Some back Clinton, others gun for him

UNDATED, (AP) - The long-awaited testimony of US President Bill Clinton about his relationship with a White House intern drew strong reactions around the world on Tuesday, with some people rooting for him and others saying that he should be punished.

In Japan, as in many other countries, Mr Clinton’s testimony before a federal grand jury in Washington on Monday was the top story on television news broadcasts.

For instance, many Japanese awoke on Tuesday to see the news as the lead story on public broadcaster NHK, and it quickly became the talk of the town in some areas.

“It doesn’t matter. It has nothing to do with the President’s job,” said Seiko Fujii, a 33-year-old teacher, after Mr Clinton testified under oath that he had engaged in an improper relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

“But having the President testify like a regular person is amazing,” she said in downtown Tokyo’s morning rush hour.

For housewife Miyoko Nishida, (61), Mr Clinton’s testimony left her comparing him to a Japanese premier who fell from power.

“You couldn’t do that in Japan,” she said of Mr Clinton’s relations with another woman. “Remember Prime Minister Uno,” she said, referring to late premier Sosuke Uno, who was forced to step down after 69 days in office in 1989, when his popularity plunged amid reports that he had kept a geisha as his mistress.

In South Korea, some people felt deep sympathy, not for Mr Clinton, but for his wife, Hillary.

“I think he lied to his wife and everyone else, and he should be punished somehow. But I don’t know how,” Kim Ji-in, (37), a housewife in a provincial city, said of Mr Clinton. It’s not a national matter, It’s a private matter. I just don’t know how to punish him. Maybe Hillary has an idea.”

In Seoul, the South Korean capital, Park Jong-il, (28), an office worker, said Americans should now drop the matter.

“As President, Mr Clinton did a lot of good things too, like creating jobs. I think Americans should let him go,” he said.

But Park also said that the President had left Mrs Clinton “no ordinary housewife”, in a difficult position.

Later, when Mr Clinton gave a nationally televised speech in the USA apologising to Americans and his family for his inappropriate relations with Ms Lewinsky, Australians gathered around office TVs with a mixture of fascination and mirth.

“It’s high drama. The fact that the leader of the last remaining superpower on earth has to discuss his sexual dalliances in public,” said John Porter, Managing Director of the Austar Satellite TV company, after watching Mr Clinton’s address with many other office staffers.

Mr Porter, an American who has lived in Australia for four years, said overseas viewers sometimes find it is ironic that a country as freewheeling as the USA is holding Mr Clinton to such “a ridiculously high moral standard.”

In Europe, Mr Clinton’s closed-door testimony before the grand jury in Washington, D.C., was the top story on Austrian television on Monday night, taking up about half of its three 30-minute reports.

“It is very hard to imagine that the President of the United States would be removed from office for a sexual affair,” said correspondent Raimund Low, who once reported for the network from Washington. However, for the remainder of his term, Bill Clinton will be severely handicapped, perhaps also in the international arena,” Low said during one of the broadcasts.

Other countries seemed to take the news in stride.

In Sweden, known for its liberal view of sexual matters, the testimony wasn’t even mentioned on the evening TV news.

And in the Romanian capital of Bucharest, the embattled U.S. President received strong support from Romanian teenagers travelling the length of the country to praise Mr Clinton.

Mr Clinton, don’t forget, the Oasul county stands by your side,” chanted a group of 15 teenagers who arrived at the U.S. Embassy from Satu Mare, a city some 450 km northwest of Bucharest.

“We are grateful to the Clinton family, especially Hillary Clinton, who helped 27 sick Romanian children get medical treatment in the United States,” said Maria Koszor Codrea, head of the Pro-NATO Association Group.

Mr Clinton was given a tumultuous welcome when he visited Romania last year, and Mrs Clinton was in Bucharest in 1996.

Most Americans ‘satisfied’ with admission

WASHINGTON, Aug 18 (Reuters) — Most Americans are satisfied with President Bill Clinton’s admission that he had an inappropriate sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky and want the entire matter dropped, according to new polls taken late yesterday.

Results differed slightly from poll to poll, but most showed that a majority do not want him to resign over the matter, nor do they want Congress to impeach him. About two-third of the Americans watched Mr Clinton’s speech.

An initial poll conducted by CNN showed 53 per cent of Americans were satisfied with Mr Clinton’s remarks and his job approval rating remained steady at 62 per cent.

But the President’s personal approval rating dropped 20 per cent to just 40 per cent from one week ago.

Fortyeight per cent said they had a negative opinion of Mr Clinton.

Mr Clinton, in an unprecedented televised speech aimed at saving his presidency, admitted yesterday he had a sexual liaison with Monica Lewinsky and misled the public and his wife, but insisted he broke no law.

Independent counsel Kenneth Starr has been investigating whether the President conspired with Lewinsky to lie about an affair, charges that if proven true, could lead to impeachment proceedings.

UN council’s mild response to Iraq

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 18 (PTI) — The USA has failed to persuade the UN Security Council to come out with a strong response to Iraq’s decision to suspend cooperation with the weapons inspectors, even as the Clinton Administration stopped short of threatening Bagdhad with use of force if its non-cooperation stance continued.

The Security Council, in the face of stiff resistance from Russia, France and China, settled for a mild response to Iraqi decision and failed to give a strong and unstinted support to the weapons inspectors during its closed-door consultations last night.

The draft letters, finalised by the council to be sent to two chief weapons inspectors, were nowhere near the apparent expectations of Mr Richard Butler and Mr Mohammed El-Baradei who had written to it last week seeking guidance on the issue.

The letters, though expressed support for their work, left it to them whether to test Iraqi defiance by ordering fresh inspections.

Mr Butler heads the UN Special Commission charged with eliminating Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and long range missiles while Mr El-Baradei is chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), responsible for destruction of Iraqi nuclear weapons.

Diplomats said the replies undermine the position of inspectors who have now to decide on the next step unsure how the council will react to any adverse outcome.

In the meantime, Mr Prakash Shah, special envoy of the UN Secretary-General, has so far not succeeded in making Iraq agree to resume cooperation. Mr Shah, a former Indian ambassador to the United Nations, is coming here on Thursday but it is not clear whether he would brief the council.

“We found nothing in Shah’s initiative that would satisfy our concern,” Iraqi Ambassador Nizar Hamdoon was quoted as saying. However, reports from Baghdad indicate that negotiations are continuing.

Meanwhile, Iraq will continue to suspend cooperation with the UN weapons inspectors until Baghdad’s concerns are addressed, the Iraqi Ambassador to the United Nations has said.

“We still stand by our position that was announced by the leadership,” Ambassador Nizar Hamdoon said.

On August 5, the Iraqi Government announced the suspension of cooperation with the UN weapons inspectors until the UN Special Commission is restructured, and its headquarters moved outside New York to dilute US influence.

NEW YORK: The US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, has come out in support for UNSCOM chief Richard Butler but stopped short of threatening Baghdad with use of force if it did not cooperate with weapons inspectors.

In an article in the New York Times, she conceded the existence of strong differences on Iraq in the Security Council but expressed the firm backing of the USA for Mr Butler and his team.

“Our purpose now is to get the Security Council to face up to its responsibilities to the UN Special Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency,” she said, stressing that the latest confrontation was between the commission and the council.

But at the same time she emphasised, “We have ruled nothing out, including use of force.”

“If the council fails to persuade Saddam (Hussein) to resume cooperation, then we will have free hand to use other means to support UNSCOM’s mandate,” she said.

Text of President’s speech

WASHINGTON, Aug 18 (Reuters) — The following is the full text of US President Bill Clinton’s speech to the American public regarding his testimony in the Monica Lewinsky probe:

“Good evening,

This afternoon in this room, from this chair, I testified before the office of independent counsel and the grand jury.

I answered their questions truthfully, including questions about my private life, questions no American citizen would ever want to answer.

Still, I must take complete responsibility for all my actions, both public and private, and that is why I am speaking to you tonight.

As you know, in a deposition in January, I was asked questions about my relationship with Monica Lewinsky. While my answers were legally accurate, I did not volunteer information.

Indeed, I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong. It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible.

But I told the grand jury today and I say to you now that at no time did I ask anyone to lie, to hide or destroy evidence or to take any other unlawful action.

I know that my public comments and my silence about this matter gave a false impression. I misled people, including even my wife. I deeply regret that.

I can only tell you I was motivated by many factors, first, by a desire to protect myself from the embarrassment of my own conduct.

I was also very concerned about protecting my family. The fact that these questions were being asked in a politically inspired lawsuit, which has since been dismissed, was a consideration, too.

In addition, I had real and serious concerns about an independent counsel investigation that began with private business dealings 20 years ago. Dealings I might add about which an independent federal agency found no evidence of any wrongdoing by me or my wife over two years ago.

The independent counsel investigation moved on to my staff and friends, then into my private life. And now the investigation itself is under investigation.

This has gone on too long, cost too much and hurt too many innocent people.

Now, this matter is between me, the two people I love most — my wife and our daughter — and our God. I must put it right, and I am prepared to do whatever it takes to do so.

Nothing is more important to me personally, but it is private, and I intend to reclaim my family life for my family.

It’s nobody’s business but ours.

Even presidents have private lives, it is time to stop the pursuit of personal destruction and the prying into private lives and get on with our national life.

Our country has been distracted by this matter for too long, and I take my responsibility for my part in all of this. That is all I can do.

Now it is time — in fact, it is past time to move on.

We have important work to do — real opportunities to seize, real problems to solve, real security matters to face.

And so tonight, I ask you to turn away from the spectacle of the past seven months, to repair the fabric of our national discourse, and to return our attention to all the challenges and all the promise of the next American century.

“Thank you for watching, and good night.”

Keeping Taliban on narrow path
from Suzanne Goldenberg in Karachi

WITH his gentle face, and his long beard streaked with grey and white, Mullah Nizamuddin Shamzi would seem a natural object of respect. For the Taliban Islamist militia he is an object of near veneration and his writ is final.

During the past 11 years as an authority on Islamic legal codes at a leading religious seminary in Karachi, he has been tutor to 20 of the men who now rule Afghanistan with a religious fervour that seems drawn from the Middle Ages.

Mullah Shamzi is unruffled by international condemnation of his puritanism, or critics who ridicule some of the Taliban’s injunctions: against television sets, white socks and high heeled shoes for women, and music. “All over the world, there are killings and shootings and mostly that comes from the TV, and so that is why it is not permissible,” he said.

Such pronouncements make the mullah the Taliban’s supreme authority on the true interpretation of the Islamic codes by which they mean to transform Afghanistan and, if Mullah Shamzi has his way, the rest of the Muslim world.

“Our belief is that the rest of the Muslim states should have such governments, but because of the West’s material influence it is hard. I would be very happy if Pakistan were like Kandahar. We would be very happy if such a day comes; we are waiting for that day.”

Pakistani support to the Taliban — which Islamabad denies — assumed new importance this month as they swept their opponents from the last of their strongholds, reducing their influence to small pockets of Afghanistan.

It is also certain to come under scrutiny following the arrest of a man suspected of being involved in the bombing of the US embassies in east Africa, who was believed to be on his way to Afghanistan.

Among Mullah Shamzi’s most powerful disciples is the Governor of Kandahar, Mullah Mohammed Hassan, whose rule has set the standard even for the Taliban. In his southern fiefdom, Mullah Hassan has ordered couples stoned to death for illicit sexual relations and decreed that gay men should be buried alive under rubble.

He is also unperturbed by critics — including the UN — that his edicts violate modern ideas of human rights. He argues that the most extreme edicts, such as the ban on girls’ education, are a war-time necessary that will change once the Islamist conquest is complete.

But it is uncertain whether the Taliban want to change. Mullah Shamzi can countenance no change to the laws that punish murder with public execution, theft with amputation and adultery with stoning.

“The main objective of law is to bring harmony to the state,” he says, arguing that the Afghan capital, Kabul, was a den of crime and sexual perversion before they arrived two years ago. — The Guardian, London

B’desh bid to stop “deportation”

DHAKA, Aug 18 (PTI) — Bangladesh has stepped up vigil along the border to block any attempt by India to “push-in” Bangladesh nationals, reports said here today.

A high-level inter-ministerial meeting, which was presided over by Foreign Minister Abdus Samad Azad in Dhaka yesterday, reviewed the “preparedness on the border” to prevent any “deportation” of alleged Bangladesh nationals by India.

The meeting was informed that none of those identified as “Bangladeshis” by India would be accepted by Dhaka.

Only 17 of the 300, deported recently from Maharashtra to West Bengal allegedly for being Bangladesh nationals, were identified by Dhaka as their citizens, Bangladesh official news agency BSS reported quoting sources.

The identity of the persons concerned must have to be established to the satisfaction of the Bangladeshi authorities before any possible move of “push-in” into the country, the agency said.

“If India suspects that Bangladeshis are living there illegally, they (India) would have to go by established international procedure,” the sources said.

Affair inspires ad

JERUSALEM (Reuters): An Israeli soap powder company is using the US presidential sex scandal to sell stain-removing detergent. In a television commercial, the Lever Israel company suggests that its Biomat detergent can deal with even the most stubborn stains caused by what has euphemistically been called DNA material. It shows “FBI agents” entering the “home” of Monica Lewinsky to remove, wash and return the dress at the centre of an investigation into whether President Bill Clinton had an affair with the former White House intern and told her to lie about it.

Man stabs himself during testimony

WASHINGTON, Aug 18 (AP) — A man jabbed himself in the neck with a screwdriver outside the White House, a National Park police spokesman has said.The 26-year-old man, whose name was not released by the police, began yelling amid tourists and protesters gathered on the sidewalk yesterday. Inside the White House, President Bill Clinton was giving testimony in the Monica Lewinsky investigation via closed-circuit television.The man was yelling something about, “free Iraq.” The words, ‘I’m going to kill myself if you don’t do something about Iraq, something like that,” said Washington Post photographer Michael Williamson, who witnessed the incident.

Yeltsin aide resigns
MOSCOW: Russia’s rouble crisis claimed its first victim when President Boris Yeltsin’s top economic aide, Dr Alexander Livshits, resigned even as the USA and International Monetary Fund asked Moscow to take measures to increase tax collection, but stopped short of endorsing a monetary U-turn that devalued the currency and halted some foreign debt payment. Russia’s central bank meanwhile, recommended that Russian borrowers carry out negotiations with foreign creditors to work out new debt payment schedules. Dr Livshits while announcing his decision to resign said: “For the first time in six years of work with the President I could not ‘protect’ him.” — PTI

Hidden N-complex
NEW YORK: US intelligence agencies have detected a huge secret underground complex in North Korea that they believe is the centrepiece of an effort to revive the country’s frozen nuclear weapon programme, the New York Times reported on Monday.. Officials at the White House and the Pentagon feared the complex might represent an effort to break a four-year-old agreement in which North Korea pledged to give up its nuclear weapon programme in exchange for billions of dollars in Western aid, The Times reported. — Reuters

King operated upon
RIYADH: King Fahd of Saudi Arabia left the hospital on Monday evening after having undergone an operation to remove his gall bladder, the royal family said. The King was admitted to hospital on August 2 for the third time in three years. His gall bladder was removed on Wednesday in what was the second operation in 10 days after he had puss removed from his abdomen. — AFP

Condoms via Net
BANGKOK: A UK-based condom manufacturer has chosen Thailand as the first southeast Asian country to make its products available at vending machines and via the Internet. London Royal Consumer Products (Thailand), which claims about 70 per cent of Thailand’s condom market, announced plans to make its products more easily available to young, presumably shy buyers. It is launching a Thai-language website by October and installing condom vending machines at popular spots in Bangkok by early next year. — DPA

‘Honour Di’
PARIS: A strong majority of the French people favour honouring the memory of Princess Diana by naming a Paris street or square after her, said a survey. The IFOP survey for the daily France Soir newspaper, conducted nearly a year after Diana’s death in a Paris car crash, found that 70 per cent backed the idea while 26 per cent opposed it. Four per cent had no opinion. — Reuters

Hitler’s art recovered
MADRID: The Spanish police has recovered a painting by Adolf Hitler, stolen along with works by two other artists last April, officials have said. ‘Woman in Blue,’ a work by the frustrated artist-turned Nazi leader, was one of three paintings valued at a total of four million pesetas ($ 26,315). The paintings had been stolen from inside a parked van belonging to Malaga Art Gallery. — Reuters

Driving at 81
EVREUX: An 81-year-old woman has already clocked up 600 km at the wheel after passing her driving test first time round. The French great-grandmother, Christiane Alexandre, passed her driving test here on July 21 “without any favouritism” on the part of the examiner. Alexandre said she was delighted with her new-found freedom, explaining that she simply had not the time to learn to drive until now. — AFP

Heroin seized
TEHRAN: The police seized 4.8 kg of heroin and arrested four men, the Islamic republic news agency has reported. It said on Monday the drugs were concealed in a vehicle in the central Yazd province and two Afghans, a Pakistani and an Iranian were arrested. — AP