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Saturday,
May 31, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Role in Asia-Pacific crucial: USA
We did not invent proof, says indignant Blair |
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LTTE rejects move to resume talks
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Masood Azhar stopped from addressing conference Pak sets deadline to shut camps NO TOBACCO DAY
Asia to woo back tourists Powder thrown at Iran’s Embassy, employee ill
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Role in Asia-Pacific crucial: USA Singapore, May 30 The assurance came at the start of Asia’s biggest gathering of defence ministers and military chiefs, attended by delegates from more than 20 countries. The USA “is committed to security and stability in this important part of the world”, said Wolfowitz, a prominent hawk in the George W. Bush administration. “It’s particularly important to the future of our country.” While acknowledging that the USA is in the process of taking a fundamental look at the country’s military posture worldwide, Wolfowitz said a Los Angeles Times report suggesting a plan was under consideration to take troops out of Okinawa and shift them to Singapore, the Philippines or Australia was “simply wrong”. “We’re facing a very different threat than the one we have faced historically,” Wolfowitz told reporters on the sidelines of the Asia Security Conference. “Our forces have very different kinds of capabilities.” Prior to a bilateral meeting with his Indonesian counterpart, Wolfowitz said his impression from talking with Indonesia’s Ambassador to the USA earlier was the effects of the US-led war on Iraq “have been much less than people feared”. “As these mass graves are uncovered in Iraq, I think it is increasingly clear to everybody, the Muslims particularly, that this horrible regime in Iraq was one that abused the Muslims perhaps worse than any other government in the world.” “There is an opportunity now to work together and we welcome help from any direction,” he said. Wolfowitz will speak to the conference about US strategy in the Asia-Pacific tomorrow before heading to South Korea and Japan, wrapping up his five-day trip.
DPA |
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We did not invent proof, says indignant Blair Warsaw, May 30 “The idea that we authorised or made our intelligence agencies invent some piece of evidence is completely absurd,” a visibly indignant Mr Blair said in Poland. “Saddam’s history of weapons of mass destruction is not some invention of the British security services.” Widespread international cynicism about the British and US justification for war was stoked this week by a BBC report that an intelligence dossier had been altered on the request of Mr Blair’s office to make it “sexier” by adding that Saddam’s weapons could be readied for use within 45 minutes. The controversy has also been fuelled by comments from the two top US defence officials that the US decision to stress the weapons’ threat was taken for “bureaucratic” reasons and that Iraq may have anyway destroyed these before the war. No chemical or biological weapon has been found in Iraq, despite repeated assertions by Mr Blair and the President of the USA, Mr George W. Bush, before the March 20 invasion that the threat posed by Saddam’s stocks warranted a war to eliminate these. Mr Blair, in comments dominating a news conference with the Polish premier, Mr Leszek Miller, said he had no doubt of Saddam’s weapons. “The evidence that we had of weapons of mass destruction was evidence drawn up and accepted by the Joint Intelligence Committee,” he said. The British leader said there was well-documented UN evidence of Saddam’s weapons programmes and fresh evidence should soon be uncovered if people showed a bit of “patience”. Mr Blair said new probes of alleged sites had only just begun. Washington: President George W. Bush has stuck to his insistence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the US-led invasion. “We discovered weapons manufacturing facilities that were condemned by the United Nations,” Mr Bush told reporters in a special interview yesterday, prior to leaving today on a tour of Europe and the West Asia. “Biological laboratories described by our secretary of state to the whole world that were not supposed to be there, that are a direct violation of the UN resolutions, have been discovered.” The US administration used the threat of Iraq’s weapons programmes to justify the invasion of Iraq. The administration has, however, cited two specially equipped tractor-trailer rigs seized in Iraq as evidence that the Saddam regime had been making the banned weapons. “The president is indeed satisfied with the intelligence that he received,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters, citing the discovery of the two mobile laboratories that could potentially be used to produce chemical or biological weapons. Meanwhile, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has denied that the USA invaded Iraq under a “false pretext”.
Reuters, AFP |
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LTTE rejects move to resume talks Colombo, May 30 The LTTE in a statement criticised the government for not specifying the extent of the rebels’ involvement and for rejecting the group’s proposal of a powerful interim administration. “The leadership of the LTTE has rejected the new set of proposals submitted by the government instituting a development structure for the rehabilitation and development of the north-east,” the LTTE said. The LTTE pulled out of the Oslo-brokered talks in April citing the government’s laxity in implementing decisions taken during six months of negotiations, particularly in the reconstruction of war-hit areas and rehabilitation of the displaced. In a bid to prod them to resume talks, the government earlier this week offered a compromise solution of an administrative body which would oversee development and investment in the island’s disputed north and east. The LTTE, however, said in response: “The proposed new structure for rehabilitation and development will turn out to be a new apex bureaucracy administratively linked to other defunct state agencies.”
PTI |
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Masood Azhar stopped from addressing conference Peshawar, May 30 It is the second time in less than a month that the authorities have restricted the movements of Maulana Masood Azhar, who headed the now banned Jaish-e-Mohammad organisation of Islamic guerrillas operating in Jammu and Kashmir. The bar comes amid stepped-up pressure on Islamabad to take tougher action against militant groups in Kashmir to prove its commitment to peaceful dialogue with New Delhi. Unlike Azhar, Lashkar-e-Toiba chief Hafiz Saeed has been conducting a high-profile lecture tour across Pakistan, addressing rallies and urging the continuation of jehad in Jammu and Kashmir. Saeed was allowed to address a rally in the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) earlier in May, where he lambasted efforts at dialogue with India. On the same day, the Pakistani authorities barred Azhar from entering PoK to address a separate rally. Azhar was today scheduled to address a conference in the North-West Frontier Province capital Peshawar, organised by a Muslim group called Khudamul Islam. The police says the group is a new version of Jaish. After he was barred from speaking, Azhar delivered a sermon during Friday prayers at a mosque.
AFP |
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Pak sets deadline to shut camps Islamabad, May 30 Though there is no official word from the government on tomorrow’s deadline, highly placed sources in the ruling Muslim Conference which headed the government in PoK said the government was “firm” in its resolve not to allow militant groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad and other splinter groups to operate from PoK. “They have been told that they would not be allowed to operate,” they said. While some of the militant groups operated from PoK, capital Muzafarabad has been informing the media during the past few days that they were under pressure to wind up their camps, Pakistan news agency SANA reported today that militants outfits had been ordered to shut their camps by tomorrow. The report also said the militant groups vowed not to follow the orders. The crackdown was aimed at preparing the ground for the forthcoming India-Pakistan peace talks, the report said. India along with the USA has been insisting that Pakistan close all militant camps and destroy the infrastructure before New Delhi and Islamabad begin talks to normalise relations and to resolve differences on various outstanding issues, including Kashmir.
PTI |
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NO TOBACCO DAY New York, May 30 “No Tobacco Day” demonstrations in Mumbai, the world’s biggest film and fashion capital, and Hollywood, the US movie capital, will highlight how the two industries are used to promote tobacco, the UN agency said. “We know that young people who see more tobacco use on the screen are much more likely to try smoking. Hollywood knows it and the tobacco companies know it. The time has come to put an end to it,” said Derek Yach, Executive Director of WHO’s Non-communicable Diseases and Mental Health section. The appeal to the two industries comes a week after the WHO’s 192-member states adopted the first global treaty calling for measures to reduce tobacco use. The WHO said the “No Tobacco Day” this year would focus on the role of the fashion and film industries in fostering a worldwide epidemic.
PTI |
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Indian-American new spelling champion Washington, May 30 Sai Gunturi, an eighth grader from Dallas, Texas, was among the 251 finalists out of 10 million US students in the 76th Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee yesterday. “Actually, I started studying in fourth grade and then I guess it’s kind of like cumulative study all the way up to here,” said Sai Gunturi after surviving the 15-round contest by spelling such words as “rhathymia”, “dipnoous” and “voussoir”. For Sai Gunturi who participated in the competiton for the fourth time had tied for a second place last year, 16th place in 2001 and 32nd place in 2000. His sister had also tied for eighth place in 1997. Son of a chemical engineer, he also plays violin and studies Indian classical music.
PTI |
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Asia to woo back tourists Singapore, May 30 ‘’While most of the markets are still well below pre-SARS levels, bookings by travellers from Asia to Europe and Asia to the Middle East have nearly returned to pre-SARS levels,’’ said ABACUS International in a statement.“The latter has as much to do with the end of the war in Iraq as it does with SARS.’’
Reuters |
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Powder thrown at Iran’s Embassy, employee ill Oslo, May 30 The unidentified attackers also set fire to a car parked near the Embassy in central Oslo, but their motive was not immediately clear. Norway is on a list of targets announced by the Al-Qaida network and has oil ties with Iran. “The (employee) who was sleeping there...is having a hard time breathing — he is at the hospital,” an official said.
Reuters |
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