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Saturday,
June 28, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Pervez: no
danger to democracy in Pak No
Iraq-Al-Qaida link: UN panel
USA okays
sale of Phalcons to India Rice
threatens unilateral action Wayne
Shorter sweeps Jazz awards NASA
plane crashes |
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Martian
north has more ice than south Three
Tibetan activists held
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Pervez: no danger to democracy in Pak Washington, June 27 “The government had a simple majority and the business of government was being carried out. Therefore, to contemplate any drastic action, is unwarranted,” he told reporters here. General Musharraf said the government had passed the national budget, laws were being enacted, though any amendment to the constitution was not possible due to lack of a two-thirds majority. “Ideal position could have been one in which there was a two-thirds majority, new ideas emerge and legislation to the extent of amendments were possible. He, however, said the system was very much functional as the business of the government was being conducted in a democratic manner and there was no threat to the system. Ruling out relinquishing power in the face of opposition against his
constitutional amendments, he said “I know the people of Pakistan want me to continue as the President of Pakistan. I have a firm grip on the nation’s affairs”. Stating that “functional democracy is not easy to implement in Pakistan,” he said “there are anti-democratic forces waiting to take advantage of the democratic process to undo the reforms and restructuring my government has introduced in the last two years.” These forces want to “foist their narrow agendas upon the masses without their knowledge and consent and I will not let that happen,” Dawn quoted him as saying.
— PTI |
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Parties
flay Pervez on troops to Iraq Islamabad, June 27 General Musharraf, during this week’s visit to the USA, reiterated an earlier statement that he supported “in principle” sending Pakistani troops to join a post-war peacekeeping force, provided it was under the auspices of the United Nations, the Organisation of Islamic Conference or the Gulf Cooperation Council.
— AFP |
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No Iraq-Al-Qaida link: UN panel United Nations, June 27 The committee, charged with reporting on Al-Qaida and remnants of Afghanistan’s Taliban, yesterday released a 42-page report on the state of international terrorism following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. “Nothing has come to our notice that would indicate links between Iraq and Al-Qaida,” said Michael Chandler, one of five outside experts who prepared the report for the committee. “That doesn’t mean to say it doesn’t exist. But from what we’ve seen the answer is ‘no,’” he told a news conference. Chandler said the first he had heard of any links was during a presentation to the Security Council in February by US Secretary of State Colin Powell. Then Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s purported links to Al-Qaida was one reason used by the Bush administration to justify the March invasion of Iraq. Another member of the investigating panel, Abaza Hassan, said: “It had never come to our knowledge before Powell’s speech. We never received any information from the United States for us to even follow up on.” Powell said Saddam’s government had allowed a senior Al-Qaida operative, identified as Abu Musab Zarqawi, an alleged associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden, to operate in Baghdad for months. — Reuters |
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USA okays sale of Phalcons to India Washington, June 27 Recent developments in South Asia have reduced tension between India and Pakistan and thus the acquisition of this system by India no longer poses a threat to regional stability, The Space Daily report said quoting State Department officials as saying. The USA had in the last week of May given the green signal to Israel for the sale of Phalcon airborne radar systems to Indian Airforce without any conditions or limitations. Clearing the long-pending deal, Washington had withdrawn all objections and given Israeli Defence Ministry the green signal for the deal that the USA had earlier asked Israel to freeze in view of tense standoff between India and Pakistan. Washington had earlier pressurised Israel into cancelling a similar signed deal with China in 2000 for the same weapons systems sparking a diplomatic crisis with Beijing. The US had in principle supported the sale to India about a year and half ago. However, in early 2002, Washington asked Israel to postpone the sale because of rising tension between India and Pakistan and the deal had since been frozen, waiting for the US approval.
— PTI |
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Rice threatens unilateral action London, June 27 “If we do not want a ‘Made in America’ solution, let’s find out how to resolve the issues of North Korea and Iran,’’ the US National Security Adviser told an IISS conference yesterday, in remarks reported in today’s Daily Telegraph. “We do not ever want to have to deal with the proliferation issue as we did in Iraq,’’ she said, indicating that the USA was not seeking military conflict. Rice accused Iran of seeking secretly to build nuclear weapons, and she insisted that North Korea would not be allowed to “blackmail’’ the world with threats to resume its nuclear programme. Rice said the USA sought international cooperation to resolve these problems, but she did rule out military action. “The avoidance of war is not in itself a final goal. Sometimes one has to fight wars to deal with tyrants,’’ she said. Iran’s programme was best dealt with by convincing the nation to agree to intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and North Korea was best addressed by regional powers exerting pressure, she said. The Telegraph reported that Rice had delivered a thinly-veiled attack on French President Jacques Chirac and his aims of a “multi-polar’’ world in which Europe acts as a counter-weight to the USA. She described the notion of competing poles as a destructive throw-back to European rivalry in the 19th century.
— DPA |
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Wayne Shorter sweeps Jazz awards New York, June 27 Shorter, who rose to prominence as a composer and saxophonist in Miles Davis’ 1960s quintet and later co-founded the electric jazz fusion band Weather Report, was voted tenor saxophonist and musician of the year. Shorter’s quartet — with pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade — was selected combo of the year. The album of the year honours went to “Footprints” (Verve), which was Shorter’s first live recording as a leader and featured the quartet reinventing some of his best-known compositions spanning his career. Also receiving multiple awards were Dave Holland for acoustic bass and big band, and Village Voice critic Gary Giddins, honoured as jazz writer of the year and with the Jazz Journalism Lifetime Achievement Award. Other award winners included Alyn Shipton of BBC Radio 3 (Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Broadcasting), Regina Carter (strings player), Russell Malone (guitarist), Kenny Barron (pianist), Da ve Douglas (trumpeter), Cassandra Wilson (female vocalist) and Andy Bey (male vocalist).
— AP |
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NASA plane crashes Washington, June 27 The plane was destroyed but there were no reports of injuries or other damage, NASA said yesterday. The Helios Prototype aircraft, a robotic solar-electric propeller-driven flying wing meant to operate at extremely high altitude, crashed while on a test flight from the US Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility. The Helios came down within the confines of the missile range over the Pacific Ocean west of Kauai. The mishap occurred during a mission to prepare for a long-endurance flight of almost two days that had been planned for July.
— Reuters |
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Martian
north has more ice than south Washington, June 27 The northern ice lies just below the Red Planet’s surface, according to Bill Boynton of the University of Arizona, part of a team of US and Russian scientists who made the discovery. What they actually detected was hydrogen, which combines with oxygen to form water, but they spotted so much hydrogen that it could not have been anything else, Boynton said in a telephone interview yesterday. “There’s just so much of it (hydrogen), it can’t be present in any other form,’’ Boynton said. He explained that small amounts of water are normally present in rocks and soil on the earth, but on the Mars’ north pole, “we’re seeing amounts that are of the order of 80 to 90 per cent ice by volume.’’ The ice is uniformly distributed throughout the martian soil, he said. “What we think ... is you could go almost anywhere in these high northern latitudes and dig down several inches (cm) to a foot or so and find ice there for you,’’ Boynton said. This is good news for those who believe life might have been present on the Mars in the past, since liquid water is a prerequisite for the development of earth-type life. If the Mars was warm and wet at some point, as many astronomers think, the current wide distribution of ice would indicate a large region where water might have been capable of supporting life. The US-Russian team, whose findings were published in the journal Science, used data from the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey, two NASA vehicles orbiting the Mars. The Mars Odyssey was first to find evidence of subsurface ice around the martian south pole about a year ago. The scientists found about one-third more ice in the northern polar region than in the south.
— Reuters |
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Three Tibetan activists held Beijing, June 27 The arrests come amid tighter curbs ahead of the July 6 birthday of Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, the report said, quoting unidentified sources. The trio, arrested on June 16, were
identified as Lhasa city Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference member Yeshi Gyatso and two third-year students at Tibet University, Dawa Tashi and Buchung. According to the report, they are accused of involvement in “activities to split the motherland”.
— AFP |
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Washington,
June 27
