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Saturday,
January 5, 2002, Chandigarh, India   
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Israel seizes 50 tonnes of arms for Palestinian areas
Omar eludes Afghan search parties
120 ultras held in Pak End backing to J&K ultras: Pak experts |
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Kashmir policy ruining Musharraf WILL the present rulers in Pakistan roll back their extremist agenda? Will Pakistan get out of the Islamic fundamentalist morass into which successive rulers have pushed it since the times of Ayub Khan? No blueprint for J&K peace: Blair UK stand on LTTE under fire London’s Bollywood queen Dolly has arthritis
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Israel seizes 50 tonnes of arms for Palestinian areas Tel Aviv, January 4 Lieut-General Shaul Mofaz said the weapons confiscated yesterday were mainly Iranian which included Katyusha rockets, anti-tank missiles, assault rifles and ammunition and explosives. He said Israeli naval and air forces took part in the operation. Israel announced the seizure as U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni was holding separate talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders aimed at ending more than 15 months of bloodshed. “On January 3, the Israel defence forces took over the ship “Karine-a”, which carried a cargo of about 50 tonnes of weapons and explosives that were to be smuggled into Palestinian authority territory,” Mofaz told a news conference. Meanwhile, US envoy Zinni said Israel wanted the USA and Europe to increase their pressure on Yasser Arafat, Premier Ariel Sharon and other leaders. US envoy Anthony Zinni said after a round of meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders today that US-brokered security talks between the two sides would resume. Mr Zinni said his mission, aimed at ending more than 15 months of bloodshed, faced “a very difficult path”. His mediation effort was overshadowed by Israel’s announcement that it had seized a Palestinian ship in the Red Sea, laden with 50 tonnes of weapons. “We have to take the first step...We will hold trilateral meetings again, resume where we left off from the last mission,” he told a joint news conference after meeting Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah. General Mofaz made the announcement at a news conference as U.S. Envoy Anthony Zinni met Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah in a renewed effort to end 15 months of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed. General Mofaz said Katyusha rockets with a maximum range of 20 km assault rifles, anti-tank missiles, mines, ammunition and explosives were found in the 50-tonne munitions cargo. Israeli television showed footage of what it said was the cargo seized from the ship. Israeli officers at the news conference said the ship was seized by naval commandos in international waters as it was travelling North in the Red Sea some 500 km (300 miles) from Israeli shores. “The link between the ship’s crew and the Palestinian authority and its leaders is clear and undeniable,” General Mofaz said. RAMALLAH: a suspected member of the Islamic fundamentalist hamas organisation was killed Friday as an Israeli army unit, backed by tanks and helicopters, entered a village in the West Bank, Israeli and Palestinian sources said. The soldiers were searching for Palestinians on Israel’s wanted list in the Palestinian-controlled village of Tel, near Nablus. The Palestinian was reportedly killed during gunbattles. The army has declared the village a closed military zone for as long as the search continued. NABLUS (West Bank):
An armed Palestinian was killed in a clash with Israeli troops who raided the Palestinian village of Tel in the West Bank today in a search for militants, an Israeli military source said. The man, armed with an M-16 assault rifle, was killed when the troops came under fire, the source
said. Reuters, AFP, DPA |
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Omar eludes Afghan search parties Kabul/Washington, January 4 With the USA highlighting terror suspects as the focus of the Afghan war it launched on October 7, an official in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar said US forces were undertaking house-to-house searches in the area of the village. “We would know within half an hour if he is captured,’’ Nasratullah, secretary to Kandahar intelligence chief Haji Gullalai, said. Afghan Minister for Reconstruction Amin Farhang told German television yesterday that he had heard Omar had been arrested. The Pentagon said it had nothing to support the report. “We have nothing on that at all,” spokeswoman Victoria Clark said. Afghan officials in Kandahar, who were trying to negotiate the surrender of Mullah Omar, said yesterday their envoys had returned and they hoped the talks would lead to his capture without bloodshed. However, interim leader Hamid Karzai said on Friday he believe Mullah Omar was still on the loose, and he would turn Omar over to the USA if he was captured. I don’t think he’s been captured yet. If he has been captured I would know it, but I hope he’ll be captured soon,” Karzai said in an interview with ABC News. After a lull of several days, US Air Force General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced a fresh display of military might yesterday. “This morning...We conducted strikes...in Afghanistan on a leadership compound, a fairly extensive compound,” he said. UN spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker told journalists in Kabul UN special envoy for Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi was “very concerned” about reports of civilian deaths and would take it up with the new Afghan government and US diplomats. NBC television said the latest bombing raid was launched after an unmanned surveillance drone picked up suggestions that Bin Laden could have been hiding at the site. The Pentagon had no immediate comment on the report. ISLAMABAD: US bombing raids on a suspected Al-Qaida base in eastern Afghanistan have killed 32 civilians in villages located nearby, the Afghan Islamic Press said on Friday, citing witnesses in the area. The Pakistan-based news agency said local tribe elders had travelled to the city of Khost to appeal for an end to the bombardment which was aimed at wiping out remaining fighters with Osama bin Laden’s terror network. “The bombing is very intense and very heavy. Many people have died. The USA should stop bombing. They are all civilians in this area,” a tribe elder was quoted as saying. Reuters, AFP |
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Osama beats Hitler ‘as most hated’ London, January 4 Saddam Hussein came third in the poll conducted with over 1,500 visitors to the waxworks in December. The results were published today. Princess Diana, who spent
15 years at number one in the “Most Beautiful Woman” category,
failed this time to make the top three. Reuters |
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120 ultras held in Pak Islamabad, January 4 The detentions came as diplomatic efforts to defuse a military standoff between India and Pakistan gathered pace while the two countries’ leaders are due at a regional summit opening in Nepal tomorrow. The police in central Punjab province said as many as 120 members of militant groups were picked up in overnight sweeps in several cities in the province. “Most of these people belong to Sipah-e-Sahaba and Tehrik-e-Jaffria,” a police official in Multan said. The rival hardline groups are from the majority Sunni and minority Shia Muslim communities, respectively, and have often been accused of the involvement in sectarian violence. The former group is in a loose alliance of Islamic groups that includes the two militants blamed by New Delhi for a bloody attack on Parliament in Delhi on December 13. Several members of the two Kashmiri groups, the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, were among those detained for questioning, the police said. The USA has put the two Kashmiri groups, which denied involvement in the attack, on its list of terrorist organisations. Pakistan has detained leaders of the two groups as well as about 200 activists, most of them in sweeps since late last month. Pakistan denies that the crackdown on the militant groups was launched because of pressure from India, or because of the US war on terrorism, which Pakistan backs. Officials said the militants had been detained, and many of their offices closed down, for internal security reasons. India has welcomed the action against the Kashmiri militants but says Pakistan must do much more to stamp out what it calls “cross-border terrorism”. A spokesman for the Jaish-e-Mohammad condemned the crackdown and said it would have bad consequences for the military government. “It is being done at the behest of the USA,” group spokesman Hasan Burki told Reuters. He said about 80 Jaish activists were rounded up last night across Punjab but the action would not stop its war in Kashmir. “These detentions cannot stop our jihad (holy war) in Kashmir,” he said.
Reuters |
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End backing to J&K ultras: Pak experts
Islamabad, January 4 “It is time for the Pakistan Government to reassess its Kashmir policy of supporting militancy and shift emphasis to diplomatic, political and human rights issues concerning the Kashmir cause,” said Mushahid Hussain, a former Information Minister. Pakistan should stop playing the game of favourites in supporting leaders in Kashmir as the same policy of backing different leaders in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, had backfired, he pointed out. “We must respect feelings and choices of the Kashmiri people and should not intervene in their internal affairs to the extent that they start distancing themselves from us,” he said participating in a seminar on tense stand-off between India and Pakistan. A former Director-General of the Institute of Strategic Studies of Pakistan, Lt Gen Kamal Mateenuddin said the military government should bring about fundamental changes in the Kashmir policy by first asking all militant groups to wind up their activities from Pakistani soil. He said militant attacks on civilians, especially Hindus, in Kashmir brought about a bad name to the Kashmir movement. “The world will recognise the validity of the freedom movement only if the attacks were directed against military targets,” he added. Gen Mateenuddin said though India prepared for war, it opted to take non-war measures like recalling its High Commissioner and half of its diplomatic staff besides cutting off road, rail and air links. He was of the opinion that the USA would not allow India and Pakistan to use nuclear weapons so long its troops were present in Pakistan and Afghanistan. A former Foreign Secretary, Mr Agha Shahi, said the danger of a nuclear war in South Asia could not be ruled out once conflict broke out between the two neighbours. “Even a small and limited conflict may lead to a full-scale war between the two,” he observed. He said President Pervez Musharraf had made it clear that action would be taken against the alleged terrorists under the law of the land only if evidence was given against them. “The handing over of alleged terrorists to India is not a reasonable demand,” and “if Pakistan does not use nuclear weapons in case of war, the situation will suit India, which has an edge over Pakistan in conventional weapons,” he said at the seminar organised by Al-Khair University.
PTI |
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WINDOW ON PAKISTAN WILL the present rulers in Pakistan roll back their extremist agenda? Will Pakistan get out of the Islamic fundamentalist morass into which successive rulers have pushed it since the times of Ayub Khan? These questions are not only relevant to India but also Pakistan. The dream of both Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Alama Iqbal of a modern state, largely forward looking, based on the western model, lies nearly shattered. The silent majority, which wants a peaceful well-developed state, is being ignored. When President Musharraf’s talkative foreign minister Abdus Sattar refers to this majority too often, he pays no more than lip sympathy. But this silent majority has asserted itself by refusing to back the jehadi demonstrations against the American attack on Afghanistan and thus made it possible for the Musharraf government to survive. This despite the fact that the American government is much hated even among the middle class. The Musharraf regime has been declaring to the world community that it has banned organisations like Lashkar-e-Toiba, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and Jaish-e-Muhammad. It has arrested some leaders and freezed their accounts. But it has not touched the mother of the extremist ideology, Sipah Sahaba. Even Tahreek Jafaria has not been touched, although Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider has been very critical of all these. He has lost his brother to the extremist bullets. Most moderate politicians, bureaucrats, and journalists have been equally critical. Many of them face threats from the mullas and their extreme lunatic hordes. The problem in rolling back the extremist ideology is that the Musharraf government does not want to accuse the jehadis fighting the so-called war of liberation in Kashmir as being extremists. There is indeed total hypocrisy and contradiction in its approach. So far it suited the rulers whose achievements on all development fronts have been negligible, the jehadis were freedom fighters and when it did not suit them, they were dumped. Pakistan exported extremist ideology and Taliban soldiers to Afghanistan for a decade and exploited the situation. It had both political and monetary support of the USA and now under orders from Washington, it has not only forsaken them, but actively helped to kill them. According to Pakistani writers, Sipaha Sahaba is the mother of most extremist outfits and is strong in Sindh, NWFP and many other areas. The government is not likely to take any action against it as it does not suit some of the masters. It cannot also take advantage of the international situation and once and for all get rid of these extremist elements and their ideology. It is now becoming clear that Musharraf’s dream of following the footsteps of Kamal Pasha is phonier. The Islamic state about which there is no clear agreement among the Islamic scholars is based on orthodox and obscurantist ideology that denies equal rights not only to those who profess other religions, but also to the Muslim women. The source of this law is Sunna, which actually encompasses Quran, the tradition of the Prophet and of the four Caliphs and the decisions recorded by the great jurists. In a nutshell, this means a totalitarian state since except the devouts, others including women have no rights. This closes the development of mind. Clearly, when the very basis of the state rests on extremist and fundamentalist ideology, banning one organisation here and there would not help. Pakistan’s Kashmir policy is in fact ruining that country as much as it is harming India. Talibanisation cannot be fought unless the extremist ideology is rooted out. Khaled Ahmed in his column in Friday Times, sums up this situation: “...Pakistan must march on to the realisation of the dogma it has embraced. In modern times, it is an extremist agenda. There is no way one can conceive that the Musharraf regime will tackle this. The state must reach its terminal stage, like the state created by Mulla Umar. There is no institutionalised trend in Pakistan of learning from history or even taking lessons from the unfolding of the present”. There is indeed a lesson or two for India also. It must stick to and strive for the secular basis of the state based on pluralistic tolerant ideology and devise its Kashmir policy in a manner that it does not grow its own kind of fundamentalist ideology. |
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No blueprint for J&K peace: Blair London, January 4 “I can’t solve the Kashmir problem just by going to India and Pakistan. But I hope by putting views on behalf of everybody in the international community, we can have a calming influence,” Mr Blair told journalists travelling with him on his plane. Delineating his discussions with the US President on the prevailing situation, Mr Blair said: “I have no blueprint for peace in Kashmir, but I and Mr Bush believe it a very serious issue with potentially far reaching and damaging consequences if the tension gets out of hand”. WASHINGTON: US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he was confident that India and Pakistan, which were engaged in a belligerent military build-up, would resolve their differences peacefully, a Reuters report said. “I don’t think they are going to go to war. I think they are going to sort these things out,’’ Rumsfeld told reporters yesterday during a news conference at the Pentagon. Rumsfeld said Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes was scheduled to visit Washington. Meanwhile for the second day running the USA urged leaders of India and Pakistan to utilise their presence in Kathmandu for the SAARC meeting “to move forward towards resolving their differences.”
PTI, Reuters |
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UK stand on LTTE under fire Colombo, January 4 “How a legally proscribed organisation is able to hold talks with representatives of a foreign government in the glare of international publicity cannot be reasoned out even by stretching the interpretation of British laws on terrorism to the utmost,” a private daily, The Island, said today. The LTTE said earlier this week that three Norwegian diplomats, including Deputy Foreign Minister Vidar Helgeson, would meet its chief negotiator Anton Balasingham in London on Friday for talks aimed at ending Sri Lanka’s protracted ethnic conflict. “In one move, the LTTE has struck a significant blow against its proscription as an international terrorist organisation by western powers,” the newspaper said in an editorial. Condemning London’s “wishy-washy attitude” towards the LTTE, the newspaper also questioned Norway’s motivation saying Oslo “has shown itself to be very partial to the LTTE.” “Already the government and the LTTE have agreed to talk, is there any need for a facilitator to begin talks?” the editorial asked. The newspaper, reflecting the opinion of diehard hawks, charged that the LTTE was planning to drag on internationally-backed negotiations while building up its fighting forces and armoury. Britain named the LTTE as a foreign terrorist organisation in February 2001 after intense lobbying by Colombo to have the separatist group banned but has pushed for talks to end the separatist war with a political settlement. London was the first to welcome the month-long Christmas truce offered by the rebels with Foreign Minister Jack Straw calling it “an excellent opportunity” to end years of fighting that has claimed the lives of over 60,000 troops and civilians. He said the UK was standing by to help its former colony in any way it could.
IANS |
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London’s Bollywood queen London “It’s still pretty hard to take in, though. I was resigned to having to work hard and struggle for years before getting these sorts of chances. It still seems quite mad that one thing has just followed another like this.” Kalidas learnt that she had been chosen for Lloyd Webber’s musical on the final day of shooting Bollywood Queen, a low-budget feature filmed on location in London’s East End last summer. Scripted by Spencer and director Jeremy Wooding, and based loosely on the Sari and Trainers story, it tracks a teenage love affair between an English lad from the provinces finding his feet in London (James McAvoy), and an East End girl from a strictly traditional Indian family. Though the story is a familiar one — Romeo and Juliet in modern multi-cultural Britain — the film takes liberties with the traditional Bollywood form, merging the often surreal musical set-pieces beloved of Indian directors with a more gritty, emphatically English kind of social commentary. “I see Bollywood as essentially a musical tradition and our movie as essentially a young London film,” says debut director Jeremy Wooding. It was a lot to ask of a 20-year-old to sing and dance and lip sync in the way that the great Indian stars do, and also to evince the emotional depth needed to portray someone torn between family tradition and the pull of contemporary, multi-racial London. The thing about Preeya is she can do it all — act, sing, dance — and, maybe more importantly, she shines on camera. Given that “Bombay Dreams” is scheduled to run for at least a year after six months of rehearsals — this may well be a vain hope. Kalidas, born in Twickenham, south west London, to a father from Malawi and a mother who grew up in Kenya, attended the Sylvia Young Theatre School, where her contemporaries included singer Emma Bunton, and All Saints sisters Natalie and Nicole Appleton. Since completing Bollywood Queen, she has starred alongside another All Saint, Shaznay Lewis, in Bend it like Beckham, also scheduled for release next spring, and directed by Gurinda Chadha, best known for Bhaji on the Beach.
Observer News Service |
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Dolly has arthritis Edinburgh, January 4 There was no way of knowing if the five-year-old’s condition was a result of the cloning process, he added. He said: “Dolly has arthritis in her left hind leg at the hip and the knee. “We can’t tell how it will develop but she is responding well to treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs.” Dolly was being closely monitored by veterinary staff at the centre, Prof Wilmut said.
AFP |
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