 |
Tuesday,
May 13, 2003, Chandigarh, India
  
|
Bin Laden died in US air raid: French expert Pak not to insist on UN resolutions: report Armitage draws flak for praising Pervez 40 killed
in truck bomb blast
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
Bin Laden died in US air raid: French expert Islamabad, May 12 Ghislaine Alleaume, a historian and an expert on Arab affairs at the French National Research Centre (CNRC), reached the conclusion after studying television and Internet messages circulated by Bin Laden’s supporters, the Daily Times reported from Paris. She bases her theory mostly on a video report of the Al Qaida leader’s broadcast by Al Jazeera television on December 27, 2001. According to Alleaume, the Saudi exile looked weary and sick but she believes he had had his left arm amputated. “He is wearing a military camouflage jacket and you can see that someone has placed a bag in the same colours just behind him to disguise the fact that he has lost his arm,” she said. She believes he died of his injuries soon afterwards. “Given the sanitary conditions, it would not have been easy to survive an amputation,” she said. Alleaume has studied other messages circulated by Bin Laden supporters and she believes they contain clues that he is dead. Since the end of 2001, the texts have often been signed Osama Bin Mohammed Bin Laden, rather than just Osama Bin Laden, she said. “Adding Mohammed, his father’s name, gives him an apocalyptic dimension. The Koran says the Mahdi, the final messenger, will be recognisable, among other things, by the fact that he carries the name of the Prophet.” Last month an Arabic language audio recording said to be of Bin Laden was circulated in which he urged Muslims to launch suicide attacks against countries that supported the war on Iraq.
IANS |
|
Pak not to insist on UN resolutions: report Islamabad, May 12 Quoting an unnamed senior Pakistani official, The Nation said that “both goodwill gifts” were delivered through US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to the Indian leadership during his recent visit to the two countries. The report said Pakistan and India were inching towards reaching an understanding to “freeze” the Kashmir issue, scale down military tensions and focus more on improving trade, transport and diplomatic ties. Islamabad’s approach has the tacit approval of China which was persuading Pakistani leaders to “freeze” the Kashmir issue and focus more on economic development as it did with India, the official said. Though there was no indication yet here that Pakistan has given such far-reaching commitments to Mr Armitage, the paper quoted a senior leader of ruling pro-military Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) as saying that by conceding so much ground to India at the first stage, Islamabad actually retreated to its February 1999 position when Prime Ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif signed the Lahore Accord. “The diplomatic disaster for Pakistan is that India has lost nothing in the process, but Pakistan’s stand on jehad in Kashmir has weakened following the 9/11 terror attacks and it also lost goodwill among the Indian masses and the government created by the Lahore accord,” he said. The PML-Q leader claimed that India held talks with Pakistan in 1999 without insisting on an end to cross-border infiltration and even Mr Vajpayee agreed for a second summit with Mr Sharif after the Kargil crisis. “But the military coup of October 1999 derailed the peace process. Those would have been serious negotiations from positions of equality. But now Pakistan’s position has weakened vis-a-vis India,” he said, predicting that no major breakthrough would be achieved this time on the Kashmir issue.
PTI |
|
Armitage draws flak for praising Pervez Islamabad, May 12 Questioning the credibility of Mr Armitage’s praise for General Musharraf as “a man of his word,” she asked, “who will believe this assertion? The General is known for going back on his word time and again.” “From General Musharraf’s initial promises of restoring ‘true democracy’ to bringing the corrupt to book, his words turned out to be empty assurances,” she said in an article in Daily Times. “Except the US administration, nobody is keeping up the pretence of believing him,” she said. The USA has a legacy of making “strange bedfellows.... But at least in the past it refrained from applauding them in public,” she said. “Pakistanis are witness to a series of events where the General acted contrary to his word. In the name of accountability former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was banished from the country. Alleged rapists have been appointed ministers with the blessing of the military junta,” she said. “Those accused of corruption and murders are being wooed and rewarded,” she said, questioning US officials’ assertions describing Pakistan’s ISI and other law-enforcement agencies in superlative terms.
PTI |
|
40 killed in truck bomb blast Moscow, May 12 The building, which also houses the police headquarters and FSB-security service branch in Znamenskoye, was almost totally destroyed in the powerful blast, which occurred at the start of office hours at 11.30 a.m. (IST), ITAR-TASS said. The head of Chechnya’s Security Council, Mr Rudnik Dudayev, said the scene of the blast was the seat of Nadterechny district in northern Chechnya. Workers were still wading through the rubble in search of bodies. Several houses nearby were also damaged in the blast. The death toll stil may go up.
PTI |
|
SARS claims 12 more lives, 80 more cases Beijing, May 12 As the virus continued to spread, authorities in Nanjing shut 566 hotels, hair salons, internet cafes and saunas, besides quarantining 10,000 persons. In Hong Kong, three more deaths were reported today, taking the toll to 218. Five more new cases of SARS infection also surfaced. The health ministry said 12 more persons died of SARS while 75 new infections were reported. PTI |
 |
| Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir | Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs | Nation | Editorial | | Business | Sport | World | Mailbag | Chandigarh Tribune | Ludhiana Tribune 50 years of Independence | Tercentenary Celebrations | | 123 Years of Trust | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
