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N-programme irreversible: Iran
Guyana Agriculture Minister shot dead
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200 hurt during strike in Bangladesh
Another Bin Laden tape?
Trafficked from Pak, raped and jailed in Saudi Arabia
New industrial policy in offing
Bhutto, Nawaz to meet in London today
Four die in shootout in Pak
Lanka seeks EU-wide ban on LTTE
10 Cambodians killed in mine blast
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N-programme irreversible: Iran
Teheran, April 23 Earlier this month Iran announced for the first time that it had enriched uranium using 164 centrifuges, a step toward large-scale production of nuclear fuel that can be used either in atomic weapons or in nuclear reactors for civilian electricity generation. “Nuclear research will continue. Suspension of (nuclear activities including uranium enrichment) is not in our agenda. This issue is irreversible,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters. “Iran won’t give up its rights and has prepared plans for any eventuality,” Mr Asefi said. He also insisted that Iran has not used any advanced P-2 centrifuges in its enrichment of uranium. Such a device would be a vast improvement over the current P-1 centrifuges, which Iran announced earlier this month it had used to enrich uranium. Iran’s hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed last week that his country was conducting laboratory research on the advanced P-2 centrifuge, which could be used to more speedily create fuel for power plants or atomic weapons. “We have not so far used P-2 centrifuges. What we have used has been P-1,” Asefi said. The spokesman, however, said Iran had the right to work on P-2 centrifuge. “No one can deny us of such a work,” he said.
— AP |
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Guyana Agriculture Minister shot dead
Georgetown (Guyana),
April 23 Satyadeo Sawh was killed as he reclined in a hammock even though his family members had satisfied the assailants' demand for money and jewellery, said his wife, Sattie Sawh, who said she survived by hiding in the coastal home. "They still turned around and shot them," she said hours after the attack at her house yesterday, where several government officials gathered to console the family. Satyadeo Sawh ( 50), and his wife, both naturalised Canadian citizens, returned to Guyana in the early 1990s. He joined the successful campaign of the Governing People's Progressive Party, which came to power in 1992, and was named a Cabinet Minister that year. "It smacks of a political assassination but the motive is still to be determined," said government spokesman Robert Persaud. The police said the motive appeared to be robbery. Later yesterday, the government held an emergency Cabinet meeting and issued a statement saying it believed the killing of Sawh — the first of a Cabinet Minister since Vincent Teekah in 1978 — was an attempt to destabilise the country before the upcoming elections. The elections, scheduled for August 4, were recently postponed to give authorities more time to prepare for balloting. A new date has not yet been set.
— AP |
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200 hurt during strike in Bangladesh
Dhaka, April 23 The mainstream opposition enforced the dawn-to-dusk hartal at 0600 hrs a second time in four days, to mount pressure on the alliance rulers to accept their reform proposals for holding neutral and credible elections. Witnesses said most vehicles stayed off the roads while schools, shops, business centres and private offices kept their shutters down during the hartal hours. Police and pickets locked in sporadic clashes from morning to midday, leaving dozens wounded, including policemen, and many were arrested. Police fired teargas shells to disperse stone pelting Awami League activists who damaged several buses near Awami League headquarters at Bangabandhu Avenue. As the activists lit fire to protect them from pungent teargas, one tin-shed shop near AL office and another shop on the second floor of Ramna Bhaban were partially damaged. A few police personnel suffered wounds from brick batting. Police smashed anti-government pickets in
Mahakhali, Mirpur, Matijheel and Gulistan areas and rounded up more than 40 activists. The opposition has announced Dhaka Siege programme on May 21 as part of its seemingly final round of agitation to force Prime Minister Khaleda Zia to accept the electoral reforms for free and fair elections scheduled early next year. Ms Khaldea Zia is scheduled to hand over power to a non-party caretaker administration on October 28 this year on the completion of her five-year term.
— UNI |
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Another Bin Laden tape?
Dubai, April 23 ‘’This is a crusader-Zionist war,’’ said the speaker who sounded like the Saudi-born militant in the tape aired on Al Jazeera television. “And they (Western leaders) do not want a truce unless it is from our side only ... they insist on continuing their crusader campaign against our nation and to loot our wealth,’’ Bin Laden said. In an audiotape issued in January Bin Laden said Al Qaeda was preparing attacks in the USA but the group was open to a conditional truce with Americans.
— Reuters
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Trafficked from Pak, raped and jailed in Saudi Arabia
Karachi, April 23 “It’s difficult for me to talk about what happened to me, from rape to prison and from prison to deportation,” Isma told AFP in the office of a rescue trust in Karachi where she sat with her sister Muna, 18, who was also deported. Isma’s parents, originally from Multan, were trafficked to Saudi Arabia around 20 years ago. “Though both of us were born there, we are Pakistanis,” Isma said. In Isma’s case, being born in Saudi Arabia was no help when she was raped last year in Medina. “I was the victim, I was raped and molested but I was named as the accused, and the man who committed the crime was not touched,” she said, hiding her face with both hands in shame. “He first kidnapped me, dragged me into his car,” Isma said. “At first he asked me to sleep with him and offered good money. When I refused and tried to resist, he warned me of dire consequences and raped me in the car.” The unnamed man warned her she would be imprisoned if she went to the police, and said that the Saudi sponsor who brought her parents to the country through a Pakistani agent would have them all expelled. The sponsor too threatened Isma and Muna, warning they would be punished unless they kept silent, she said, asking that the sponsor’s name not be revealed to spare her family any additional grief. “I and my sister thought otherwise and we went to the police as we expected justice. But after a few hours of filing the report the police allegedly changed it,” Isma said. Under pressure from the Saudi sponsor, Isma’s parents asked her to withdraw her allegations. “I never wanted my parents to get into trouble as they were at the mercy of the sponsor and he lived in our neighbourhood. So I did not speak much but the police still put me behind bars,” she said. “My sister Muna tried to help me out but was also arrested and put into prison only because she spoke for me, ” she said. “Once a jail official offered me help and assured me I would be released if I agreed to sleep with him.
— AFP |
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New industrial policy in offing
Hanover, April 23 “We are working on a new industrial policy that will give fiscal incentives to companies that set up plants in backward areas. We would submit a proposal before the Cabinet within six weeks,” Union Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said here. Mr Nath said the new policy would aim at achieving “all inclusive” economic growth, which has so far eluded small and marginal sections of the society. The new policy would not have any subsidies but would have incentives, he said. India’s last industrial policy was introduced in 1991 when the then government started the liberalisation
process. — PTI
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Bhutto, Nawaz to meet in London today
Islamabad, April 23 Bhutto arrived in London on Saturday en route to the US. During her brief stay in Britain she will also attend party meetings besides meeting Sharif. The two former Prime Ministers, who have both been forced to live abroad, continue to have a strong popular base in the country. Both have previously been arch rivals taking turns in power twice and being sent home on both the occasions prematurely by the then Presidents. While Bhutto has been living in self-imposed exile in Dubai since 1998, Sharif went into exile in 2000, along with his entire family, as part of an understanding with Musharraf after he was exonerated of all charges. After the military coup of October 1999, the parties led by Bhutto and Sharif were part of a larger alliance of opposition to
Musharraf. Bhutto's spokesman Farhatullah Babar said that both the former Prime Ministers are eager to return home before the next elections, due in 2007. ‘‘The PPP (Pakistan Peoples Party headed by Bhutto) wants end to illegitimate rule of Musharraf. This meeting will be one step towards a joint struggle against dictatorship," Babar told IANS. He said another option would be to go for seats adjustment during the polls. ‘‘The PPP will get major share if adjustment is opted for because we have better strength in Parliament,’’ he said. The PPP spokesman also condemned the surveillance network apparently set up by the military regime in London to spy on Bhutto’s activities in Britain.
— IANS |
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Four die in shootout in Pak
Islamabad, April 23 The clash took place near a check post on the main road between Miranshah, headquarters of North Waziristan, and Bannu, a major city near the tribal region, they said. Paramilitary soldiers opened fire on a van when it ignored signals from them to stop. Three armed tribesmen in the van returned fire, killing a soldier. Three tribesmen were killed when security forces returned fire. Local officials said two of the armed men were militants but the witnesses said they were local citizens. Sporadic firing started in parts of the city after the shooting and shopkeepers closed markets. People were confined to homes and authorities called gun-ship helicopters as tension prevailed in the region. A large number of paramilitary troops and several armoured vehicles were deployed to check any reaction from the insurgents.
— PTI |
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Lanka seeks EU-wide ban on LTTE
Colombo, April 23 The government said an EU-wide ban will encourage the LTTE to return to peace talks on saving a faltering truce. The rebels had indefinitely postponed the talks and refused to meet the Norwegian mediators. "There are consultations between the government of Sri Lanka and the European Union and we expect the EU to go ahead with the threatened sanctions," the head of the government's Peace Secretariat, Palitha Kohona told reporters here. An EU ban should help revive the stalled Swiss talks on saving the island's troubled ceasefire as well, he added. There was no immediate reaction from the Tigers, but the group was warned by the 25-member EU in October that it faced an EU-wide ban unless it gave up terror tactics. The government's new diplomatic offensive came as fresh violence in Sri Lanka claimed at least eight lives. Five security personnel and three Tiger rebels were killed in fresh clashes since yesterday, Defence Ministry spokesman Prasad Samarasinghe said. Nine soldiers were also wounded in three claymore mine attacks blamed on the LTTE, he said. The EU had slapped travel restrictions on the LTTE and refused to accept their delegations after the group was held responsible for the August assassination of the then Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar. India, the US, Britain and Canada have already banned the
LTTE. — PTI |
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10 Cambodians killed in mine blast
Phnom Penh, April 23 "While they were travelling in a truck... they drove over a mine and it exploded," Pich Sokhin said over the phone. "No one survived."
— AFP |
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