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Tuesday,
June 3, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Bush,
Chirac, Schroeder chat amiably
WMDs: CIA
to submit proof soon Protesters
loot petrol stations, shops
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| Lanka PM
writes to LTTE Colombo, June 2 In a bid to break the present impasse in the 16-month-long peace process and persuade the Tamil Tiger rebels to participate in the crucial Tokyo donor conference, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe sent a “detailed response” to the LTTE leadership explaining the full scope of his proposal for a “development-oriented mechanism’’ which was rejected by the LTTE as “unacceptable’’.
Students and opposition members shout slogans during a protest in Kathmandu
on Monday.
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Bush,
Chirac, Schroeder chat amiably
Evian (France), June 2 It was a casual scene for the leaders of the Group of Eight industrial nations on the terrace outside the Royal Park Evian resort in France, with a superb view of Lake Geneva, before they convened their morning session. Mr Chirac walked outside the hotel followed by Mr Schroeder, who was talking on a mobile phone. Mr Schroeder handed the phone to Mr Chirac, who spoke to whoever it was. A few moments later Mr Bush emerged and Mr Chirac and Mr Schroeder put the phone away. There were plenty of smiles as they chatted amiably on the terrace, just the three of them, for a couple of minutes. At one moment when Mr Bush was talking to Mr Schroeder, the German leader could be heard laughing out loud. Mr Bush then walked away to talk to Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, also a vocal opponent of the US-led war on Iraq. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi came outside, as did Russian President Vladimir Putin and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and the leaders chatted among themselves in several changing groups.
Reuters |
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WMDs: CIA to submit proof soon
New York, June 2 After despatching dozens of GI patrols to some 200 suspected weapons of mass destruction sites in Iraq over the past few months, only to come up empty handed, the Pentagon announced last week that ‘it would shift from hunting for the banned weapons to hunting for documents and people who might be able to say where the banned weapons are — or were’. But the Time news magazine says it is clear that the US is running out of good leads. “We’ve been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad,” Lieut-Gen James Conway, commander of the Marine Expeditionary Force, was quoted as saying. “But they’re simply not there,” he added. The magazine says several current and former military officers who saw all relevant data through this spring charge that the Pentagon took the raw data from the CIA and consistently over-interpreted the threat posed by Iraq’s stockpiles. SYDNEY: Australia’s Defence Minister conceded on Monday that intelligence reports suggesting Baghdad possessed weapons of mass destruction, the primary reason used to justify the invasion of Iraq, may have been flawed. Defence Minister Robert Hill told The Sydney Morning Herald that the Australian Government did not have any corroborating evidence of its own to justify its claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
AFP |
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Protesters loot petrol stations, shops
Geneva, June 2 For more than nine hours, the police used rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons against several thousand demonstrators who rampaged through the Swiss city of Geneva, turning its elegant streets into a sea of glass and leaving the air heavy with acrid fumes. The Swiss police raided a youth cultural centre which acted as a base for the protesters, while the German police — brought in to bolster the Swiss — made repeated baton charges. The protesters looted petrol stations, pharmacies and other shops, leaving downtown Geneva in chaos and its self-described status as a “city of peace” in tatters. Only a handful of stores were left intact — mainly those which had anti-G-8 or anti-war banners on the windows. Even the bulletproof windows of big banks were smashed. The violence erupted at the end of two authorised marches by anti-globalisation protesters against the G-8 meeting.
AP |
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Lanka PM writes to LTTE
Colombo, June 2 Official sources here said the Prime Minister had forwarded his response addressed to the LTTE leadership late last night with a covering letter to Norwegian Foreign Minister Jan Peterson, after a discussion with his key negotiators G.L. Peiris and Milinda Moragoda and other senior Cabinet ministers and officials involved in the peace-making process. The sources said Wickremesinghe had called upon the LTTE leadership to make use of the good offices of the Norwegian facilitators to clarify or resolve issues, if any, with regard to his government’s offer of greater financial authority for the North-East with the greater participation of the rebels for effective implementation of rehabilitation and reconstruction in the war-ravaged region.
UNI |
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Row over new leader: Nepal faces protests Kathmandu, June 2 “We want the king to appoint our nominee in place of Lokendra Bahadur Chand,” said Subash Chandra Nemwang of the Communist Unified Marxist- Leninist (UML) Party, one of the five parties leading the protest. “We hope it will be the biggest protest today.” Organisers expect to bring tens of thousands of people onto the streets across the country.
Reuters |
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