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Tuesday,
September 17, 2002,
Chandigarh, India  
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Riyadh hints at bases for Iraq attack, if UN okays
Infiltration can’t be plugged: Pervez Sixth
Al-Qaida suspect held Maoists’ strike paralyses capital
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Riyadh hints at bases for Iraq attack, if UN okays
United Nations, September 16 But the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, also said the rest of the world clearly wants the Iraq crisis resolved without “the firing of a single shot.” Saud’s statement was issued yesterday in New York as the UN General Assembly wrapped up the fourth day of its opening general debate, a day on which other Arab leaders also addressed the explosive impasse over Iraq. Syria’s foreign minister said “blind bias” was focusing global attention on Iraq rather than Israel. Jordan urged Iraq to comply with UN resolutions and avert “direct consequences” for its people. Some 5,000 US military personnel are stationed in Saudi Arabia, most at the remote Prince Sultan Air Base. In the 1991 Gulf War Saudi Arabia was the main base for a half-million-strong, US-led military force that drove the Iraqi army from Kuwait. But since then the Saudis have periodically prohibited the use of their soil for strikes against Iraq and, most recently, for the US campaign in Afghanistan. LONDON: The Times quoting an Iraqi dissident said Iraq can build a nuclear bomb by the end of the year. Khidir Hamza, who helped launch Iraq’s nuclear bomb programme before he defected in 1994, said President Saddam Hussein’s regime could produce the weapons in the next three months using pirated German equipment and uranium smuggled from Brazil, The Times reported. Meanwhile US intelligence officials fear that Saddam Hussein has drafted a “doomsday plan” to help Al-Qaida attack the United States with biological weapons in the event of a US strike against Iraq, the New York Post reported on Monday. The threat has been raised in secret intelligence assessments provided to top military officials and White House policymakers as they prepare for war, according to the daily. Sydney: Australia’s Defence Minister told parliament on Monday that the government might agree to join a US-led war on Iraq even without UN approval. “Actions are sometimes legitimate without an authority of the Security Council,” Robert Hill said during question time in response to a question about the need for UN authorisation for an attack on Iraq. He was speaking after Foreign Minister Alexander Downer met his Iraqi counterpart at UN headquarters in New York. AFP
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Infiltration can’t be plugged: Pervez Washington, September 16 In an interview with CNN telecast yesterday, he, however, said: “Nothing is happening across the LoC and both the USA and India have agreed that either it (infiltration) has stopped or it has been minimised. “We have always been saying, and everyone knows, that this area is most treacherous. To seal the border or give a guarantee that nothing is going across the border is not possible and even 7,00,000 Indian troops (deployed in Kashmir) have not been able to ensure this (stoppage of infiltration). “So, asking Pakistan to give a guarantee is just not possible. But we have said that nothing is happening on the LoC and this had been recognised by everyone that infiltration definitely is not there or it has been minimised.” Commenting on UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s statement which listed Kashmir as one of the four potential threats to world peace and described the situation there as perilous, General Musharraf said: “It is not as perilous as it is being quoted because of the conventional balance that exists between India and Pakistan.” He said the danger was there earlier. Indians showed their intentions through their rhetoric and developed capacity by moving their troops to the border. “But, now, their intentions seem to have receded because the rhetoric has gone down, but the capability of the force is still there. So to the extent that the capability exists, there is a danger,” he said. General Musharraf also ruled out a nuclear conflagration between India and Pakistan because of the conventional arms balance between the two countries. He was “reasonably sure” the conflict would not go beyond conventional modes. IANS
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Sixth Al-Qaida suspect held
New York, September 16 The arrests capped an investigation that had extended for more than a year, after the US authorities learned that the suspects — all US-born men of Yemeni parentage — had travelled to Afghanistan. The officials have not disclosed how they obtained that information. According to government documents, the men from Lackawanna, outside Buffalo in western New York state, went to train at the camp outside Kandahar, in the spring and summer of 2001. The Federal authorities reportedly began their probe shortly after their return to New York — weeks before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The authorities said the five were part of a “terrorist cell” and had trained in the use of weapons at the Al-Farooq camp outside Kandahar — the same Al-Qaida camp as the one where American Taliban John Walker Lindh had trained. “While they were at the camp, Osama bin Laden visited and delivered a speech, instructing the approximately 200 trainees in anti-US and anti-Israeli sentiment, as well as Al-Qaida doctrine,” Deputy Attorney-General Larry Thompson said at a Washington press conference on Saturday. Karachi: Suspected Al-Qaida terrorist Ramzi bin al-Shaiba arrested here was transferred on Sunday to a U S navy ship off the coast of Pakistan for interrogation, a newspaper report said today. Urdu daily Ausaf quoted unidentified ‘’informed sources’’ as saying the transfer from a secret detention centre near the Karachi airport took place after 36 agents of the FBI arrived in the port city. Meanwhile, the Pakistan Government said its investigators had finished interrogating Ramzi al-Shaiba and he would be extradited after legal formalities. AFP, DPA
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Maoists’ strike
paralyses capital Kathmandu, September 16 The guerrillas set off two bombs in residential areas of Kathmandu, where nearly all businesses and schools were closed by the general strike, police said. In the eastern Sindhupalchok district, a group of Maoists bombed a prison this afternoon in a bid to release detained rebels, killing a police sergeant, a private radio said. Overnight, the rebels kidnapped and beheaded the leader of Nepal’s main opposition party in the eastern Kabhre district, the party said. The Nepal Communist Party-United Marxist and Leninist (NCP-UML) said Krishna Prasad Sapkota was dragged out of his house as he slept and that his head was found on the banks of a river. The guerrillas ordered the strike to press for their demand that Nepal convene a special assembly to redraft the constitution. Reports from outside the capital said the strike was similarly observed in much of the kingdom.
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Blaze on ship contained London, September 16 |
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KOREA HAS ‘5,000 T OF CHEMICAL ARMS’ CANADA DENIED ACCESS TO TEENAGER PERSSON WINS 3RD TERM AS SWEDISH PM WORLD’S OLDEST PERSON TURNS 115
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Iraq ‘can build’ N-bomb by year-end
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