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Sunday,
April 20, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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12 more
SARS deaths in Hong Kong Pak offers
to open visa centre at Wagah Jamali
terms Pervez his boss Kasuri
hails PM’s offer of talks |
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End
infiltration to solve Kashmir issue: Blair Nuclear
pursuits of India, Pak ‘matter of concern’ |
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Tapes
deepen Saddam mystery Nepal
bans rallies by students Message
at Nazi camp site
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12 more
SARS deaths in Hong Kong Beijing, April 19 The 12 dead include seven men, aged from 71 to 86, having a history of chronic diseases. The remaining are three men and two women, aged between 37 and 75, the Department of Health said. Thirty-one new patients of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) were admitted to hospitals in the territory, taking the cumulative number of infected persons to 1,358 since March 12. The fresh cases include two healthcare workers while the remaining 29 were other patients and contacts of patients with SARS. Hong Kong currently has 995 SARS patients in hospitals of which 109 are receiving treatment in intensive care units. A total of 363 patients have recovered and have been discharged from hospitals, including 41 discharged today. Earlier today, the government began a massive cleaning-up campaign in the territory, with the Health Secretary helping in scrubbing down a vegetable market along with health workers and volunteers. “Personal hygiene and environmental hygiene are two important objectives,” the Secretary, Yeoh Eng-kiong said. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Department of Health today called on passengers who had travelled from Singapore to Hong Kong on flight CX 714 of Cathay Pacific on April 15 to call the department’s hotline for health advice. The plea follows the detection of a confirmed case of SARS in a male cabin crew member.
PTI |
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Pak offers to open visa centre at Wagah Lahore, April 19 “The Pakistan Government has offered the Indian Government to open a visa centre on the Wagah so that Sikh pilgrims could easily avail a visa to visit Pakistan as most of the Sikh shrines dating back to the first Sikh Guru, Guru Nanak Dev, are all located in Pakistan,” Adviser to the Governor of Lahore on Punjab Public Affairs Yasub Ali Dogar told a delegation of Sikhs. “Pakistan has always tried to maintain better relationship with India so that the masses of both the countries could visit their relatives who were parted during Partition,” he said. Hundreds of Sikh devotees from across the world had congregated at Gurdwara Hasan Abdal here, where a gurdwara marks the birth place of Guru Nanak Dev and at a gurdwara in Nankana Sahib near Lahore to celebrate the Baisakhi festival. Nearly 100 Indian Sikhs had been given special permission to cross into Pakistan through the Wagah border to celebrate the festival. The border has been closed to all but foreign travellers following the terrorist attack on Indian Parliament in December, 2001. Dogar assured the delegation that the government was committed to speedy development of all Sikh shrines in Pakistan and added that most of the gurdwaras in the country would be renovated within the next two years.
PTI |
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Jamali terms Pervez his boss Islamabad, April 19 As the opposition continued disrupting proceedings in the national Assembly and Senate terming General Musharraf as an “illegal” President and a “stranger”, Mr Jamali said he had no hesitation in admitting that he considered General Musharraf his “boss”. Mr Jamali declared that General Musharraf was an elected President and needed no approval from Parliament. After pandemonium yesterday, the national Assembly was adjourned to April 21 while the Senate was prorogued after a five-hour standoff between the opposition and ruling party members. As both the Houses were adjourned, Mr Jamali turned down the opposition demand to hold direct talks with General Musharraf, saying that the General was “my boss”.
PTI |
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Kasuri hails PM’s offer of talks Islamabad, April 19 Mr Kasuri, who is currently touring Riyadh, told Pakistan state television PTV last night that he welcomed Mr Vajpayee’s statement. “I appreciate all of those statements by the Indian Government which will mean lowering the temperature in the region so that the people of Indo-Pak subcontinent could concentrate on the actual problem of poverty”. The Pakistani leader said he hoped that no clarification would surface to Mr Vajpayee’s statement. “However, which is being reported to me is a very positive development which I see a rather positive in the context of Kashmir and South Asia.” He said holding dialogue with India was always a priority to his government. “I and Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali invited Prime Minister Vajpayee and Mr Yashwant Sinha to attend SAARC Conference which they could not”. Mr Jamali yesterday hailed Mr Vajpayee’s speech, saying “I welcome this offer and appreciate it but the basic principles on issues will remain the same.” Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed also welcomed the offer for talks. “Pakistan will go two steps forward if India will take one step,” Mr Ahmed told a television channel. “We believe that all issues with India, including core issue of Kashmir, should be solved through dialogue which is beneficial for both countries.”
PTI |
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End infiltration to solve Kashmir issue: Blair Islamabad, April 19 “Terrorist organisations including the Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen have been at the forefront of the terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir. Violence will never solve the Kashmir dispute,” he said in an interview to Friday Times weekly. On how Britain proposed to solve the Kashmir issue, Mr Blair said it should be resolved through bilateral negotiations. “In the end the dispute between Pakistan and India, including the Kashmir issue, can only be settled by bilateral negotiations between Pakistan and India. But it is a dispute with serious international implications, not least because any future military conflict could lead to nuclear weapons use,” he said. He said such a conflict would be devastating for Pakistan and whole of South Asia. “In such a dangerous environment it is imperative that both sides act with restraint and avoid inflammatory rhetoric. All who wish both countries well — and this certainly includes the UK — should do what we can to encourage them to find a solution through peaceful means and engagement.” Mr Blair said Britain remained committed to regional stability in South Asia and Pakistan’s long-term economic development. “Together with our US, European Union and other partners we will continue to engage and cooperate with our Asian friends and allies bilaterally and in multilateral forums, not only on regional issues but in global context too,” he said.
PTI |
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Pak rejects US criticism over Kashmir Islamabad, April 19 Islamabad had taken all possible preventive measures and no infiltration was taking place, a foreign office spokesman said. Mr Aziz Ahmed Khan noted that Pakistan had repeatedly offered to allow the deployment of neutral observers to verify that no incursions were taking place across the Line of Control. Pakistan had also repeatedly called for dialogue with India on the problem, he said. “No positive response to these offers, which has been going on, have been received from India. These allegations are baseless,” said Mr Khan, who called on the international community to press India to agree to dialogue with Pakistan on the matter. Mr Khan was replying to comments by the US State Department’s Director of Policy Planning, Mr Richard
Haass, who told an Indian TV channel yesterday that Washington had been urging Pakistan to halt incursions by Islamic guerrillas into Kashmir.
AFP |
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Nuclear pursuits of India, Pak ‘matter of concern’ Washington, April 19 Non-proliferation efforts had been concerned in the short term on a number of regional crisis points like the India-Pakistan “arms race”, North Korea and the Middle East, the CRS said in a paper on non-proliferation. “China has long been a non-proliferation concern. It was widely viewed as a major supplier of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme in the 1980s and early 1990s, and also as a supplier of aid and technology to Iran”, it said. “India, in justifying its own nuclear weapons tests, cited China’s help to Pakistan as a major motive in developing nuclear weapons capability.” China’s past involvement in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme and India’s accusation that it needed to test nuclear explosives because it was being “encircled” by China, made China a major player in the nuclear escalation in South Asia, the CRS said. The “undeclared nuclear arms competition” between India, Pakistan and China reached a turning point on May 11, 1998, when India announced an underground test, which was followed by Pakistan, the paper said. There was also concern about China’s actions in expanding its nuclear force, and of Chinese and Russian activities that may encourage proliferation in other regions, it added. In addition, China in recent years had been expanding and modernising its own nuclear arsenal and was involved with allegations of spying on US weapons technology facilities in the US Department of Energy, the CRS said. India and Pakistan, having tested nuclear devices in confrontation over Kashmir. Tension between Israel (which has nuclear weapons) and Arab neighbours (who have none) persist. Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons technology remained a threat and North Korea was still a serious proliferation threat, the paper said.
PTI |
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Tapes deepen
Saddam mystery Doha (Qatar), April 19 The theory that Saddam was killed in an April-7 bombing by coalition forces suffered a blow with the broadcast yesterday of a videotape purporting to show him alive two days later and an audiotape with a voice that sounds like his. Some experts believe the deposed Iraqi leader could be using his vast wealth and the extensive connections cultivated over decades at the helm of a police state to stay safe in his own country. “It’s possible that he could be hiding among his loyalists,” said Mr Anthony Cordesman, a West Asia expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s possible that he may try to change his appearance,” he said.
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Nepal bans rallies by students Kathmandu, April 19 Heavily armed security personnel were mobilised on the major roads after the Home Ministry issued a notice prohibiting any demonstration in Kathmandu, Lailtpur and Bakhtapur. The student organisations had announced to take out torchlight demonstrations tonight in favour of tomorrow’s nationwide shut down.
PTI |
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Message at Nazi camp site Oranienburg, April 19 “I want to go home,” read the note, written April 19, 1944 and stuffed into a bottle by a German communist identified only as Anton E who was deported in 1937. “When will I see my loved ones in Cologne? But my spirit is not broken. Everything will be better soon.” “It can't be a call for help because the letter was hidden inside the wall,” the memorial site's spokesman, Horst
Seferens, told AFP. It must be “a message for the future, so as not to die without leaving any trace.”
AFP |
PAK TRIBESMEN KILL 5 OF RIVAL CLAN LOOTERS RETURN OBJECTS TO IRAQI MUSEUM 28 INJURED AS FERRY HITS WALL CRICHTON AGREES TO PAY EX-WIFE $ 31M MASSIVE HAUL OF ANCIENT COINS |
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