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Saturday,
June 16, 2001, Chandigarh, India  
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Israel
starts pullback, shooting
Search on
for 17 illegal immigrants Book takes
new look at Diana |
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Taliban
execute eight men 2 rebels
held, no hostage released BSF
kills 3 B’deshi farmers: reports
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Israel starts pullback, shooting goes on Jerusalem, June 15 Despite the shoot-out, Israel yesterday began moving some of its tanks on the West Bank and Gaza Strip back to positions they occupied before the confrontation broke out last September. Israeli forces also did not return fire after five mortar shells were lobbed at Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. Local civil militia who responded with light weapon fire were interrogated by Israeli police for possibly using their weapons illegally, but the three men were released. In Hebron in the West Bank, 10 fire bombs were hurled at Israeli patrols, but there were no damages or casualties. In Gaza, Palestinian medical sources said that six Palestinians were injured, among them a 12-year-old boy who was wounded seriously when Israeli soldiers opened fire to disperse teenage boys who threw stones at them. Eyewitnesses said Israeli soldiers had assaulted three Palestinian boys, triggering the clashes. The events were among nearly 20 shooting incidents since Israel and the Palestinians accepted the proposed basis for a ceasefire on Tuesday. Despite continuing Palestinian fire, Israeli military units opened several main roadblocks in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, pulling back several tanks. The road connecting the Gaza settlement of Kfar Darom with the Palestinian city of Khan Yunis was reopened. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Thursday afternoon that the Israeli army would not pull back its forces in areas where the fire had not ceased, specifically Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Nablus, where shots were fired at Israeli army troops. In Gaza, Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat asked on Thursday that the USA pressure Israel on implementing the ceasefire deal. Erekat told Palestinian radio that an Israeli government proposal on starting a six-month cooling-period and setting new conditions was totally contradictory to what had been agreed. BEIRUT: Syrian troops based in Beirut and surrounding, mainly Christian-populated areas, began pulling out overnight, heading eastward in a redeployment demanded for months by Lebanese Christian and other opposition leaders, officials said. “The redeployment began last night and is to continue for several days until the end of the week,” a high-ranking Lebanese official told AFP, on condition he not be identified. “It follows decisions taken in the spring (of 2000) but suspended as a result of anti-Syrian campaigns waged during the legislative elections” last year, he added. The official said the move was decided by Lebanese President Emile Lahoud and his Syrian counterpart, Bashar al-Assad, along with the military high commands of the two countries. LONDON: An International Parliamentary Group on Palestine with representatives from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Cuba is being set up to act as a pressure group to check violence in the occupied area in the West Bank region. The idea to establish the group was mooted at a meeting of Latin American and Caribbean countries organisation held at Havana recently, K.M. Khan, Chairman of the Asian Co-ordination Committee on Palestine attached to the UN Palestine Division, said here last night. Khan, who was a special invitee from Asia because of the volatile situation in the occupied area, emphasised at the meeting the urgent need for the UN Security Council to check the violence in the region. We have suggested that a team of international observers under the UN umbrella be appointed to monitor the situation in occupied Arab area. Besides, a suggestion was made that the Security Council should take some strong action against Israel,” Khan said. He said Parliamentarians of India and Cuba had a meeting with the Chairman of the International Affairs Committee of Cuban Parliament, Ramon Pesserro, President of the committee on International Relations.
DPA, AFP, PTI |
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Search on for 17 illegal
immigrants London, June 15 Three other illegal immigrants caught in Slovakia gave the information regarding the 17 persons. All of them are believed to have been heading for Britain. The three illegal immigrants have been detained and the police in Slovakia and the Czech republic are still searching for the missing 17. The three detainees said the 17 illegal immigrants had been trying to cross the Morava, also known as the Danube, at night by making a human chain holding hands. “The Slovak and the Czech authorities are still looking for the remaining 17,” Mr Ram Rattan, senior official at the Indian Embassy in Bratislava, the Slovak capital, told IANS on phone. “We cannot say as yet whether they died in the river or managed to cross successfully.” Mr Rattan said it was still not clear how many of the group of 20 were Indians. But one of the three men caught is reported to be an Indian. Britain is usually the final destination for immigration gangs who bring people into Britain through circuitous routes that invariably pass through East Europe. Human trafficking is big business for these gangs. The “market rate” to smuggle a person is reported to be around Rs 500,000 to Rs.700,000 (£10,000/ $15,000). Most “clients” are from Punjab or Gujarat coming to Britain to join the large Punjabi and Gujarati communities. The business continues despite danger of death and arrest. And success can mean years of slaving at wages of no more than a couple of dollars an hour apart from years of a furtive life in hiding from the authorities. Now, the danger of getting caught is rising as the police invests more into intelligence operations to detect illegal immigrants. In March, the British police cracked a big smugglers, gang who were reported to have made millions of dollars smuggling illegal immigrants into the country. The gang brought Gujaratis into Britain and provided them with forged British passports, birth certificates and driving licenses. The Gujaratis became slave labour as soon as they were brought in. Several were kept crowded into rooms from where they were taken for manual labour in farms and factories. The police seized 151 stolen passports, birth certificates, driving licenses and forgery equipment from a house in Leicester, about 100 miles north of London, from where the gang operated. “We cannot put a figure on the number of illegal immigrants involved with this gang, but we believe it to be in thousands,” Detective Inspector Bob White, who led the 24-member team working on the operation, said after the raid. The arrested men in this case included Pravin Patel, 45, a forger who played a leading role in the illegal enterprise along with Mohammed Garja, 37, and Hari Krishna Patel, 31, of Wembley in London. Each was jailed for five years. Vinodbhai Patel, 41, was jailed for four years at the same hearing, while Ahmed Jogi, 30, was sentenced to 15 months. Such arrests are becoming more and more frequent as the police tightens controls over illegal immigration. A stronger police force at the English Channel is also leading to detection of more illegal immigrants being brought into Britain.
IANS |
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Book takes new look
at Diana London, June 15 “Diana: Story of a Princess,” by British journalists Tim Clayton and Phil Craig, has been serialised in the tabloid ‘Daily Mail’ in the days before what would have been Diana’s 40th birthday on July 1. Nearly four years after the princess died in a Paris car crash, the Diana story fixed in most minds is of unhappy childhood, loveless marriage, infidelity and a final, brief love affair. But two persons who had a frequent view of Charles and Diana insist it wasn’t quite like that. “When they looked at each other, they looked as though they wanted to rip the clothes off each other. They looked so much in love. I am convinced of it to this day,” veteran newspaper photographer Arthur Edwards told the authors. Photographer Ken Lennox, whose telephoto snaps of the pregnant Princess in a bikini outraged much of the country before Prince William’s 1982 birth, agreed with Edwards. An unidentified senior member of royal household reportedly said the same. They were not unhappy at the beginning — just tempestuous; loving at times and confused at times, he reportedly said. The book adds that some who knew Diana felt she exaggerated the unhappiness of her childhood. One man, described as a close friend, is quoted as saying her famous “suicidal” plunge down a staircase in 1981 had been an accident; that she told him she had simply slipped. The authors say Diana’s famous affair with Capt James Hewitt began in the autumn of 1986 at about the same time Prince Charles’ friends say he started seeing his old flame, Camilla Parker Bowles, again. Clayton and Craig say the affair began when Diana invited Hewitt, her riding teacher, to Kensington Palace for dinner and he spent the night. The book includes more than the usual number of quotes from identified sources.
AP |
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Love in Nepal’s royal
palace Kathmandu, June 15 King Ranabhadur Shah, third descendent of Prithvi Narayan Shah, the founder of the Shah dynasty and the unifier of the country, was so besotted by a Brahmin widow that he even threatened to give up his crown and leave the country for her. When he finally married her, Ranabhadur Shah, who ruled the country for 22 years (1775-1797), even transferred the lineage of the crown to the child from this marriage, Girbanyuddha, who became the king of Nepal in 1797 and ruled the country for 17 years. Likewise, late King Mahendra, who ruled the country for 17 years (1954-1971), almost gave up his title of crown prince when his father, King Tribhuvan, objected to his love for a girl (the present Queen Mother Ratna) and refused to give approval to the marriage. Then home minister late B.P. Koirala in his memoirs has written that “one fine morning Crown Prince Mahendra came to my official residence without any notice and told that he wants to resign from princehood and become a commoner because his father did not approve of the girl he loved.” “Crown Prince Mahendra said he is ready to give up his title and become a commoner to marry the girl of his choice,” Koirala, the present Prime Minister Girija Koirala’s elder brother, said, adding in his memoir that it was his mediation effort which averted a royal crisis. A weekly newspaper has given account of Mahendra’s brother Basundhara’s affair with a foreigner that finally did not end in marriage because he did not want to create another royal controversy. “Basundhara was patient enough not to marry a foreigner and protect his title,” the weekly said. In continuation to the family trend, the younger brother of late King Birendra, Dhirendra Shah gave up his title in the late 1980s to marry a woman of his choice despite having three children from his married wife. Dhirendra, slain in the carnage of June 1, was very active and intelligent and mixed with people, preferred to choose his love to the royal title. “It was his decision and he was firm in his decision,” a person close to Dhirendra told IANS. People of Nepal have started comparing all these incidents in the royal family and trying to convince themselves that then crown prince Dipendra must also have reached the extent of giving up the title and due to the pressure, possibly put on him for not doing so, he lost control and carried out the carnage. “Love is blind and it is true with Nepali royals anything is possible,” a historian and high-level government official said. “Only Devyani Rana can tell how deep was her affair with Dipendra and how lunatic he had become in her love; only after that the incident could be written in history books,” said the historian.
IANS |
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Sectarian
attack in Pak claims 2 lives Multan, June 15 The police said the attackers, five persons on two motor cycles, sprayed bullets at members of the minority Shiite community late yesterday. Angry shiite residents took to the streets following the incident, burning tyres, tearing off sign boards and chanting slogans against the administration. “One Shiite and one Sunni was killed on the spot while six were injured,” said Shaukat Javed, deputy inspector general of police in Multan. He said the attackers were members of an underground militant Sunni outfit, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, that is blamed for hundreds of sectarian killings in Pakistan in recent years. The police said the situation was tense in the city and they had deployed extra force to ensure peace.
AFP |
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Taliban
execute eight men Dushanbe, June 15 The men were brought out in a group yesterday and shot. No further details on the circumstances of the killings were immediately available. The execution happened 200 km south of Dushanbe on the Afghan side of the Pyandzh border crossing, near the river port of Sherkhan-Bandar. The river Pyandzh forms the border at that point and the Taliban are in full control of Afghan territory in that region. “The Taliban shot eight men on Afghan territory by the river,’’ the Russian military source told Reuters. He could not confirm whether the eight were Afghans or give any reason for their execution, but he added that Russian troops had seen two men killed in a similar incident in mid-May.
Reuters |
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2 rebels held, no hostage released Zamboanga, June 15 The rebels, brothers Jubail and Alih Sahibol, were caught in the capital town of the nearby Jolo island following a brief chase by police yesterday, Jolo provincial police chief Candido Casimiro said. The two are listed on the government’s order of battle and were among those who guarded dozens of foreigners and locals snatched by the Abu Sayyaf in similar hostage crisis last year, he said. The police also raided yesterday a hideout of the Abu Sayyaf in Jolo’s Patikul town, but the guerrillas managed to escaped after a brief firefight, Casimiro said. The Abu Sayyaf last month abducted three Americans and 17 Filipinos from an upscale beach resort off the western province of Palawan who they spirited to Basilan. Nine of the hostages have been rescued, while two were
executed.
DPA, AFP |
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BSF kills 3 B’deshi farmers: reports Dhaka, June 15 They said the BSF personnel also “abducted” six Bangladeshis after firing on farmers at Shibrampur village near the Bangabari border in Chapainawabganj. While Dhaka’s Daily Star said that three farmers were killed and another was injured in the incident, private news agency UNB reported that one farmer was shot dead and another injured after BSF men walked into Bangladesh territory and opened fire on them. The Independent newspaper also said that one farmer was killed and another injured in the firing. Pro-Opposition daily Dinkal said BSF men also abducted six persons.
PTI |
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