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Pak court
suspends term of French scribes
Saddam
given PoW status
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Council
flays Hillary’s remarks on Gandhiji No road
map for Kashmir, says USA Jamaat-e-Islami
vows to continue support to ultras Kanishka case witness trying to stall trial Lakhani pleads not guilty in missile plot 2 Indians held for
trafficking girl
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Pak court suspends term of French scribes Islamabad, January 10 Defence lawyer Nafees Siddiqui applied for the suspension immediately after reporter Marc Epstein and photographer Jean-Paul Guilloteau of French weekly, L Express, were found guilty and sentenced. Siddiqui said he would appeal against the conviction and sentence at the provincial Sind High Court within a week, probably on Monday. Announcing the suspension, Judge Nuzhat Ara Alvi said the two still had to pay a fine of Rs 100,000 each in order to be released. The court fined the journalists and convicted them to six months’ jail today after they pleaded guilty.
— AFP |
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Saddam given PoW status Washington, January 10 “Saddam’s status is he’s an enemy prisoner of war and he’ll continue to be an enemy prisoner of war unless and until his status is determined to be otherwise,” a Pentagon official said yesterday. He said the International Committee of the Red Cross had submitted a request to visit Saddam who was captured on December 13. “He is being treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention and the convention permits that,” he said of a possible visit. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Colin Powell has said that Hussein would be “put on trial with international observers participating.” “We are treating everybody in our custody in accordance with the basic rights and expectations of international agreements that we have,” he said in an interview to CBS-TV yesterday. When asked whether there would be a high profile trial of Hussein this year in Baghdad, Mr Powell said “it is up to the Iraqi people. The Iraqi Governing Council is putting together judicial proceedings and bringing in experts who will help them develop charges against Saddam Hussein, and he will be put on trial with international observers participating.” Asked whether Hussein would be handed over to the Iraqi authorities shortly after July 1, when Iraq might regain sovereignty, Mr Powell said “that is something we will have to decide.” He said the USA wanted the “Iraqis to be full partners in this (trial), and we believe the credibility of the new Iraqi Government will be measured by how they handle this horrible dictator.” Asked whether Saddam Hussein was talking to interrogators, Mr Powell said: “He is talking. I can’t go into what he is saying or what he is not saying, but we are communicating with him.”
— PTI |
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Council flays Hillary’s remarks on Gandhiji Washington, January 10 “It is simply outrageous that Hillary Clinton used the venerable Mahatma Gandhi to perpetuate racial stereotypes,” the council’s co-chairman Mr Sudhakar Shenoy said. Hillary had joked that Mahatma Gandhi used to run a gas station in the USA, while speaking at a fund-raiser for Senate candidate Nancy Farmer. She had regretted the comments in the same speech saying Gandhi was a great leader of the 20th century. “Hillary Clinton said she was just making” a lame attempt at humour.’ This is truly shameful. I assure that the Indian American community is not laughing. Humour based on racial slurs has no place in public discourse. We call on Hillary Clinton and Nancy Farmer to apologise directly to Indian Americans,” he said. The comments demonstrated Hillary Clinton did not truly respect our heritage and culture, Mr Shenoy said. “Bill and Hillary Clinton heap lavish praise to our faces, but behind our backs, they use hurtful racial stereotypes that perpetuate ignorance and cause harm to our community,” he said. Hillary had urged Americans in her book “It Takes a Village” that adults must speak out against racial, ethnic, religious or gender slurs. “It is the height of hypocrisy for her to urge Americans to speak out against ethnic slurs, only to shamelessly make such slurs herself,” he said.
— PTI |
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No road map for Kashmir, says USA Washington, January 10 “I don’t have a roadmap to how the question of Kashmir will be resolved. I just have a great deal of more confidence now that it will be resolved peacefully and to the mutual satisfaction, both of Pakistan and India, but most importantly of all, to the people of Kashmir,” Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said in an interview to Pakistan TV yesterday. Mr Armitage praised Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for the statesmanship they had shown in moving forward towards greater dialogue between the two countries. “I think this cannot help but to be a signal to the world that there are better ways to resolve differences than through fighting.” Mr Armitage underscored the commitment by the USA to deepening bilateral relations with both countries, commenting in particular the USA had “a role to support President Musharraf in the development of social and economic vitality of Pakistan.” The Deputy Secretary offered no prescriptions for a resolution to the specific issues that divide the two countries, but noting the recent landing of an Indian airliner in Lahore, he asserted “the people-to-people links, the transportation, the rail, the economic links will be a good underpinning for what I hope will be ever stronger political links, ...as our friends in Pakistan and India try to resolve questions that have lingered, in many cases, since the time of partition in 1947.” Asked whether he agreed that Kashmir had been the central issue in relations between India and Pakistan during the past five decades, Mr Armitage said it was so from Pakistan’s point of view “I have had many discussions with Pakistani friends who talk to me about Kashmir being in the blood.” he said. But from the Indian perspective, the US official said “I think the central issue had to do with what they saw as hostility coming towards India from Pakistan.” On whether the USA could play any role in keeping the balance of power in the region, he said the conventional military superiority of India was a given fact. “It was one of the things that led to our friends in Pakistan feeling it necessary to develop a nuclear weapon. I think what we can do to best keep the military temperature low is to have very in-depth bilateral relationships with each of the two nations, but not relations which are based on the third country.”
— UNI |
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Jamaat-e-Islami
vows to continue support to ultras Islamabad, January 10 “We have supported jehadis in Afghanistan, Palestine and Kashmir, and we will continue to do so. Jehad is a reality and our support for Kashmiris will be uninterrupted,” vice-president of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Khurshid Ahmad told reporters here yesterday. Ahmad also blamed Musharraf for letting India off the hook even before the talks resumed by giving “too many concessions”.
— PTI |
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Kanishka case witness trying to stall trial Vancouver, January 10 William Laurie, a former Canadian intelligence agent, told the British Columbia Supreme Court yesterday, that the woman was refusing to tell the court what she knew because she fears that Bagri would get her and her children killed. “She is afraid for her children. She is afraid that Mr Bagri would kill them or have them killed,” Laurie told the Court hearing the Kanishka trial. The witness also indicated that she would commit suicide before she would give evidence in court, Laurie was quoted as saying by the media here. The identity of the woman, who was also a friend of Bagri is protected under a publication ban imposed by the court. Laurie told the court he interviewed the woman numerous times in the years following the Air India bombings in June 1985, also as a police officer, CBC News said. He said the witness revealed a great deal about Ajaib Singh Bagri and his role in the plot and willingly provided him with information.
— PTI |
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Lakhani pleads not guilty in missile plot New York, January 10 Lakhani (69), being held without bail since his arrest in August last year, did not speak during the 10-minute hearing and the “not guilty” plea was entered on his behalf by his lawyer Henry Klingeman as his wife Kusum watched from the public gallery. The US District Court judge in Newark in neighbouring New Jersey fixed April 26 for pretrial oral arguments in the case. Lakhani was arrested from a hotel near Newark International Airport following a sting operation by the FBI during which its agents allegedly posed as terrorists seeking missiles to shoot down commercial airliners. He is charged with procuring a missile from a Russian, who he believed was a disgruntled officer but, in fact, a government agent. The arrest came after the missile, which was a dud, had been imported to the USA. He is also alleged to have said that the best way to terrorise Americans would be to shoot down 10 to 15 commercial airliners simultaneously. Originally, Lakhani was charged with trying to sell the shoulder-fired missile to an FBI agent who, he believed, belonged to a Somali terrorist group. Later, prosecutors added several other charges, including that he offered to procure anti-aircraft guns, tanks, armoured personnel carriers and radar systems besides the “dirty bomb.” |
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2 Indians held for trafficking girl Kathmandu, January 10 They were about to cross the border from Malangawa with a 24-year-old Nepali girl when the police arrested them, the state-run Gorkhapatra daily reported. The Indians were identified as Pramod Sharma and Sunil Sharan, and Nepali woman named Kamala, the report said.
— PTI |
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Washington,
January 10
