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Seoul snubs demand
of kidnappers
Spy scandal to hit India-US ties, say analysts Indian commits suicide
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Sikhs in panic over shooting WINDOW ON PAKISTAN
Diana’s butler tells story in one-man show
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Seoul snubs demand
of kidnappers Baghdad, June 21 In London, oil prices fell, as southern Iraq readied to resume exports after a sabotage attack last week, but the president of the OPEC said the “Iraq problem” may stop world oil prices falling from their current highs over the long term. Months of hostage-taking showed no sign of easing, as a 33-year-old South Korean and reportedly 10 other foreigners were abducted last Thursday near the restive city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad. South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon called on Islamic militants to release Arabic translator, Kim, Sun-II, immediately and unconditionally, and pledged to push, ahead with plans to send the troops to the war-ravaged country. “We are very much disturbed and shocked at the news of the kidnapping of a Korean national. We do not understand why this has happens,” he said. Militants threatened on Sunday to behead her in 24 hours, unless South Korean plan to send 3,000 troops to Iraq is scrapped. Several other people, including third-country employees of US company KBR, part of the Halliburton group, were abducted along with Kim, the Yonhap news agency quoted the head of the South Korean company Kim worked for, as saying. Back home, Kin’s tearful mother, 63-year-old Shin Young-Ja begged the kidnappers to spare her only son’s life. “Please save our son, no matter what it takes,” she pleaded after watching televised footage of the terrified Kim flanked by three masked militants. In the video, Kim pleaded in English, “Korean soldiers, get out of here. I don’t want do die. I don’t want to die. Meanwhile, pre-trial hearings for three US soldiers, charged with abuse, such as stamping on Iraqi detainees and forcing them to simulate sexual acts at the Abu Ghraib prison, opened in Baghdad. A military judge said the defence team of one US soldier will be allowed to interview the head of US-led forces in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, and ordered that Abu Ghraib should remain open. The testimony is likely to fan speculation that US commanders were aware of the abuse charges before January, when an Abu Ghraib guard alerted the Army’s criminal intelligence department to the abuses at the prison.
— AFP |
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Spy scandal to hit India-US ties, say analysts
Washington, June 21 The strains in the strategic alliance could mean that US access to vital Indian intelligence on Islamist militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan could be limited, analysts at Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor) said. Stratfor said its sources within the Indian intelligence community had confirmed that Rabinder Singh, joint secretary in India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), defected to the United States, sometime between May 14 and early June, after being exposed as a CIA spy, Singh, who fled India a day before his scheduled arrest, travelled through Nepal and entered the States on a US passport. Earring its intelligence has been significantly penetrated by the CIA and Israel’s Mossad, the Indian Government is conducting a broad investigation that will cause a major shake-up in the Indian intelligence community, they said. Stratfor pointed out that although the Rabinder Singh case had been widely reported by the Indian media, the government has been denying that the defection occurred. “Washington, meanwhile, is mum or matter, and the US media have ignored the case.” The Indian Government believes this Rabinder Singh case is only the tip of the iceberg in what is likely to be a significant infiltration by the CIA and Israel’s Mossad of its three intelligence branches; RAW, the Intelligence Bureau and the Defence Intelligence Agency, Strator asserted quoting sources in the Indian Prime Minister’s Office.
— UNI |
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Indian commits suicide Dubai, June 21 Karnatakas Srinivas Ravi Kumar, an employee of the Comet Contracting Company in Jubail in the Kingdom’s Eastern Province was found dead by his colleagues. They are virtual prisoners of the company as their passports and resident permit documents have gone missing along with an absconding company official. Based on a report in Jeddah’s Arab News, the Indian Ambassador Kamaluddin Ahmad took up the matter with Eastern Province Governor Prince Muhammad Bin Fahd, who assured him a speedy solution this month. The Ambassador also urged Mr Fahd to waive the resident transfer permit fee of SR 1,800 so that the workers could return home. Although the Embassy has issued emergency certificates to the workers, they can leave Saudi Arabia only if they get exit visas for which the resident permits need renewal requiring SR 1,800 each and the sponsor’s consent.
— UNI |
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Sikhs in panic over shooting New York, June 21 The sign at the entrance to Guru Nanak Sikh Temple at 2948 Rockville Road in Solano County was found riddled, with bullet holes, temple founder Paul Randhawa said. The structure and the fixtures have been estimated to cost $ 7,000. The sign was defaced late month and while Mr Randhawa reported the incident to Solano County Sheriff’s deputies, he described it as the work of vandals. “When it happened again over the weekend, I really started to worry,” Mr Randhawa told Daily Republic, a local newspaper. Sheriff Gary R Stanton said the agency was investigating the incidents, but as of now had not drawn any conclusion.
— UNI |
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WINDOW ON PAKISTAN Pakistan’s port city of Karachi is fast turning into another Beruit of the sixties and the early seventies. Bombs blasts, targetted killings of politicians and daily murders makes it the most dangerous city, perhaps worse than even Kabul. If it was an attack on a corps commander one day, it was another politician the next day. Dawn, Pakistan’s leading newspaper, expressed anguish when it wrote: “Yet another politician has been gunned down in Karachi, adding to the long list of assassinations that have rocked the nation’s biggest city. Munawwar Suhrawardy, PPP information secretary and party chairperson Benazir Bhutto’s close confidant, was shot and killed in broad
daylight." He was the second PPP leader to be assassinated in a matter of three months. On March 6, unknown gunmen had murdered Abdullah Murad Baloch. If it is established that Mr Suhrawardy’s killing was political in nature, then that will take Karachi’s toll of such incidents to three - Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai was gunned down on May 30. Zahoorul Hasan Bhopali, Azam Tariq, Hakim Said, Murtaza Bhutto, Maulana Yusuf Ludhianvi, Maulana Saleem Qadri, and many more have been gunned down elsewhere. Dawn wrote: “We are concerned here with a phenomenon that has held Karachi in its grip for nearly two decades — politics of violence, terror and intimidation. Many groups now firmly believe that political rivals should be tackled not by political means but through violence, threat of force or outright murder”. The politics of murder and mayhem does not solve any problems; it only worsens it.” “Basically, this is a political problem and cannot be solved by administrative means alone. It is time political parties developed a consensus on the need for conducting politics politically, and agree to ostracise elements that believe in violence as a political tool,” Dawn added. The two attacks on mosques in June resulting in 29 deaths, and injuries to over a hundred, and the ambush of the Karachi Corps Commander’s convoy leading to the killing of 11, including soldiers, and it becomes clear the industrial hub, financial capital and sole port of the country is fast becoming ungovernable. During the 18 months of the present set-up in Karachi, 109 persons have been killed in 62 terrorist incidents. Compare this to 19 killed in similar incidents in Punjab and none in the NWFP, and the horror in Karachi becomes all too evident. The Nation drawing attention to the tragic events wrote: “The killing of Mr Suhrawardy has naturally evoked strong reaction. Angry protestors in Karachi went on the rampage as invariably happens after such incidents. The entire Opposition wearing black armbands staged a walkout from the National Assembly. The opposition parties have decided to hold nationwide protests over the next three days. The murder is being widely considered as a message to other opposition politicians that their safety cannot be guaranteed in Karachi.” Ayaz Amir in Dawn blamed the military dictatorship and its unqualified support as the main reason for such violence. He wrote, “The mayhem in Karachi is no accident. It is the Pakistani equivalent of the Spanish train bombings, designed to bring home to Pakistan’s rulers the folly of siding with America. As for the attack on the Karachi Corps Commander, in broad daylight in the very heart of the city, it is the most striking metaphor thus far produced by this undeclared war — a signal after the twin attempts on General Musharraf’s life that no target, however guarded or holy, is immune from attack.” Has it jolted Pakistani minds into realising that this was no small-time terrorism the country was facing but something far bigger? |
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Clinton
blames affair with Lewinsky on ‘old demons’ New York, June 21 In the end, after months of sleeping on the couch, a year of intensive marital counseling and his acquittal on impeachment charges in the Senate, he said he finally felt free. “In some ways it was liberating,” he wrote in the book ‘My Life’, adding that he no longer had a secret to hide. The 957-page book is to be released this week with initial printing of 1.5 million copies, but the New York Times said it had acquired a copy of it from bookstore. Clinton received an advance of more than $ 10 million on the memoirs. The book, the Times said, provides an intimate glimpse not only of Clinton’s struggle with the affair and the impeachment battle that followed, but also of eight eventful years in the White House, an improbable childhood and a precocious political career in Arkansas. The book, the paper said, is sprawling, indisciplined and idiosyncratic in its choice of emphasis. It devotes nearly 100 pages to his childhood, but treats large spans of his Presidency as a travelogue of campaign cities and foreign capitals. The book’s length, the Times said, gives the former President plenty of room to settle scores and he does so with his customary
élan. He takes the whip to Republicans in Congress; Louis J Freeh, the former FBI Director; the National Rifle Association; and even the Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously in 1997 that Paula Jones’s sexual harassment case against him could go forward while he was in office. He called that one of the most politically naive and damaging court decisions in years. But, the paper said, he reserved special venom for Kenneth W Starr, the independent counsel who chased him for years in one of the most expensive government investigations in the nation’s history. He writes that Starr was the tribune of an organised right wing cabal that was determined to destroy his Presidency because he was a personal anathema to them and repeatedly defeated them on policy grounds.
— PTI |
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Diana’s butler tells story in one-man show London, June 21 Paul Burrell, the longtime servant Diana called “my rock”, was vilified in the press and criticised by the princess’s friends and family when he published his book, “A Royal Duty”, last year. He is now taking his memories of Diana on-stage, in a show that ran yesterday at London’s Theater Royal Drury Lane and that will be performed at New York’s Town Hall Theater on June 24 and 25. “I think they understand why I had to do this,” Burrell said of the royals before the show yesterday. “I had to, once and for all, justify my relationship with one of the world’s most unique and inspirational persons.” “A lot has been written about me in the past few years,” he added. “And it’s my chance now to actually interact with the audience and say this is me, this is who I am. And I’m very proud of who I am.”
— AP |
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