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| Monday, February
19, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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Pardon not for donations, says Clinton
Protest march
in Baghdad Barak under fire from partymen |
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| Peace bid hits new snag Colombo, February 18 Norway’s peace attempts in Sri Lanka have run into fresh trouble over the composition of an international panel to monitor a truce between government troops and Tiger rebels, a press report said today.
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Pardon not for donations, says Clinton New York, February 18 Mr Clinton also repudiated allegations that the Rich pardon was granted in exchange for donations by the financier’s former wife for the building of the Clinton library. In a lengthy statement to the newspaper, Mr Clinton said the pardon of Rich was a neat resolution to the long-outstanding case against him and a business associate, Mr Pincus Green, also a fugitive, who were charged with money-laundering, fraud and tax evasion in 1983 from their oil business dealings. “If the two men were wrongly indicted in the first place, justice has been done,” he said. “On the other hand, if they do personally owe ... unpaid taxes or civil fines, they can now be sued civilly, as others in their position apparently were, a result that might not have been possible without the waiver,” the former president reasoned. “I believed the essential facts were before me, and I felt the foreign policy considerations and the legal arguments justified moving forward,” he continued Mr Clinton said he was disturbed by suggestions that the pardon might have been granted as a quid pro quo for financial donations. “I am accustomed to the rough and tumble of politics, but the accusations made against me in this case have been particularly painful because for eight years I worked hard to make good decisions for the American people,” he wrote in the daily. “I want every American to know that, while you may disagree with this decision, I made it on the merits as I saw them, and I take full responsibility for it.” One of the most important factors in deciding to grant the pardon, Mr Clinton said, was support from the Jewish community in the USA and abroad. “Many present and former high-ranking Israeli official of both major political parties and leaders of Jewish communities in America and Europe urged the pardon of Rich because of his contributions and services to Israeli charitable causes,” he wrote. Rich, 66, a billionaire commodities trader, fled to Switzerland in 1983 while he was under investigation for allegedly failing to pay more than $ 48 million in taxes.
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Clinton to serve on AIF board New York, February 18 The adoption of villages was suggested by Atal Behari Vajpayee when Mr Clinton talked to him to convey sympathy within hours of the deadly quake. “I am honoured to serve on the AIF board. The Gujarat earthquake has brought about tremendous human suffering. It is important to harness the management skills, financial resources and entrepreneurship that resides in the Indian community in the USA and use these to benefit India in its hour of need,” Mr Clinton said. The foundation with several community leaders and eminent businessmen on its board, was formed yesterday and aims at utilising US private, corporate and academic resources to aid in the rehabilitation of 100 afflicted villages.
PTI |
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Protest march
in Baghdad Baghdad, February 18 “Yes to Jihad,” or holy war, “No to submission,” chanted some 3,000 people who gathered despite rainfall in southern Baghdad’s Al-Baya district. They pledged “total support” to President Saddam Hussein’s determination to “liberate Palestine.” Another 5,000 demonstrators carrying red, white and black Iraqi and Palestinian flags marched through central Baghdad, condemning US President George W Bush and his administration. “Despite Bush and (Saudi King) Fahd, Saddam is forever our President,” they shouted. “We are all soldiers for liberation,” they chanted. Thousands were also out in northern Baghdad swearing allegiance to Saddam and attacking the US air strikes. Similar protests orchestrated by the regime took place yesterday across Iraq.
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Barak under fire from partymen Jerusalem, February 18 “Rebellion against Mr Barak,” was the headline in the Hebrew newspaper, Maariv. Mr Barak has raised the hackles of disgruntled Dovish members of his Labour Party by agreeing on Thursday to serve as Defence Minister in the Sharon government, despite his announcement after his humiliating defeat that he would be quitting politics. Leading Labour opponents of Mr Barak, including parliamentary Speaker Avraham Burg, Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami, Interior Minister Haim Ramon and Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, held a closed meeting yesterday to discuss tactics, the Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported today. “This is one of the party’s critical struggles. We will declare an all-out war against any attempt by Mr Barak to return to political life and destroy the Labour Party,” the paper quoted one of the meeting’s participants as saying. Internal bickering has been rife in the party since Mr Barak’s devastating defeat. Labour’s central committee is due to meet on Tuesday and hold a secret ballot on whether to join a government with the Likud Party of Mr Sharon, a man feared by the Left wing over his hardline policies.
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Peace bid hits new snag Colombo, February 18 Oslo assembled the ceasefire monitoring team drawn from nine countries, including Britain and Japan, but the Tigers as well as neighbouring India had objected to some of them, the privately-run Sunday Leader said. The newspaper, quoting unidentified western sources, said India had objected to Britain and Japan being included in the team that could give them a larger role in a South Asian issue. “India wants to avoid the setting up of any precedent that may in the future encourage further interference by the West or the East,” the Leader said. Japan, which is Sri Lanka’s largest single foreign-aid donor, was expected to head the truce monitoring panel and finance its activities, it said. There was no official reaction today to the Leader report. Norway’s special envoy, Erik Solheim, has made it a point to brief India’s top envoy in Colombo during his visits for talks with Sri Lankan leaders. The Leader said the Sri Lankan Government too was against having a high representation of western nations in the panel, fearing a backlash from nationalistic elements among the majority Sinhalese community. Equally, the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had objections against to any country which was funding the Sri Lankan Government’s military campaign. The peace process has got further complicated with the impending British legislation to outlaw foreign terrorist organisations. The LTTE has told Norway it feared proscription under Britain’s laws and that such a move could jeopardise peace prospects in the island where more than 60,000 people have been killed in the past two decades. Press reports here quoted the LTTE’s London-based ideologue Anton Balasingham as saying he had information that the British Government would ban his organisation. “He (Balasingham) had raised this issue with Solheim who met him in London.... He had asked Solheim how the LTTE could be described as a terrorist organisation when it was fighting for the liberation of the Tamils.” “In a war situation, the protagonists commit atrocities and that was natural,” Balasingham was quoted as saying in an interview with a Tamil weekly.
AFP Benazir to face fresh charges London, February 18 Ms Bhutto will face four new charges, including one that she and her jailed husband Asif Zardari illegally owned a 340-acre estate in Surrey in Britain, The Sunday Times reported. The newspaper quoted Lieut-Gen Khalid Maqbool, head of the National Accountability Bureau, Pakistan’s main anti-corruption body, saying that Ms Bhutto would face four new charges and none of the charges allowed bail so if she went back she would be placed in custody on arrival. Mr Maqbool said the government was awaiting 20,000-page documents from Britain about the purchases of the estate, including Rockwood House before detailing charges. Bhutto’s lawyers have been fighting in the high court to stop the home office from releasing the documents to the Pakistani authorities. The latest threat of slapping fresh corruption charges against her come at a time the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chief was contemplating to return to Islamabad in the wake of disclosure of taped telephone conversations allegedly showing that Malik Abdul Qayyum, the judge who presided over her corruption trial in 1999, had been in regular contact with her political adversaries and had settled on his guilty verdict before the defence case began. The tapes, seemingly the result of bugging by Pakistan’s intelligence bureau, make it more likely that Bhutto’s original convictions and a five-year sentence imposed in absentia will be quashed when her appeal is heard next week. The taped telephone conversation has thrown Pakistan’s legal system into turmoil. As a sequel, the high court in Lahore has asked the government for a report on the tapes and a writ has been issued urging the president to suspend Mr Qayyum. Ms Bhutto has demanded a formal UN inquiry into Pakistan’s judiciary over its handling of her case. “I’d been hearing for some time that these tapes were in existence,” she said in an interview to the daily. “But I could not believe my eyes when I read the transcripts. They confirmed what I had been saying for many months. It was clear that it was the Law Minister, Mr Saifur Rehman, conducting the trial and not the judge. Ms Bhutto maintains that her political enemies fabricated corruption evidence against her and Mr Zardari, who is in custody awaiting trial. Their children Bilawal (11) and Bakhtwar (9) and Aseefa (7) are in Dubai along with her. The latest developments may delay the return of Ms Bhutto, who has previously indicated that she could be back in Pakistan in the spring. However, much will depend on the result of her appeal on February 26 when her lawyers will argue that her trial was fixed. “I have suffered for four years of humiliation and degradation,” said Ms Bhutto. “My husband has been in prison for more than eight years of our 13 years of married life. “I have had many legal opinions, including from a former British Attorney-General and two former American chief justices, stating that the charges and the whole process against me and my husband were politically driven. Unless the regime acts, the judicial system will be for ever
undermined.” PTI |
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Pakistan to test-fire naval missile on March 4 Islamabad, February 18 The Pakistan Observer quoting sources in the Pakistan Naval Headquarters said the missile was likely to be test-fired from its Agosta 90-B submarine on March 4. The move is aimed at “correcting the strategic balance in terms of naval power in the region and also to flex muscles before the ever-growing Indian Navy, senior officials at the Pakistan Naval Headquarters told the newspaper. The missile would be fired on a ship target from an unknown position in the southern far coast of the India Ocean. Pakistan has also informed other countries including India, about its planned test-firing, the paper said. The missile SM-39 is a submarine-launched fire-and-forget missile that can carry high explosive warhead of up to 165 kg and the known maximum range is believed to be from 42 km to 70 km. Pakistan will be the second country after France to have SM-39 missile that can be launched from a submerged submarine, the newspaper claimed.
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US navy orders inquiry Washington, February 18 The probe named “an open court of inquiry” will provide “full accounting for the collision and will be open to the media,” Pacific Fleet spokesman Shean Hughes told AFP yesterday. He said a panel of three admirals that would head the inquiry would meet in Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii, for the first time next Thursday. “It is the highest form of administrative investigation in the Navy,” Hughes pointed out. The panel intends to invite a high-ranking
Japanese navy officer to participate in the probe as an adviser, the spokesman said. The decision came after the navy concluded its preliminary probe of the incident, which occurred on February 9, when the surfacing US submarine Greeneville struck the
Japanese fishing ship Ehime Maru, causing it to sink in minutes.
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