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Tuesday,
December 17, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Rocca meets Pak officials Jamali asks India
to review attitude
‘Arms dealers’ met top British diplomats |
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Quattrochhi in Italy Tamil girl to clear mines Clinton teams up
with Sophia Loren
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Rocca meets Pak officials Islamabad, December 16 In meetings with members of the civilian government that came into power last month, Ms Rocca was expected to discuss a wide range of issues Ms Rocca, who has the responsibility for South Asian affairs, began her visit by meeting Foreign Minister Mian Kursheed Mehmood Kasuri and other officials. She arrived in Islamabad after the Pakistani police arrested three men in Karachi on Saturday and seized a Volkswagen Beetle car packed with explosives. The police also seized a 10-tonne stash of explosive ammonium nitrate powder at a warehouse in a middle-class, residential district in Karachi. The trio planned to ram the Volkswagen into a car driven by US diplomats in Karachi, a city where foreigners and the US Consulate have come under deadly attacks this year. Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said he did not think the plot was related to Ms Rocca, a frequent visitor to Pakistan, which became a key ally of the USA in its fight against terror after the September 11 attacks. The alleged plot underlines the threat still posed by Islamic militants more than a year after a US-led coalition ousted the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaida, blamed for the September 11 attacks, has been active in Pakistan through its links with local hardline Islamic groups. The joint hunt for terror suspects ran into a major snag after the October elections, when hardline Islamists made strong gains in provinces bordering Afghanistan, where many Taliban and Al-Qaida suspects are thought to have taken refuge. US embassy officials said Ms Rocca would stay in Pakistan for two days and might also visit Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province, now controlled by the Islamists. Pakistani news reports said Ms Rocca would seek talks with the leader of the Islamic alliance, Mr Fazl-ur-Rehman. The bearded and turbaned cleric appeared in an uncompromising mood yesterday, saying Washington should respect the alliance’s popular mandate and leave it to Pakistan to hunt down wrongdoers.
Reuters |
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Jamali asks India to review attitude Islamabad, December 16 He said Pakistan had been continuously asking India for the resolution of all outstanding issues through dialogue for lasting peace in the region. It would continue with this policy, but New Delhi’s continued refusal to hold talks was disappointing, he told reporters at an exhibition here yesterday. “Due to inflexibility in the Indian attitude towards Pakistan, we are getting the impression that India does not want to negotiate. We will have to reconsider whether we should insist on forcing India to come to the negotiating table,” the Prime Minister was quoted today in the Pakistan daily ‘The News’ as saying. Regretting the Indian Government’s refusal to come to the negotiating table despite a civilian rule in Pakistan, he said it appeared that India’s “obstinacy is not against any government here, but is directed against Pakistan.” He said Pakistan had been hoping that after establishment of a democratic government in the country, India would adopt a flexible and a lenient approach. Asked whether he would take the initiative to hold a dialogue with India, Mr Jamali said he did not have any inhibitions about meeting any Indian leader to improve relations between the two countries. Replying to a query about extending an invitation to Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Mr Jamali said so far he had only heard him and not seen or met him.
UNI |
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‘Arms dealers’ met top British diplomats London, December 16 The disclosure will be highly embarrassing for the UK Government’s so-called ethical foreign policy and has prompted calls for a parliamentary inquiry into the nature of repeated contacts between the British Government and former soldier Andrew Smith and businessman John Bredenkamp over the past two years. The Observer newspaper in London has established that British High Commission staff in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, have held numerous meetings with Smith and Bredenkamp, who is not a British citizen. Bredenkamp asked for advice on how to rebuff allegations of being an arms dealer at a meeting in Harare in March. Smith has also made ‘representations’ to diplomats over similar allegations. Both men have been recently exposed in The Observer for their role in supplying weapons and supplies to the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Both were also ‘named and shamed’ in a United Nations report into the illegal looting of minerals and resources from the country. Bredenkamp, who lives in Berkshire, has been barred from entering the USA, and Smith, a former captain of the Royal Engineers, faces UN claims that one of his companies was involved the mercenary-style operations in the eastern region of Congo. Bredenkamp held two face-to-face meetings with the British High Commission staff in Harare. The first was on November 14 last year and the second on March 11 this year. British officials have declined to comment on what was discussed. However, The Observer has established that at the second meeting Bredenkamp was seeking advice on how best to clear his name of some of the charges of arms dealing made against him by British MP Paul Farrelly during debates in the House of Commons. Smith has also held several meetings with British diplomats in Harare over the past two years, including an October 2001 meeting with the defence attache. He too has sought advice from diplomats on how to respond to the UN allegations. Smith has also met British officials in London and Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, where he runs a private airline company. The revelations have prompted outrage among anti-arms trade groups and prompted calls for an inquiry into why Britain is holding regular meetings at its embassies with arms traffickers. ‘It beggars belief that government officials were willing to talk to people involved in the activities that the UN has accused them of,’ said a spokesman for the Campaign Against the Arms Trade.
The Guardian |
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Quattrochhi in Italy Kuala Lumpur, December 16 Quattrochhi left Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, a day after the High Court here dismissed India’s plea seeking a review of the lower court’s verdict throwing out the Italian’s extradition. The sessions court had also ordered return of his passport and bail. Hearing an Indian appeal against the high court order the Court of Appeal, Malaysia’s highest court, asked Quattrochhi to surrender his passport pending disposal of the petition. The Italian businessman and his lawyers were not present in the court when the appeal filed by Malaysia’s Attorney-General on behalf of India was taken up. Quattrochhi, when reached on mobile phone for his comment, said “I am in Italy as my daughter wanted me to be here urgently.” He said he left Kuala Lumpur on Saturday and was not aware of today’s court order. “I was supposed to travel for a long time and I was told (Friday) that this is the final stage and the order of the high court final and conclusive.” “I am here only on vacation and will be back in Malaysia later,” he said, adding that “I have nothing to fear and I wanted everything to get over before I left Malaysia that is why I waited for so long.” Quattrochhi’s lawyers also said their client had left Malaysia on Saturday and added “we are yet to receive the court order.”
PTI |
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Tamil girl to clear mines Colombo, December 16 Niroja Sirirajakumar, 19, of Jaffna, the traditional home of Sri Lanka’s 3.2 million Tamils, was trained in demining work by foreign experts, said Tamilnet.com, a Website that gives the Tamil perspective on the nation’s 19-year-old civil war. Thousands of displaced families in the northern peninsula are unable to settle in their villages and cultivate their land because of minefields. Rebels from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and rival government forces have planted some 7,00,000 landmines in Jaffna peninsula during the rebels’ struggle for a Tamil homeland.
AP |
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Clinton teams up with Sophia Loren Geneva, December 16 For the project, which the report dubbed “top secret,” Clinton and Loren reportedly read out a series of texts against a background of orchestral music directed by renouned US conductor Kent Nagano. According to the Sunday editions of Dimanche.ch and
SonntagsBlick, Mr Clinton arrived in Geneva on Saturday and agreed to participate in the project which was organised by Dutch record label
Pentatone. AFP |
‘NO GOVT HAND IN
AZHAR’S RELEASE’ PERVEZ ISSUED 297
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