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Wednesday,
February 6, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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$ 151m US aid for India
Six arrested in Pearl case
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Starving Zambians selling kids? Iraq ready for talks with UN USA admits to blunder in raids
Turkey biggest IMF beneficiary
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$ 151m US aid for India
Washington, February 5 In President George W. Bush’s $ 2.12 trillion budget for fiscal 2003 beginning October this year, India is now treated as a “frontline state” like Pakistan and Jordan, meaning it is allied with the USA in the war against terrorism, administration officials said India gets $ 151.185 million under various heads apart from PL-480 programmes which are handled by the US Agriculture Department. Pakistan gets $ 304 million total assistance, twice that of India, presumably because of its economic condition and the expenditure it is incurring in providing base and other facilities to the USA. Under Foreign Military Financing (FMF), apart from the $ 50 million for fighting terrorism, India also gets $ 1 million for international military education and training (IMET) for the coming year against a similar amount in 2002 and $ 498 million in 2001. Agencies
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Maoists kill 16 policemen
Kathmandu, February 5 According to eyewitnesses, at least half a dozen Maoists were also killed in the encounter that lasted around three hours. The five injured policemen have been brought to the capital for treatment. The attack comes at a time when Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba is seeking more assistance from donors to fight terrorists at the four-day Nepal Development Forum meeting which kicked off here yesterday. Additional police forces have been sent to Kabhre to fight the terrorists and an extensive search has been launched to locate the terrorists responsible for last night’s attack. This was the first time that such a large number of policemen have been killed in an encounter after the declaration of emergency in the country on November 26 last year. Meanwhile, the rebels also destroyed a tower at Lukla Airport in Solukhumbu district, 500 km east of Kathmandu, sources at the Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation said. A group of Maoists exploded a powerful bomb at the airport, which destroyed its tower, they said. All flights to and from the airport, one of the busiest in Nepal and known as the gateway to Mt Everest, have been postponed.
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Six arrested in Pearl case
Islamabad, February 5 A breakthrough is expected as the six arrested may provide new leads during interrogation, Governor of the southern Sindh province Mohammadmian Soomro said. Investigating agencies were also tracing mobile phone calls, he told reporters here. Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider has said he believes that Pearl had not been kidnapped but taken hostage by someone whom he met on the day of his disappearance. Asked about the identity of the men who were responsible for the kidnapping, he said “we are not in a position to say who is responsible for the kidnapping. Whatever be the objective, those behind it have not done any service to Pakistan or Islam”. PTI, Reuters
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Karzai raises new Afghan flag
Kabul, February 5 Mr Karzai officially raised the country’s black, red and green flag at a special ceremony celebrating a further step in the war-ravaged country’s return to the constitutional rule. “Today marks a new era for our country. I hope my country will have peace forever,” Mr Karzai said before hoisting the flag over the palace, for the first time, since his interim cabinet took office in December. “We the Afghan people have had many problems but from now on we must take each other’s hands in a brotherly way and rebuild our country.” The flag was approved by the 1964 Constitution as Afghanistan’s National emblem but has not flown over the government offices in Kabul since the early 1990s, before the Taliban took over. GARDEZ: Meanwhile, two Afghan tribes battling over a southeastern town are due to exchange prisoners but their dispute appeared no closer to a resolution and one side threatened more violence if it lost power. The violence here illustrates the difficulty the interim administration faces in trying to bring stability to a country battered by more than two decades of conflict and riven by tribal and ethnic hostility. The prisoner exchange was brokered by a government team of peacemakers who travelled to Gardez, some 120 km south of Kabul, after the rival tribes from the Pashtun ethnic majority battled for two days last week. Some 50 persons were killed in the fighting. AFP, Reuters
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Starving Zambians selling kids? Chibombo (Zambia), February 5 “You must buy my child. You must raise her. I only ask for 200,000 kwacha ($ 50) to buy maize meal to feed my family,” said Brenda, offering the tiny girl strapped to her back. Brenda, a mother of six, said she had not seen maize in months and would be happy with one less mouth to feed, as well as the cash she needed urgently to sustain her household or its equivalent in maize meal in return for her child. Families in Zambia face a double blow from a failed maize crop last year and the threat of job losses in the country’s key copper sector, a vital source of foreign exchange and employment in this southern African country of 11 million persons. The price of maize meal has soared by as much as 120 per cent since November to 45,000-55,000 kwacha ($ 11.25-13.75) per 25 kg (55 lb) bag, pushing it well beyond the means of families like Brenda’s that have no steady income. Zambia’s newly elected government is grappling with ways to tackle a large external debt and high inflation, restore investor confidence and fiscal discipline, and at the same time ensure its people have enough to eat. Floods and drought in key maize-growing areas in the 2000/2001 (April/March) crop year have left nearly two million Zambians on the brink of starvation, says the government. In January, the World Food Programme (WFP) launched an emergency feeding operation for 1.3 million persons too poor to afford food who must now rely on relief handouts. The other 700,000 are expected to buy imported maize subsidised by the state, but the imports have not arrived three months after the government pledged to deliver food on the tables of the hungry and proclaimed the worst was over. Reuters
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Iraq ready for talks with UN
United Nations, February 5 Mr Annan met here for 33 minutes Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa yesterday, who visited Baghdad last month, Annan’s spokesman’s office said. General Mossa “returned with a message from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, saying that the Iraqis were prepared to resume dialogue with the Secretary-General (Annan), without any preconditions,” the office added in a statement. Mr Annan last held talks with Iraqi Government officials here on February 26 and 27 last year. The meeting — the first high-level contact between the two sides for more than two years — ended with an agreement to hold a second round of talks. But the following day, Baghdad laid down five conditions for doing so, including an end to the comprehensive sanctions imposed on Iraq by the UN Security Council in August, 1990, and no new meeting took place. After the meeting between Mr Annan and General Mussa, the UN said that “the Secretary-General indicated that he was prepared to receive a delegation from Iraq to discuss implementation of the relevant Security Council resolutions” AFP
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USA admits to blunder in raids Washington, February 5 Mr Rumsfeld yesterday said US troops have returned to Hazar Qadam to reconstruct what happened on January 24 when US special forces raided what was initially believed to be an Al-Qaeda compound and clusters of other buildings in the area, 100 km north of Kandahar. As many as 15 persons were killed in a gun battle triggered by raid which uncovered a large cache of munitions. The probe was launched following charges by villagers and local officials that those killed were forces friendly to the interim government of Hamid Karzai who were gathering weapons being handed over as part of a disarmament campaign.
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Turkey biggest IMF beneficiary WASHINGTON: The International Monetary Fund on Monday approved a $12 billion increase in its lending to Turkey, swelling the lender’s Turkish loan program to $31 billion and making Ankara the IMF’s largest-ever beneficiary. The IMF said in a statement its executive board had “approved a three-year, about $16 billion, stand-by credit for Turkey to support the government’s economic program for 2002-2004.” The lender added that about $9 billion of the funds would be available immediately.
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