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May 16, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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NMD plan not unilateralist: USA Ramallah, West Bank, May 15 Thousands of Palestinians rallied in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and Israeli troops patrolled flashpoints today, the anniversary of what Palestinians call “Al Naqba,” or their displacement during Israel’s creation in 1948. NATO to cede Kosovo buffer ‘Imitation’ hair dye
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| Bombing accused seeks fresh trial Washington, May 15 Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols has asked the US Supreme Court to pave the way for a new trial based on the same overlooked FBI documents that forced a delay in bomber Timothy McVeigh’s execution, according to court papers made available. Three Lankan soldiers die in mine blast 54 killed in China coalmine fire Counting on amid violence
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NMD plan not unilateralist: USA Washington, May 15 Mr Powell said yesterday that it was reasonable for Washington to discuss with Moscow how to create a new security framework that may, as President George W. Bush had said, replace the key 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missiles (ABM) treaty. “Our partner in that treaty is now Russia and we should discuss with Russia whether or not the treaty is still as relevant as it was 30 years ago,” he added. “There are different points of view on the ABM treaty but there is nothing peremptory about this. There is nothing unilateralist about this. There’s nothing arrogant about it,” he said in an interview with CNN. The USA says it needs the system to shield itself, and potentially its allies, from “rogue states”, including North Korea, Iran and Iraq, but Moscow and Beijing and US allies fear it could spark a new arms race. Mr Powell is to hold talks with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov in Washington on Friday, their third meeting. Russia was unconvinced about the missile defence system after the visit by a senior delegation to Moscow last week though both sides pledged to keep discussing it. MOSCOW: An adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin said in interviews that US arguments to justify its planned missile shield made him laugh, but he predicted Washington would build the system anyway. Former Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev, in interviews with the RIA and Interfax news agencies published on Monday, said US negotiators last week had proposed no reasonable alternative to the 1972 ABM treaty to oversee strategic stability. Mr Sergeyev, who became an adviser to Mr Putin after being replaced as Defence Minister in March, said Moscow rejected Washington’s arguments that “rogue states” like North Korea and Iran could produce missiles capable of hitting US territory. “We will continue to stand for upholding the ABM treaty in its current form and oppose US plans for a national anti-missile system,” he told RIA. OTTAWA: Senior Canadian officials dismissed a newspaper report that said Ottawa would undoubtedly sign on to the controversial US missile shield plan. The National Post yesterday quoted a government foreign policy expert as saying that “in the end, Canada will support the USA” when it comes to the NMD scheme. But Mr Randy Mylyk, a spokesman for Defence Minister Art Eggleton, said the report was not accurate. “You can’t exclude anything right now. It is still in the realm of the possible for us to say “No”. There’s nothing new in our position,” he told Reuters. The Canadian Government has until now sat firmly on the fence, refusing to make any commitment to the NMD proposal on the grounds that Washington has yet to ask it to participate. An aide to Foreign Minister John Manley said the National Post report was “just conjecture”.
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One killed, 4 injured in Israeli attack Ramallah, West Bank, May 15 At the Karni crossing between Israel and Gaza, a Palestinian was killed and four were wounded when Israeli troops fired on a car, the Palestinian police said. In the Gaza town of Beit Nanoun, a Palestinian police station was razed by Israeli tank shells. Near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim in Gaza, Israeli troops fired rubber-coated steel bullets to disperse dozens of Palestinian stone-throwers. Thousands of Palestinians gathered for rallies in towns across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. At noon, a three-minute siren was to ring out at noon, followed by a taped speech by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat broadcast to the crowds. Israel’s Arab citizens, led by Arab legislators, also planned to hold Al Naqba ceremonies. Ali Abdel Jawad, a 45-year-old school teacher from Gaza city, said despite all setbacks, he was hopeful about eventual independence. “I believe we are closer than ever before to statehood. Sooner or later we will have it,” he said. This year’s commemorations came at a time of intense Israeli-Palestinian fighting, and Israel braced for widespread clashes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, reinforcing troops at expected flashpoint. Arafat left for Cairo this morning, drawing Israeli criticism that he was trying to avoid being blamed for possible violence. Yesterday, he had convened a meeting of his Gaza security chiefs to review the situation, with their West Bank counterparts participating by conference call, Palestinian officials said. WASHINGTON: Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath on Tuesday urged President George W. Bush to endorse the Mitchell report on ending Israeli-Palestinian violence, saying such a move could help revive peace talks. But Shaath, writing in an opinion column in The Washington Post, expressed deep skepticism about Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s commitment to peace. He said a return to peace and stability in the region would require “changes in the status quo, such as withdrawal of Israel’s army from populated Palestinian areas; a halt to Israeli settlement expansion; implementation of existing interim agreements; and relief from Israel’s economic suffocation of the Palestinians.” Such steps, detailed in the report of a five-member commission led by former US Sen George Mitchell, a Maine Democrat, “are the only way to end the violence,” Shaath wrote in the column, which was published in Tuesday’s Post. The UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has supported the Mitchell Commission’s report on the West Asian violence, which calls for freeze on building of Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories. Praising the report by the mission led by American Senator George Mitchell, Mr Annan called it “fair and objective and could revive the peace process”. UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said Annan believes that full implementation of the report’s recommendations can, in conjunction with the Jordanian-Egyptian peace initiative, help build a bridge back to negotiations towards a just, lasting and comprehensive peace in the West Asia on the basis of the UN resolutions.
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NATO to cede Kosovo buffer BRUSSELS, May 15 Alliance ambassadors said
NATO-led KFOR peacekeepers would oversee a “phased and controlled” return of the tense Sector b of the ground safety zone (GSZ) to Yugoslav forces on May 24. The 5-km-wide zone was created in June, 1999, as part of a deal to end
NATO’s 11-week bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, launched to halt Belgrade’s repression in ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo. Ethnic Albanian rebels, fighting what they say is Serb discrimination against local Albanians, moved into the area and use it as a guerrilla base for attacking Serb forces. At least two ethnic Albanians were earlier reported killed and three Yugoslav soldiers wounded in recent fighting in southern Serbia’s volatile Presevo valley. Rebel commander Ridvan Cazimi warned last week that if
NATO ceded control to Yugoslav forces, “armed ethnic Albanians will defend themselves and it will be the beginning of a war.’’ NATO secretary-General George Robertson said the buffer, initially set up to keep apart the
KFOR and Yugoslav forces, was now redundant, but the alliance had not taken the decision to hand it back lightly. He warned that any attacks on
KFOR troops would draw “a robust military response.” “The time has come for
Albanian armed groups to lay down their weapons and take an active part in the peaceful political process within a democratic
Serbia,” he added. Rebels from the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac have used Sector B — a 35-km strip of the buffer zone — as a safe haven. As part of a
backed-backed effort to subdue the rebels, Yugoslav forces have gradually been allowed to retake control of the zone, section by section. They have yet to enter Sector B, which makes up the final one-fifth of the zone. Mr Robertson said the Yugoslav and Serb governments had promised to resolve the crisis peacefully and had taken several measures to try and rebuild confidence. These included demilitarising certain villages, removing Yugoslav forces from schools and factories, compensating Albanian workers and reinstating at least 60 ethnic Albanians in a multi-ethnic police force. In addition
NATO urged the Serb authorities to offer an amnesty to armed rebels who give up their weapons. It also sought a commitment that returning Yugoslav forces would respect human rights and avoid any excessive use of force. The government-run press office in southern Serbia said the three Yugoslav soldiers had been wounded in fighting on a mountain peak west of the town of Vranje. Around 30 km to the south, fighting raged in the village of Oraovica, captured by rebels at the weekend. The press centre said later that Yugoslav security forces had re-taken control of all checkpoints in Oraovica, with groups of rebels withdrawing to the outskirts of the village.
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‘Imitation’ hair dye caused singer’s death Colombo, May 15 Bulathsinghala, 51, died in the USA in March at the end of a concert tour. The autopsy held in Los Angeles by the county coroner found that she had died of “acute bronchial asthma,” probably caused by an allergic reaction to Eagle’s black henna powder. The sole agent for the brand in Sri Lanka, Mr Bertie Perera of Dineth Enterprises, reacting strongly to the autopsy report told a local newspaper that it was likely Bulathsinghala had used a sub-standard imitation product. He said his import was a herbal product containing only the “marathondi” herb. Claiming that he had not had a single complaint since he began importing the hair dye in 1992, Mr Perera said: “Those who are allergic to other varieties, use this brand as it does not have any adverse effects. Where some customers have complained of allergies, I have found them to be using duplicates of Eagle’s black henna.” The Los Angeles coroner’s report also found that Bulathsinghala, an asthmatic, had clogged arteries. “It is likely that she developed an allergic reaction from the henna hair dye which exacerbated the asthma and, combined with the occlusive artherosclerotic coronary artery disease, led to her rapid death,” the report said. Bulathsinghala had used the hair dye on the day before she was to leave Los Angeles. Her hosts, the Sri Lankan consul-general and his wife, heard her call out as she stepped into the shower. As she was finding it difficult to breathe, the singer was brought out of the bathroom and given her inhaler to use and water to drink. However, she had a cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead by the time she was taken to a nearby hospital. The importer, Mr Perera, said the singer had been using the hair dye for over 10 years and gave the name of the local pharmacy from which she regularly purchased it. “I suspect she used a duplicate of this brand, borrowed mistakenly from abroad or locally, that had caused the allergy.” IANS
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Bombing accused seeks fresh trial Washington, May 15 Lawyers for Nichols, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for helping McVeigh build the truck bomb that killed 168 persons, asked the Supreme Court to order more hearings by a federal judge because the FBI failed to produce thousands of pages of documents about its investigation. The Supreme Court made available yesterday the eight-page request by Nichols’ defence team filed on Friday after the FBI turned over the newly discovered documents to his lawyers and lawyers for his co-conspirator, McVeigh. McVeigh (33) had been set to die by lethal injection tomorrow for bombing the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in 1995, killing 168 persons. The discovery of the documents forced US Attorney-General Mr John Ashcroft on Friday to delay the execution until June 11 to give McVeigh’s lawyers time to review the material. McVeigh’s defence team has left open the possibility that their client may seek a new trial or a reduced sentence, which would mark a reversal of his decision last year to waive all appeals and go forward with his own execution. But McVeigh’s lawyers declined to comment on Monday on the status of their review as they waded through more than 3,000 pages of FBI investigative reports. They said at the weekend that McVeigh had not yet authorised any appeals.
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Three Lankan soldiers die in mine blast Colombo, May 15 The attack took place yesterday when the soldiers were travelling in a truck from Trincomalee to Minneriya, the ministry said. Meanwhile, a civilian who was caught in a shoot-out at Pachanoor in Trincomalee district yesterday, succumbed to his injuries. A policeman had died on the spot in the same incident when the LTTE attacked a police patrol. Another civilian was killed as the militants fired at armymen at Sinnawatta in Ampara district in eastern Sri Lanka. The civilian was caught in the crossfire, the army said. Meanwhile, two LTTE cadres were killed in an attack on their bunker by the army at Muhamalai in the Jaffna peninsula on Sunday, army sources said.
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54 killed in China
coalmine fire Hong Kong, May 15 The fire in a mine, in the city of Hegang in Heilongjiang province, began on May 8 and was still burning late today, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said. “We urge Chinese authorities to improve the safety standard of coalmines to protect the workers’ living rights,” the group said in a statement. It noted that official statistics showed 5,798 persons died in coal mine accidents in China last year. It added that the actual number of fatalities in China’s coal industry was much higher than the official figure as many deaths went unreported. Experts estimate the actual number of deaths could be as high as 10,000 per year, the group said.
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Counting on amid violence Manila, May 15 The assault by men firing automatic weapons brought the number of political killings to 68 since campaigning began in January for a Senate race. The outcome of the race is still uncertain although candidates who favour Ms Arroyo over jailed former President Estrada have taken an early, if flimsy lead, according to preliminary results being broadcast. The assailants, not immediately identified, made off with ballot-boxes from two precincts in Santa Ana city, in the Philippines’ extreme north, the police said. Elsewhere, Police Superintendent Rojillo Montijo said suspected Communist rebels of the New People’s Army (NPA) abducted Mayor Zemaida Doria, who had run for re-election in the Mayorja town, some 600 km southeast of Manila. Mr Montijo said the NPA, which is fighting to install Marxism and claims to serve as vigilantes against crime in some rural areas, had accused Doria of corruption. Scattered violence, missing ballot boxes and incomplete voter lists plagued parts of the country throughout voting during elections yesterday.
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