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Friday,
November 8, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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UK asks Pak to take
action against militants Adopt tough posture towards Pak: US expert Pak dishonours its dead again
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No deal with
Musharraf: PPPP Pervez puts off Parliament opening Small nations under US pressure Sikh’s killing: trial put
off
Actress Winona Ryder at a court prior to the reading of the verdict in her shoplifting trial at the Beverly Hills courthouse on Wednesday. Spencers were jealous of Diana:
butler
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UK asks Pak to take action against militants London, November 7 “We have made clear that the international community will expect Pakistan to take firm action against any terrorists seeking to use that country as a safe haven,” Parliamentary Under Secretary, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Baroness Amos, said in the House of Commons while replying to a question on steps taken to close terrorist training camps in the PoK. “We have welcomed the steps that Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has taken so far to clamp down on terrorist and extremist groups in Pakistan. We shall urge him to continue in that vital task,” she said yesterday. Answering a separate question on the killings of 800 persons by terrorists’ violence in Jammu and Kashmir since the Assembly poll were announced, Mike O ’Brien, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, said “We now need to ensure that there is an end to terrorism and a beginning of a process of greater contact between the two countries. “In due course, I hope that it will be possible to hold discussions that will lead to a peaceful settlement of the disputes, including those in relation to Kashmir.” Sharing the members’ concern about cross-border infiltration, O’Brien said Britain had raised the matter regularly with the Pakistani Government, including during the visit of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to Islamabad on July 19 and 20 and when he met his Pakistani counterpart on September 16 in the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York. “The Pakistani Government has assured us that President Musharraf’s pledge that there will be no further movement across the Line of Control still stands, and that the Pakistani army is doing all it can to stop infiltration. We are ensuring that the Pakistani Government are aware of our continued concern and we are working with them in order to try to ensure that those promises are indeed kept,” he said. During the discussions in the House, the Indian Election Commission came in for high praise for its efforts to hold free and fair elections in Jammu and Kashmir. “The elections in Jammu and Kashmir were marred by high levels of violence and intimidation, which we unreservedly condemn. Despite that, the Indian Election Commission has made strenuous efforts to deliver free and fair elections,” O’Brien said.
PTI |
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Adopt tough posture towards Pak: US expert Silicon Valley, November 7 “This pussyfooting approach toward the Pakistani leader is demeaning to the USA and can only encourage him to continue his defiance of the US efforts to stop nuclear proliferation and to defuse the Kashmir issue,” Selig S. Harrison, an expert on Asian affairs and a former journalist, wrote in the ‘San Jose Mercury’ newspaper. He also criticised Secretary of State Colin Powell for trying to “cover up” for the Pakistan President, although it was clear that General Musharraf had supplied uranium enrichment technology to North Korea, by saying that it had happened before the military coup in 1999.
PTI |
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Pak dishonours its dead again The refusal by Pakistan to accept the bodies of the two jehadis killed at Akshardham is in keeping with the studied policy of dishonouring those who die for dubious causes sponsored by it around the globe. Any nation that refuses to accept the bodies of even its own uniformed soldiers, as was done in Kargil, is not worthy of trust at any level, be it diplomatic relations or political contacts. For a long time after the incursion into Kargil, Pakistan maintained the fiction that the intruders were “mujaheeds” seeking “self-determination for the people of Kashmir”. That falsehood was exposed when identity cards, personal letters and battalion records recovered from positions that were wrested back by Indian troops showed that they belonged to the Northern Light Infantry of the Pakistan army. That Pakistan should deny that the men belonged to its regular army is an issue that would require the scrutiny by a War Crimes Tribunal, but the manner in which it treated the bodies of more than 500 of its soldiers that were recovered from the Kargil battlefield showed an abysmal lack of military etiquette and total disrespect for the dead. This fact was highlighted by the Pakistani media itself when families of the dead complained that the bodies of the men of the Northern Light Infantry were brought home in the dead of the night and were buried without due military honours like a flagdraped coffin and the sounding of the last post by a military bugler. It took a blatant act of diplomatic arms-twisting and a blunt “do as you are told or else” by US Secretary of State Colin Powell before Gen Pervez Musharraf admitted to massive involvement of Pakistan regular troops and a plethora of jehadi outfits on the side of the Taliban and the Al-Qaida in Afghanistan. In exchange for the use of Pakistani air bases and ports for the induction of troops of the “coalition against terror” into Afghanistan, the Americans and their allies allowed General Musharraf to secretly evacuate several plane-loads of jehadis controlled by the Pakistan army’s Inter-Services Intelligence from Kunduz where current reports suggest, several thousand jehadis were either killed or captured and deported to the Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for intensive interrogation in sub-human conditions. The wanton killing of worshippers at Akshardham in Gujarat evoked a bald-faced denial of its involvement by Pakistan. It has done the same during the cold-blooded killing of 800 civilians in Jammu and Kashmir in its attempt to disrupt the elections in the state by terrorists trained and motivated in camps run by the ISI in so-called “azad Kashmir” which too is a fiction created by regular Pakistan army personnel disguised as tribalmen in 1947.
ADNI |
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No deal with
Musharraf: PPPP
Islamabad, November 7 “The party debunks the reports being circulated by vested interests of some secret underhand deal between the PPPP and the government in the run-up to National Assembly’s session,” Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) said in a statement here. “The party condemns the reports as deliberate disinformation by the vested interests to subvert the recent forward movement in a broad-based understanding between the anti-regime political parties on the platform of Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD) to uphold the supremacy of Parliament and for the restoration of the Constitution.” Some newspapers had reported that the PPPP-PML-Q had reached an understanding to form the government, with PPPP leader Mukdhum Amin Fahim as the Prime Minister. The reports also spoke of a “deal” to release Zardari.
PTI |
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Pervez puts off Parliament opening Islamabad, November 7 The general, accused by opponents of rigging the October 10 election in his favour, looked to be facing a coalition of an anti-military party led by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and a hardline Islamic bloc critical of his pro-US policies.
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Small nations under US pressure Cry “uncle” (Sam) or else. That is the message the USA seems to be sending to small nations who are members of the UN Security Council, even as it tries to drum up support for its draft resolution on Iraq now being finalised for presentation before the council. According to a report in Sydney Morning Herald, the White House was so concerned that Mauritius, a non-permanent member of the Security Council, was not squarely behind it, that it sent out a warning to the Foreign Office at Port Louis. The unfortunate victim of the American missile is the Mauritian Ambassador at the United Nations, Mr Jagdish Koonjul. The Herald report, quoting a senior official from the Indian Ocean nation, said Mauritius has recalled the Ambassador for not accurately conveying the government’s pro-U.S. stance in the Security Council debate over how to disarm Iraq. The Foreign Minister of Mauritius, Mr Anil Goyan, was quoted as declaring. “We support the U.S. Our position is not neutral”. According to the report, Mauritius’s concern over solidarity with the USA may well have an economic subtext. Some Mauritian officials fear that Mr Koonjul’s equivocal stance on the resolution could cost them access to the U.S. market under a recent trade deal that explicitly requires support for the U.S. foreign policy. Although the programme was a Clinton Administration initiative, it illustrates a growing trend of linking economic issues with U.S. foreign policy objectives, the Herald said. The paper noted that Mauritius was not the only Security Council member subject to political requirements. Cameroon and Guinea also receive trade benefits under the same trade Act, putting these three Francophone nations in the midst of French and US lobbying efforts at the UN. “Our position on this issue is very clear”, Mr Goyan was quoted as saying, “If there is a consensus, we will go along. If there is none, we will support the USA and the UK. The Ambassador has been recalled for not following strictly the instructions given him.” Mauritius’s term in the Security Council ends on December 31 this year. Cameroon and Guinea will continue until the end of the next year. |
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Sikh’s killing: trial put off Phoenix, November 7 The murder trial of Frank Silva Roque, 42, was scheduled to start next week. Prosecutors say Roque drove to a gasoline station on September 15, 2001, and fatally shot its owner Balbir Singh Sodhi, who was wearing a turban. He may have been mistaken for an Arab, prosecutors say. Roque’s attorney is planning to present a “guilty but insane” defence and says his client is schizophrenic.
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Guilty
Winona Ryder may not be jailed Beverly Hills, November 7 The prosecutor
said she would not try to put the 31-year-old two-time Academy Award
nominee behind bars, saying she would seek probation, community
service and restitution at Ryder’s sentencing on December 6. AP |
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Spencers were jealous of Diana: butler London, November 7 Diana’s mother and elder sister testified against Burrell during his trial prior to its collapse last week after a dramatic intervention by Queen Elizabeth-II. Burrell told The Daily Mirror that the Spencer family was “jealous” and “hypocritical” in its treatment of Diana before and after her death in a car crash in Paris in 1997. “The Spencers found Diana unacceptable in life. But after her death they found her very acceptable at 10 pounds 50 pence a ticket ($ 16.5 Euros),” Burrell said in reference to the cost of visiting Diana’s grave at the family’s Althorp estate in Central England. Burrell labelled Diana’s brother Earl Spencer a “hypocrite” for the speech he made at the princess’ funeral. Burrell also slammed Diana’s mother Frances Shand Kydd for trying to have him convicted of
theft. AFP |
QUEEN’S ACCOLADE FOR PINTER 775 FALL ILL AFTER TAKING MILK ALAN JACKSON WINS 5 MUSIC AWARDS 7 KILLED, 3 HURT IN PLANE CRASH |
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