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Sunday,
December 29, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Pakistanis flay US registration move WINDOWS ON PAKISTAN Bush steps up post-war Iraq planning Iraq shrugs off
war threat UN experts swoop on 5 Iraq sites Kenyan opposition set to win |
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Maoists set off blasts in Nepal
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Pakistanis
flay US registration move New Jersey, December 28 “We
are Americans who have chosen to live here,” Shaukat Sindhu,
president of the Chicago-based Pakistani-American Association of North
America, said at a news conference yesterday. “Suddenly, we are
foreigners in this country. We have done nothing wrong, and now we
have to register with the government. “If this would make our
nation, the USA, more safe, it would be OK,” he said. “But it
doesn’t look like it. It sounds like the Pakistani community is
being targeted unfairly.” By February, young men who recently
arrived in the USA from at least 20 nations will be required to submit
fingerprints, photographs and undergo interviews as part of the
government’s efforts to better keep track of who is in the country. The nations include Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Sohail
Mohammed, an immigration attorney, noted that Armenia was originally
included on the list, but was removed just days later after an uproar
from the Armenian-American community. AP |
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WINDOWS ON PAKISTAN With the installation of an elected government, even if
under the jackboot of the military, fresh enthusiasm is visible among
journalists across Pakistan for freedom of expression as available in
successful democracies like India. There is no doubt the media has
been highlighting different viewpoints on issues of local and
international significance, but not in total disregard of the wishes
of the military regime or the government of the day and with a lot of
caution. Annoying the government would mean inviting trouble for the
newspaper establishment and the journalists concerned. Only
recently journalist Shaheen Sehbai had to pay for his daring attempt
at discharging his professional duty. There have been numerous other
cases of victimisation of individual journalists and publications
endeavouring to record their differences of opinion forcefully. The
demotion of a Nawa-e-Waqt senior reporter, the stoppage of government
advertisements to the Jang group and forcing The Frontier Post to
close down its shop (that it has restarted its publication after a
short while is a different matter) are some of the well-known
instances that come to one’s mind immediately. The Jang group was punished during the Nawaz Sharif regime whereas the other cases relate to the period after Gen Pervez Musharraf came to power on October 12, 1999, through a military coup. The Nawa-e-Waqt journalist was punished on instructions from the army regime, and the highly respected Frontier Post was forced to discontinue its publication because of its controversial stand on most policies of the Musharraf government. Had there been adequate freedom of the Press with well-defined rights of this fourth pillar of a democracy, it would have been very difficult for the government to victimise the daring journalists and independent newspaper establishments. In this backdrop, the two-day (December 19-20) gathering of senior media persons at Lahore under the auspices of the South Asian Free Media Association assumes special significance. There were wide-ranging discussions on the state of the media with particular reference to the new laws enacted under the Musharraf regime. There was a consensus among the participants, cutting across ideological and other divides, not to accept the intimidatory laws as fait accompli. The conference adopted a 12-point declaration depicting the pitiable state of the media in Pakistan. Some of the points are worth reproducing here as reported by The News, a Jang group publication: “(1)
The expectations that the process of restoration of institutions of
democratic governance should lead to enhanced respect for the people’s
fundamental rights and freedoms, including the right to freedom of
expression, have not been realised. Instead, the series of new
Ordinances related to the media betray lack of comprehension of the
essential attributes of freedom of expression, constitute an attempt
to abridge the concept of transparency and represent a substantial
deviation from the spirit of the State’s constitution. “(2) The
new media laws being extra-constitutional decrees lack legitimate
sanction; some of these laws have been issued after the general
election when a new parliament was about to meet and are liable to
rejection on this ground alone. “(3) The Freedom of Information
Ordinance, instead of removing the flaws and deficiencies in the
earlier drafts, makes access to information extraordinarily
difficult.... “(4) The Press, Newspaper, News Agency and Book
Registration Ordinance is a rehash of the infamous Press and
Publications Ordinance and retains the authoritarian regimes’
practice of treating a declaration as a licence, brings the
page-editor of a newspaper under the purview of punitive measures, and
fails to free the media of the constraints against which all sections
of the media community have been agitating for decades. “(5) The
Electronic Media Regulatory Authority Ordinance is also arbitrary and
in violation of the international standards for a free flow of
information and retains the infamous system of licensing without
defining eligibility in unambiguous terms....” |
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Bush steps up post-war Iraq planning
Crawford (Texas), December 28 Policy coordinating committees and working-groups have been set up by the White House to oversee the effort, which has become an urgent priority as President George W. Bush nears a decision on whether or not to take military action to topple Saddam and eliminate his alleged weapons of mass destruction. Administration officials want to extend the United Nations oil-for-food programme, at least temporarily, to ensure that post-invasion oil dollars are spent on the country’s basic needs, US officials say. One policy committee is preparing plans to distribute humanitarian aid inside Iraq and rebuild the country’s infrastructure, including roads, water and power plants. As many as 4.5 million to 9.5 million of Iraq’s 22 million people could quickly need outside food to survive once a campaign began, according to UN sources. The committee is also drawing up plans to reopen the country’s hospitals and schools with emergency shipments of medicine, textbooks and other supplies in coordination with the United Nations and other partners, officials said yesterday. “It’s an attempt to craft a coherent and unified policy for the reconstruction of Iraq in the event of the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime,” an administration official said. The Bush administration is under pressure to come up with post-invasion plans as quickly as possible. In addition to causing food shortages, war could drive some 9,00,000 Iraqis into neighbouring countries, with about 1,00,000 of those requiring immediate assistance as soon as they arrived, according to the UN estimates. “There is an increased concern and awareness of the potential human consequences,” said Rob Breen, a liaison officer with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He said discussions were under way with the State Department and other US government agencies. Reuters
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Iraq shrugs off war threat
Baghdad, December 28 The US Defence Department sent orders yesterday for two aircraft carrier battle groups and two assault ships — carrying roughly 4,400 Marines — to be ready to sail to the sea off Iraq within 96 hours after a certain date, US officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. They declined to specify that date. “Whoever dares to strike Iraq and its people will pay a high price,” the official Iraqi army newspaper, Al-Qadissiya, said today in an editorial. “Iraq is fenced by real men, experienced in battle. The beating of war drums, the noise of weapons and the sending of warships will neither frighten nor terrorise the Iraqis. On the contrary, it will increase their determination and strengthen their unity,” said the paper, named after a historic battle between Arabs and Persians. In similar vein, Iraqi Trade Minister Mohammed Mahdi Saleh opened a seminar in Baghdad today saying that Iraq would defeat any invader. “Iraqis will fight under the leadership of holy leading warrior (President) Saddam Hussein,” Mohammad Mahdi Saleh said. “We will fight from village to village, from city to city, from street to street in every city.” AP
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UN experts swoop on 5 Iraq sites
Baghdad, December 28 MIC is the government’s body in charge of developing weapons and munitions. Several of the five sites had been visited before by the inspectors. International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) experts yesterday interviewed Kathim Jamil, a metallurgist of
Al-Rayah Company which is under the MIC. “He provided technical details of a military programme,” U N spokesman Hiro Ueki said in a statement in Baghdad. “This programme has attracted considerable attention as a possible prelude to a clandestine nuclear programme.” Hero Ueki said Jamil’s answers “will be of great use in completing the IAEA assessment” of Iraq’s nuclear programme. Kathim Jamil denied any links to Iraq’s nuclear programme. “I have nothing to do with any programmes...I’m a metallurgist working on restoring aluminium tubes,” he told state television, adding that Hero Ueki’s statement that he had provided information about a military programme was not true. The USA and the UK have raised the alarm in recent months over alleged attempts by Iraq to buy aluminium tubes that could be used to process uranium. Iraq denied the charges and said it had had the tubes since 1980s.
Reuters
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Kenyan opposition set to win
Nairobi, December 28 If the trend continues, Kenya could record one of the most remarkable democratic changes in Africa by peacefully retiring one of the continent’s last old-style political strongmen. ‘’We are cruising to a fantastic and historic victory,’’ leading opposition politician Kijana Wamalwa said as early returns appeared in line with most analyst predictions. ‘’The mood here is very sombre,’’ said an official at State House, seat of power in east Africa’s largest economy. Exploiting a thirst for change after years of economic decline and corruption, the opposition National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) is tipped to overturn almost four decades of dominance by the ruling KANU party. The focus is on the race for the powerful presidency. NARC leader Mwai Kibaki is vying with Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Kenya’s first president and candidate of the Kenya African National Union. Three minor candidates are given little chance. Kibaki, tipped as favourite by many pundits, led with 78 per cent of the presidential vote against 25 for Kenyatta with 325,913 votes counted, according to figures from the Institute for Education in Democracy, an NGO.Reuters |
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Data must to prove cloning claim: UN
United Nations, December 28 Asked to comment on the announcement by adherents to the Raelian movement that the first cloned baby girl was born yesterday, Mr Fred Eckhard, a spokesman for UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said: “We heard about this claim, but in the absence of scientific data, we can’t automatically accept it as a fact.” “No one should expect the Secretary-General to send flowers,” he said. A French and German-sponsored resolution banning reproductive human cloning was blocked this fall in the UN by a coalition organised by the USA and the Vatican — both of which support a total ban on human cloning. Like the Vatican, the administration of President George W. Bush believes that from the moment of conception, an embryo is a human being who must not be destroyed or killed. The US President wants the US Congress to pass a legislation banning all human cloning, the White House said after a cult announced it had produced a baby girl through cloning. Cloning a human being would be both criminal and an affront to human dignity, said French President Jacques Chirac in Paris. Mr Chirac called on all countries to rally behind a Franco-German proposal, submitted to the United Nations, for a complete ban on human cloning. In London, a scientist at the British research centre that produced the first cloned mammal, warned today of the dangers of human cloning. “I clearly do find it objectionable,” Dr Harry Griffin told BBC radio. Dr Griffin is the spokesman for the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, which made history in 1996 by producing the first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep. In Cairo, Muslim clerics grappled with the moral and spiritual dilemmas posed by human cloning. AFP
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4 Israelis killed in West Bank
Jerusalem, December 28 The two Palestinian militants infiltrated into the settlement of Otniel last night and opened fire with automatic weapons in ‘yeshiva’ (religious seminary), and outside its canteen killing four settlers and injuring eight others, Israeli military sources said. Later, one of the terrorists was shot dead nearby during a 30-minute gunbattle with security forces. Three Israeli soldiers were injured in a subsequent firefight with another gunman before he was killed as he attempted to escape, the sources said. Taking responsibility for the attack, Islamic Jihad leader Abdallah Ramadan Salah told Arabic Al-Jazeera channel that the attack was carried out to avenge the killing of nine Palestinians by Israeli army in separate incidents in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Thursday. Meanwhile, a car exploded in central Jerusalem in the wee hours today. No one was injured except the person the police suspected carried out the attack, media reported. PTI
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Maoists
set off blasts in Nepal
Kathmandu, December 28 The Maoists have planted a number of bombs in and around the capital before their ‘general strike’ in Bagmati and Narayani, police sources said today. In the latest attack, they exploded a bomb today in front of Nepal SBI branch office at New Road, at the heart of city, they said, adding that there were no casualties. Two Maoist activists came on a motorcycle early this morning and hurled the explosive packed in an effigy towards a taxi stand, they said. When the police threw it in the garbage can thinking that it was an effigy, it suddenly exploded, they said. The effigy had ‘Gyanendra (King) and Paras (CrownPrince)’ written on it, the police said. A powerful bomb exploded yesterday at a school hostel in front of the Education Minister’s house injuring seven persons including five children between 3 and 9 years of age and two teachers of East Pool English Boarding School of Jorpati on the outskirts of Kathmandu, the sources said. The school hostel was damaged by the blast. The bomb, planted near the main gate of the residence of Education Minister Devi Prasad Ojha, also broke its window panes. Maoists blast a bomb and set on fire an old Shera Palace previously belonging to Helen Shah, a member of the royal family, in Bidur Municipality of Nuwakot district yesterday, the police said. Meanwhile, the Nepal Government yesterday announced a scheme for rehabilitation and income generation programmes for those Maoists who were either captured by security forces or have surrendered. PTI
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Baghdad, December 28
In video: Clonaid,
a Washington-based company, claims to have produced the first
clone of a human being. (
