 |
| Thursday, March 29, 2001, Chandigarh, India    |
Wahid rejects parliamentary censure
India may buy missile
tech from Russia India vows to fight
racism |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Indian scribe
wins £ 1.25 m book deal Benazir favours plebiscite in PoK Court orders release of 8 PML men USA vetoes UN resolution Woman lashed
for adultery |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
Wahid rejects parliamentary censure Jakarta, March 28 The apology at the end of the one-hour speech — read for the near blind Wahid by his Justice Minister — elicited about the only applause from legislators who had mostly listened in stony silence as he poured scorn on last month’s formal rebuke. Outside Parliament and across the capital there were no immediate signs of street protests by pro or anti-Wahid supporters as the reply was delivered. Security forces have mobilised 15,000 personnel to guard against violence. “I don’t accept the memorandum (censure),” said Mr Wahid, who has repeatedly insisted he is innocent of wrongdoing. Mr Wahid said the accusations were “baseless” and that he considered the parliamentary committee which had investigated his role in the $6.1 million scandals as illegitimate. “It is hard not to see the censure as the result of a dislike of the President or aimed at toppling the President... The censure does not stand on the principle of justice.” The Muslim cleric occasionally dipped into the Koran, quoting one verse which was clearly directed at his accusers: “Torture is created for those who lie.” But he did for the first time make an effort to appear contrite and called for an end to the political conflict which has kept the country locked in prolonged crisis. “At this moment, I personally ask for the forgiveness from Parliament and the people of Indonesia for any inappropriate behaviour,” he said without elaborating. The February 1 parliamentary censure is the most serious threat so far to the country’s first democratically elected President whose stumbling 17-month rule has failed to pull Indonesia out of three years of economic and political crisis. If he fails to win over a hostile Parliament — and analysts expect him to fail — the eccentric leader will likely find himself on the road towards impeachment, which many fear could drag the economically ruined nation back into mass violence. “It was definitely unsatisfactory. It only made clear the President’s other weaknesses,” Slamet Effendy Yusuf, Golkar’s Deputy Chairman and a legislator, told reporters after Mr Wahid delivered his response. Golkar is the second biggest party in Parliament and is headed by influential parliamentary speaker Akbar Tandjung.
Reuters |
|
India may buy missile tech from Russia Washington, March 28 Disclosing this in an exclusive report from Abu Dhabi, Defense News of the USA Government said electro-optical guided missile warhead, developed originally for Scud missiles and its later versions, would substantially improve the accuracy of Indian ballistic missiles. The same type of seeker is used on Russia’s Iskander E short range ballistic missiles, which is also being offered for export, it was told. The Defense News quoting Russian industry sources said Moscow-based Central Scientific and Research Institute of Automatics and Hydraulics, which had developed the seeker, was negotiating the sale of a variant of the seeker to India. The Russian industrialist admitted that the electro optical seeker warhead could be fitted to a ballistic missile in ways that could breach the Missile Control Technology Regime guidelines. A Washington newsweekly also quoted an Indian defence official to confirm the proposal. He said no assistance had been provided to India by Moscow so far. Indian officials would discuss this issue during the next round of the Indo-Russian joint commission on military cooperation scheduled next month in New Delhi. The Russian industrialists told the Defence News that negotiations between the Indian military and Russia for the seeker’s sale had been under way for some time. The draft contract banned the Indian military from installing the seeker on long range missiles. In addition to Prithvi, which has a shorter range than the Scud B, Indian officials also identified the medium range Agni ballistic missile as a candidate for an electro-optic guidance package. The Agni has maximum range of 2500 km. The export version of the seeker was approved by the former Russian President Boris Yeltsin nearly three years ago. The export version, according to the Russian industrialist, has an accuracy of some 30 to 40 metres from the target compared to 20-metre accuracy of the variant developed for the Russian forces.
UNI |
|
India vows to fight racism Geneva, March 28 “We stand firm to counter the forces that seek to destroy the values of pluralism, tolerance, diversity and equality,” India’s Permanent representative at the UNHRC Savitri Kunadi said at a UN meeting which voiced concern over the continuing spread of racial discrimination throughout the world. Calling for a “constructive and a focussed” approach to combat these evils, she said India opposed all attempts to dilute the focus of forthcoming world conference against racism in Durban by broadening its scope for forms of discrimination not related to racial discrimination. “The phenomenon of racism and racial discrimination regrettably continues to persist and, indeed, grow in many parts of the world,” she said. A special session on steps to combat racism and xenophobia at the ongoing 57th session of the UN Human Rights Commission has concluded that racial discrimination no longer formed just part of governmental structures as it did during the apartheid era in South Africa. Ms Kunadi told the representatives of the 53-country commission during the second week of the six-week annual meeting to examine human rights violations globally that the world community is currently witness to a “recrudescence” of extreme forms of exclusivism, hatred and racial discrimination. Calling for urgent steps to invigorate action against racism at the international level, Ms Kunadi said laws and punitive measures alone could not eliminate racism. “Changing of social attitudes is equally important,” she added. UNHRC chief Mary Robinson said victims of racism look to the UN to “change the climate of intolerance, prejudice and marginalisation under which they suffer”. Delegate after delegate decried rising intolerance while noting that racism was flourishing despite international efforts to stamp it out and blaming new technologies, including the Internet, for helping fuel the rise in racial hatred.
PTI |
|
Indian scribe
wins £ 1.25 m book deal London, March 28 Oxford educated Hari
Kunzru, son of an Agra-born orthopaedic surgeon, has so far secured £ 750,000 for the American rights to his first two books, which are yet to be published, and £ 500,000 for the European rights. The draft manuscript that has attracted so much attention is entitled “The Impressionist,” which Kunzru describes as “Midnight’s Children meets Tom Jones.” It is his third attempt at writing a novel. Set in the 1920s, “The Impressionist” is the story of a half-English illegitimate child who is disowned by his Indian family, travels to Britain where he trains as an anthropologist before moving on to Africa. Dr Krishan Mohan Nath
Kunzru, the journalist’s father, migrated to Britain in the mid-1960s. Kunzru was born in London and went to a private school, Bancroft, in Woodford Green before going on to Wadham College, Oxford, where he graduated with an English degree. Since graduating 10 years ago, he has tried his hand at novel writing and also worked as a journalist for Wired magazine and the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
IANS |
|
|
Benazir favours plebiscite in PoK New Delhi, March 28 She added that nothing would happen if India, Pakistan and Kashmir continue to function in the manner they are at present. In an interview on Aaj Tak which will be telecast from tomorrow in a two-part series, Ms Bhutto while expressing her views on the present Indian government said, “After Rajiv Gandhi, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee is the most farsighted Indian leader”. Ms Bhutto praised Mr Vajpayee for his efforts with the bus to Lahore and blamed Mr Nawaz Sharif for the deaths in Kargil. Airing her concern on the lack of democracy in Pakistan for half of its independent existence, Ms Bhutto said “Gen Pervez Musharraf will have to go like the other Generals and people of Pakistan will vote for democracy again” She refuted all allegations of corruption against her. “I challenge the government to prove a single allegation against me,” she said. Speaking on the democracy in Pakistan, Ms Bhutto said she was sad that the “jehad in Pakistan today is armed and communal”. |
|
Court orders release of 8 PML men Islamabad, March 28 The members of the Pakistan Muslim League
(PML), the former ruling party of ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, were detained last week after opposition parties failed to hold a protest rally on Friday. Hundreds of other politicians and their supporters were rounded up before the failed pro-democracy rally in Lahore, but those arrests have not been legally challenged. According to the police, about 200 persons were arrested, but party leaders claim that more than 1,000 were thrown into detention in the largest crack-down on political groups since the military coup in October, 1999. The police said the arrests were “preventative” and carried out under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance. The News Daily quoted Mr Justice Bashir A. Mujahid of the Lahore High Court as saying yesterday that the magistrate who approved the arrests of the eight PML workers had not acted independently.
AFP |
|
USA vetoes UN resolution United Nations, March 28 The vote was nine to one with four abstentions while Ukraine did not vote. In favour were Bangladesh, Colombia, Jamaica, Mali, Mauritius, Singapore, Tunisia, Russia and China. Those abstaining included UK, France, Ireland and Norway. “ The USA opposed the resolution because it is unbalanced and unworkable and hence unwise,” chief US representative James Cunningham told the council. “It is more responsive to political theatre than political reality.” “We have shown flexibility time and gain to accommodate the views of all sides, the basic intention being that the observer force proposal will have the broadest possible support,’’ said Bangladesh’s Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury, spokesman for the seven sponsors of the failed resolution. The USA has been negotiating intensely on the European draft that would not commit the council to any specific action without the agreement of the Israelis and the Palestinians. More than 400 persons, almost all of them Palestinians, have been killed in six months of violence between the Palestinians and the Israeli soldiers. “We cannot take any more. Since the other side is not willing to move, we have to move,’’ chief Palestinian delegate Nasser al-Kidwa told reporters before the vote.
Reuters |
|
Woman lashed
for adultery Kabul, March 28 The station said the woman, identified as Zuhra, received 100 lashes with a leather strap on Monday for having sex with a man who was not her husband. The man had been punished earlier, but Zuhra’s thrashing was delayed until after she had had a baby.
AFP |
 |
| Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir | Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs | Nation | Editorial | | Business | Sport | World | Mailbag | In Spotlight | Chandigarh Tribune | Ludhiana Tribune 50 years of Independence | Tercentenary Celebrations | | 121 Years of Trust | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
