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Tuesday,
June 25, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Israeli
troops take over Ramallah
Peres
ready to quit on ‘buffer zone’ Don’t
sideline Arafat: Putin Al-Qaida
sets up network in Pak Qanooni
accepts posts
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Americans prepare for bomb attack Pakistan may allow Indian flights WB
defends policies as Oslo protests loom
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Israeli troops take over Ramallah
Jerusalem, June 24 As Israeli army’s ‘Operation Determined Path’ entered the sixth day, its forces backed by dozens of tanks surrounded Arafat’s headquarters for the third time this month while the Palestinian leader was inside along with Faisal Abu Sharakh, head of one of Arafat’s security apparatus, and intelligence chief Tariq al-Tarawi. About 50-60 tanks, armoured personnel carriers and other vehicles moved into Ramallah before dawn, with at least two helicopter gunships, media reports quoted Palestinian security sources as saying. In an apparent attempt to assassinate wanted militants, Israel’s missile-firing Apache helicopter attacked two taxis travelling in the Rafah area of the southern Gaza Strip, killing six persons, the reports said. While there were no immediate details of the identity of the victims in the helicopter raid, English daily Haaretz quoted Palestinian security sources as saying that one of the cars was turned into a pile of twisted wreckage and the body parts of the passengers were scattered amid the smoking remains of the vehicle. Several explosions could be heard as a column of some 20 armoured vehicles moved through the city, reports from Ramallah quoted witnesses as saying. The troops also took control of a refugee camp in Ramallah. The Israelis imposed a curfew on Ramallah, the Al-Amar refugee camp and the Al-Bireh town, the reports said. Israeli army, in a statement said, that operations in Ramallah were launched last night, taking control of the strategic points of the city and imposing a curfew. An Israeli soldier was slightly injured by an explosive device in Ramallah, it said, adding that 12 Palestinians were arrested in the areas of Hebron, Jenin and Bethlehem. Israeli officials have said the crackdown will continue until Palestinian suicide bombings and shooting attacks end. Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said the Ramallah incursion was the “beginning of the end” for the Palestinian Authority. Israeli army’s incursion came as Palestinian police and security officials put Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin under house arrest and ordered him not to leave his home in Gaza City. Meanwhile, a senior Palestinian official condemned today international “silence” at Israel’s latest operations in the West Bank.
PTI, AFP |
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Peres ready to quit
on ‘buffer zone’ Jerusalem, June 24 Such a zone was marked on a map which Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer, a fellow Labour Party member in Israel’s coalition government, submitted the previous day to the weekly Cabinet meeting.
AFP |
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Don’t sideline
Arafat: Putin Moscow, June 24 “It would be dangerous and a mistake to remove Mr Arafat from the political arena because in our view that would lead to the radicalisation of the Palestinian society,” Mr Putin told a press conference in the Kremlin.
AFP |
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Al-Qaida sets up network in Pak Osama bin Laden’s terrorist outfit Al-Qaida has established a good network in Pakistan with the active help of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. These three outfits are known to have been behind some major strikes like on Islamabad church in March, suicide bomb attack in Karachi on May 8 and the attack on US Consulate in Karachi on June 14. Besides, well-placed sources quoting the latest Indian intelligence reports today told The Tribune that the Al-Qaida leadership was regrouping in Eastern Afghanistan and Western Pakistan. The Al-Qaida was planning new attacks targeting western nationals and facilities within Pakistan, apart from using the Pakistan-based infrastructure for mounting a mammoth attack in the heart of the USA before the first anniversary of the September 11 terror attack on USA. Though the American intelligence agencies have been talking of July 4 — the American Independence Day — as the likely date of an Al- Qaida reprisal attack, sources here believe otherwise. They say the next attack in the USA was more likely in August rather than July or September as the entire American establishment will be on its fullest alert in July as well as in September. The American vigil, sources argue, is bound to relax a bit in August as it is not humanly possible for any agency to be on its fullest alert for months. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is also trying to track down activists of the Lashkar-e-Omar, the newest group to have emerged on the radar screens of world terrorism, whose members have been trained to carry out suicide missions against westerners in Pakistan. Al-Qaida fighters have received help from the local extremist groups like the LET and the JEM in the form of safe houses, communication, training and logistics. These Al -Qaida fighters, numbering about 3,000, are presently living in safe houses in the tribal areas in Baluchistan and NWFP. |
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Qanooni accepts posts
Kabul, June 24 About half of the 28 ministers belong to the Tajik-led Northern Alliance, which swept the Taliban from power last year, with Karzai largely sticking to the same formula of the interim government set up by the UN sponsored Bonn accord in December. Only hours before the ceremony in the presidential palace garden, former Interior Minister Yunis Qanooni decided to accept the dual roles of education minister and presidential adviser on security affairs, an aide said. Mr Qanooni had been visibly angered when Karzai offered him the education portfolio, apparently as an afterthought, at last week’s Loya Jirga which elected Karzai as Afghanistan’s transitional president. Mr Karzai announced his full Cabinet on Saturday except for two positions Justice and Women’s Affairs. The justice portfolio was eventually given to incumbent Abdul Rahim Karimi, but the women’s portfolio had yet to be decided.
Reuters |
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Americans prepare for bomb attack
Washington, June 24 At Anbex Incorporated, which has been making potassium iodide since the 1980s, sales of the medicine have risen from a ‘few hundred’ before September 11, to “tens of thousands of packages per month”, company officials told the daily. “Ridge just says the word ‘nuclear’, and our phones start to ring, Troy Jones, of Nukepills.com, Anbex’s online distributor, told the Post, referring to the director of the office of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge. The spike in sales comes not just from consumers but from the government as well. In December 2001, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) purchased nine million iodine tablets from Anbex and offered them to states. So that anyone living within 10 miles of a nuclear- power plant could have two free pills. The idea was to buy them enough either to get out of town or wait for the radiation danger to pass, the Post reported. And the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) bought 1.6 million pills for a stockpile to backstop the NRC’s supply, triggering a brief debate about whether the pills should simply be distributed to everyone. Potassium iodide is a relatively simple salt. It is used because human thyroid gland needs iodine and will take it from the first available source, the Post wrote.
AFP |
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Pakistan may allow Indian flights
Islamabad, June 24 Spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan gave no indication when the ban might be lifted. Asked if such a move was under consideration, he replied: “Yes, we’re examining. All these things are under examination.” Following a visit by US Deputy Secretary of State Richared Armitage, India announced on June 10 that Pakistani aircraft could resume flights through Indian air space. “What is required is the forces should be withdrawn from that forward position, from that agressive posture, that the Indian forces have adopted,” Mr Khan told mediapersons.
AP |
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WB defends policies as Oslo protests loom
Oslo, June 24 The bank said it had shifted in recent years to cut debt burdens, combat corruption and boost education and health in developing nations, moving away from simply imposing tough capitalist economic cures as conditions for loans meant to help the poor. “The focus is more on poverty reduction,’’ World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern told a news conference at the opening of a three-day Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics attended by about 300 academics and politicians. “Our successes are more than our failures,’’ Mr Stern added at a hotel on the fringes of Oslo, saying that the bank was trying to meet UN goals of halving the number of people living on less than $1.0 a day by 2015. The police imposed strict security in the centre of the normally tranquil Nordic city before a march expected to draw thousands of protesters later today.
Reuters |
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