Sharif for early talks
with India
ISLAMABAD, Aug 9 — Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has said there is no harm in having talks with his Indian counterpart, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, on the sidelines of the non-aligned summit in Durban this month.

China lobbying
against India
BEIJING, Aug 9 — China is currently working closely with Japan and Russia on two separate joint statements condemning India’s nuclear tests while going soft on Pakistan.

Bombing suspect
vowed ‘jehad’
DUBAI, Aug 9 — One name keeps coming up when Americans search for suspects in the two African Embassy bombs — Osama Bin Laden, the renegade Arab financier who has vowed to wage a war on the US forces. In Nairobi, an Israeli team searching with rescue dogs found a woman and her son today in a building damaged in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya.

Mir ‘could hit’ populated areas
THE troubled Mir spacecraft could land on populated areas when it ends its 13-year endurance trial in orbit, say British scientists.
Snap presidential poll in Lanka?
COLOMBO, Aug 9 — The Sri Lankan government could hold a snap presidential election and disband top-level local councils it looked set to lose in postponed poll, analysts and newspapers said today.

Sharif for early talks with India

ISLAMABAD, Aug 9 (PTI) — Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has said there was no harm in having talks with his Indian counterpart, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee on the sidelines of non-aligned summit in Durban this month in spite of what he had termed ‘zero outcome’ of the previous meeting during the SAARC conference in Colombo.

“I see no harm in meeting (Vajpayee)” on the sidelines of the non-aligned movement (NAM) conference in Durban this month, Mr Sharif told Qatar’s daily The Peninsula.

Immediately after the talks with Mr Vajpayee on the fringes of the SAARC summit, Mr Sharif had described the exercise as a “failure” and the outcome a “big zero”. He accused India of remaining “adamant and non-serious” on addressing the two most urgent issues of peace and security and Jammu & Kashmir.

The two leaders are also likely to meet in New York next month when both address the UN General Assembly.

Mr Sharif said the recent firing along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir has wider ramifications, coming as it does against the backdrop of nuclearisation in both India and Pakistan.

“... Aware that the risk of war is high, we have proposed to India the resumption of early talks to evolve measures on avoidance of conflict, nuclear and conventional stabilisation and restraint,” Mr Sharif told the paper. “The nuclearisation of South Asia by India has qualitatively altered the geo-strategic environment in the region.”

ANI adds: After shifting former Finance Minister Sartaj Aziz to the Foreign Ministry, the government has decided to remove the State Bank of Pakistan Governor Dr Muhammad Yaqoob, and the Finance Secretary, Mr Mueen Afzal, and is on the look out replacements.

“The Prime Minister has asked his close aides to recommend names for both the posts,” a source told ANI on Saturday. With the removal of SBP Governor and Finance Secretary, only Dr Hafiz Pasha would survive the Prime Minister’s axe from amongst Mr Sharif’s team of economic managers.

Though he was part of the team, which took all crucial decisions during the past few weeks, the Prime Minister seems satisfied with Dr Pasha’s performance. The latter has been elevated to the post of Adviser (Economy) to the Prime Minister.

The changes, apparently, are being made to portray as if the responsibility of ruining the confidence of the market is being fixed, which plunged after the government froze foreign currency accounts.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Mr Sartaj Aziz has ruled out any change in the country’s foreign policy and has denied that the change of his portfolio was an expression of no-confidence in his economic policies by the Prime Minister.

“There is nothing of the sort as the decision about the change in his portfolio was taken four or five months ago but was delayed until presentation of the federal Budget for 1998-99,” he said.

The Cabinet reshuffle was further delayed in the wake of the crisis which surfaced after Pakistan’s nuclear tests, he added.

Mr Aziz claimed that economic and other policies of the government had been successful and said “we not only accomplished all the targets of 1997-98 but also achieved more.

When his attention was drawn towards the public ire on the decision to freeze foreign currency accounts, he said: “It was a difficult decision, but foreign exchange reserves were very low and the liabilities were great and, therefore, we had no alternative.”

Asked about his priorities as foreign minister, he said there would be no significant change in the foreign policy. “The structure of priorities will remain almost the same”, he added.

Responding to another question, he said there was a possibility of a meeting between the prime ministers of the two countries on the sidelines of the non aligned summit at Durban, South Africa, next month.

“We want to resolve the Kashmir issue politically and want to hold serious talks on it. If there is progress on the Kashmir dispute, there may be progress on other issues also such as economic cooperation and trade, etc,” he added.

China lobbying against India

BEIJING, Aug 9 (PTI) — China is currently working closely with Japan and Russia on two separate joint statements condemning India’s nuclear tests while going soft on Pakistan, diplomatic sources today said.

While the finer points of the joint statement were discussed here yesterday between Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan and Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura, the second political document between China and Russia is being readied, they said.

China wants to gain “as much as possible” diplomatically from the ‘fallout’ of India’s nuclear tests, the sources said.

While the joint statement between China and Japan would be ‘harsh’ in its language of condemnation of India’s actions, the Sino-Russian joint statement would be ‘mild’ in nature considering the friendly relations between Moscow and New Delhi, they said.

“In all probability, there will be a separate Sino-Japanese joint statement on South Asia,” sources said.

However, the views of China and Russia on the South Asian nuclear tests would be contained in the general ‘political document’ which was discussed recently by Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov and Tang in Beijing.

The two documents are expected to be issued next month, the sources said.

The Sino-Japanese joint statement will be issued during Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s first official visit to Japan early next month while the Sino-Russian ‘political document’ will be released during Jiang’s informal summit meeting with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in Moscow in September.

However, China will be ‘protective’ of its traditional ally, Pakistan, by stressing that Islamabad conducted the tests as a result of New Delhi’s ‘aggressive’ statements after the May 11 and May 13 nuclear tests.

China has already succeeded in issuing a Sino-US joint statement on South Asia during US President Bill Clinton’s state visit here which strongly condemned the nuclear tests and expressed their wish to assist both India and Pakistan to resolve peacefully their long-standing difference between them, including the Kashmir issue.

Bombing suspect vowed ‘jehad’

DUBAI, Aug 9 (Reuters) — One name keeps coming up when Americans search for suspects in the two African Embassy bombs — Osama Bin Laden, the renegade Arab financier who has vowed to wage a war on the US forces in the land of Islam’s holiest shrines.

No evidence to link Bin Laden with the car bombings in Nairobi and Dar Es Salam, or two previous attacks on Americans in his homeland Saudi Arabia to which he has been linked by Washington, has been made public.

But the US State Department has identified Bin Laden, born to a wealthy Saudi family but stripped of his citizenship and exiled first in Yemen, then Sudan and now Afghanistan, as a major sponsor of Islamic militants.

Counter-terrorism experts in Washingon said after Friday’s explosions in Kenya and Tanzania that Bin Laden topped the list of suspects.

Responsibility for the East Africa bombs was claimed yesterday in statements sent in the name of a previously unknown Islamic group to a Gulf television station, a French radio station and a London-based Arabic newspaper.

Bin Laden is Washington’s prime suspect in the still unsolved bomb attack in the Saudi city of Dhahran in June 1996 in which 19 Americans were killed.

He has vowed “jehad” or holy war against the US forces in the kingdom because of American support of Israel and American “occupation” of the land of Islam’s two most sacred shrines in the holy cities of Mecca and Madina.

Four Saudis were beheaded a month earlier for a bombing in the Saudi Capital Riyadh in November 1995 in which five American servicemen and two Indians were killed. The four had said in televised confessions that they were influenced by Bin Laden and other Saudi dissidents.

Bin Laden denied involvement in the two Saudi blasts.

Mother, son saved as toll rises

NAIROBI, Aug 9 (AP, AFP) — An Israeli team searching floor to floor with rescue dogs found a woman and her son today in a building damaged in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya.

Red Cross officials said 10 more persons may be in the building, but they were unsure of their conditions. As of today, the death toll in the bombing in Kenya and a blast at the U.S. Embassy in neighbouring Tanzania totalled 198.

Earlier, US Embassy spokesman Bill Barr said 11 Americans and 21 Kenyan employees at the embassy had been killed in Friday’s devastating blast.

The Kenyan News agency, KNA, quoted the Kenyan Government as saying 566 injured had been taken to hospital, 24 of them in a critical condition. Another 4,257 persons had been given treatment and sent home.President Daniel Arap Moi told reporters his government had “some clues” about the identity of those behind the blast.Asked about the arrests, Mr Moi said: “At this moment, I don’t want to say anything about that because it could jeopardise the investigation.”

“We have clues about several things. Definitely it is an astonishing thing that some people can make Kenya the scapegoat, but we have some clues which could lead to good information,” he said speaking at the site as rescuers continued their work.

Meanwhile, a report from Dubai said an Islamic grouping which met in Pakistan in June under the leadership of Saudi dissident Ossama Bin Laden resolved to hit the US worldwide interests, a London-based Islamic faction told AFP.

The bombings in Nairobi and Dar es-Salaam were “probably led by militants from the International Islamic Front”, following this agreement”, said a spokesman for the group Al-Muhajirun.

The spokesman, who asked not to be named, said in a telephone interview from London that cracks had appeared in the ranks of the front since the attacks.

The dissent was being caused, he said, by the opposition of several factions, including Al-Muhajirun, to violence that intentionally claimed the lives of civilians.

Taliban tighten hold on Mazar-e-Sharif

KABUL, Aug 9 (AFP) — The Taliban Islamic militia tightened its grip on Mazar-e-Sharif today after routing opposition forces in the key northern Afghan city, amid reports of a new Taliban offensive north of Kabul.

Heavy Taliban reinforcements were pouring into Mazar-e-Sharif and its surrounding areas after the militia seized the city in a dawn attack yesterday, sources said.

Independent sources told AFP the Taliban had met little resistance as they secured "overall control" of Mazar-e-Sharif, the last Afghan city to elude the Islamic fundamentalist militia’s control.

Sources said the Taliban spent the night flushing out pockets of resistance in the city of 500,000 people and that turbaned militia fighters were posted at key junctions and buildings.

Sources in the fractious anti-Taliban alliance conceded the militia had met little resistance as they swept into Mazar-e-Sharif, saying opposition forces fled in disarray.

"There is not much we can do at the moment in the north. Our forces have been scattered everywhere," said Asad Ullah, a spokesman for opposition warlord Abdul Rashid Dostam.

He said the Taliban were in control of large swathes of the north after a spectacular offensive this month that also seized the opposition garrison of Sheberghan west of Mazar-e-Sharif.

The Taliban said its forces had also secured the city’s airport around 20 kilometres east of Mazar-e-Sharif, and were chasing opposition forces to the south.

"We launched another major attack this morning on Dar-i-Suf where a lot of the opposition had fled to," said Taliban official Masoom Afghani.

The town situated around 100 km south of Mazar-e-Sharif, is located on the road linking the city to the mountainous central massif stronghold of the Shiate Muslem Hezb-i-Wahdat faction.

While the Taliban consolidated positions in the north, reports said the militia launched a new attack today north of Kabul against opposition troops loyal to commander Ahmad Shah Masood.

The Pakistan-based private Afghan Islamic Press (AIP), quoting a Taliban spokesman, said the militia seized five military posts in a pre-dawn assault on the road towards the town of Bagram.

"We have broken the opposition frontline and captured five posts" on the so-called new road, 40 km northeast of Kabul, the spokesman said.

He said the Islamic fighters were also advancing on a parallel old road in their bid to reach the Bagram junction. The report could not be confirmed.

However, Iran’s official IRNA news agency said opposition troops repelled two Taliban attacks north of Kabul yesterday, inflicting "casualties and damage" on the militia.

DUBAI (PTI): Iran has urged the Taliban militia to ensure the release of 11 Iranian diplomats detained by it after capturing the city of Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan, an Iranian official said today.

"We have contacted the Taliban directly and through Pakistan in an effort to get our diplomats released," Iran’s permanent representative for Afghanistan Alaeddin Borujerdi told Tehran radio.

Iran had earlier sought Pakistan’s assistance in securing the release of its diplomats who were captured by the Taliban when they seized the Iranian mission in the northern alliance-held city.

Mir ‘could hit’ populated areas
From Tim Radford

THE troubled Mir spacecraft could land on populated areas when it ends its 13-year endurance trial in orbit, say British scientists.

Russian scientists plan to nudge the elderly space hotel and laboratory into the atmosphere and lose it in the Pacific Ocean at the end of next year, but British experts are warning that it could hit populated areas instead.

Dr Richard Crowther, a space scientist at Dera, Britain’s defence research agency, said: “The trouble is that Mir is a very complex vehicle. It’s very easy to de-orbit a vehicle such as the shuttle, which has well defined and symmetric aerodynamic surfaces.

“The problem with the Mir station is that it is asymmetric and it is difficult to predict how such a shape would behave when it gets into the lower reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. Unlike the shuttle which has rigid surfaces, the Mir station has solar arrays which will bend and buckle quickly.”

The last NASA (National Aeronautic and Space Administration) astronaut on Mir — the Australian-born Andrew Thomas — has checked out, leaving only a Russian crew. Moscow space chiefs may decide they cannot afford to supply the space station for much longer.

Its managers plan to let it sink gradually closer to Earth, and then in December, 1999, help the last supply ship nudge it into the atmosphere on a trajectory that will let it splash down harmlessly. Dr Crowther said that once Mir had been pushed into the atmosphere it would be difficult to control its terminal trajectory. Mir would come streaking from the heavens at a shallow angle at 17,500 mph (28,000 kph), heated, braked and buffeted by an increasingly thick atmosphere.

“If you are out by several minutes, you could be out by hundreds of kilometres. The issue is where the station would end up,” he said.

Mir’s forerunner, the Salyut-7 spacebase, came back in 1991. It should have landed in the Atlantic. “It ended up striking South America. The Americans had a similar experience with Skylab. Again they aimed for the Pacific and ended up going into Western Australia. It seems that, even though people have very large targets, just because of the complex configurations of these vehicles it’s difficult to predict where they are going to fall along the track.”

Mir’s orbital pathway could take it as far north as London, as far south as the Falkland Islands. But the worry is where along the ground track the larger pieces will fall. Mir is a large object: 90 per cent of it is likely to vaporise in the heat of re-entry into the atmosphere. But it weighs 140 tons. That could still leave 14 tons of metal heading for places of habitation at several hundred miles an hour.

Space agencies routinely plan early in the design stage how spacecraft will end their lives, but the Mir programme is 13 years old. It has already survived far longer than its planned life. In the last couple of years there has been a series of sudden, terrifying moments, including a collision with a supply vessel and a fire.

Mir’s crew has also had to deal with regular computer failure, power loss, spilt chemicals, uncertain oxygen supply and overflowing lavatories. Even so, Mir has had a key role in providing endurance training in low gravity for US astronauts who will be working on the planned $ 65 billion international space station next year. “It’s actually achieved a great deal since it has been up there,” said Dr Crowther.— The Guardian, London

Snap presidential poll in Lanka?

COLOMBO, Aug 9 (AFP) — The Sri Lankan government could hold a snap presidential election and disband top-level local councils it looked set to lose in postponed poll, analysts and newspapers said today.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga last week invoked a nationwide state of emergency and indefinitely postponed provincial council elections due on August 28.

Political analysts said the ruling People’s Alliance (PA) believed Kumaratunga could boost the party by calling a presidential poll.

Constitutionally Kumaratunga can call a snap presidential election anytime after November even though her six-year term ends in 2000.

Elections to Parliament, where she has a slender one-seat majority, are also due in 2000.

“It may not be provincial council elections that will be first on the menu,” the English language Sunday Island newspaper said.

“The signals are that both she (Kumaratunga) and her party rate her as a stronger electoral prospect than the government”.

Protestant militia to surrender
BELFAST: The Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), an extremist Protestant militia, has declared its intention to lay down arms and support the Northern Ireland peace accord, radio reports said on Sunday. The group’s promise was immediately greeted by Mr Mo Mowlam, Britain’s Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who said that LVF activists held in prison would be released soon. There are about 400 LVF members currently held in prisons. They are likely to receive a similar treatment as their rival members of the Irish Republican Army, many of whom have been released from jails since the April peace agreement came into effect. — DPA

Kids die of heat
WEST VALLEY CITY (Utah): Five young girls trapped while playing in the trunk of a car died of heat exposure, the police said. Officers and dogs responding to a report that the children were missing searched the neighbourhood, scouring garages, homes and yards. The girls ranged from ages 2 to 6. Temperatures reached the upper 90° Fahrenheit (30°C) in the Salt Lake city area on Friday afternoon. “We have none of the details as to how they got in the car,” the police said. — AP

Flesh-eating bacteria
PHILADELPHIA: Two cases of flesh-eating bacteria have surfaced at a hospital here. A 38-year-old man was in critical condition at St Agnes Medical Centre after having undergone surgery during the week to save his leg from the bacterial disease, also known as “necrotizing fasciitis.” On Thursday, 17-year-old man was rushed to a Delaware county hospital for emergency surgery to remove skin damaged by the bacteria. He was in a critical condition at the Crozer-Chester Medical Centre on Saturday. The bacteria infects 500 to 1,500 Americans a year and is fatal in about 30 per cent of the cases. — AP

18 die in pile-up
ANKARA: Eighteen people died and 23 were injured in a pile-up of nine vehicles on a southern Turkish highway on Sunday. The Anantolian news agency said. It said a bus carrying labourers, first hit a truck and then a second lorry, unable to stop in time, it ploughed over bodies on the road and into a second bus laden with workers. Five more vehicles were involved in the ensuing pile-up. — Reuter

Drooping eyebrows
WASHINGTON: Neither age nor the sun can make eyebrows droop! Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, have developed a new treatment for dropping eyebrows, which lift them up without any surgery. With age and exposure to the sun, muscles which control the eyebrows begin to drag them lower on the face giving a person an angry, tired or sad look. Under the new treatment, an injection of a protein called “botox”, obtained from bacteria, weakens those muscles. The average “lift” provided by the botox is 0.18 inches and the side-effects are minimal. —ANI

Imitator hurt
BIRMINGHAM (Alabama): A 10-year-old boy found hanging from a tree by a nylon rope told his parents he was acting out a scene from the horror movie, “Scream.” Joshua Young was discharged from a Birmingham hospital on Friday, a day after he was rescued and resuscitated. In the opening scene of “Scream”, a body was left hanging from the limb of a tree. The mother of one of Joshua’s playmates said her son learned how to order pay-per-view movies, and “Scream” was one of the ones he watched. — AP

Balloon quest
BUENOS AIRES: A daredevil American balloonist is pressing on with his attempt to circle the globe, despite losing use of two of his four propane burners. After putting out a small fire that knocked out the burners, Steve Fossett said he was undeterred by the damage to equipment that heats hot air for his balloon. “I am committed to making it around the world,” he said in a message on Saturday. — AP

Amputee top scorer
HONG KONG: The brightest student in a Hong Kong school is a 17-year-old cancer patient who had his leg amputated after he was diagnosed with having bone cancer. In the secondary school examination results, announced earlier this week, Gary Ng secured the highest marks in all eight subjects. He said he wanted to study medicine. — ANI

Brunei heir
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN: Brunei proclaims an heir to Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah this week amid economic uncertainty and a rare public split within the royal family. Prince Billah, educated at Oxford and a lover of snooker, will be inaugurated as Crown Prince in an elaborate palace ceremony on Monday morning. — Reuter.