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Friday,
January 31, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Preventing Indo-Pak war major feat: Powell
USA ready to help Saddam find asylum Shahbaz’s US trip fuels speculation Onassis’ heiress is billionaire at 18
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Preventing Indo-Pak war major feat: Powell Washington, January 30 Recalling the period when the two countries were in an eyeball to eyeball confrontation, but eventually the war was avoided. Mr Powell said it was a good piece of work on the part of “all of us.” “We kept Foreign Ministers stacked over Islamabad and New Delhi a thousand feet apart for six months to constantly talk to both sides and defuse that crisis,” he said in an interview to the National Journal. “And it was the positive relationship I had formed with the Russians and the Chinese over the spy and EP-3 incidents that allowed me to go to them and say, “Hey guys, here’s what we have to do to keep the Indians and Pakistanis from going after each other,’” Mr Powell said. “And we all agreed. Nobody was playing superpower or Cold War politics with that one,” he said. At the time, everybody was swearing that a war was going to break out between India and Pakistan that would possibly go nuclear. Mr Powell said however, “I personally never thought that because I had been talking to both sides almost every day. I was quite confident a solution would be found. But solutions don’t happen overnight. You’ve got to work them. You’ve got to bound the problem, and then work within those boundaries to find a solution.” Mr Powell recalled how President Musharraf agreed to support the USA over the war against Al-Qaida and the Taliban, which the Pakistanis had created. Earlier, during a meeting with visiting Pakistani Foreign Minister Kurshid Mahmud Kasuri, Mr Powell hinted to Pakistan that prospects of a dialogue with India would improve if Islamabad put an end to cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. “I think many people are watching activity that is occurring across the Line of Control to see whether the rate of that activity, if it went down, might be an encouraging step,” Powell told reporters here yesterday after the meeting. “I think we have to find a way to get the dialogue begun. Some suggestions have been made that perhaps some economic moves from one side to the other might be a way to jumpstart it,” Powell said, adding that he could not be more “forthcoming” to that. “We will continue to work hard at it...the USA is committed to doing everything we can to get the dialogue going,” Powell said.
PTI |
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USA ready to help Saddam find asylum Washington, January 30 “If Saddam Hussein were to leave Iraq and take care of his family members with him and others in the leading elite who have been responsible for so much trouble during the course of his regime,” the USA would, “I am sure, try to help find a place for them to go,” Secretary of State Colin Powell told correspondents here yesterday. That, he said, certainly would be one way to avoid war, “ and we have indicated this before,” he said. However, Mr Powell refused a direct answer when asked if the USA would consider offering any kind of immunity for Mr Hussein and his people saying he was not prepared to talk on that subject. Meanwhile, hours after he almost declared war on Iraq, US President George W. Bush stepped up rhetoric against his bete noire Hussein saying he posed a threat to the USA and world peace and that committing troops was his “last option” as expecting the best from the Iraqi President was “not a risk worth taking.” UNITED NATIONS: Iraq must realise that “the game is up” and that it can no longer keep the United Nations at bay over its weapons of mass destruction, Britain’s ambassador to the UN, Mr Jeremy Greenstock has said. He spoke to reporters during a break in a second meeting of the Security Council with the chief arms inspectors to review the first two months of work in Iraq on Wednesday. BAGHDAD: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has vowed that Iraqis will battle a US-led invasion with pistols and rifles if they have to and will ultimately “break the neck” of their enemies. “Our determination is solid, even if it comes to pistols and rifles to battle and defeat the enemy,” Mr Hussein told a meeting of top army officers, later broadcast by state television on Wednesday.
PTI, AFP |
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Shahbaz’s US trip fuels speculation Islamabad, January 30 According to reports here, Shahbaz Sharif landed in the USA on Wednesday apparently for treatment of a backbone problem. This is the first time in two years that a high-profile political member of the Sharif family has been allowed to go out of Saudi Arabia. The family has been living there in exile from December 2000. There were reports late last year that the Sharif family was planning to shift to Britain and prepare the ground for a return to Pakistan. The military regime’s consistent claim has been that the Sharif family can not be permitted to leave Saudi Arabia or enter Pakistan for 10 years, according to an agreement under which they left the country. “Shahbaz will be meeting some senior officials of the Bush administration,” a leader of the former ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) told IANS. A government spokesman said the trip was permitted on “humanitarian grounds”. President Pervez Musharraf’s chief spokesman Rashid Qureshi said Pakistan was aware of the visit in advance. “We know he has gone to the USA for medical treatment,” Mr Qureshi told IANS. But a PML-N spokesman said no request for the trip had been made to the military regime, which had sent the two brothers, their elderly father, and over 15 other family members into a 10-year exile. “No request was made to the government,” PML-N information secretary Siddiqul Farooq said about the trip. The PML-N official said Mr Shahbaz Sharif would contact his party leaders in Pakistan in “a day or two” and might even talk to the press. The visit has been welcomed by one-time Nawaz Sharif rival and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, whose Pakistan People’s Party is now an ally of the PML-N. Ms Bhutto, who has been living in self-exile abroad since early 1999, was quoted as welcoming Mr Shahbaz Sharif’s trip, saying she would be happy at anybody’s freedom.
IANS |
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Onassis’ heiress is billionaire at 18 Geneva, January 30 The tycoon's sole grandchild and heiress, who spent the day in private with her family, is not expected to change a lifestyle devoted to studies and riding, said family lawyer Marc Bonnant. Athina was believed to be in Switzerland with her French father Thierry Roussel, a pharmaceutical heir, and Swedish stepmother Marianne ''Gaby'' Landhage. Athina has come into an estimated $ 2.7 billion in properties, including the lush island of Skorpios in the Ionian Sea, companies, shares, artwork and a private jet. At 21, she will become president of the Athens-based Onassis Foundation and receive another $ 2 billion.
Reuters |
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