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Sunday,
May 12, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Bodies of
Frenchmen sent home Pakistan Navy officers flank the coffins of 11 French Navy engineers during a ceremony in Karachi on Saturday. The bodies of the French engineers, killed in Wednesday’s suicide bomb attack, were officially handed over to the French authorities at a special ceremony in Karachi. USA to
ensure fair poll in Pak: Rocca Algiers, May 11 A fresh prison mutiny in Algeria left 54 persons injured including four guards in the wake of a string of similar incidents that have claimed 44 lives since early April. |
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Indian
economy recovering: FM
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Bodies of Frenchmen sent home
Karachi, May 11 The bodies of the 11 dead Frenchmen were handed to French officials at a sombre ceremony and they were due to be flown to France later. Sketches of three suspects, who are believed to have paid Rs 100,000 for the beaten-up 1974 Toyota a day before Wednesday’s attack in Karachi, have been issued and Rs 2 million offered for clues leading to a breakthrough. “We have some information about the three suspects and we have also collected some evidence from the scene of the occurrence, but I cannot say that we have made any major breakthrough,” a senior police official, who asked not to be identified, said. The suicide bomber drove alongside a Pakistan Navy bus on Wednesday morning, detonating a powerful bomb that killed 11 French Navy experts, two Pakistanis and wounded 22 persons. “The police has arrested 406 suspects from extremist groups since Thursday and the crackdown is continuing,” an Interior Ministry spokesman told AFP. The blast blew a crater in the road, reduced the bus to a twisted and blackened skeleton and splattered blood and body parts down the street. The 12 Frenchmen wounded were flown to Paris on a German military flying hospital on Thursday. About 500 mourners, including the French Ambassador to Pakistan and senior Pakistan Navy and government officials, gathered at a Naval Hospital in Karachi. The 11 coffins, each with a framed photograph of the victim, were carried by six Pakistan Navy pallbearers and laid out in front of the mourners, who included about 90 French nationals, many of whom were in tears. The dead had all worked on a project to build two submarines for the Pakistan Navy. “We are in deep shock because of this regrettable event,” one Frenchman told the ceremony. A Pakistani Catholic priest led prayers and a Christian Pakistan Navy commander read a passage from the Bible, before there was a minute’s silence, wreathes were laid and the French Ambassador led a walk past the green coffins. The coffins were loaded into 11 ambulances and driven to Karachi airport where a French military plane was waiting to the dead home. Pakistani policemen, along with French and US Federal Bureau of Investigation teams, were following the first lead in the investigation after a car dealer gave details of three men who bought the vehicle used by the bomber, the police official said. The police traced the dealer through the car’s engine number. After the blast, the Pakistani authorities quickly rounded up hundreds of Islamic radicals linked to banned domestic groups, but officials say the crackdown was not directly related to the suicide attack. “A number of people have been detained and we are questioning them but no arrests have been made in connection of the blast,” the police official added. A Karachi police source said several raids had been conducted in the volatile city of 14 million, and a few people detained. “At least three raids were conducted on tips about the three suspects,” he said. He did not elaborate.
Reuters |
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USA to ensure fair
poll in Pak: Rocca
Islamabad, May 11 US Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca, who is due here early next week, said the Bush Administration would play its role if the October elections were not free and fair. Ms Rocca is visiting India and Pakistan to try to solve the stand off between New Delhi and Islamabad. Besides assuring Washington’s commitment to supporting free elections, Ms Rocca, in an interview to The Nation, said the American Administration wanted all political parties in Pakistan to participate in the elections so that real democracy was restored in the country. This is by far the strongest statement by a top US official about ensuring the restoration of democracy in Pakistan. The Bush Administration came under heavy criticism for not taking a firm stand against the referendum held by General Musharraf. While not openly endorsing the controversial referendum, the USA merely left the issue open by saying that the referendum was an internal issue of Pakistan. The Bush Administration, she said, was making all efforts to persuade India to resume talks with Pakistan in order to reduce tension between the two countries and wanted New Delhi to hold a free and fair poll in Jammu and Kashmir backed up by an economic package to develop the valley. On whether the USA would “pressurise” India into holding a dialogue with Pakistan as it was not responding to Islamabad’s calls to resume talks, Ms Rocca said the USA was continuing its efforts to persuade India. About Pak-India relationship and the danger of a war due to the presence of the forces at borders, Ms Rocca said Washington was concerned about it. “We are endeavouring to make both nations agree for resolving their disputes through negotiations.” About the Kashmir issue she said it could be only resolved through a dialogue. Elaborating, she said the US Secretary of State Colin Powell has stated that the war was no option for India and Pakistan. The USA wants India to hold fair and transparent elections in Jammu and Kashmir and announce a better economic package for the upliftment of Kashmiris, she said.
PTI |
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Algerian
prison mutiny leaves 54 injured Algiers, May 11 The mutiny broke out on Thursday when inmates started a fire that spread through several buildings at the jail in Bechar, some 900 km southwest of the capital Algiers, the official APS news agency reported yesterday. Bechar’s public prosecutor and provincial governor came to the prison to calm the inmates, APS said. “Order was quickly re-established by the guards, with the help of the security forces,” Bechar’s public prosecuter’s office said in a statement. Four Bechar inmates remained hospitalised yesterday but their lives were not in danger, the statement said.
AFP |
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Indian economy recovering: FM
Shanghai, May 11 Unlike Indian central bank chief Bimal Jalan, who said on Thursday there was no clear indication that the economy was improving, Mr Sinha pointed to the rising cement and steel output as well as an improvement in the April tax collections as evidence of an economic revival. “We are seeing signs of recovery,’’ Mr Sinha told reporters on the sidelines of the annual Asian Development Bank conference here. “There are signs of industrial recovery.’’ Agriculture was the mainstay of India’s estimated growth of 5.4 per cent in the year that ended in March, while the industrial sector lagged. Some economists estimate that India needs to achieve annual GDP growth of around 8 per cent in order to improve the lives of millions of its citizens who currently live in poverty. Data last week showed growth in India’s manufacturing sector slowed to 2.8 per cent in the third quarter of 2001/2002 (April-March) from 7.1 per cent a year earlier. But Mr Sinha said he was counting on a pick-up in manufacturing to bear more of the burden of growth. “If agriculture holds as we expect it to hold, and industrial recovery takes place, then the kind of growth rate which had been projected can be easily achieved,’’ Mr Sinha said. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has forecast gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 6.0-6.5 per cent in the current year. India has long struggled to control its federal and state finances, and the estimated combined deficit last year of 5.7 per cent of GDP was sharply higher than the government’s initial target of 4.7 per cent. Delhi is aiming to reduce the deficit this year to 5.3 per cent, but Mr Sinha said this was still unacceptably large. “It’s a high target, it’s at an unsustainable level and left to myself, I would like to bring it further down,’’ Mr Sinha said. “This year I’m hoping that we will maintain the revenue target and, therefore, establish the confidence so that we will be able to maintain the fiscal target also,’’ he said. Meanwhile, India today asked the Asian Development Bank to make a quantum jump in its lending for developmental and infrastructure projects to make a real dent on poverty in developing countries. “We need to look beyond the current lending levels at which we are operating and prepare for a quantum leap,” Mr Sinha said here, adding that the ADB has to be capable of raising more resources to help developing member countries. That would enable the third world countries in equipping themselves to make a real dent on poverty, Mr Sinha said, while addressing the 35th annual general meeting of the ADB here.
Reuters, PTI |
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Karachi,
May 11
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