Laden: Taliban offers talks with USA
KABUL, Oct 24 — Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban have offered to hold talks with the USA over bombing suspect Osama bin Laden, after being threatened with sanctions unless he is handed over to Washington.

Russian parties rush for registration
MOSCOW, Oct 24 — Russia’s parliamentary election race took shape over the weekend as political groups hustled to meet a vital Sunday deadline for submitting registration documents.

204 m malnourished in India
LONDON, Oct 24 — India has more undernourished people than whole of sub-Saharan Africa combined, Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) publication says.

Tongue-twister has Germans tongue-tied
SCHWERIN (GERMANY), Oct 24 — A German radio station launched a contest to find anyone who can pronounce the title of a new state law without getting tongue-tied — it is 26 syllables long and contains 86 letters.

Jamaat to challenge army ban on Qazi
Probe into money transfers ordered

ISLAMABAD, Oct 24 (Reuters) — Pakistan’s army rulers today faced their first legal challenge when a religious party said it would contest a ban on its leader travelling to his home province.

Jamaat-i-Islami, Pakistan’s main religious party, said it would go to court to challenge the ban on its leader, Qazi Hussein Ahmed, who has been barred from his native North West Frontier Province (NWFP) for 30 days.

A spokesman for the party said the ban was meant to “incite the Jamaat-i-Islami and create a situation leading to a clash with the military government”. He said the group would challenge the ruling in the high court at Peshawar, capital of the NWFP.

It was thought to be the first legal challenge by any of Pakistan’s myriad political parties to the 12-day-old rule by Gen Pervez Musharraf, Chief Executive.

The ban was imposed last night after Ahmed made remarks which were seen to be critical of General Musharraf, who is overseeing the formation of a national security council and cabinet of technocrats.

It said the ban had been imposed to prevent the Qazi from engaging in “activities prejudicial to public safety and maintenance of good order”.

Ahmed formed issue with an interview in which Musharraf praised modern turkey’s hero, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the General who ruled his country for 15 years from 1923. Ataturk is widely respected in Pakistan but is criticised by fundamentalist Islamists because of his secular policies.

A newspaper last Saturday quoted Ahmed as saying that Jamaat would strongly resist the imposition of secularism in Pakistan “in the name of Kemalism”.

“The Chief Executive should know that our destiny is an Islamic revolution,” the news quoted Ahmed as saying in a sermon on Friday at a Peshawar mosque .

His party is committed to building an Islamic state in Pakistan and has taken a wait-and-see attitude towards military rule, which Pakistan has endured for half its 52 years.

Meanwhile, the military regime has launched an inquiry into the alleged transfer of millions of dollars abroad by key leaders shortly before an economic moratoria in the wake of Islamabad’s nuclear tests last year.

A probe into the entire transfer of money affair has been initiated and all banks and financial institutions have been asked to furnish details on who sent how much forex and for what purpose, the Urdu daily, Nawa-e-Waqt, today reported, quoting official sources.

It said the authorities recently summoned two leading industrialists of Lahore, deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s home town, to ask them about the $ 200 million they transferred abroad after May 1998.

They also gathered crucial evidences which prove that most of the foreign exchange sent abroad after the nuclear tests belonged to key personalities in the country, it said.

The army has also sought details of the withdrawal of foreign currency from banks immediately after the nuclear tests.

The erstwhile Nawaz Sharif government had ordered freezing of all foreign currency accounts in Pakistan immediately after Islamabad went nuclear and also imposed a financial emergency in the country.

An earlier report had also claimed that the government’s decision to carry out the blasts in response to New Delhi’s nuclear tests and the impending freeze on accounts had been leaked to influential circles to allow them to transfer their money abroad.

Pak warns loan defaulters

ISLAMABAD, Oct 24 (DPA) — Pakistan’s central State Bank has warned loan defaulters to settle their loans with the banks by November 16 or face criminal action.

“This time it is different. All escape routes have been closed and the government is monitoring the assets of the defaulters,’’ said the Governor of the bank, Mr Mohammad Yaqub, in remarks reported today.

Yaqub said the defaulters owe a total of 356 billion rupees (about $ 6.9 billion) to commercial banks, 40 per cent of which has been run up by just 322 families or business groups.

Banks and financial institutions have launched a recovery drive in the country following last week’s military take-over.

Similar campaigns launched in the past had proved cosmetic as political governments protected influential defaulters. Governor Yaqub, who presided over those campaigns also, promised “blind justice” this time around. “Now we will not settle the loans against assets mortgaged with banks or sick industrial units. We will go directly for the life-style of the defaulter,’’ he said.

Nawaz grows beard

ISLAMABAD, Oct 24 (DPA) — Pakistan’s deposed Prime Minister, Mr Nawaz Sharif, has grown a beard in military detention and misses his favourite dishes from the Prime Minister’s House kitchen, the Jang reported today, quoting “reliable sources.”

Mr Sharif (47) has been held incommunicado since being overthrown by the army on October 12 after he sacked the army chief, Gen Pervez Musharraf.

Jang said the fallen leader, who is fond of good food, is being served “simple food” against his desire for hamburgers of an American fast food franchise.

Mr Sharif has been shifted from place to place but not interrogated. Doctors monitoring his health had detected some irregularity in his blood pressure, the newspaper said.

Mr Sharif told his guards several times that he was willing to quit politics for seven years — the punishment the law provides for a disqualified politician — or even go into exile, it said.

When asked for his choice of newspapers, Mr Sharif, a keen player of the game of cricket, chose magazines related to the game.

Laden: Taliban offers talks with USA

KABUL, Oct 24 (Reuters) — Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban have offered to hold talks with the USA over bombing suspect Osama bin Laden, after being threatened with sanctions unless he is handed over to Washington.

The US State Department reacted by saying that it wanted action not words over the Saudi-born Islamic Guerrilla leader, accused of bombing US embassies in East Africa.

“For the solution of Osama’s case, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) is ready for talks with the USA,” Taliban Information and Culture Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said in a statement yesterday.

That followed the Taliban’s denunciation of a UN Security Council resolution last week which will impose sanctions on the movement from next month if it fails to hand over Bin Laden for trial.

The US sponsored council resolution requires all UN member countries to ban flights operated by the Taliban and to freeze its financial assets overseas.

‘’The IEA has no hostility towards America and its people,” Mr Muttaqi’s statement said.

‘’If the way is paved for substantial solution of the difficulties instead of intimidation or pressure by the USA the Afghans would warmly welcome it.’’

WASHINGTON (IANS): US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Karl Inderfurth will on Monday meet a representative of the Taliban to discuss the handing over of Osama bin Laden.

State Department spokesman James Foley made the statement shortly after the Taliban offered to hold talks to try to settle the dispute over Laden. He, however, hastened to add that the Washington meeting was scheduled before the Taliban issued the statement and would be a follow-up to talks between Taliban representative Abdul Hakeem Mujahid and US Assistant Secretary of State for Counter-Terrorism Michael Sheehan in New York last week.

Washington’s response yesterday was cool. ‘’More important than discussions is the actual delivery or handing over of Bin Laden,’’ a State Department spokesman said.

‘’We’ve had discussions before and they’ve been unwilling thus far to do what now the international community is demanding they do”.

‘’We are willing to talk to them and discuss the Bin Laden case,’’ he said. ‘’But it’s clear now that this is much more than a bilateral issue between the USA and the Taliban following the unanimous vote in the Security Council.

‘’We will only know if there’s movement if, by action, they comply with the Security Council resolution,’’ he said. ‘’And the clock is ticking in that regard.’’

Bin Laden is accused by the USA of plotting bombings of its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August last year that killed more than 220 person and injured more than 4,000.

The USA fired more than 70 cruise missiles at suspected Bin Laden training bases in eastern Afghanistan as a reprisal for the embassy bombings.

Bin Laden denies the charges and the Taliban have in the past rejected the US Demand for his extradition.

‘’We want to solve Osama’s case in a way which both honours Islamic laws and Afghan traditions and puts an end completely to America’s concern,’’ yesterday’s Taliban statement said.

Russian parties rush for registration

MOSCOW, Oct 24 (Reuters) — Russia’s parliamentary election race took shape over the weekend as political groups hustled to meet a vital Sunday deadline for submitting registration documents.

Parties or blocs hoping to take part in the December 19 vote for the state Duma, or Lower House, had until 6 pm (2 pm GMT) to present lists of candidates for registration to the central election commission.

Under the election law, political groups must also submit 230,000 signatures supporting their participation in the vote or pay a deposit as collateral.

They must also provide details of their property holdings and income for 1998 — a process which has already led to the exclusion of many politicians and the embarrassment of others. “The respected candidates have had enough time to do this,’’ Itar-Tass news agency quoted Central Election Commission chairman Alexander Veshnyakov as saying.

He said several groups were expected to submit documents today in a last-minute rush to get under the closing barrier.

Mr Veshnyakov said in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda he thought about 32 various parties and blocs might be eligible to run from a total of 139 which applied.

Those registered so far are the Centre-Left Fatherland-All Russia Movement and the Communist Party, which lead opinion polls, as well as the liberal Yabloko Party, the centre-right Our Home is Russia and the Union of Right-wing Forces.

Competing parties will have to win at least five per cent of the total vote to enter the Duma, where half of the seats are allocated for party lists and half are decided by voting in single-mandate constituencies.

The election will test the mood of a nation mired in economic crisis and warring in the North Caucasus.

204 m malnourished in India

LONDON, Oct 24 (PTI) — India has more undernourished people than whole of sub-Saharan Africa combined, Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) publication says.

Despite its green revolution and food self-sufficiency, India has 204 million undernourished people against 180 million in all of sub-Saharan Africa, says the first edition of the ‘state of the food insecurity in the world, 1999.’

Hartwig de Haen, Assistant Director-General, Economic and Social Department, of FAO, who released the report at a news conference here said almost 800 million people in the developing world went to sleep hungry every night. “That is more than the combined population of Europe and North America.”

Tongue-twister has Germans tongue-tied

SCHWERIN (GERMANY), Oct 24 (DPA) — A German radio station launched a contest to find anyone who can pronounce the title of a new state law without getting tongue-tied — it is 26 syllables long and contains 86 letters.

The law, adopted by the Mecklenburg-West Pomerania Legislature to monitor beef labelling regulations, is entitled: “Rinderkennungsund Indfleischetikettierungsuberwachu-gsaufgabenubertragungsgesetz’’ and more or less means bovine identification and beef labelling monitoring assignment transference law.

State Agricultural Minister Till Backhaus conceded the title was nearly as long as the text of the law, which comprises only a couple of succinct paragraphs.

Klan protest
NEW YORK: The white supremacist Ku Klux Klan held a silent demonstration outside the courthouse here in protest against a recent court order which prohibited demonstrators from masking their identity. The 75-minute protest on Saturday came at the end of a legal battle during which Klan had challenged the ban on their demonstration imposed by the city authorities. The court rejected this ban but the city authorities invoked an obscure law which prohibited demonstrators from masking their identity. — PTI

‘Schindler was spy’
PRAGUE: Oskar Schindler, who saved 1,200 Jews during World War II, was a spy for the Nazi intelligence service, the Abwehr, according to a Czech historian. In an interview with AFP, Radoslav Fikejz, the author of a biography of Schindler, painted a no-frills picture of the then-agent as a lover of women, money, alcohol and racing cars. As an Abwehr spy Schindler’s links with the Nazi command structure allowed him to save Israeli workers from the death camps, says Fizkejz. — AFP

Award for Indian
WASHINGTON: Indian entrepreneur Madhura Chatrapathy has received the distinguished International Alumni Award for her work in developing women entrepreneurs in India. Chatrapathy is “one of those people who have truly made a difference in other people’s lives — in her own country and beyond,” US Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Evelyn S. Lieberman said after presenting the award last week. — PTI

Jumps to death
SAN FRANCISCO: A grandmother who jumped from a Yosemite peak to show that parachute jumping was safe died when her borrowed parachute failed to open, reports said. Jan Davis, 60, was jumping from the El Capitan peak as part of a protest against the ban on the sport of base jumping at the Yosemite National Park in eastern California. Three jumpers who proceeded her landed safely. But in front of hundreds of spectators and banks of television cameras Davis plunged almost 1,000 metres to her death when her chute failed. — DPA

Meddling resented
TRIPOLI: Libya has denounced US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s “interference” in efforts to end Sudan’s 16-year civil war after she rejected a Tripoli-backed proposal for peace talks. “This is an unacceptable interference in African affairs,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Saturday, cited by the official Jana news agency. “It is not up to Albright to accept or refuse initiatives toward peace. This matter does not concern the USA but the African continent, which can resolve its problems by itself,” the spokesman said. — AFP

Kids’ ‘parliament’
PARIS: Nobel laureates Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi are among world figures who have sent video greetings to 350 child deputies in Paris for the World Parliament of Children, organisers have said. The children, from 178 countries, will have the messages screened for them at the French Parliament building in the heart of Paris during a session in which they are due to adopt a youth manifesto for the 21st century. — AFP

Indian awarded
BEIJING: An Indian student has won acclaim in China for performing in Peking opera, beating professionals from around the world. Soumendra Banerjee, won the Silver Dragon medal at the international competition organised by the state-owned television channel, the China Central Television (CCTV). “I am happy to win the award as officials have confirmed that I am the first Indian to win such recognition in the cultural field in China,” Mr Banerjee said. — PTI

Spy network
WASHINGTON: An ultra-secret spy network reportedly is eavesdropping on E-mails, looking for words suggesting terrorist plots and other nefarious acts, and prompting angry Internet users to try to overwhelm the listeners by flooding the system with fabricated messages. In an attempt at electronic civil disobedience on Thursday organisers urged Internet users on dozens of Web sites and in discussion groups to bombard the US National Security Agency with millions of E-mails with subversive-sounding language — AP

‘Hollywood madam’ broke
LOS ANGELES: Former “Hollywood madam” Heidi Fleiss, who as the boss of an illustrious call-girl ring amassed a considerable fortune, is reportedly bankrupt, media reports said on Friday. — DPA