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Friday,
February 21, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Iranian military plane crashes, 302
dead Greenpeace blocks US cargo for
Gulf
UN for cautious approach on Iraq USA may seek chickens’ help for
war! |
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Russia may veto war resolution
USA to help Iraqis form
new govt Reimpose curbs on Pak:
Pallone RUN-UP TO NAM SUMMIT
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Iranian military plane crashes, 302 dead Dubai, February 20 The Russian-made airliner was on a domestic flight to Kerman from southeastern Zahedan in Sistan-Baluchestan province near the Pakistan border, when it crashed about 30 km from its destination yesterday, the state-run media said. The aircraft was preparing to land at the Kerman airport, 800 km southeast of Teheran, when the pilot had radioed about bad weather and strong winds before losing contact with air traffic controllers, Teheran Television said. Search teams, including Army helicopters, early today found parts of the debris, including the plane’s wing near a tunnel which cut through local mountains. “All those aboard were personnel of Division 41 of Sarallah of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps,” Kerman Governor Mohammad Ali Karimi told the Iranian news agency IRNA. Those who perished — 18 crew and 284 passengers — were members of the Revolutionary Guards, an elite group under the direct control of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The guards protect the ultra-conservative country’s borders and defend ruling hard-liners. The elite forces, most of them senior officers, had gone to the impoverished Sistan-Baluchestan province, of which Zahedan is the capital, for an “important mission”, Teheran Television quoted an anonymous official as saying. The government, in a statement, offered condolences to the families of the victims, media reports said. The crash came as Iran prepared to celebrate the eve of Qadir, marking Prophet Mohammad’s appointment of first Shi’ite Muslim, Imam Ali, as his spiritual heir.
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Greenpeace blocks US cargo for Gulf Rotterdam, February 20 Greenpeace said 25 of its activists used inflatable dinghies and canoes to stop the ship, the MDS Progress, from setting sail from the port of Rotterdam and supporting US-led preparations for a possible war against Iraq. The Dutch police was trying to halt the action, but Greenpeace vowed it would continue, even if some of its activists were arrested. “Day and night, US tanks and helicopters are being shipped to the Gulf from European ports. Greenpeace is determined to do everything it can to stop this relentless march to war,” said Greenpeace’s Femke Bartels, speaking from the port. “Not only would it make the world a more volatile and dangerous place, it would also be illegal, disastrous and immoral,” he added. He commented that the USA and Britain had cited Iraq’s alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction as grounds for a potential attack, even though “the USA and the UK have some of the world’s biggest arsenal on such weapons.” The Dutch Government had consented to a request from Washington for US troops and military material to transit Dutch territory on their way to the Gulf region.
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UN for cautious approach on Iraq WHILE the USA and the UK are busy drafting a new UN resolution to set a deadline for Iraq to cooperate fully with weapons inspectors with a warning of “or else”, the two-day debate in the Security Council has clearly signalled caution on the use of force against Baghdad. Dozens of countries have, while impressing on the need for Iraq to cooperate fully with the inspectors, expressed themselves in favour of giving more time for the inspection process to be completed. Over 60 countries participated in the Security Council’s open meeting that was held at the instance of the Non-Aligned Movement
(NAM) in order to give the wider UN membership an opportunity to express its views on the inspections process. The call for Iraq’s full compliance and continued cooperation with the inspectors was repeatedly stressed by many delegates. The Egyptian Ambassador called it a “way out of the dark tunnel.” The watchword among the overwhelming number of nations was caution and the need to avoid a rush to war. The Indonesian delegate warned that to authorise war without taking into account the final results of the inspections would amount to “pre-conceived warfare” and seriously undermine the Security Council. Many speakers stressed that the time had not run out and the use of force was not unavoidable. While urging Iraq to fully and proactively cooperate with the weapons inspectors, Iranian Ambassador Javad Zarif warned about the consequences of a war. “The extent of destabilisation in the region and uncertainty in Iraq in the case of a war may go far beyond our imagination today,” he said. “Given the state of the Iraqi society and the whole region, there are so many wild cards and no party could fit them beforehand into its calculations with any degree of certainty. But one outcome is almost certain: extremism stands to benefit enormously from an uncalculated adventure in Iraq.” India’s Ambassador, Mr Vijay Nambiar, expressed his country’s concern about the difficult humanitarian situation in Iraq, whose people, he said, had suffered enormously for over a decade. It was India’s view that force should be resorted to only as “a last, unavoidable resort”. The Iraqi representative thanked the “vast majority” who had advocated peace and opposition to war. Iraq, he said, had “opened all doors”, and it was up to the inspectors to work in a measured way, apart from the pressures being applied. Outside the Council chambers, the U.S.A. gave no indication that it was impressed with the call for caution. The U.S. Ambassador, Mr John Negroponte, told reporters: “We want to be sensitive to international opinion...but in the end, our behaviour is going to be determined by our concern about the disarmament of Iraq and considerations of national security of our own country and of others.” |
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USA may seek chickens’ help for war! New York, February 20 Worried that the pollution from blown oil installations may clog up complicated detection equipment and make it difficult to pick up deadly chemicals and nerve agents, US marines and soldiers will drive into battle across the dusty plains of Iraq with caged chickens atop their Hum-Vees, Time news magazine has reported. The chickens, which were otherwise destined for Kuwaiti dinner tables, will work in the same way as canaries in coal mines. Small traces of poisonous gases or chemical agents will kill the birds and warn troops to put on their gas masks. “A sky full of oil can mask some chemicals,” Warrant Officer Jeff French, a nuclear, biological and chemical officer for a marine battalion in Kuwait, told Time. “Using chickens may sound basic, but it’s still one of the best ways we have of detecting chemical agents”, he said. Dubbed Operation Kuwaiti Field Chicken (KFC), the measure is bound to enrage animal rights’ activists.
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Russia may veto war resolution Rome, February 20 “It’s an extreme measure to be used in a
responsible way,” the Russian minister said of Moscow’s veto in the UN council, in an interview with Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper. “We are not against a second resolution in principle, but we must see what purpose it would serve. To be clear: if the resolution aims to reinforce the mandate of the (UN weapons) inspectors, we will be ready to look at it.”
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USA to help Iraqis form
new govt Washington, February 20 “In a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, the USA goal will not be to impose an American-style template but to create conditions where Iraqis can form a government that will not have weapons of mass destruction,” Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a recent speech. PTI |
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Reimpose curbs on Pak: Pallone Washington, February 20 “Revelations over the past couple of months show that Pakistan has been transferring equipments to support North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme in exchange for ballistic missiles”, Democratic Congerssman Frank Pallone said. Pointing out that head of the US State Department’s Bureau of Nonproliferation John S Wolf was reviewing Pakistan’s role in supporting North Korea’s nuclear programme, Mr Pallone said he hoped Wolf would return with a recommendation that sanctions on Pakistan be re-imposed. “Though Pakistan has been an ally of the USA in our war on terrorism, I support immediate steps by the administration to ban all military sales to Pakistan and to re-impose Symington sanctions on Pakistan for assisting a foreign nuclear weapons programme,” the New Jersey Congressman wrote recently in a letter to US Secretary of State Colin Powell. Mr Pallone also asked Mr Powell to advise US President George W. Bush to publicly acknowledge Washington’s commitment to nonproliferation by re-imposing sanctions on Pakistan.
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RUN-UP TO NAM SUMMIT Kuala Lumpur, February 20 Rubbishing Pakistan’s claim that New Delhi was implicitly targeting Islamabad by moving amendments to the resolution on terrorism at the senior officials meeting of the Non-Aligned countries here, Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal said: “It is Pakistan’s own sense of guilt. Pakistan’s role in international terrorism is known. The Taliban and the Al-Qaida networks continue to operate in Pakistan.” He said the victory of religious extremist parties the Muttahida Muslim Alliance (MMA) in Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Provinces (NWFP), had strengthened terrorist groups operating in Pakistan and this had posed a new threat to the security of Afghanistan. The Foreign Secretary, who led the Indian team at the senior official level meeting, said India wanted to update the NAM resolution on terrorism. Since the Durban summit, ‘’a lot has happened on terrorism.’’ The NAM must have updated the view which is in conformity with the latest U N resolution. Mr Sibal was commenting on the remarks of Pakistan’s permanent representative at the UN office in Geneva, Mr Shaukat Omer that some amendments moved by India at the meeting were targeted against Islamabad. “There are some attempts targeting Pakistan, which we do not like or accept,” Mr Omar said. Mr Sibal also rejected NAM’s role in the resolution of bilateral issues, stating that the grouping is not there for resolving such issues. He said the NAM cannot take any initiative on bilateral matters. “Pakistan wants a third party intervention or role”, but that is against the spirit of the NAM. “A leopard does not change its spots,” he remarked. The Foreign Secretary said India had no intention to launch anti-Pakistan tirade at the NAM summit. However, he hoped that the Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf would also follow “code of conduct and not indulge in rhetoric.” He said: “India wants a serious debate on terrorism, which should address concerns of the member countries and oppose attempts to deflect the debate under one pretext or the other. There is a strong consensus today that no cause justifies terrorism. The NAM must have updated view on the international terrorism”.
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All 302 members of the Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on board a military aircraft were killed in the country’s worst-ever aviation disaster when it crashed in the mountains bordering Pakistan.
