,” he added.

In reply to a question, he said, the market-oriented reforms, in many ways, were long overdue in India. In 1991, when the government began their introduction, it faced two types of problems: there was enormous over-activity of the government in areas of control and licensing and the “so-called licence raj reflects that”.

Simultaneously, there was also enormous under-activity of the government in the fields like education and health care, he observed.

In his view, both of them were correct. “You need to reduce the over-activity of the government in those areas where it was counter-productive and expand in areas—education, health care, land reforms, social security and child nutrition—in which government activity could be positive and under-performed in the previous situation,” he added.

“So, reforms were a move in the right direction but not an adequately complete move in that direction,” Prof Sen remarked.

Prof Sen, (64), who hails from West Bengal and is now master of Trinity College in Cambridge, recalled in vivid details the 1943 Bengal famine and its impact on his thought process. “When I actually began my work, I did not think that famine is a very difficult subject to study. I did not go in that direction for quite some time. Then, I again started working on famine in 1973—some 30 years after the Bengal famine. Then, quite a lot of thought that I had even as a child proved quite relevant,” he added.

“Who were its victims?” he posed a question and then stated, none of his friends, schoolmates and family members had any problem. “that of course is a characteristics of a class nature of the famine,” he added.

Asked as to what he intended to do with the prize which includes a cheque for about $ 964,000, he would receive in Stockholm on December 10, he said” I have no clue, no idea at all. I am still an American resident in addition to being a British resident, even through I am exclusively an Indian citizen.”

He said half of the money would go in taxes to the USA in any way “what I would do with rest I don’t know.”

‘Hindus must wear yellow band’

KANDAHAR, Oct 22 (AFP) — Under a rigid new social code imposed by the Taliban Islamic militia, nearly 50 Hindu families living in this southern Afghan city are required to wear a distinctive yellow piece of cloth.

Most of the estimated 600 families who once thrived in Kandahar, have moved out during the past 20 years of turmoil.

Mostly of the South Asian origin, the non-Muslim minorities including Sikhs have played a vital role in commerce in Kandahar, once a thriving trade centre, which is now the headquarters of the hardline militia.

Mr Partab Chand, a 40-year-old Afghani Hindu is desperate to meet his wife Shanti and six children who moved to India during trouble in Afghanistan.

“I took them away to India because there was no future here,” Mr Chand told AFP. Mr Chand, who sells milk-based sweets, said he had to come back because of his business. The family remains divided because of difficulties in visa facilities as the Taliban administration is not recognised by New Delhi and India, still recognising the ousted Afghan Government has closed its consulate in Kandahar, he said. “This is my motherland but life here is too difficult,” he said.

Mr Mohan Lal, a 50-year old photographer, said, “We suffered the agonies of war like other Afghans. We saw deaths and destruction.” he said that his business was down under the militia as the Taliban had banned taking photographs. The Taliban only allow the taking of passport-size pictures for official purposes such as identity cards or obtaining travel documents.

Hun Sen backs out of talks

PHNOM PENH, Oct 22 (AFP) — Cambodian strongman Hun Sen today said he had given up on a proposed summit to hammer out a coalition government as the country’s political deadlock deepened.

“Even though a summit meeting can be held several times, in any venue, no results will be achieved,” Mr Hun Sen said.

His comments came as Opposition Funcinpec Party officials confirmed that King Norodom Sihanouk had backed out of the chairmanship of a proposed summit to break the almost three-month-old stalemate.

In a letter to his son, Funcinpec leader Prince Norodom Ranariddh, the king said he could not see any point in chairing a second summit to discuss the make-up of the government following elections in July.

USA pays $ 50 m to save UN franchise

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 22 (PTI) — The USA has paid $50 million to the United Nations but still needs to pay another $300 million to save its voting right in the General Assembly.

The United Nations estimates that Washington owes it more than $ 1.3 billion in regular budget and peacekeeping payments, a figure which the USA disputes.

The announcement of the payment was made by the cash-starved world body yesterday.

The US Congress has voted to pay another $ 197 million in terms of the outstanding bill.

The total amount should enable the USA to save its voting right in the assembly. But next year, it would be required to pay a much higher amount.

Exercises may affect Korean peace talks

GENEVA, Oct 22 (AFP) — Delegates from South and North Korea, China and the US resumed talks today amid warnings from Pyongyang that the upcoming military exercises would hurt the meeting.

The second round of talks is not being held on a full-fledged scale. Only top delegates from each party will attend the meeting, officials here said.

Mr Li, North Korea’s spokesman, told reporters before the start of the talks, that Pyongyang was not against South Korea’s proposal to set up sub-committees. But, he said, he did not know what would be discussed at the sub-committees.

Rebel leader killed
LONDON: One of Algeria’s top rebel leaders, Hassan Hattab, has reportedly been killed in a major military offensive in the north-eastern part of the country. Delayed reports here on Wednesday said Hattab could have been killed during an army bombardment of the Sidi Ali Bounah forest. The rebel leader has been reported dead several times in the past two years. The Algerian Government has not confirmed the killing so far. — ANI

Blue town
OSLO: Four Norwegian artists have come up with a novel idea for celebrating the new millennium in the coastal town of Sortland: paint the town blue. The Mayor of the town in Northern Norway fully supports the plan and many house-owners have said that they would join in the colourful painting ceremony, the Oslo daily Aftenposten reported on Wednesday.. — DPA

Disenfranchised
WASHINGTON: Felony laws in the USA bar 3.9 million Americans from voting, The Human Rights Watch says in a new report. “A stunning proportion of the disenfranchised is black men. If current trends continue, in a dozen states as many as 30 to 40 per cent of the next generation of black men will permanently lose the right to vote,” it warns. Almost every state in the USA denies prisoners the right to vote. But 14 states bar criminal offenders from voting even after they have finished their sentences. — PTI

Troop reduction
MOSCOW: Russia is continuing to reduce its troops along the Chinese border, Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev has said. Mr Sergeyev said on Wednesday that so far this year Russia had disbanded or cut 300 military units stationed near the 200 km border with its eastern neighbour, the Interfax news agency said. — AP

Gen Musharraf
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Army Chief, General Pervez Musharraf, has said that Pakistan could not be deterred by threats from across the border and its troops wery fully prepared to meet any eventuality. Addressing troops deployed in the forward areas of Siachen, General Musharraf said that despite bad weather conditions and an inhospitable terrain, the troops were performing tremendously well. He was accompanied by the Corps Commander, Lt-Gen Saleem Haider. — ANI

Typhoon kills 4
MANILA: Four persons were killed and thousands were evacuated as typhoon Babs advanced over Philippines on Thursday. The typhoon which was said to be approaching Manila, has brought life to a complete standstill. Officials have suspended stock and foreign exchange trading and schools and government offices have been closed. The typhoon, with winds blowing at the speed of 200 km per hour, was centred about 250 km east-southeast of here. — ANI

Stealing mud
MOSCOW: Criminals are even stealing mud in Russia. Thieves used a tractor and shovels to make off with eight tonnes of therapeutic, lakeside mud that belonged to a health spa near the southern city of Volgograd, the Itar-Tass news agency reported on Wednesday. Spa director Svetlana Gnutova said the soothing mud, which was hauled away in a truck, was worth about 19,000 roubles and had left the spa without enough to service its 200 clients. — AP