BAGHDAD : Iraqi schoolgirls demonstrate on Thursday outside the United Nations Development Programme office in Baghdad against the continuing U.N. trade sanctions on Iraq. They shouted and carried anti-U.S. slogans. — AP/PTI

China resents US meddling
BEIJING, Oct 29 — China today reacted sharply to two “anti-China” acts passed by the US Congress recently and asked America to refrain from interfering in China’s internal affairs.

2 killed in Gaza car blast
CAIRO, Oct 29 — A Palestinian militant, carrying explosives, today drove into an Israeli convoy of Army jeeps and school bus killing himself and an Israeli soldier and injuring three children in the Gaza strip this morning.

Poll campaign: Ads focus on Clinton-Lewinsky affair
ONLY days before the United States congressional elections on November 3, the Bill Clinton question has returned to centre-stage in the Democratic campaign as the Republicans launch a $10 million advertising blitz focusing on the President’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.

1m offer to Jones withdrawn
NEW YORK, Oct 29 — Maverick New York millionaire Abe Hirschfeld has withdrawn his $ one-million offer to Paula Jones to settle her sexual harassment lawsuit against U.S. President Bill Clinton and accused her lawyers of dragging their feet.

China to consider request for route
BEIJING, Oct 29 — China today responded positively to India’s request of exploring the possibility of opening a new route to Mansarovar in Tibet.

India for talks on N-arms convention

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 29 (PTI)— India has urged the international community to begin talks on the nuclear weapons convention for the elimination of all atomic arms.

The adoption of this convention by the millennium General Assembly session in the year 2000 would be a “crowning glory” for the United Nations, Deputy Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha Najma Heptulla said.

By the turn of the century, the biological weapons convention and the chemical weapons convention would have “hopefully” received near universal ratification, Dr Nazma Heptulla said while addressing the United Nations General Assembly on the issue of cooperation with the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) yesterday.

“These weapons of mass destruction have been outlawed but very little progress has been made on the last remaining weapon of mass destruction — nuclear weapons,” she added.

Stressing the need for the millennium assembly to identify “effective goals” for the 21st century, the Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairperson said an obvious goal would be increasing the role of the United Nations in development through the promotion of South-South cooperation.

The special millennium session is scheduled for June, 2000. Simultaneously, a meeting of the representatives of parliaments, governments and international agencies is planned.

“The UN and the IPU have also to work simultaneously towards the sharing of information and knowledge and transfer of technology from developed countries to the developing nations so as to bridge the widening gap between them and reduce tensions and pave the way for growth, peace and understanding,” she added.

In this context, Dr Nazma Heptulla stressed the need for providing sufficient resources to the world body to enable it to carry out its mandates and said the IPU could play a major role in this direction as parliamentarians of all views are represented in it.

“Obviously, bankruptcy or even chronic poverty of the United Nations will have an adverse impact on all its activities, including cooperation with the IPU. In our view, the IPU can play a role in redressing this situation by mobilising the necessary political will to support the United Nations,” she told the 185-member assembly.

Dr Heptulla emphasised the need for participation of women in all aspects of economic and social life and their political empowerment to strengthen democratic systems.

“As a country committed to the uplift of women, India has enacted significant socially emancipating legislations, including reservation of one-thirds of seats (for women) in locally elected bodies at the district, municipal and village levels, through constitutional amendments”, she told delegates.

Human rights violations
Tutu panel nails killers

PRETORIA, Oct 29 (Reuters) — South Africa’s Truth Commission today held former President P.W. Botha, President Nelson Mandela’s ex-wife and the ruling African National Congress (ANC) accountable for gross violations of human rights.

"Where Amnesty has not been sought or has been denied, prosecution should be considered where evidence exists that an individual has committed a gross human rights violation," the Statutory Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) said in a 3,500-page report on its two-year inquiry into human rights under White rule.

The report was handed to South African President Nelson Mandela at a ceremony in Pretoria just over two hours after a Cape Town court dismissed a last-ditch bid by the ANC to block its release.

The ANC argued in papers prepared during the night that it had not been given adequate opportunity to respond to the commission’s allegations, which included complicity in the deaths inside South Africa of civilians including children and farm workers.

The commission headed by Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu branded apartheid, the policy of white domination enforced in 1948 and dismantled in 1994, a crime against humanity.

Tutu said he was "devastated" by the ANC’s attempt to block publication. He greeted the ruling party’s court defeat as "a triumph for truth and humanity".

Mr Mandela told the handover ceremony he "accepts the report as it is, with all its imperfections, as an aid the TRC has given us to help reconcile and build our nation".

The panel listed crimes including assassination, torture and abduction by members of the former White minority government and said: "Botha contributed to and facilitated a climate in which the above gross violations of human rights could and did occur and as such is accountable for such violations."

Amongst state actions for which it said Botha was accountable, it included: "the deliberate unlawful killing and attempted killing of persons opposed to the policies of the government within and outside South Africa."

Botha (82) denies any wrongdoing during his 10 years as President and has refused to seek amnesty under a parallel provision of the Truth Commission law. Earlier this year, he was fined and given a suspended sentence for refusing to testify to the commission on his actions as President till 1989.

The commission said also that Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, divorced by Mandela two years ago on grounds of infidelity, was politically and morally responsible for the actions of her so-called Mandela United Football Club, which abused, abducted and killed Soweto township youths.

"The commission finds further that Madikizela-Mandela herself was responsible for committing such gross violations of human rights," the five-volume report added.

The report said Inkatha Freedom Party leader and Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who also has refused to seek amnesty for his actions under apartheid, was responsible for human rights violations.

A half-page of detailed allegations against former President F.W. De Klerk, who shared a Nobel Peace prize with Mandela in 1993, was blacked out.

De Klerk sought a court order earlier this week to block the report, which was to have linked him to state-sponsored bombings of church and civic offices.

De Klerk said he learned about the events after they had happened and after the perpetrators had decided to seek amnesty for their actions.

In other recommendations, the commission proposes a wealth tax or a once-off levy on individuals and companies to help redress the black poverty that is a legacy of apartheid.

China resents US meddling

BEIJING, Oct 29 (PTI) — China today reacted sharply to two “anti-China” acts passed by the US Congress recently and asked America to refrain from interfering in China’s internal affairs.

In a strongly-worded statement, the Chinese Foreign Minister expressed “strong resentment” and “firm opposition” to the anti-China contents enshrined in the two US acts passed by the Congress.

“These contents serve to interfere in China’s internal affairs, support the Tibetan separatist elements, obstruct the normal cooperation between China and the USA in economic, trade and other fields, include Taiwan into the Theatre Missile Defence (TMD) system and continue to sell arms to Taiwan,” the statement, read out by Foreign Ministry spokesman Tang Guoqiang, said here.

Tang said China was seriously concerned with the contents of acts, the Omnibus Appropriation Act and the 1999 fiscal year Department of Defence Authorisation Act.

“By passing these acts, the US Congress has gravely violated the basic norms of international relations and the principles enshrined in the three Sino-US joint communiqués, interfered in China’s internal affairs, seriously hurt the feelings of the Chinese people, placed obstacles to the Chinese people’s great cause of peaceful reunification of the motherland and normal exchanges and cooperation between the two countries,” the statement said.

“Any attempt to interfere in China’s internal affairs is absolutely unacceptable to the Chinese side,” the statement said while pointing out that development of Sino-US relations is the “shared wish” of both Chinese and American peoples and it serves their long-term interests.

However, Tang noted that normal Sino-US relations would be impossible if the principles of mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are not observed.

“We hope the US government will, proceeding from the over all interests of the bilateral relations, strictly observe the principles set forth in the three joint communiqués between China and the USA, explicitly oppose the anti-China contents of the acts adopted by the US Congress...,” the statement said.

Fastest computer

WASHINGTON, Oct 29 (IANS) — The US Administration has unveiled the world’s fastest supercomputer, known as “blue pacific”, which has been developed primarily to help it move towards non-proliferation goals.

Capable of performing 3.9 trillion calculations per second — more than twice as fast as any other computer — the machine has been developed jointly by the US Energy Department’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and IBM at a cost of $ 96 million.

Vice-President Al Gore and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson unveiled the new machine at a White House ceremony. Mr Gore said the world’s fastest computer would lead to advances in medicine and aviation safety and better understanding of global climate change.

Mr Gore said that it would take a person using a hand calculator 63,000 years to perform the same number of calculations that this computer could calculate in one second.

Mr Richardson said: “We have broken the speed barrier and we are going to keep accelerating. The Department of Energy needs these high-speed computers to help ensure the safety, security and reliability of our nuclear stockpile without nuclear testing,” he added.

“Blue pacific” is the second in a series of five generations of high-performance computers planned by the Department of Energy, which has set a target of making a machine with a speed of 100 trillion calculations per second (teraops) by the year 2004.

2 killed in Gaza car blast

CAIRO, Oct 29 (PTI) — A Palestinian militant, carrying explosives, today drove into an Israeli convoy of Army jeeps and school bus killing himself and an Israeli soldier and injuring three children in the Gaza strip this morning.

Police said a Palestinian tried to drive up next to the bus carrying 40 school children, but was held back by the Army jeep which positioned itself between his car and the bus.

A bomb in the car then exploded, with the jeep taking the main force of the blast, police said.

The dead soldier was in a jeep guarding the bus as it picked up children from Jewish settlements located in the central and southern Gaza strip. Three children in the bus were also slightly wounded, police said.

Hamas has claimed responsibility for the attack even though its spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin distanced his group from the claim saying “we have nothing to do with the bombing and we only came to know about it from media”.

Poll campaign: Ads focus on
Clinton-Lewinsky affair
By Martin Kettle in Seattle

ONLY days before the United States congressional elections on November 3, the Bill Clinton question has returned to centre-stage in the Democratic campaign as the Republicans launch a $10 million advertising blitz focusing on the President’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.

The decision to broadcast new ads attacking Mr Clinton marks a sharp change of approach by the Republicans. Their campaign opened with high expectations that the scandal would help their cause, but the issue has rebounded increasingly in favour of the Democrats.

So the adverts represent a big gamble by the Republicans, who will try to link any gains they make to the standing of the President. The change of approach might signal fresh determination by the party leadership to press ahead with impeachment.

One ad features a conversation between two women. “What did you tell your kids?’’ the first asks. “I didn’t know what to say,” the other replies.

“It’s wrong. For seven months he lied to us,” the first woman says.

“But aren’t there other things to do?”

“And say it’s OK to lie?” the first woman concludes.

A second ad ends with silent slow-motion footage of Mr Clinton jabbing his finger at the camera in his public denial of a sexual relationship with “that woman, Ms Lewinsky”. The ad then urges people to vote Republican. The tactics reassert recent conventional political wisdom that the elections would hurt the Democrats because of the fallout from Mr Clinton’s affair with the former White House intern.

In the suburbs of liberal Seattle, however, at least one Democratic candidate is trying to disprove that conventional wisdom.

A week ago, Jay Inslee, who is trying to unseat Republican congressman Rick White to become one of nine members of the House of Representatives from Washington state, became the first Democrat to highlight the impeachment issue in his election campaign.

“What the president did was wrong,” Mr Inslee said in his television ad.

“He should be censured, but not impeached. Rick White and (House Speaker) Newt Gingrich shouldn’t be dragging us through this. Enough is enough.”

The themes are familiar to Democrats but Mr Inslee has turned them around by using the issue to attack not defend in one of the Democratic party’s target electoral races.

The battle in Washington’s First District - which runs north and east from the Seattle suburbs to include the Redmond headquarters of Bill Gates’s Microsoft empire - is seen as one of the key contests of the mid-term elections and strategists from both parties are observing Mr Inslee’s gamble with interest.

Before the the new Republican campaign, the gamble appeared to have paid off. Mr Inslee said many voters had expressed support. Rather more reliable evidence comes from the surge of donations to the Inslee campaign - more than $8,000 flooded in the day after the first Democratic campaign committee poll claiming that Mr Inslee was four points ahead of Mr White, after trailing by several points two weeks earlier.

The evidence from Seattle and the unpopularity of the impeachment inquiry have encouraged Mr Clinton’s strategists to urge candidates to adopt a more combative stance against Republican tactics. A recent Gallup poll showed that 55 per cent of Americans disapprove of the way the Republicans have handled the investigation of Mr Clinton, while 38 per cent approve of it.

The point is underlined by a new poll in California for the Los Angeles Times. A poll taken at the start of campaigning found that the Lewinsky scandal was encouraging Republicans to want to vote and Democrats to stay at home. But a poll taken last week showed Democrats were leading by three points among those more likely to vote because of the issue.

Such findings have emboldened Mr Clinton’s advisers James Carville and Stan Greenberg to issue a memorandum urging candidates not to “run from” the issue of impeachment. “The impeachment inquiry is an opportunity.”

Many Clinton loyalists remain convinced that the electorate is dominated by people who are prepared to forgive the President’s transgressions and want him to get back to work, but other Democrats and Republicans disagree. The split reflects a difference seen in the polls between voters as a whole, who disapprove of the inquiry, and those more likely to vote, who do not favour Mr Clinton.

A Gallup poll on October 12 found a narrow 49-48 per cent disapproval among all voters of Congress’s decision to begin an impeachment inquiry. Among likely voters, on the other hand, there was a 10-point margin in favour of the decision. The Democrats are failing to mobilise support among those who are less likely to vote.

“The voters are tired of people who prefer to talk about sex than about what would make a difference in their lives,’’ Cathy Allen, a Democratic campaign consultant, said.

“The trouble, however, is that a lot of them are also tired of politicians in general. This has not been a good year for America, and there are a lot of people out there who think that all politicians are a bunch of two-faced so-and-sos.’’

“People don’t want to see the impeachment inquiry made into a partisan issue,’’ said Republican pollster Bill McInturff, whose firm is advising Rick White in his campaign to beat Mr Inslee.

He argues that both parties would be wiser to stick to the issues in the search for votes during the next 10 days.

“People in my focus groups are saying ‘How can you blame the Democrats for the things President Clinton did?”

—The Guardian News Service

1m offer to Jones withdrawn

NEW YORK, Oct 29 (AFP) — Maverick New York millionaire Abe Hirschfeld has withdrawn his $ one-million offer to Paula Jones to settle her sexual harassment lawsuit against U.S. President Bill Clinton and accused her lawyers of dragging their feet.

The real estate magnate complained he had received “very little gratitude or appreciation of my willingness to give my own money to settle a case that mired this nation in a quagmire of misunderstanding that has us losing our national direction.”

In a statement yesterday, the 79-year-old Hirschfeld also complained of not being able to directly contact lawyers for Jones, the former Arkansas state employee who has sued the President for sexual harassment.

The millionaire announced on October 2 that he would give Jones the money if she dropped the case. But he stipulated that none of it should go to her lawyers.

China to consider request for route

BEIJING, Oct 29 (PTI) — China today responded positively to India’s request of exploring the possibility of opening a new route to Mansarovar in Tibet.

“The Chinese side is willing to consider the request by the Indian side for opening a new pilgrim route,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Tang Guoqiang said here.

Mr Tang said the two sides could have “concrete consultations” over the issue.

Home Minister L. K. Advani had expressed the hope on Saturday that China would respond positively to India’s request for routing Mansarovar pilgrims via Demchok in the mountainous Ladakh region.

13 ultras killed
ALGIERS: Thirteen armed Islamic militants of the “Katiba Khadra” (Green Phalanx) were killed by security forces south of Tiaret in western Algeria, Algerian TV has reported, showing pictures of the bodies. Among the bodies which lay on their backs, scattered across a clearing, was a woman. Beside the bodies were many weapons, including automatic weapons, knives and home-made grenades. The TV report, however, did not say when the group was killed. — AFP

Mob burns robbers
QUICHEE (Guatemala): An enraged Guatemalan mob torched the bodies of three bank robbers shot by the police, and then threw a captured gang member in the pyre to be burnt alive, officials said. Mr Mardoqued Diaz of the police force in El Quichee, 260 km north of Guatemala City, said a 15-member gang tried to rob a bank on Wednesday but guards fought them off, killing three. Another robber was captured by townspeople. Mr Diaz said local people forced the police to hand over the bodies of the dead criminals and set them alight in front of the bank. They then threw the captured man into the flames, burning him alive. — Reuters

Bardot defends dog
LONDON: French screen legend Brigitte Bardot has made an impassioned appeal to Scottish judges to spare the life of a dog sentenced to be put down for having growled at a postman. “It’s not credible, it’s impossible”, Bardot said. The dog, Woofie, a three-year-old bitch and cross-breed of Colley and Boxer, was ordered to be put down after she ran after a postman and growled at him, even though she did not bite. The owner pleaded guilty thinking he risked only a fine. — AFP

Judge admonished
WASHINGTON: A California judge has been publicly admonished for asking his female clerk to sign a “sexual harassment waiver” and then repeatedly pestering her with personal advances. California’s Commission on Judicial Performance said Judge Harvey Hiber of the San Diego County Municipal Court had overstepped the boundaries of proper judicial behaviour. — ANI

Identity problem
LONDON: Movie star Tom Cruise probably thought he would be instantly recognisable after hit films such as “Mission Impossible” and “Top Gun”, especially in a video store. But when he popped down to his local video rental store outside London, he was turned away — for failing to produce two forms of identification. Multi-millionaire Cruise, 36, was told by his local blockbuster store that rules were rules. No ID, no video. According to The Mirror daily, the video store assistant recognised Cruise but stuck to the company line. — AFP