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3 US troops among 13 killed in bomb attacks
Japan House okays sending of troops |
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Clash of views at World Punjabi Congress Europe Sikhs hold protest Gilligan quits BBC 11 elderly persons killed in
UK fire |
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Window on Pakistan Pak to observe Kashmir Day Clemency plea of killer rejected
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3 US troops among 13 killed in bomb attacks Baghdad, January 31 The American soldiers were travelling in a convoy that was attacked by a homemade bomb, some 45 km southwest of Kirkuk, at 12.45 pm, a US military spokesperson said. The deaths pushed to 249 the number of US combat fatalities in Iraq since US President George W. Bush declared an end to major hostilities on May 1. In Mosul, a powerful suicide car bomb tore the front of a police station killing nine persons and wounding 45, hospital officials and police said. “Nine persons were killed, including two policemen and seven civilians, and 45 wounded,” said head of the emergency room at the Mosul hospital Najem Abdullah Shuaib. He said four of the wounded, including some policemen, were in a serious condition. A chunk of the front of the police station was engulfed in flames and two rooms on the ground floor totally destroyed. Cement blocks placed to protect the police station crashed onto a car. An Iraqi Turkmen party official was also shot dead and another wounded in an attack near Kirkuk, a police official said. — AFP |
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Japan House okays sending of troops Tokyo, January 31 The issue has sharply divided Japanese public opinion and sparked demonstrations. Many critics say the mission violates Japan’s pacifist constitution. Disgruntled members of the Opposition boycotted the vote while several senior ruling party legislators walked out or did not attend the session. Parliament’s Upper House was expected to endorse the controversial dispatch next week, ruling party officials said. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s ruling coalition majority ensures Parliament will eventually approve the dispatch, which it has to do within 20 days of the order being issued. The order was given last Monday. A group of about 80 troops is expected to leave Japan next week for Samawa in southern Iraq, the first main army contingent in a mission expected to involve up to 1,000 military personnel in humanitarian and reconstruction efforts. An advance team of about 30 soldiers is already in Samawa, chosen as a base because it was considered relatively safe and about 150 Air Force personnel are in Kuwait to haul food and medicine to Iraq from Kuwait. Late yesterday, the ruling coalition rammed the issue through a Lower House committee despite some vociferous Opposition and stalling tactics. Mr Koizumi criticised the Opposition for boycotting the midnight plenary session of the Lower House. “I can’t understand why they refused to discuss”, Mr Koizumi told reporters after the vote. But there are differences of opinion within Mr Koizumi’s party too. Three senior members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party abstained. “It is not an appropriate policy decision to dispatch,” Mr Koichi Kato, a former Defence Minister, told reporters after walking out of the session. — Reuters |
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Clash of views at World Punjabi Congress Lahore, January 31 While Capt Amarinder Singh used the opportunity to blame Britain for dividing Punjab through its politics, Elahi countered it by saying that though Pakistani and Indian Punjabis shared the same language, yet nothing could be handed down or handled as a surrogate in one’s own homeland. Though the climate and culture of both Pakistan and Indian Punjab was uniform, yet “there is no alternative to one’s own country,” Elahi said. From the positive point of view, however, Capt Amarinder Singh said nothing could divide Punjabi culture, the way of living, language and love. “If we have to promote Punjabi language, we will have to arrange for the teaching of the Punjabi language at the primary level in Pakistan like in India. We should allow students on both sides to visit each other’s country for three months so that they could forge love and amity among themselves,” Capt Amarinder Singh was quoted as saying by Online News on Friday. On the occasion, he also announced the setting up of a Punjabi Centre in Patiala where he would hire the services of Pakistani Punjabi scholars and writers. The centre would initially receive a monetary grant of Rs 2 crore from his government, he said. About the possibility of holding a Punjabi Youth festival, he said he would talk to Chief Minister Elahi about it. He said he was in favour of holding such a festival in Lahore and Amritsar annually. Acknowledging the efforts mounted in Indian Punjab for promotion of the language, Elahi said such efforts were missing in Pakistan. He said his government had sent out teams throughout the Punjab province and was astounded to discover that the work for preservation of their provincial languages had been going on for the past 50 years. After the findings of the delegation, he said, “we also initiated work for promotion of Punjabi language.” He announced a grant of Rs 2.5 million for the establishment of an institute to preserve and promote Punjabi as a language. This institute would also have a museum that would showcase Punjabi history, culture, language and arts.
—ANI |
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Europe Sikhs hold protest Paris, January 31 Waving French flags and chanting ‘’live and let live’’, about 3,000 Sikhs turned out to call for turbans to be exempted from the ban due to outlaw symbols such as Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses in the public schools. Sikhs came from Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States and Canada. An Indian MP, Mr Simranjit Singh Mann also joined the protest.
— Reuters |
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Gilligan quits BBC London, January 31 In a statement issued last night, 35-year-old Gilligan conceded that some of his story on the government’s Iraq dossier was wrong. “I again apologise for it. My departure is at my own initiative. But the BBC collectively has been the victim of a grave injustice”. Gilligan said he had not been forced to resign, but was quitting to protect the institution he “loved.” In a lengthy statement, he said “I love the BBC and I am resigning because I want to protect it. I accept my part in the crisis which has befallen the organisation. But a greater part has been played by the unbalanced judgments of Lord Hutton. “If Lord Hutton had fairly considered the evidence he heard, he would have concluded that most of my story was right.” He said the broadcaster’s punishment was “far out of proportion to its mistakes or my mistakes, which were honest ones,” adding Lord Hutton’s report “casts a chill over all journalism, not just the BBC’s. “It seeks to hold reporters, with all the difficulties they face, to a standard that it does not appear to demand of, for instance, government dossiers.”
— PTI |
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11 elderly persons killed in
UK fire
London, January 31 More than 40 fire-fighters extinguished the blaze and a spokesman for fire brigade said at least 11 elderly persons might have died in the blaze. Alan Forbes of Strathclyde Fire Brigade said at least 40 persons were in the home when the fire broke out in the early hours in one wing. “The fire was well alight when the fire-fighters arrived,” he said. “Fire crews were at the scene within five minutes of the alarm being raised. But most of the casualties were owing to suffocation.” The
two-storeyed, 43-bed Rosepark Nursing Home opened in 1992 in New Edinburgh Road,
Uddingston. A spokesman for the North Lanarkshire Council, which registers the home, said it was owned privately.
— PTI |
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WINDOW ON PAKISTAN PAKISTAN, as father of its nuclear bomb Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had once vowed, has indeed eaten grass and yet produced a nuclear bomb. All this, as rulers
claim, was in response to India's launching its nuclear programme in1974. But, in the process, its wily scientists were said to be sharing the knowledge about nuclear weapons and helping two countries, Iran and Libya, with material. North Korea is also being mentioned. These charges have put the Pakistan government under a scanner and mounting pressure from the West has forced the Musharraf regime to question its scientists, including the father figure of nuclear programme, Dr Abdul Kadir Khan. They were taken away from their homes in the dead of the night and held at the ISI headquarters for questioning. This has indeed struck hard at the already divided public opinion. Not long back, the scientists and engineers, along with those from the military, were the heroes and decorated for their achievement that made Pakistan safe from any military attack. The government is finding it hard to defend its action. This has, as Dawn and Daily Times reported, made President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Mir Zaffarullah Khan Jamali speak up. Musharraf in faraway Devos declared that Pakistan had not and would never proliferate nuclear weapons. “Let me assure you, Pakistan is an extremely responsible state. All strategic assets are under total custodial
control. The Pakistan government has never and will never proliferate.” Dawn, in its editorial on January 31, asked the government to come clean on it. If Dr Khan is not involved the government should state so. It accused the government of deliberate confusion and insulting the scientists .A similar position was taken by Nation and the News. As per the two newspapers, Musharraf assured that investigations were being carried out whether somebody did something wrong for personal gains . He said anyone found guilty would be treated as an “anti-state element”. Newspapers have taken an exception to the direct involvement of the FBI into the investigation. In Quetta, Jamali stated, “Nuclear scientists are being debriefed in the larger interest of Pakistan and there should be no doubt in this regard. Let the government do its job and nobody must challenge its jurisdiction. We are doing everything in the interest of the country.” But former Prime Minister and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Chairman Nawaz Sharif condemned the detention of the nuclear scientists and directed party leaders to proceed with a lawsuit to provide legal protection to the “national heroes”. "The scientists have strengthened the defence of Pakistan and nobody should be allowed to humiliate
them" he said. This case this week has moved to Lahore High Court. Ayaz Amir, writing in Dawn, argued, “Needless to say, proliferation is a serious charge and calls for the strictest investigation. 'Rogue' scientists peddling nuclear secrets and freelance terrorists carrying small nukes in briefcases (and then one of the briefcases being taken to Times Square, New York) represent the worst nightmare that can haunt the Western mind. No one will tolerate proliferators and if there are any in Pakistan’s nuclear community they should be smoked out and given their just desserts.” But then as Amir put it, “ This matter should have been handled with the utmost care and secrecy, with Pakistanis reporting to Pakistanis and not to inspectors or monitors of any third country. And we should have had the good sense and the guts to draw a line somewhere. We have done America’s bidding for small wages. We have changed tracks and done the most amazing somersaults (even if some of those somersaults were good for us) at the sound of a single telephone call. Our support continues to be crucial as the US tries to pacify Afghanistan. We are not Iran or Libya. We are America’s leading foot soldiers in George Bush’s war against God knows what or whom.” Amir feared, “The question arises: now that Pakistan’s nuclear programme stands demystified, its halo stripped away and its secrecy seriously compromised, will the Americans stop here? Or pressing home their advantage and capitalising on Pakistani weakness, will they insist on a regime of inspections and monitoring that will effectively check Pakistan’s nuclear capability in its tracks?” |
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Pak to observe Kashmir Day Islamabad, January 31 Kashmir Solidarity Day would be observed on February 5 all over the country and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), Federal Minister for Kashmir Affairs, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, said. The day would be observed as official holiday and the government would organise special programmes to highlight the Kashmir issue, he said. Sherpao said President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali would address the joint sitting of Kashmir Legislative Assembly and Kashmir Council at PoK on the occasion.
— PTI |
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Clemency plea of killer rejected San Francisco, January 31 This opens the way for the state’s first execution in two years on February 10. Kevin Cooper hacked two adults and two children to death after escaping from prison in 1983. Cooper was sentenced to death in 1985 and is now in San Quentin prison, north of San Francisco. Another child was badly wounded but escaped alive. Now an adult, the man, Joshua Ryen, favours Cooper’s execution. “The state and federal courts have reviewed this case for more than 18 years,” Schwarzenegger said yesterday. —
Reuters |
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