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Bofors destroyed Rajiv’s promising career: Pitroda Chandrika dissolves Parliament Concessions on French headscarves ban CIA claims credit for Khan’s fall from grace Window on Pakistan |
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| Bollywood stars
to perform at Lahore festival Islamabad, February 7 Reflecting the spirit of the current thaw in Indo-Pak relations, a 70-member Indian film artistes’ team, led by Akshay Kumar and Shilpa Shetty, will perform in Lahore during the 15-day Basant festival to be celebrated there from next week.
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Bofors destroyed Rajiv’s promising career: Pitroda Chicago, February 7 “Rajiv, have you taken the money?” Pitroda wanted to know. “Sam, believe me, I haven’t taken a penny. Neither has my family. Obviously someone has taken the money but I don’t know who,” Gandhi said. The two men never discussed the allegations again. Seventeen years after the allegation was made, and now that the Delhi High Court has cleared his name, Pitroda says: “His response was so sincere and so direct that I believed him. In retrospect I was glad that I asked him that question. He was equally glad that I did because it gave him a chance to unburden himself on someone he considered a friend. In an interview with IANS here, Pitroda, who lives here, reminisced his days with Gandhi during the tumultuous Bofors years that began when Swedish Radio first broad cast allegations of bribery in April 1987. Q: Does the court verdict exonerating Rajiv Gandhi change your view of the time when the Bofors scandal was raging at its peak in the late 1980s? A:
It does not for the simple reason that I never quite bought the allegations. Rajiv and I had a very brief exchange one morning in October 1989 at the height of the controversy. We never talked about it after that. It was a very matter of fact exchange and both of us were glad we talked about it. There was no need for elaboration. He looked me in the eye and said ‘Sam, believe me, I have not taken a penny. Neither has my family. Obviously someone has taken the money but I don’t know who.’ We just left it at that. Q: Did he seem troubled by your question coming as it from a friend? A:
On the contrary, his response was so sincere and so direct that I believed him. In retrospect I was glad that I asked him that question. He was equally glad that I did because it gave him a chance to unburden himself on someone he considered a friend. Q: What do you think was the biggest fall-out of the unfounded allegations on Gandhi’s political career? A:
It was obvious to everyone who knew him closely that Rajiv had nothing to do with the Bofors bribes. What I feel sad about today is how such unfounded allegations destroyed perhaps modern India’s most promising political career. In any case a lot of what we did together during his leadership is paying off now, especially in the telecommunications and IT areas. We were then derided as computer boys with very little understanding of real India by the very people who are now celebrating India as an IT superpower. In a sense we had a headstart of two decades with a vision of a modern India. Unfortunately few could appreciate and understand what we were trying to accomplish with modern technology. In fact, the process we started with emphasis on indigenous development in telecom, super computer, defence, etc. gave us the base to build our human resource that is the foundation of our success today. It is one of the keys why we have 100 billion dollars in foreign exchange reserves. Q: Did he ever give you the impression of being angry at the allegations? A:
My sense was that he was more disappointed and intrigued because being essentially non-political he did not quite understand the political games being played. Q: Do you think if the allegations were proved wrong then in 1989, history would have turned out differently? A:
One can certainly speculate along those lines, but what is the point of that? The fact is that it turned out the way it did and in the process seriously undermined his political career and caused the nation a great loss. I have always believed that had he lived on he would have returned to power in 1991. He would have been wiser and more confident in his quest to build a modern prosperous India. Q: Did you ever think that Rajiv Gandhi tried to subvert the Bofors probe? A:
To tell you the truth I was not involved in those details, but I did not get any such sense. It is possible that someone overzealous at lower level might have tried to work around it. I believe the sheer force of the allegations was such that a non-political person would have difficulties in countering them. Don’t you find it strange the investigators have not been able to come up with anything damning for Rajiv despite spending so much time on this?
— IANS |
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Chandrika dissolves Parliament
Colombo, February 7 Ms Kumaratunga used her executive powers to dissolve the 225-member legislature led by Mr Wickremesinghe, brushing aside international pressure to avoid snap elections. Officials said the dismissal of Parliament would go into effect at midnight. “We have just got the gazette notification for immediate printing,” said government printer Neville Nanayakkara tasked with printing such official notifications. There was no immediate reaction from Mr Wickremesinghe’s government to the dissolution, which had been widely expected after Ms Kumaratunga last month entered into a pact with a radical Leftist party. With the sacking of the legislature, the Prime Minister and his Cabinet must assume a caretaker position with no powers to take key decisions on running the country. There had been intense pressure on Ms Kumaratunga to avoid a snap election, with India and the US urging the two squabbling leaders to end their bitter rivalry and resume peace negotiations with LTTE rebels. The Tigers had warned that the tug-of-war between the two Sinhalese leaders was undermining peace efforts and also suggested that the country could slip back to war. Ms Kumaratunga had been in an uneasy cohabitation arrangement with Mr Wickremesinghe since his party won parliamentary elections in December, 2001. — PTI
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Concessions on French headscarves ban Paris, February 7 As per the first amendment schools will now be required to hold talks aimed at resolving the dispute with any pupil flouting the law before they proceed with disciplinary measures. The other amendment calls for a review of the law after one year to see if its call for a ban on “conspicuous” symbols rather than merely “visible” ones is sufficiently clear to avoid argument. France’s opposition Socialists had asked for the two amendments in return for their support in next week’s National Assembly vote. The law, which some Muslims argue unfairly targets them, now looks set to win widespread support. Former minister Jean Glavany, who is the Socialist spokesman on the issue, welcomed the stipulation that schools should attempt to effect a compromise with pupils in case of breach of the law. “The aim of state schools is to integrate people, not to exclude them,” he told French radio on Friday. The law was debated for 22 hours over four days with 120 speakers taking the floor, including Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Education Minister Luc Ferry and leaders of all of mainstream parties of the country. Few dissenters had emerged from President Jacques Chirac’s majority UMP party against the law which is meant to ban Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses from classrooms.
— Reuters |
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CIA claims credit for Khan’s fall from grace Washington, February 7 In a speech at Georgetown University on Thursday, George Tenet, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), took credit for the fall from grace of Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist. “Khan and his network have been dealt a crushing blow and several of his senior officers are in custody. “First, we discovered the extent of Khan’s hidden network. We tagged those involves in proliferatory, we detected the network stretching across four continents offering its wares to countries like North Korea and Iran,” Mr Tenet said. He said US intelligence officials, collaborated with their British colleagues and “pieced together the picture of the network, revealing its subsidiaries, its scientists, its front companies, its agents, its finances and manufacturing plants in three continents.” Welcoming President George W. Bush’s decision to set up a commission on proliferation, he said: “We have a record and a story to tell and we want to tell it to those willing to listen.” At the White House, press secretary Scott McClellan reiterated Mr Bush’s confidence in the CIA Director. In Vienna, Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, said Dr Khan represented “the tip of an iceberg” in an illicit nuclear supply network that has connections in many countries. In an editorial on Friday, the Washington Post said Mr Bush should insist that Pakistan supplied the details of its trafficking to the IAEA and allow outside monitoring of its programmes. “Stopping nuclear proliferation by Pakistan is vital to the US security. It cannot be left to Mr Musharraf to decide how or whether it will be done.” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, meanwhile, commended the Pakistan government’s efforts to “end the activities of a dangerous network that had already done much damage.” |
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Window on Pakistan Nuclear sales to Iran, Libya and N. Korea by Pakistan are no secrets. These are perhaps the toughest tests for Pakistani rulers. The pressure from the West, the domestic upheaval and the concerns of Pakistan’s own security make this an intricate task. President Musharraf has, perhaps done his best to extricate himself, army and the nuclear scientists. For
him, it is indeed a densely clogged web of domestic, regional and international hotwires. President Musharraf’s worst critic Shaheen Sabhai of the South Asian Tribune advised, “Musharraf to come clean on this issue with a mature and dignified position, putting the facts straight, admitting that the State knew what was going on but had to look the other way as the country needed a nuclear capability, by hook or by crook. Every other country has done that, so what is wrong in admitting that Pakistan too had used the black market. Has not India done it, or did the US not send enriched uranium to Iran, or were the Germans and French not supplying nuclear parts to Israel, South Africa and everybody who wanted them. What did Israel do to a whistle blower in Europe?” Ayaz Amir writing in Dawn questioned, “After Khan’s confession it would have been natural if he were denounced for betraying the nation’s trust. But public reaction (read the papers) is altogether different: that by accepting blame Khan has done the nation one more service. Judging from this, my guess is the whole confession affair will be taken as the Pakistani version of the Hutton Report - whitewashing the guardians and making a sacrificial lamb of Khan. Sacrificing Khan is a small price to pay if it saves Pakistan’s nuke capability. But do we really take the Yanks to be so dumb? Will they take Khan’s confession at face value that he was the lone ranger of proliferation?” Amir made a telling point when he wrote, “In the register of nuclear crimes, the one unpardonable sin is proliferation, and Pakistan, Khan or no Khan, stands accused of that. Khan’s confession can be played on TV a thousand times but sceptics will still ask whether he could have proliferated without official support or connivance.” Daily Nation in its editorial warned, “Islamabad has under the circumstances little cause to feel reassured by Dr A.Q. Khan accepting total responsibility. Many fear that in days to come the admission of oversight and intelligence failure along with Dr Khan’s confession might be used to build up a case against Pakistan’s nuclear programme.” |
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Bollywood stars to perform at Lahore festival Islamabad, February 7 Considered to be the largest Indian cine artistes’ show in Pakistan in recent times, the Bollywood stars will arrive at the Royal Palm Golf Club in Lahore along with top singers and artistes to perform at the Concord-2002 India-Pak show on February 12, club director Pervez Qureshi said. Those participating in the show include Jatin-Lalit, Shaan and Sunidhi Chouhan, he said, adding that it would be an exclusive show by Indian stars and the tickets were priced as high as Rs 8,000.
— PTI |
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The American intelligence community was aware of Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation activities well before Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan’s recent confession.
In a speech at Georgetown University on Thursday, George Tenet, Director
of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), took credit for the fall from
grace of Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist.
In 1989, at the height of the gun bribery scandal involving Sweden’s Bofors firm, former Indian premier Rajiv Gandhi was asked a direct but matter-of-fact question by his most trusted adviser Sam Pitroda.