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Thursday,
June 7, 2001, Chandigarh, India  
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India may
buy Israeli air defence systems 21 dead in
LTTE attack on army base
Jewish
settlers burn Palestinian houses Thatcher’s
legacy haunts Blair Vaz not
guilty of impropriety, says Blair |
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Charges
filed against Reyat US hostage
hurt in gunbattle
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India may buy Israeli air defence systems Washington, June 6 The Air Force has shortlisted the Python-4, fourth generation air-to-air missile, and the Derby, radar-guided air-to-air missile, from Israel as a part of its future air defence systems, it said quoting a senior Air Force official. Air Vice-Marshall Vinod Patni, Vice- Chief of the Indian Air Force, saw trials of the missiles during his visit to Israel in April, it said in a despatch from New Delhi. India’s own missile defence systems, Akash and Trishul, would not be ready for the country’s military in another four years, the report said. As part of its plans for upgradation and modernisation, the Indian Air Force was looking for additional mobile air defence systems for the protection of air fields, ammunition depots and other strategic installations, it said. Its six THD-1955 and six IRS-2015 control reporting systems would be upgraded. The service would also install 50 Indira II medium range detection radar systems built by Bharat Electronics, Bangalore, and would digitise 50 units of the Pechora air defence systems, the report said. The Air Force, it says, uses about 200 P 30, P 35 and P 40 low level detection radars, which it intends to replace with Indira II in the next five to 10 years.
PTI |
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21 dead in LTTE attack on army base Colombo, June 6 The monitoring of rebel transmissions confirmed that 12 LTTE militants were killed and four seriously wounded in retaliatory fire by army reinforcements after the LTTE launched a surprise attack on the base at Kaavathumunai village in Batticaloa district, a military statement said. With one more soldier succumbing to his wounds, the death toll of the security forces went up to seven. One more civilian died of injuries suffered in shelling and firing by the LTTE at Kaavathumunai village, the statement said, taking the civilian death toll to two. Fourteen civilians were injured in the rebel attack, the army said, claiming that the LTTE’s mortar shells and machine gun fire were directed at the predominantly Muslim village, damaging three houses. The latest LTTE attack in the east came a day after the Special Task Force, an elite police commando unit, destroyed a key rebel base on Monday, killing 14 cadres. Eleven bodies were recovered and handed over to the LTTE through the International Committee of Red Cross. Elsewhere in the island, eight LTTE fighters were killed in separate incidents in the Jaffna peninsula in the north in the last two days, the statement added. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka will submit to India a proposal seeking general amnesty for 112 fishermen of both countries, who allegedly intruded into the territorial waters of each other. Fisheries Minister Mahinda Rajapakse, who has just returned after a visit to India last week, said he received a ‘positive’ response from his Indian counterpart Nitish Kumar to his proposals to sort out the fishermen’s problems. There is increasing concern, especially in Tamil Nadu, after 47 fishermen were detained by the Sri Lankan navy in Jaffna last month. Sixtyfive Sri Lankan fishermen who have been arrested by Indian authorities are languishing in the jails of southern states. Mr Rajapakse said a joint committee comprising officials of India and Sri Lanka would sort out problems relating to the fishermen of the two countries. The committee would decide whether any amnesty should be granted to these fishermen or not.
PTI, UNI |
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Jewish settlers burn Palestinian houses Nablus (West Bank), June 6 The settlers attacked the village after an Israeli baby was critically injured by stone throwers on a West Bank road near the village yesterday, an Israeli police spokesman said. He said the police was trying to move the settlers out of the village. The settlers burned at least three Palestinian houses and a greenhouse in the Eisawya village and took over at least one house where they raised an Israeli flag, witnesses said. There were no reports of casualties, they said. “We have large forces trying to clear the area. We hope it will be quiet there soon,” said the police spokesman. He said so far no arrests had been made. A doctor at Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital said the five-month old baby boy “was struck in the head and arrived in critical condition”. BEIRUT: The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrillas urged Palestinians to continue fighting and not to be scared by Israeli threats of retaliation. “The course you have elected is the right path and do not be afraid of all those threats,” Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Iranian-backed Islamic Militants, said on Tuesday at a rally at the Iranian Embassy in Beirut on the 12th anniversary of the death of Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. After a suicide bombing Friday in Tel Aviv, Israel, killed 21 persons, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government threatened retaliatory strikes against Palestinian areas. But Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s call for a cease-fire and a subsequent decrease in violence staved off the Israeli attack. JERUSALEM:
Israel said it would resume food and fuel supplies to the Palestinians on Wednesday and that a ceasefire promised by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat was starting to take hold ahead of new U.S. Efforts to end months of violence. U.S. President George W. Bush said “enough progress has been made on the ceasefire” for CIA chief George Tenet to return to the West Asia today. Tenet will hold talks with Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs on cementing the truce pledged by Arafat in the face of threatened Israeli military retaliation for a Tel Aviv suicide bombing that killed 21 persons on Friday. But a stone-throwing attack that seriously injured an Israeli infant in the West Bank late on Tuesday and a television interview in which Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called Arafat a “murderer and pathological liar” kept passions high. Meanwhile Palestinian gunmen shot and wounded an Israeli driving near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Israel radio identified him as an Israeli Arab. The Muslim militant group Hamas, which claimed
responsibility for the Tel Aviv nightclub explosion, said it would keep attacking Israelis “everywhere”. Israel, meanwhile, loosened restrictions it imposed on Palestinians since the suicide bombing. Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said food and fuel supplies would begin flowing again from Israel to the West Bank and Gaza on Wednesday. Fuel is running out fast in Gaza. Ben-Eliezer decided to lift the ban as a result of “a significant drop in the level of violence in the past few days’’ a reduction he called “a step in the right direction’’. He said residents of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank stuck in Egypt and Jordan since Israel closed border crossings after the Tel Aviv attack could begin to return home on Wednesday. But he gave no indication Israel was prepared to end soon its encirclement of Palestinian cities or fully reopen the West Bank-Jordan border of Gaza-Egypt frontier.
Reuters, AP |
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Thatcher’s legacy haunts Blair
London, June 6 Love or hate her, Mrs Thatcher may have been out of power for more than a decade but the former Conservative Prime Minister keeps taking centre-stage in the battle for Thursday’s ballot. Mr Blair anxious that the opinion poll forecasts of a landslide do not trigger voter apathy and dent his chances of a strong second term mandate, wants to draw a line under the 1979-1990 Thatcher years and put improving the UK’s schools, hospitals and other public services at the top of the Agenda. “Thatcher has been the dominant political force of the past two decades. We want to show that if we get back we will have our own mandate, separate from that agenda,’’ said Mr Blair’s spokesman Alastair Campbell. Mrs Thatcher — dubbed the “Iron lady” during the Cold War years — has been prominent in the opposition Conservatives’ campaign, accusing Mr Blair planning to sell UK’s sovereignty to a federal Europe and the membership of the euro. The former Prime Minister, who won three general elections, has also been at the forefront of the Conservative warnings that a landslide for Mr Blair’s Labour Party would be a disaster for the UK’s democracy. In her typically blunt view, the UK’s could end up with an “elective dictatorship’’. Conservative leader William Hague, strongly endorsed by Mrs Thatcher, has spent much of the four-week campaign trying to make Europe and the euro the key battleground issues. Mr Hague is campaigning to keep the pound for the five-year duration of the next parliament and wants UK’s to be “in Europe but not run by Europe’’. Mr Blair on the other hand favours greater engagement with other European Union states and supports the euro entry after the election subject to the right economic conditions and approval by Britons in a referendum. Urging Britons to give him a strong mandate, Mr Blair said on Tuesday they would be making an ‘’historic decision. “It is to reach out in a new century for a different political agenda,’’ he told a Labour rally at Derby in central England. The Conservatives were “camped out on the right, pointing in the direction of the past’’, Mr Blair said. A new opinion poll showed that popular support for Mr Blair had shrunk to its lowest level in weeks but would still ensure he won by a landslide.
Reuters |
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Vaz not
guilty of impropriety, says Blair London, June 6 Questioned in BBC’s Newsnight programme, Mr Blair justified the decision to sack one of his senior Cabinet ministers Peter Mandelson, who had found himself in the eye of a controversy in regard to the grant of passport to Mr S.P. Hinduja. It was a harsh but necessary decision because “people had been inadvertently misled” by Mr Mandelson with regard to his role in the grant of passport, he said. Asked why Minister for Europe Keith Vaz, regarded as close to the Hindujas, was not sacked, Mr Blair said, “He had done absolutely nothing to mislead people. He had acted entirely properly.”
PTI |
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Charges
filed against Reyat Vancouver, June 6 The charges were filed yesterday, just days before Reyat was due to be freed after serving a 10-year sentence for another bombing. The British Government on Monday gave the go-ahead for Reyat’s prosecution in the Air India case. The British extradition laws would not allow fresh charges to be filed against Reyat in the Air India bombing without the British permission. Reyat would appear in court today. Reyat, who has both British and Canadian citizenship, was extradited from England in 1989 to face trial for a bomb -believed to have come from Canada - that exploded on June 23, 1985, in Tokyo’s Narita Airport. Two baggage handlers were killed. An hour later, another bomb brought down Air India flight 182, from Montreal to New Delhi, off the Irish coast. All 329 persons on board, most of them Canadians, were killed.
AP |
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US hostage hurt
in gunbattle Manila, June 6 “He was wounded in the back. He has many wounds in the back,” Abu Sayyaf spokesman Abu Sabaya said referring to Martin Burnham who has been held together with his wife Gracia Burnham. The third US hostage is Californian Guillermo Sobrero. They are among the 59 hostages being held by the Abu Sayyaf in the southern Basilan island. Abu Sabaya said over Radio Mindanao Network that Burnham was wounded two days ago by an exploding rifle grenade during fighting in the forested areas of Tuburan town.
AFP |
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