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China, USA agree to revive talks
Iran warns EU not to cross its red lines
IMF chief urges debt relief for Iraq
3 Iraqis killed in car blast
Money won’t do, say Gaza Jews
14 Palestinians killed
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Indian Muslim’s body rots in Pak morgue
Pak not hankering after Kashmir: Kasuri
Pak condemns attack on Omar
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China, USA agree to revive talks
Beijing, October 25 “What we agreed to is the need for the six-party framework to continue”, US Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters here after meeting Chinese leaders, including President Hu Jintao, during his whirlwind tour of Japan, China and South Korea ahead of the November 2 US presidential poll. “China is actively involved and we hope the talks will be held in the not too distant future”, Powell, possibly on his last official tour of China, said. The six-way talks among the USA, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia have been stalled since North Korea failed to participate in a scheduled fourth round in late September citing Washington’s “hostile” policies. Powell said China and the USA also agreed to resume talks on the sensitive issue of human rights, which they had not discussed for two years after Washington launched an anti-China resolution at the UN Commission on Human Rights. “We were not talking to each other as candidly as we would have liked. We agreed to resume the dialogue as soon as possible,” he said on the human rights issue. Powell confirmed that he and Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing discussed the most sensitive issue in Sino-US relations, the Taiwan issue in a candid manner during which both sides restated their known stands. “I said in my talks to Foreign Minister Li that the USA urges cross-strait talks as soon as possible”, Powell said. “With respect to weapons sales to Taiwan, yes this topic did come up, and China expressed its opposition. We said we have an obligation to Taiwan through the Taiwan Relations Act for Taiwan to defend itself. We will do it in a way that will in no way undermine the one-China principle”, he said. The Chinese media reported that Chinese President Hu Jintao told Powell that Beijing wants the USA to respect the one-China principle and to stop selling arms to Taiwan. Powell, who met with premier Wen Jiabao separately, emphasised that the USA will unswervingly pursue the one-China policy and oppose any action aiming at “Taiwan independence”, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Earlier, Hu had told Powell that its opposition to “Taiwan independence” and curbing risky activities of “Taiwan independence” forces are in the common interests of both China and the USA and the Asia-Pacific countries.
— PTI |
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Iran warns EU not to cross its red lines
Teheran, October 25 The EU’s biggest three powers — Britain, France and Germany — have offered Iran a deal, whereby it would scrap activities related to producing its own nuclear fuel in return for help with civilian nuclear technology and resumption of trade talks. But Mr Hassan
Rohani, Secretary-General of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said Iran had the same rights to develop nuclear technology as any other signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT). “Our red lines are clear and if anyone wants to cross these, we will not allow it,” the official IRNA news agency quoted him as telling Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Affairs Commission. “The Europeans should say that Iran has every legal right that is mentioned in the NPT and it should not discriminate against Iran regarding these rights,” he said.
— Reuters |
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IMF chief urges debt relief for Iraq
Riyadh, October 25 The oil-rich Gulf kingdom — which is expected to record a budget surplus this year of around $40 billion — says, Iraq owes it $30 billion, mostly offered to Saddam Hussein during his 1980-88 war with Iran. It says it is ready to discuss a substantial debt cut to its impoverished and violence-torn neighbour but only as part of a wider international agreement. “Saudi Arabia’s role in providing economic and financial support to Iraq and other countries in the region ... is commendable and needs to be maintained,’’ IMF Managing Director Rodrigo Rato said in a statement after talks in Riyadh. Saudi Arabia should continue to play a leading role in “helping Iraq strengthen its financial position and restore its place in the regional economy’’, Mr Rato added. “The Saudi Government’s decision to consider debt relief for Iraq would go a long way in improving Iraq’s economic viability,’’ he said after a two-day visit during which he met Gulf Finance Ministers and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdullah. The United States, which is pushing for a near-total write-off of Iraq’s debts, says the $45 billion offered by Gulf Arab countries during the Iran-Iraq war was provided as grant and need not be repaid. Saudi Arabia, by far the biggest of Baghdad’s regional creditors, says the money was loaned. Mr Rato said windfall revenues from high oil prices this year provided Saudi Arabia — the world’s biggest crude exporter — with a “unique opportunity’’ to accelerate the pace of economic reforms aimed at diversifying its oil-dependent economy. It could also use the money to strengthen ‘’fiscal sustainability’’ and reduce vulnerability to oil price shocks without threatening monetary or financial stability, he said. “The government has rightly decided to use part of this revenue for infrastructure development, including health and education, and to reduce the level of government debt,’’ Mr Rato said. A report by Riyad Bank last week predicted Saudi Arabia would enjoy an enormous budget surplus of around 155 billion riyals ($41.3 billion) this year. Mr Rato, who said in Geneva on Friday that rising oil prices posed a growing risk to the world economy, welcomed Riyadh’s “constructive’’ efforts to curb record world oil prices by raising production well above its OPEC quota to 9.5 million barrels per day.
— Reuters |
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3 Iraqis killed in car blast
Baghdad, October 25 At around the same time, two US patrols were targeted in roadside bombs that caused no casualties but damaged an army vehicle, the military said. US-led troops in Iraq come under daily attack from a determined insurgency that bred in the aftermath of last year’s war to topple Saddam Hussein. In the latest attacks, a vehicle was detonated by a remote control device as an Australian convoy drove towards the heavily fortified Green Zone that houses Iraq’s seat of government, said US Major Scot Stanger, citing witnesses. “There were two civilian casualties. Two Australian soldiers were slightly wounded,” he said. The US military later revised the toll up to three dead. An Australian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman confirmed that a bomb had exploded close to the Australian Embassy in Baghdad.
— AFP |
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Money won’t do, say Gaza Jews
Avi Farham and his son, Ofer, have been here before.
Twenty-two years ago when Ofer was just two-year-old and had to ride on his father’s shoulders, Avi was on the march to Jerusalem, as he is this morning, in protest at the only other time Israel has ever evacuated a Jewish settlement beyond its 1967 borders.
That evacuation was supervised by the then Defence Minister, Ariel Sharon, the man who as Prime Minister will be asking the Knesset tomorrow to approve the evacuation of Avi and 8,000 other settlers from Gaza. But there is a difference. Avi, who claims to be the last settler forced out by the army from Yamit in the Sinai under Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt, made his protest after the settlement had been dismantled. This time he is making his protest before the decision is taken, in the fervent hope that it can still be stopped. Ofer, who works as a bartender in Tel Aviv and Ashkelon but still regards Elei Sinai settlement in northern Gaza as his home, is scornful of the idea that financial compensation - averaging about $ 300,000 (£ 160,000) under a package approved by the Cabinet yesterday - can make amends for what his family stands to lose if the evacuation of their ample house by the Mediterranean goes ahead. “Thirteen years ago, I planted a stick and it became a tree. Recently I built a tree house in it for the kids in the family and the neighbourhood. How can money pay for that? The beach is where I learned to swim, where I nearly drowned. There is a dune where I lost my virginity, which I think of as my dune. How can money ever pay for losing that?” The 85 families who inhabit Elei Sinai - and almost all of whom will join the Farhams to protest in Jerusalem today - are, for the most part neither as religious or as ideological as many others in Gaza. They don’t talk of the need to occupy every part of greater Israel from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. But they are just as immune to the argument that they should have to leave their homes under Mr Sharon’s plans to disengage from Gaza. Sarita Maoz was just 14 when her family, too, left Yamit. Now she doesn’t want her three children to suffer the same “traumatic” experience that she did. Like Ofer Farham, she says that the residents of Elei Sinai won’t physically resist evacuation. “We will do anything we can do in a normal democratic way to persuade the government of our case,” she says. But if the evacuation goes ahead, she and her family will leave Israel, perhaps for Australia. “Being evacuated once is one thing,” she says. “Twice-well, I get the message.” You don’t have to spend much time in the detached homes among the bougainvilleas and palms of Elei Sinai to see why its residents might enjoy the lifestyle and neighbourliness the community affords - so vastly different from the densely overcrowded and impoverished conditions in which Gaza’s Palestinian majority of well over one million live. But the conflict of the past four years has hardly passed it by. Three years ago, Sarita Moaz and her husband lay bleeding from gunshot wounds in their home while their children cowered terrified upstairs after an attack by Palestinian militants who infiltrated the settlement. As they did so, they were unaware that Liron, the 19-year-old daughter of their friend and neighbour Avi Horpaz, was dying in their garden after being shot as she walked past their house hand-in-hand with her boyfriend. Yet Mr Horpaz, still unable to come to terms with his loss, remains as determined to stay here if he can as the Moaz family. He took his family to Ashkelon after the attack, but returned to the warmth of this close-knit community shortly afterwards. Standing by the inscribed memorial stone to his daughter he erected in the Moaz’s garden, with its clear view of the Palestinian apartment blocks of Beit Hanoun, he asks: “Where am I going to take this stone if we have to leave here? The Israeli government has suggested that the settlement houses - though not the public buildings - will be razed rather than handed to the Palestinians. But Mr Boahadania says his young son Itamar has suggested their home should be given to the people who built it - poor Palestinians from Beit Hanoun and Gaza city. — By arrangement with The Independent, London |
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14 Palestinians killed
Gaza City, October 25 The fighting erupted hours before the start of a crucial parliamentary debate on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, ahead of a vote tomorrow. The police has deployed outside the Knesset ahead of expected demonstrations by settlers against the plan, under which all 8,000 Jewish residents of the Gaza Strip would be evacuated.
— AFP |
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Indian Muslim’s body rots in Pak morgue
Islamabad, October 25 Mohammad Ali, a resident of Gopalnagar in the Bandipura district of India, was arrested in 1998 by the Pakistani authorities after he crossed into the country. He was sentenced to 10 months in prison for his illegal entry. Ali died in a Lahore jail hospital on January 1 and his body, now decayed into a skeleton, has since been lying in a morgue because of diplomatic problems between India and Pakistan and legal hitches between various government departments in the country. However, the Indian High Commission has told the Pakistani police to give Ali’s body a burial but so far no funeral has yet taken place as neither jail nor police officials were ready to claim his body. “We have told the Pakistani police to bury Ali,” Dr Ramesh Chandar, the Press Secretary of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, told Daily Times. However, jail, police and home department officials claimed that they had sent several reminders of Ali’s death to the Indian High Commission but it did not respond. Home department officials told the newspaper that the Interior Ministry had in July allowed the body to be buried in accordance with Islamic customs. They said a permission letter was also sent to the jail authorities. “We even sent seven reminders to them,’’ they added. “The jail authorities have no problem in burying Ali but the Kotlakhpat police is not handing the body to us. We have sent several reminders to the police and even sent a man to talk to them,” said Mr Tariq Babar, Kotlakhpat Jail Superintendent.
— UNI |
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Pak not hankering after Kashmir: Kasuri
Kuala Lumpur October 25 However, no solution to the Kashmir issue — and therefore an end to enmity between India and Pakistan — could be practical without the Kashmiri people’s approval, he said in an interview. “Pakistan is a large country. It is a country of strategic importance. It’s opinions are respected in the world,” said Mr Kasuri, who is on a two-day visit to Malaysia for bilateral talks. “We are not hankering for Kashmiri territory. It is not simply a question of territorial gains” but matter of ensuring justice for Kashmiris, Mr Kasuri said. The statement is in line with a series of encouraging remarks by Pakistani and Indian officials on the sensitive issue, all of which express hope but steadfastly skate around details that could prove sensitive. In Islamabad, Foreign Office spokesman Massood Khan urged patience and said Pakistan maintained its position that the Kashmir could be solved unless a deal meets the aspirations of the people of the region. “The issue of Kashmir is about the will, wishes and aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir,” Mr Khan said. — AP |
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Pak condemns attack on Omar
Islamabad, October 25 “Violence should come to an end. Pakistan condemns terrorism in all its
forms and manifestations. No violent attack can be tolerated. This is regrettable,” Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan said. The NC leaders escaped unhurt yesterday when militants triggered a powerful blast as they reached a graveyard in Anantnag district to attend a ceremony for a slain party leader.
— PTI |
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