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Monday,
April 8, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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ARD,
Islamic parties to boycott referendum
Powell may
still meet Arafat |
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24
Maoists die in fresh violence Pakistan
advances time by one hour Three
mass graves found in Bamiyan Rockets
fired at ISAF in Kabul Woman
with cloned embryo eight weeks pregnant
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ARD, Islamic parties to boycott referendum
Islamabad, April 7 “We have decided to boycott it,” Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) chief Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan told a news conference after a meeting of the 15-party grouping. “We have outrightly rejected this referendum and we consider it extra-constitutional, (and) illegal,” said Khan, whose grouping includes country’s two main political parties — the Pakistan People’s Party of ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan Muslim League of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Musharraf, who seized power in an army coup in 1999 toppling Sharif, had announced he would hold the referendum in the first week of May to get a popular decision whether he should stay in office. An alliance of Islamic parties has also rejected the referendum, although some smaller parties have said they supported Musharraf’s plan. Jamat-i-Islami party has filed another petition in the Supreme Court questioning the legality of the referendum. Jamat leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed yesterday filed his second petition in the Supreme Court seeking its immediate intervention to restrain President Musharraf from going ahead with the referendum. The petition also requested the court to issue an order restraining the President from taking further steps to hold a referendum next month saying that it was violative of the Supreme Court’s order conferring limited legality to the military regime. Meanwhile, the country’s media today criticised the referendum plan as a clear violation of the constitution and joined political and religious groups in condemning the move. The decision may have an adverse impact on the country’s federal polity, leading English daily Dawn said. The constitution specified that a President must be elected by an electoral college consisting of members of the federal parliament and the four provincial Assemblies. Besides, a person already holding an office of profit in the government of Pakistan cannot contest a presidential election, it said, adding that the referendum next month will elect as head of state a person who is a serving General. Coming down heavily against the referendum, another daily The Nation said President Musharraf had opted to go for a referendum against the advise of the mainstream political parties and the press. The Opposition from the mainstream political parties make it imperative for President Musharraf to depend on official machinery to take the voters to the polling booths. This means that either the turn-out will be low or the official machinery will be used to mobilise voters and take them to the polling stations, the Dawn added. President Musharraf may get “Yes” vote because there is no doubt that he enjoys wide popularity among large sections of the population. Many of his policies — especially those relating to the September 11 attacks and crackdown on religious militancy — have been welcomed by the people, the Dawn said. The issue, however, is not popularity but giving the country political stability and protecting the economic and political reforms by constitutional means, the daily added. The Nation said there was little hope of changing his mind at this stage but we would be held responsible by posterity in case we fail to put on record our differences on certain important issues he had raised. However, toeing the Musharraf line The News said Pakistan required the continuity of Musharraf’s presidency to safeguard the reform process initiated by him. Meanwhile, President Musharraf has kicked off the campaign for a referendum for extension of his term in office by meeting local body officials to enlist their support. President Musharraf yesterday addressed a meeting of district nazims and naiz nazims, who were elected last year, seen by the media and political parties as an attempt to enlist their support.
Reuters, PTI |
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Powell may still meet Arafat
Washington, April 7 In an interview on NBC’s “Meet-the-Press,” Powell said he would spend “whatever time and effort” is necessary on his mission to try to ease the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. While he hopes to bring about a ceasefire, Powell said he did not expect to leave the Middle East with a peace treaty in hand, adding, “I’m not even sure I’ll have a ceasefire in hand.” Powell said he had talked with Israeli President Ariel Sharon shortly before the NBC interview and that while Sharon understood Washington’s desire for Israel to halt it’s military incursions into Palestinian lands, he did not offer a “specific time-frame” for withdrawal. President George W. Bush told the Prime Minister in a telephone call on Saturday from his central Texas ranch to pull back “without delay,” warning that the success of the U.S.-led peace mission was at stake. Powell said Bush “does expect something to happen soon with respect to bringing this operation to some culminating point where you can start to see a movement in the other direction.” Powell was despatched to the Middle East to revive ceasefire talks after Bush announced a dramatic change of course in policy, following widespread criticism he was doing too little to curb an escalation of violence in the regional conflict. Set to leave late Sunday, Powell is to meet with leaders of several key Arab countries, as well as with European allies, Sharon, and possibly with Arafat to try to quell the violence that has spiraled in recent weeks with a spate of Palestinian suicide bombings that prompted Israel to move tanks and soldiers into Palestinian cities amid sometimes fierce fighting. Until Thursday, the Bush administration had sided with Israel in demanding an end to Palestinian violence before peace talks on a political settlement could begin. Powell stressed that the administration believes Israel has the right to defend itself, but “the manner in which they have gone about defending themselves in this operation opens us up to new instabilities and new insecurities and new threats in the long term for Israel and for the region.” EU may slap
sanctions VENICE: The Spanish Foreign Minister said on Sunday that the European Union would discuss introducing possible sanctions against Israel if it continued to reject calls for a ceasefire in the Palestinian territories. “We discussed the possibility (of sanctions) at the last general council in Luxembourg,” Minister Josep Pique told Reuters on the sidelines of a meeting in Venice. Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, also speaking on Sunday, said the EU could rethink trade ties with Israel after it barred EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Pique on Thursday from meeting Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Reuters |
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24 Maoists die in fresh violence
Kathmandu, April 7 Ministry spokesman Tana Gautam said 13 guerrillas were killed on Saturday in Bardiya district where the rebels had set off a landmine, killing five soldiers. Gautam said four guerrillas were killed in Rukum district and two in neighbouring Dang district in western Nepal. Others died in separate gunbattles elsewhere. The rebels, who walked out of peace talks last November and launched a wave of attacks on security posts, are campaigning to overthrow the constitutional monarchy and set up a Communist republic in Nepal. Nepal declared a state of emergency and called in the army, giving soldiers sweeping powers of search and detention to crush the insurgency.
Reuters |
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Pakistan advances time by one hour
Islamabad, April 7 Clocks were moved forward by an hour to GMT plus six hours at midnight. An Islamic prayer leader said it would make no difference to five-times-a-day prayers whose timings are determined by sunlight. Pakistan’s South Asian neighbours — India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal — as well as Afghanistan to the West and China to the north — do not move their clocks on a seasonal basis, a practice common in Europe, North America and Oceania but less often seen in Asia and Africa. The Pakistan government said the move — under which clocks will be put back by one hour on October 15 — was an experiment for one year and would be adopted permanently only if the people liked it. Benefits include more time for leisure after work and lower power consumption, it said. Pakistan’s time change means it will be 30 minutes ahead of India.
Reuters |
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Three mass graves found in Bamiyan
Kabul, April 07 “Yesterday the discovery of three previously unknown mass graves near the Bamiyan airport were brought to the attention of the UN and the interim administration,” the spokesman told a press conference. “We were informed by representatives of the Hazara community that they believe the graves contain bodies of members of their community killed, by their estimate, one month before the fall of the Taliban.” WASHINGTON: Hundreds of US troops returned to Bagram Air Base after a week of searching and destroying caves in eastern Afghanistan formerly used by Al-Qaida and Taliban forces, US media reported. The troops recovered some weapons and documents, including military manuals and dossiers with fingerprint samples, according to journalists who accompanied the US forces on what was dubbed Operation Mountain Lion. After searching the caves the soldiers destroyed some with anti-tank rockets and explosives, but many of the caves were heavily reinforced with concrete, as the soldiers did not carry enough ammunition to destroy them all, CNN reported. CNN said the operation was prompted by intelligence reports that Taliban and Al-Qaida forces were trying to escape into Pakistan.
AFP |
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Rockets
fired at ISAF in Kabul Kabul, April 7 |
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Woman with cloned embryo eight weeks pregnant Rome, April 7 Dr Severino Antinori, who runs a fertility clinic in Rome, has been quoted in an Arab newspaper as claiming that one of his patients is eight weeks’ pregnant with a cloned embryo. Dr Antinori refused to comment on the reports, but in March, 2001, he said he hoped to produce a viable cloned embryo for implantation within two years. When asked at a conference in Dubai about his attempts to clone humans, he was quoted as saying, “Our project is at a very advanced stage. One woman among thousands of infertile couples in the programme is eight weeks pregnant.’ Doctors have reacted with scepticism and outrage, but admitted that human cloning was inevitable unless there was a worldwide ban on the practice. Prof Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said: “I find it appalling that people do this where the outcome is predictable that it will not be a normal baby. It is using humans as guinea pigs. “Dr Michael Wilks, Chairman of the British Medical Association’s ethics committee, said: “It is to be condemned. It’s a universal view that we are totally opposed to reproductive cloning. Antinori is not an ethical or welcome member of the worldwide medical community.” But Ronald Green, Director of the Ethics Institute at Dartmouth College in the USA, said it was unlikely that an eight-week-old pregnancy would lead to a birth. `The record in animal cloning has been so disastrous in terms of foetal survival that I would hesitate to think that this pregnancy will necessarily go to term,’ he said. Dr Antinori refused to say where the pregnant woman was from. So far all cloned animals have suffered a range of severe disorders, many of them dying prematurely. The technique is so hit and miss that in other species hundreds of embryos have had to be implanted before one has been born alive.
The Observer, London |
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Shortly
before departing on a crucial peace-seeking mission to the Middle East,
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said he would meet Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat “if circumstances permit” and urged Arafat to
call publicly for a halt to violence.
