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Wednesday,
March 12, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Americans for military action without UN nod: poll
Second resolution unnecessary: China
UN observers on Iraq border withdrawing US diplomat resigns over war Pakistan reports new leads on Osama |
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3 killed in bomb blast in Afghanistan Kandahar, March 11 Three persons were killed when a powerful bomb ripped through a vehicle near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, witnesses told AFP. The bomb exploded yesterday some 20 km north-west of Kandahar as a vehicle carrying tribesmen to Zari Dasht desert for a meeting passed by.
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Americans for military action without UN nod: poll United Nations, March 11 While 55 per cent of Americans interviewed in the poll said they would support an American invasion of Iraq even if it was in defiance of a vote of the Security Council, 52 per cent felt the inspectors should be given more time to search for evidence of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons on the ground in Iraq, the New York Times/CBS opinion poll concluded. The poll findings suggest that US President George W. Bush has made progress, at least at home, in portraying Saddam Hussein as a threat to peace while rallying support for a war over rising objections in the international community. It also signals that the USA may be moving towards the traditional wartime rallying around the President that the White House — and Bush’s Democratic opponents — have anticipated. At the same time, many Americans remain perplexed about what Bush was doing and why he was doing it, The Times said. While Bush says his main goal is disarming Iraq, Americans are more likely to say he is motivated by a desire to oust Saddam Hussein from power. A majority of Americans say the White House has failed to tell them what they need to know about the justification for a pre-emptive attack, the poll found. Respondents were nearly evenly divided when asked if Bush was being guided by the memory of his father’s dealings with Hussein in prosecuting what would be the nation’s second war against Iraq in 12 years. Nearly half of them said Bush was driven by personal desire to accomplish what his father did not when he cut off his invasion of Iraq in 1991 without ousting Hussein. There was a clear concern among Americans that USA is paying a price internationally for Bush’s aggressive posture, it said. The number of Americans who believe that their President enjoys the respect of world leaders dropped to 45 per cent from 67 per cent within the space of a year.
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Second resolution unnecessary: China Beijing, March 11 “We feel that there is no need to table a second resolution,” chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Kong Quan said. Asked whether China, a permanent member of the UN Security Council would also veto a US-British second resolution, he said: “There is no need for it as resolution 1441 has not yet been fully implemented.” Chinese President Jiang Zemin in his separate phone conversations last night with American counterpart George W Bush and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Kong said, called for unity within the Security Council and preserving the authority of the world body. “Great efforts should be made to maintain the unity and authority of the Security Council and implement the resolution 1441 well,” he quoted Mr Jiang as telling Mr Bush, who called the Chinese leader for seeking Beijing’s support for the draft resolution. Mr Jiang said nuclear inspections should be carried on and the issue should be resolved by peaceful means.
PTI |
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UN observers on Iraq border withdrawing United Nations, March 11 An unspecified number of troops of the Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission (UNIKOM) were being moved “for their safety” back to their base at Umm Qasr in Iraq, close to Kuwaiti territory, the sources said late last night. “The two UNIKOM observers based in Baghdad are going to be withdrawn also”, they added. Back-up has been provided, meanwhile, for UNIKOM forces on the Kuwaiti side of the frontier. UNIKOM was set up to monitor the 240-km land and maritime border in the wake of the 1991 Gulf war to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation, and to ensure no violations occur in the demilitarised zone (DMZ). On Saturday, UNIKOM announced it had raised its state of alert to phase 3 amid the increasing threat of a US-led war against Iraq. A day earlier, UN officials said that holes had appeared in the security fence marking the border between the two states. Spokesman Daljeet Bagga said UN observers had seen people they suspected were US troops on the Kuwaiti side of the DMZ before spotting seven wide gaps in the electric fence which marks the Emirate’s border with Iraq.
AFP |
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US diplomat resigns over war Washington, March 11 Mr John H. Brown, who joined the US diplomatic corps in 1981 and served in London, Prague, Krakow, Kiev, Belgrade and Moscow, yesterday said in a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, made available to the media: “I cannot in good conscience support’ President Bush’s war plans against Iraq. “Throughout the globe the USA is becoming associated with the unjustified use of force. The president’s disregard for views in other nations, borne out by his neglect of public diplomacy, is giving birth to an anti-American century,’’ the diplomat added. Mr Brown has recently been attached to the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University in Washington. Immediately before that, he was cultural attache at the US embassy in Moscow. A senior US diplomat based in Athens, political counsellor Mr John Brady Kiesling, (45), resigned in protest at the Bush Administration’s policy on Iraq last month.
Reuters |
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Pakistan reports new leads on Osama Islamabad, March 11 The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) said yesterday Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s arrest in Rawalpindi on March 1 indicated the hunt for the world’s most wanted man was moving forward. An intelligence source said another Al-Qaida suspect, who had been arrested in Peshawar as part of swoops since Saturday, was believed to have had contact with Bin Laden. “Progressively we are moving (in the hunt for Bin Laden),” a senior intelligence official said at the first news conference that the ISI had held for foreign journalists in its history. The official said the ISI was not sure whether to believe Mohammed, suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the USA, when he said he had met Bin Laden because he had refused to say where the meeting took place. “He confirmed he met (Bin Laden) in December,” the official said. “I don’t believe him unless he tells us the locations and gives us witnesses.” In another glimpse into the hunt for Bin Laden, the intelligence source said the man arrested in Peshawar had received a telephone call that was traced by a team monitoring satellite and mobile phone conversations of suspected terrorists. “We think he was in contact with Osama bin Laden,” said the source, but added that it was unclear if a conversation with the Al-Qaida leader had been among those monitored. The man, one of 10 Al-Qaida suspects arrested in Peshawar since Saturday, was identified only as Masood and reported to be either an Afghan or an Egyptian. The ISI showed journalists a grainy video purporting to show the night-time raid on the house where they say Mohammed was seized together with Saudi national Ahmed al-Hawsawi, an alleged key financier of the September 11 attacks. The video did not show Mohammed’s face — just his back and neck before his head was hooded — nor any sign of the struggle which officials say took place.
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3 killed in bomb blast in Afghanistan Kandahar, March 11 "It was a remote-controlled bomb planted on the road," Mr Fazaluddin Agha, district commissioner of Spin Boldak in Kandahar, told a reporter. The car was blown up about 7 km from the meeting's venue, said Mr Agha, adding that five other persons had been injured. "We suspect the culprits belong to the Hezb-i-Islami," Mr Agha said in reference to the party of radical leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
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Maoists attend Left parties’ meeting Kathmandu, March 11 The Maoist leaders have not appeared in public even after the declaration of a cease-fire on January 29 to end the seven-year-long insurgency through dialogue. Maoist leader Dina Nath Sharma attended the meeting of the Left parties which expressed commitment to a struggle to safeguard the achievements of the popular movement of 1990. The leftist and democratic forces should unitedly struggle to safeguard the achievements of the popular movement, said a statement issued after the meeting. The meeting also criticised the sacking of the Sher Bahadur Deuba government and said such regressive actions must be corrected and an all-party government must be formed in accordance with the spirit of the present Constitution. The major political parties boycotted an all-party meeting called by Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand yesterday and are demanding that either the dissolved House should be restored or an all-party government should be formed in accordance with the clause 128 of the Constitution. Meanwhile, King Gyanendra met Nepali Congress President Girija Prasad Koirala and CPN(UML) general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal yesterday to discuss the country’s present political situation.
UNI |
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Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair waves to the media after meeting with his Romanian counterpart Adrian Nastase in Downing Street, London,
on Monday. Blair warned Russia and France on Tuesday that their UN veto threat risked wrecking the transatlantic alliance and would allow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to think he could wriggle off the hook.
— Reuters photo
