• Starr rejects request

Power failure may have led to crash
TORONTO, Sept 9 — A catastrophic electrical failure could have occurred aboard a Swissair jet just minutes before it crashed into the Atlantic off Canada, according to evidence pieced by investigators after a preliminary analysis of the airliner’s flight data recorder.

Clinton wants power to lift sanctions

WASHINGTON, Sept 9 (Agencies) — The Clinton Administration has warned lawmakers that nuclear arms control talks with rivals India and Pakistan were hampered by inflexible US sanctions and called on Congress to give the President the power to waive the penalties.

US Under-secretary of State Stuart Eizenstat told the US Senate’s sanctions task force yesterday that talks aimed at reducing tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad and at persuading the governments to join international arms control treaties were progressing.

But we warned “the lack of flexible waiver authority (for US economic sanctions) has limited our ability to be creative in encouraging India and Pakistan to cooperate in avoiding an arms race on the sub-continent.”

Mr Eizenstat urged lawmakers to pass legislation giving President Clinton the sweeping authority to waive the sanctions if progress is made in the talks, without which, the administration would have little to offer the two governments if they agreed to US non-proliferation demands.

But Mr Eizenstat said lawmakers might not agree on the waiver until early next year because so little time left before Congress adjourned its session in early October, ahead of elections in November.

The nuclear tests by the two countries in May triggered US economic sanctions under the so-called Glenn Amendment.

The Clinton Administration complained to Congress that the Glenn Amendment was too inflexible.

Tough US sanctions are in place against both countries, although Congress has allowed President Bill Clinton to waive them for food exports partly in response to complaints from US farmers.

“The history of our use of unilateral sanctions very clearly shows that in the majority of cases they fail to change the conduct of the targeted country,” Mr Eizenstat said.

Meanwhile, the International Trade Commission, in a study commissioned by the House Ways and Means Committee, issued a report yesterday suggesting that the direct cost of economic sanctions to the US economy ranged from $ 5 billion to $ 20 billion in lost export sales each year.

The ITC said 29 countries are now subject to unilateral US economic sanctions.

Anti-Hun Sen stir turns violent

PHNOM PENH, Sept 9 (AP) — Defiant Opposition leaders today vowed to intensify mass protests against strongman Hun Sen, even as riot police used clubs, guns and water cannon to scatter rock-throwing demonstrators demanding his ouster.

About 1,000 protesters were dispersed by police in clashes near the US Embassy and nearby residence of Opposition leader Prince Norodom Ranariddh. Some regrouped later in smaller clusters around the city until police would arrive to scatter them again.

Human rights workers, speaking on condition of anonymity, reported a Buddhist monk was killed by gunfire. The death could not be confirmed. At least one and possibly two more were wounded.

Prince Ranariddh told supporters of his Funcinpec party that Mr Hun Sen sparked a real revolution by sending police today with clubs and bamboo canes to destroy a protest camp at the National Assembly, smashing a 16-day vigil against his rule.

An angry Prince Ranariddh and Opposition ally Sam Rainsy applied for legal permission to hold a peaceful mass rally on Sunday.

“It is in the interests of this government to authorise a peaceful demonstration, rather than letting what is happening now to continue,’’ the Prince said. “It’s now time for Hun Sen to stop using violence.’’

Such rallies have drawn as many as 20,000 people. One now, legal or not, could provoke more violence as Mr Hun Sen moves to reassert the power he has held for 13 years.

The violence is the worst since Mr Hun Sen deposed Ranariddh as co-prime minister in a bloody coup a year ago.

Mr Hun Sen drew a tougher line following a grenade attack on Monday against his home. He was not present and no one was hurt. Mr Hun Sen has denied Opposition allegations that he staged the attack as a pretext.

Mr Sam Rainsy sought refuge in the local UN office at the luxurious Cambodiana Hotel after Mr Hun Sen ordered his arrest. The order has been rescinded, but his supporters doubt Mr Hun Sen’s intentions.

The Prince said the violence was deepening, not resolving, the deadlock resulting from July 26 parliamentary elections.

The Opposition accuses Mr Hun Sen of massive electoral fraud in winning the election and has threatened to withhold support, raising the prospect that Cambodia could soon have no legal government.

IPU ignores move to discuss J&K rights issue

MOSCOW, Sept 9 (PTI) —The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) has ignored a proposal by Britain and Denmark to discuss the alleged violation of human rights in Jammu and Kashmir at its ongoing meeting.

With the election of India, China and Iran to the IPU Human Rights Committee, the issue simply "fizzled out", Indian delegation member and Lok Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy said.

With an overwhelming vote, Dr Swamy was elected a member of the executive of the IPU Human Rights Committee yesterday.

Earlier on Monday, the IPU centenary conference refused to debate on the South Asia nuclear standoff as proposed by Britain, Japan and Iran who in their separate initiatives urged India to unconditionally sign the CTBT and the NPT and resolve the Kashmir issue with Pakistan.

The conference has asked Iran to workout together with Britain, Japan and Denmark a joint proposal addressing the problem of nuclear non-proliferation and global disarmament for the next conference.

Responding to a Pakistani representative’s reference to Kashmir during the general debate yesterday, Mr Jagmohan, MP and member of Indian delegation, said the problem had been the result of terrorism "generated, funded, equipped and trained across the borders".

Congo summit fails to stop war

VICTORIA FALLS, Sept 9 (Reuters) — A southern African summit on the conflict in Laurent Kabila’s Congo ended yesterday without agreement on a ceasefire and the country’s Tutsi-led rebels vowed to fight on.

Seven Presidents including three backing Mr Kabila’s 15-month-old administration and two opposing it gathered for a second round of talks in the Zimbabwean resort of Victoria Falls today promising an immediate end to the fighting.

Four hours later, however, the rebel delegation led by Mr Arthur z’Ahidi Ngoma, deputy president of the Congolese democratic coalition, left the summit venue without having met face to face with Mr Kabila or his backers.

“We are going back home now to do one thing only, to intensify our campaign against Kabila,” Mr Ngoma told Reuters.

“There will be no ceasefire before Kabila negotiates with us directly”, he said as he left the conference site.

Namibian Foreign Minister Theo Ben Gurirab, who earlier promised a ceasefire would be implemented across the Congo today, told Reuters later he was not disappointed.

“What more did you expect. We’ve had the Presidents sitting around a table and talking while their armies are fighting. This is an achievement, he said.

Clinton apologises to Democrats

WASHINGTON, Sept 9 (UNI) — Devastated by the depleting ranks of his supporters in the face of possible impeachment, a beleaguered President Clinton today apologised for his sexual indiscretion and begged of the congressional Democratic leadership to stand by him at least till the availability of report on his extra-marital relations with former White House intern Monica Lewinski.

"There was no discussion of impeachment or resignation. I think the President will certainly be able to continue in office,’’ ranking Democratic Congressman David Bonior told mediapersons later.

Mr Clinton expressed sorrow for causing pain to his family and throughout the country by his affair. "It was an emotional meeting. He wants to carry on with the business of the country but he clearly understands the deep pain he has caused,’’ he added.

Mr Bonior said Mr Clinton’s meeting with Democrats had been emotional. "What we saw was a father, a husband, the leader of our country who was contrite, who was very sorry for his actions.’’

Congressional leaders told Mr Clinton that he should express regret to the American people in the same manner as he did at the closed door White House meeting.

Later, the President left for Florida to raise money for Democratic Lt Gov. Buddy Mackay who is trailing Republican candidate Jeb Bush, former President George Bush’s son, in the state’s gubernatorial race.

The President had an hourlong emotional meeting with top party leaders even as House of Representative Speaker Newt Gingrich discussed with House minority leader Dick Gephardt how to handle the report that is expected to outline impeachable offences against him.

Starr rejects request

WASHINGTON, Sept 9 (Reuters) — Independent counsel Kenneth Starr has rejected a request by attorneys for President Bill Clinton to receive an advance copy of a much-anticipated report by Starr to Congress on the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Starr told Clinton’s private attorney David Kendall in a letter yesterday that laws passed by Congress after Watergate were intended to ensure that “no barrier should intervene between the House of Representatives and its prompt receipt of impeachment-related information”.

Suffice it to say that the statute imposes an obligation on me in specified circumstances to provide certain information to the House of Representatives and I will endeavour to satisfy, that obligation if I believe those circumstances exist,” he said.

Starr’s office worked through the Labour Day holiday weekend, trying to finish an impeachment report against Clinton in the White House sex-and-perjury investigation.

Clinton last month admitted to having had an affair with Lewinsky but denied he had ever told anyone to lie about it.

Legal sources close to the investigation said Starr was expected in the report to outline possible impeachable offences of perjury, obstruction of justice, encouraging a witness to lie and abusing the power of the office of the President.

Power failure may have led to crash

TORONTO, Sept 9 (Reuters) — A catastrophic electrical failure could have occurred aboard a Swissair jet just minutes before it crashed into the Atlantic off Canada, according to evidence pieced by investigators after a preliminary analysis of the airliner’s flight data recorder.

Canadian investigators said yesterday they had observed signs of heat stress on small fragments of the cockpit recovered from the crash site in the choppy waters offshore Peggy’s cove, Nova Scotia.

“There are some signs of heating on some of the small pieces of the wreckage retrieved,” Vic Gerden, chief investigator for Canada’s Transportation Safety Board, told a news conference in Halifax.

“But it is much too early in the process to draw conclusions from this,” Gerden said.

The pilot of flight 111 had reported smoke in the cockpit shortly before the plane disappeared for radar.

HALIFAX (AP): The flight-data recorder recovered by divers near the wreckage of Swissair flight 111 contains no information for the six crucial minutes before the plane crashed, investigators have said.

The setback offset good news from the search operation: a Canadian navy submarine detected a signal from the plane’s other “black box,’’ the cockpit-voice recorder.

The chief crash investigator, Mr Vic Gerden, said the flight-data recorder retrieved on Sunday was in good condition and should provide more than 100 types of information ranging from altitude and airspeed to whether the plane’s smoke warning lights were on.

But he said there was no data from the last six minutes before the MD-11 Jumbo jet plunged into the ocean off the Nova Scotia coast on Wednesday night, killing all 229 persons aboard.

Mr Gerden said the data recording stopped once the plane dipped below 10,000 ft. A strong possibility, he said, was that the plane lost electrical power at this stage.

At the crash site, five miles offshore, divers equipped with hand-held sonar searched 190 ft underwater for the cockpit-voice recorder.

If retrieved intact, the voice recorder would reveal other noises in the cockpit besides the pilots’ conversation with controllers, portions of which were released on Saturday. That conversation was cut off 10 minutes after the pilots reported smoke in the cockpit and six minutes before the crash.

PoK PM invited to UK meetings

LONDON, Sept 9 (PTI) — In an apparent bid to put Kashmir on the centre-stage of the Labour Party agenda, some Labour MPs have invited so-called Prime Minister of Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) barrister Sultan Mehmood to address meetings on the fringes of the upcoming party conference to be held later this month.

This was disclosed at a news conference in the Commons over the weekend by Labour MP Tom Cox.

After his return from Pakistan, Cox told newsmen that ‘puppet’ PoK Prime Minister’s presence at the Labour Party’s annual conference would ‘help raise the Kashmir issue at the highest party platform.’

Some of the known India-bashers also stayed away, apparently due to embarrassing media disclosures that former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto allegedly had paid huge amounts to a Labour MP to boost Islamabad’s propaganda on Kashmir. Cox, who purports to speak on behalf of PoK Kashmiris here, advised the Pakistan Government that it needed to boost contacts at a higher level of administration in the United Kingdom to effectively lobby Pakistan’s interests on Kashmir.

He lamented that attendance of Pakistani delegations to Commonwealth parliamentary gatherings was thinner than India, apparently pointing out repeated failures to drum up support through an orchestrated campaign on human rights.

Cox, who claimed to be in touch with other Labour MPs, said the group would be planning for reiteration of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) resolution on Kashmir, adopted at the party’s annual conference in Brighton in 1995.

He claimed there was no lack of commitment on the part of the British Government on Kashmir. However, after the BBC disclosures on Bhutto’s attempts of creating an alleged fund at the Pakistan High Commission here for lobbying among MPs on Kashmir, the number of such meetings has sharply plunged.

India’s flag hoisted in Sindh

ISLAMABAD, Sept 9 (UNI) Some persons hoisted India’s flag on a building in Hyderabad (Sindh) on Sunday just when Pakistan was observing its annual Defence Day.

The English Daily News, which reported this, said the flag was scribbled with the words “Jiye Sindh” and Bharat. The building on which the flag was hoisted was under construction and owned by a former deputy inspector general.

On receiving reports about the incident, police reached there and removed the flag. It has detained the chowkidar of the building for interrogation.

The incident occurred amid mounting resentment among Sindhis about dominance of Punjab in the affairs of Pakistan. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s unilateral decision to go ahead with the construction of the controversial Kalanagha Dam has further fuelled this resentment.

Last month, Pakistan’s flag was desecrated in Karachi, police suspect by workers of the MQM, which has broken its alliance with the ruling Muslim League.

Dissident’s wife
BEIJING: The wife of an imprisoned Chinese dissident was dragged away by security personnel on Wednesday as she attempted to reach UN Human Rights Commissioned Mary Robinson, witnesses said. Chu Hailan, 36, is the wife of the imprisoned labour activist Liu Nianchun. — AFP

Highest & fastest
KATHMANDU: A Nepali Sherpa climber will attempt to scale Mount Everest within 18 hours next month to break a speed record held by a Frenchman. Kaji Sherpa, 34, said he planned to climb the mountain from the Nepali side. Sherpa was beaten back by wind and cold during an earlier attempt from 8,300 metres in the autumn of 1994. — Reuters

10,000 centenarians
TOKYO: Japan, home to the world’s longest-living population and one of the world’s lowest fertility rates, now has more than 10,000 centenarians, the government has said. Japan’s oldest citizen, 114-year-old Tase Matsunaga, is in a nursing home in Tokyo. Japanese have the world’s longest life expectancy — 83.82 years for women and 77.19 years for men. — AP

World’s best actor
MOSCOW: A Russian actor who fell into the orchestra pit during a performance has given new meaning to the phrase, “the show must go on.” The unidentified actor is in the southeastern town of Khabarovsk broke both arms during the fall, which occurred as he performed a stunt, the Interfax news agency reported. But he continued to act out his role until the end of the play, and the audience was unaware of his injuries, the report said. — AP

Pakistani held
MOSCOW: A Pakistani has been detained by the Georgian state guard service for regularly watching the US Embassy in Tbilisi, Itar-Tass reported quoting Georgian television. However, the identity of the Pakistani was not disclosed, it said from Georgian capital Tbilisi on Tuesday. — PTI

Statue theft
COLOMBO: Undercover Sri Lankan police arrested 10 people, including an Army Major, for trying to sell a priceless statue of a Hindu deity, officials said on Wednesday. The arrests were made in the north-central town of Anuradhapura when the men were trying to sell the statue to policemen posing as millionaire art collectors, they said. — AFP