W O R L D

Palestinian parents wage war against US company
Three years after their daughter was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer while trying to protect a Palestinian home, Rachel Corrie's parents are waging a war she would be proud of.

Nicole Kidman weds Keith
Sydney, June 25
Hollywood superstar Nicole Kidman today married country singer Keith Urban in a romantic twilight ceremony on a beachside hilltop in the Sydney surfing suburb of Manly.

Nicole Kidman (left) and Keith Urban pose during their candlelit wedding ceremony at Cardinal Cerretti Memorial Chapel in Manly, Sydney, on Sunday. — Reuters photo

B’desh war hero’s remains brought home
Dhaka, June 25
The remains of Matiur Rahman were brought back to Bangladesh after 35 years from Pakistan and were reburied at Martyred Intellectuals Graveyard in Mirpur with full state honours today.

Iraq germ war threat: CIA questioned, US believed
Washington, June 25
The USA had cited mobile germ warfare labs in Iraq, which were never found, as one of the justifications for invading the country despite a former CIA officer’s warnings that the man who gave information on it was suspected to be “mentally unstable”, a report said today.

Saudi King pays blood money for Indian driver
Dubai, June 25
An Indian driver involved in a car accident nearly two years ago has been freed after Saudi King Abdullah paid SR 185,701 (Rs 22,87,839.8) as blood money to the members of a Saudi family to secure his release.

Palestinian parents wage war against US company
Ashish Kumar Sen writes from Washington

Three years after their daughter was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer while trying to protect a Palestinian home, Rachel Corrie's parents are waging a war she would be proud of.

Cindy and Craig Corrie want Caterpillar (CAT), the US company that manufactures the bulldozer that killed Rachel, to stop selling the equipment to Israel. The couple attended CAT's annual shareholder meeting on June 14 in Chicago where they sought to educate shareholders about the destruction caused by the bulldozers in Israel.

"Why would we pay for our own homes with the destruction of other people's homes? Why would we fund our retirements with the destruction of other people's olive groves? Caterpillar shareholders should know that there are good and decent people in Israel and in Palestine and shareholders should support them and not support violence," Craig Corrie told the Tribune.

According to human rights activists, since 1967, Caterpillar bulldozers have illegally razed the homes of over 50,000 Palestinians. The CAT is facing a lawsuit from the Corries and some Palestinian families.

"When you are part of the management in an international company you make a lot of decisions that affect people across the world and you don't see the results of those decisions," said Mr Corrie. Rachel went to Rafah because she wanted to see what her tax dollars were doing.

A shareholder resolution calling for Caterpillar to separate the roles of CEO and board chairperson received 27 per cent of the vote. A coalition of Jewish and Christian institutional investors - Jewish Voice for Peace, Sisters of Loretto, Mercy Investment Program, Sisters of Mercy, Maryknoll Sisters and Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers - introduced the resolution to increase the corporate accountability.

Mr Corrie believes separating the roles would allow the chairman to take a larger interest in responsibility to the community. People should be aware, "at some sort of gut level," that there was a family behind the wall Rachel stood in front of, he said.

Howard Lenow of the Jewish Voice for Peace said in a statement, "The 27 per cent vote far exceeded our expectations. It shows that many investors agree that Caterpillar's refusal to examine its sale of bulldozers that violate human rights is simply bad business."

Noura Erekat of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation said, "Caterpillar profits from each home its bulldozers help Israel to demolish, each centimetre of the Annexation Wall its bulldozers help Israel to build, each olive tree its bulldozers help Israel to uproot. Our presence here today is a message to Caterpillar that its complicity in war crimes amounts to culpability pursuant to the Nuremberg Principles and International Law."

The CAT has told activists it has neither the legal right nor the responsibility to the police the use of its equipment.

"The protest against the CAT started before Rachel Corrie was killed, but her death galvanized the movement," Matt Gaines of the Stop CAT Coalition told the Tribune.

Mr Corrie calls Rachel, his youngest child, an inspiration. "Most of what was learned in our family was learned from Rachel," he said. After the attacks on America on September 11, 2001, Mr Corrie recalls his daughter being very angry. But within a few weeks she was trying to understand why people would want to harm Americans.

In her research, Rachel learned that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories was the crux of the problem and Rafah was the centre of that conflict, said Mr Corrie. Rachel and her friends would stay with families that lived along the border between Rafah and the Egyptian Sinai. "They were hoping that the presence of internationals would prevent homes from being destroyed - or that they could at least record what was happening."

Rachel died trying to defend the home she had stayed in as a guest of its Palestinian owners. The Corries remain in touch with the Palestinian brothers and are trying to help build their home.

But Mr Corrie says the situation in the Gaza Strip has deteriorated since the Israeli withdrawal. "It's awful out there. Women are selling their jewellery to get bread for their children. It's a prison now," he said. "In the US we don't understand how violent the occupation is."

"We should have negotiated with Hamas," he said. "We gave them no chance."

Nicole Kidman weds Keith

Sydney, June 25
Hollywood superstar Nicole Kidman today married country singer Keith Urban in a romantic twilight ceremony on a beachside hilltop in the Sydney surfing suburb of Manly.

The elegant, strawberry-blonde Oscar-winner put the pain of her divorce from movie heartthrob Tom Cruise behind her as she made her vows to the new love of her life in the Gothic-style Cardinal Ceretti Memorial Chapel.

Kidman, wearing an ivory Balenciaga gown and veil with drop-pearl earrings and with her wavy tresses falling naturally to her shoulders, was accompanied down the aisle by her father Antony.

Her sister Antonia was matron of honour and her 13-year-old adopted daughter from the marriage with Cruise, Isabella, was the bridesmaid.

As the bridal party arrived in a pair of black Rolls Royce limousines, Kidman won the hearts of hundreds of cheering fans braving the winter chill by winding down her window and thanking them for coming.

"She was very, very friendly, so gracious and so, so nice," said Matthew Smith, a US student from Miami who is touring Asia and Australia. — PTI

B’desh war hero’s remains brought home

Dhaka, June 25
The remains of Matiur Rahman were brought back to Bangladesh after 35 years from Pakistan and were reburied at Martyred Intellectuals Graveyard in Mirpur with full state honours today.

Matiur Rahman is one of the seven heroes bestowed with the Bir Shershtha, Bangladesh’s highest gallantry award, posthumously for the country’s 1971 War of Independence.

The hero of the Bangladesh’s 1971 independence war remained buried in Karachi for the past 35 years.

Matiur took off on a T-33 aircraft from a West Pakistan airbase to flee to India to join Bangladesh’s war of liberation at the early stage of the 1971 war. He was killed when his jet crashed near the India-Pakistan border.

Freedom fighters and family members of the martyr in Bangladesh have long been asking successive governments to bring the remains of the hero back home.

The government after long consultations with Pakistani authorities at last brought back his remains. Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia received Matiur’s remains in a coffin on Saturday night at the Zia International airport, where contingents drawn from the army, navy and the air force accorded him a guard of honour upon arrival.

Before the burial ceremony, his coffin was taken to Tejgaon airport where people from all walks of life paid tributes to the war hero. — ANI

Iraq germ war threat: CIA questioned, US believed

Washington, June 25
The USA had cited mobile germ warfare labs in Iraq, which were never found, as one of the justifications for invading the country despite a former CIA officer’s warnings that the man who gave information on it was suspected to be “mentally unstable”, a report said today. CIA veteran Tyler Drumheller had recognised the source of the information, a man code-named ‘Curveball’, as “an Iraqi defector suspected of being mentally unstable and a liar”.

In 2003, ahead of the then Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech in the UN Security Council on Iraq’s suspected weapons of mass destruction, Drumheller had crossed out a whole paragraph in the text which mentioned the mobile labs.

The Post said US intelligence agencies “were eagerly drawn in by reports about a troubled defector’s claims of secret germ factories in Iraqi desert” which were never found.

Over a year after Powell’s speech, following a probe that extended to three continents, the CIA acknowledged that ‘Curveball’ was a con artist who drove a taxi in Iraq and spun his engineering knowledge into a fantastic but plausible tale about secret bio-weapons factories on wheels. — PTI

Saudi King pays blood money for Indian driver

Dubai, June 25
An Indian driver involved in a car accident nearly two years ago has been freed after Saudi King Abdullah paid SR 185,701 (Rs 22,87,839.8) as blood money to the members of a Saudi family to secure his release.

After his release, Samad said the accident occurred in October 2004 when the car he was driving was rammed by a bus as he was making a U-turn. Three people, the head of a Saudi family, his wife and daughter, died while Abdul Samad survived.

The police arrested Samad and imprisoned him for causing the accident. He was also held liable for the payment of blood money to the next of kin.

"This was a tragic end to my dream of earning a good living in the Gulf. The accident brutally shattered my life and left me to ponder my future behind bars," he said.

The turning point came when his family submitted a petition for mercy to King Abdullah, who visited New Delhi on January 26, through Minister of State for External Affairs E.Ahamed. The King then promised to secure his release. — PTI