Pak army ‘taken by surprise’
LONDON, Aug 22 — The US Cruise missile attacks on suspected terrorist bases in Afghanistan took the Pakistan’s Army Headquarters by “complete surprise” and many of its trainers are believed to have been killed in the attacks in Khost area near the Pakistan border.

• US-Russia summit despite strikes
• UN to take up Sudan complaint

• 3 detainees ‘confess to Laden links’
• Terrorist camps destroyed, claims USA

Clinton gave goodbye gifts in Dec
WASHINGTON, Aug 22 — Last December 28, at a time when Monica Lewinsky had been subpoenaed in a sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton, he met her privately at the White House and gave her an Alaskan stone carving and other gifts, sources familiar with Mr Clinton’s grand jury testimony have said.
Political tension in Myanmar
YANGON, Aug 22 — Political tension escalated in Myanmar today after the Opposition declared it would form its own government despite stern opposition from the country’s Junta.
Botha pleads against conviction
JOHANNESBURG, Aug 22 — Former South African President P. W. Botha has appealed against his conviction and sentence by a court for disregarding the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Pak army ‘taken by surprise’

LONDON, Aug 22 (PTI) — The US Cruise missile attacks on suspected terrorist bases in Afghanistan took the Pakistan’s Army Headquarters by “complete surprise” and many of its trainers are believed to have been killed in the attacks in Khost area near the Pakistan border.

Afghan dissident sources here told PTI that the US missiles had hit Khost before the top brass of the Pakistani army and Taliban commanders could shift men and material from the area.

The Taliban and Pakistani army were expecting that the USA would ask for their help in physically handing over of Osama bin Laden, Saudi billionaire and the main suspect in the bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

“We believe some Pakistan army trainers also perished in the missile attack on Khost,” the sources said.

British media reports, quoting US officials, said the Cruise missiles might have also claimed the lives of some other leading international terrorist leaders who had come to the ‘Al-Badr’ camps in Khost to congratulate Laden on the successful strike against the Americans.

Afghan dissident leaders charged that Laden’s entire Arab-Afghani Mujahideen outfit was armed, funded and directed by the ISI.

The Guardian newspaper quoted former Director General of the ISI Hamid Gul and other Islamists within the Pakistani establishment as describing Laden as a “darling throughout the Islamic movement and a symbol of Islamic defiance”.

It also reported that the USA had completely jammed the Pakistani radars and air surveillance systems along the entire Markan coast. “Even radars to alert the Pakistan General Headquarters (GHQ) were paralysed and the top Pak army brass had the first information only through CNN reports,” it said.

Meanwhile, a major row was reported between civil and military intelligence agencies in Pakistan over the handing over to the USA Federal Bureau of Investigation of a key Arab suspect Mohammad Sadiq Howeida in the bombings.

The Arab national, held at Karachi airport for producing a fake passport, was handed over to the USA by the civilian Intelligence Bureau.

US-Russia summit despite strikes

MOSCOW, Aug 22 (AFP) — Next month’s summit between the US President Bill Clinton and his Russian counterpart Boris Yeltsin will go ahead despite Mr Yeltsin’s criticism of the US missile attacks on terrorist-linked targets in Afghanistan and Sudan, Russian presidential sources said yesterday.

The Russian Foreign Ministry was preparing the text of a communique which would “underline the two countries’ common positions in the fight against terrorism,” the source was quoted as saying.

The Russians would, however, also recall the need to place the anti-terrorist struggle in the context of international law and insist on the need for cooperation between the two countries in this struggle.

Russia’s Lower House of Parliament, the state Duma, voted in an emergency session yesterday on a motion condemning the US cruise missile strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan ordered by Mr Clinton in retaliation for the car bomb attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7.

The Opposition sees the new government’s anti-crises steps as bankruptcy of the state and policies pursued by Mr Yeltsin.

“All the bankrupts beginning from President Yeltsin, Prime Minister Kiriyenko and Central Bank Chairman Dubinin should quit,’’ Duma Chairman (speaker) Gennady Seleznyov, a moderate leader of the Communist Party, said.

The Duma backed his proposal to appeal to Mr Yeltsin to voluntarily step down.

Realising the impossible task of impeaching the President under the present Constitution the communist majority has decided to concentrate on the no-trust motion in the Kiriyenko Cabinet and the formation of a government of “people’s trust’’.

UN to take up Sudan complaint

WASHINGTON, Aug 22 (AFP) — The UN Security Council will discuss on Monday a Sudanese protest against a US cruise missile strike on a pharmaceuticals plant, the Council presidency said.

Samuel Zbogar, deputy permanent representative of Slovenia, whose country currently holds the council presidency, said “there was a consensus among the 14 other members that the Sudanese letter is best raised on Monday’’ in informal discussions.

He said the Sudanese letter from Bishop Gobrial Roric, state minister at the Foreign Ministry, was still being translated from Arabic into English.

As a result it was not known whether the 15-member Council would decide on Monday whether to agree to Sudan’s request for a fact-finding mission to verify US claims that the plant manufactured a precursor chemical for VX nerve gas, he said.

The factory in northern Khartoum, and alleged terrorist bases in Afghanistan, were hit by the US cruise missile strikes on Thursday.

Sudanese Foreign Minister Osman Ismail has warned the U.S.A. that any new strike against Sudan will be subject to retaliation.

“The United States should rest assured that it will not escape justice from the Sudanese people, the Arab and African peoples and the international community if it repeats this action again,” Ismail told the press yesterday.

U.S Secretary of Defence William Cohen yesterday said he did not rule out further U.S military strikes against terrorist targets.

President Omar el-Beshir has announced the recalling of Sudan’s diplomatic mission from Washington.

Sayed Hamed, Managing Director of Al-Shifaa, said the plant employed some 360 people and had suffered an estimated $100 million worth of damage. He told official Suna news agency it had been “completely destroyed.”

He also denied US allegations that the plant was making chemical weapons and said nearby facilities were also not involved in such production.

The U.S.A. said the Al-Shifaa factory was used to produce a key ingredient in the lethal nerve gas VX and was connected to international terrorist Osama bin Laden, suspected of masterminding the August 7 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

But Information Minister Ghazi Salah Eddin Atabani said the raid was “a criminal act,” and that Sudan would “respond to the American aggression” in a manner that “conforms to the international law.”

3 detainees ‘confess to Laden links’

NAIROBI, Aug 22 (AP) — Three men being held by the Kenyan authorities in connection with the US Embassy bombing have confessed to links with renegade Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden, a Nairobi newspaper reported today.

The report in the daily nation also publicly identified two of the suspects for the first time: a Yemeni named Khalid Salim and a Lebanese man named Abdallah Nacha. US and Kenyan officials have already identified the third man in custody, Mohammed Saddiq Odeh.

Neither the Kenyan police nor American FBI officials would comment on the newspaper report, which said the three were the same men who had been seen filming the American Embassy in Nairobi days before the August 7 blast.

Terrorist camps destroyed: USA

WASHINGTON, Aug 22 (PTI) — The USA has said its missile attack on Afghanistan had eliminated "terrorist camps" making these non-functional for further use, while the strike on Sudan had "functionally destroyed" the factory it claimed was making chemical weapons.

"With respect to the terrorist camps in Afghanistan, the assessment of damage has been hampered by weather conditions in the target areas... but to the extent our military intelligence people can make.. judgements at this point .... the attack has significantly disrupted the capability to use these camps as terrorist camps," U.S. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger told mediapersons.

Regarding the strike on Sudan, he said the damage caused to the "so called pharmaceutical company", which, he insisted, was making chemical precursors for producing VX nerve gas, "was functionally destroyed."

He said the USA had no information whether Osama bin Laden, Saudi billionaire suspected to have masterminded the August 7 twin bombings at American Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, survived the attack or not.

The newspaper had printed a photograph of the Yemeni man, Salim, smiling with his hands raised and clasped, and said he had been identified by three witnesses as the man who threw a grenade at embassy guards just before the explosion.

The report did not say how it obtained the photo or when it was taken.

The three told the police that they had planned the bombing while pretending to be fish merchants, based in the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa and financed by Laden, according to the report.

Witnesses had reported that fbi agents and the Kenyan police raided a home in the nearby coastal town of Malindi, conducting a three-hour search of a house in a slum district and detaining its owner, identified as Hassan Omar Hassan.

Both US and Kenyan officials declined to comment on the raid.

On the political front, both the Kenyan and Tanzanian governments remained conspicuously silent about the US cruise missile strikes on targets in Sudan and Afghanistan, which the Clinton administration said had Laden links.

Clinton gave goodbye gifts in Dec

WASHINGTON, Aug 22 (AP) — Last December 28, at a time when Monica Lewinsky had been subpoenaed in a sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton, he met her privately at the White House and gave her an Alaskan stone carving and other gifts, sources familiar with Mr Clinton’s grand jury testimony have said.

The gift-giving is the first detail to emerge about the last known visit between the two, a 15-to-20-minute get-together that is a key element of prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s investigation of obstruction of justice.

The sources, who yesterday spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the President told grand jurors that he gave Ms Lewinsky a throw rug or blanket, a decorative pin and the stone carving. Prosecutors believe he gave her three additional gifts in the Sunday morning meeting, a point not disputed by the President: a box of chocolates, Joke sunglasses and a bag from the Black Dog Store on Martha’s Vineyard, where the Clintons have vacationed for three years.

The President testified the items were going-away presents, the sources said. Ms Lewinsky was planning to go to New York to take a job that the President’s friend, Mr Vernon Jordan, was trying to secure.

Mr Starr is investigating whether Mr Clinton told Ms Lewinsky to return numerous gifts he gave her over the course of their affair, instructions that prosecutors believe could be obstruction of justice in the Paula Jones lawsuit. If Ms Lewinsky had kept the gifts and Mrs Jones’ lawyers found out about them, she would have had to turn them over as evidence.

Mr Clinton’s lawyers are arguing that his late-December gift-giving shows he was not concerned about any of that. His defenders also point out that Mr Clinton gave similar gifts to many aides and friends and “didn’t consider them a big deal.”

Yet the gifts could also be read as part of an attempt to keep Ms Lewinsky quiet a week and a half after she had been subpoenaed. At the time, Mr Jordan was helping her find a job and had arranged a lawyer to represent her in the Jones case.

The grand jury called Ms Lewinsky back for a second appearance on Thursday so her testimony could be compared with the word of the President, who testified on Monday from the White House before addressing the nation.

Ms Lewinsky testified that she and Mr Clinton agreed that gifts he had given her should be handed over to his secretary, Ms Betty Currie. Mr Clinton denies this.

Sources familiar with Mr Clinton’s testimony said he told grand jurors he did not instruct Ms Currie or anybody else to retrieve the gifts from Ms Lewinsky. Mr Clinton also said he did not learn that Ms Lewinsky had turned over the gifts to the secretary until after Mr Starr’s inquiry became public.

The December 28 meeting was a goodbye visit, probably in the Oval Office. The President acknowledged in his testimony that he could have initiated it, the sources said.

The pair talked about her plans to leave Washington for New York.

Ms Lewinsky and Mr Clinton had exchanged numerous small gifts during the course of their affair, which the former White House intern says began in November 1995.

It has previously been reported that he had given her a T-shirt, a brooch, a book of poetry and other small items.

A source familiar with the President’s testimony said at one point Mr Clinton told Ms Lewinsky that she would have to turn over the gifts to Mrs Jones’ attorneys if subpoenaed. This could be read two ways: the President was telling her to give Mrs Jones’ attorneys the gifts, or he was signalling that she should get rid of them to avoid this.

In his January 17 deposition in the Jones case, Mr Clinton was asked, “Have you and Monica Lewinsky ever been alone together in any room in the White House?” The President replied, “I have no specific recollection.”

Mr Clinton told grand jurors this week that he recalled about half-a-dozen sexual encounters with Ms Lewinsky, beginning in late 1995 or early 1996, according to a legal source familiar with his testimony. Most of their activities occurred in 1996, with Mr Clinton recalling one in 1997, the source said. Her testimony on the time frame was similar.

The President suggested that he and Ms Lewinsky agreed to keep the affair secret from the beginning. Mr Clinton misled Mr Jordan about the nature of the relationship, the source said.

Among remaining witnesses expected to testify is Clinton confidant Bruce Lindsey, a Deputy White House Counsel who has helped with the Lewinsky matter.

Yesterday, the White House asked the Supreme Court to consider overturning an appeals court ruling that Mr Lindsey can be compelled to testify. The appeals court said a government-paid lawyer cannot claim attorney-client privilege to avoid testifying before a federal grand jury. Earlier this month, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist turned down a request to block Mr Lindsey’s testimony until the issue was decided.

Political tension in Myanmar

YANGON, Aug 22 (AFP) — Political tension escalated in Myanmar today after the Opposition declared it would form its own government despite stern opposition from the country’s Junta.

There was no immediate response from the Junta to the announcement from the leading Opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party of Aung San Suu Kyi but foreign diplomats said the military rulers could not allow the new Parliament to be convened.

“You’d have the NLD dominating Parliament and issuing announcements effectively as the Government of Burma,” said one western envoy, using the former official name for Myanmar.

The NLD statement yesterday came as a leading dissident group called for a nation-wide uprising against the Junta when it failed to meet an Opposition deadline to convene Parliament elected in 1990 but never allowed to sit.

“The National League for Democracy (NLD) will be convening Parliament soon,” a party statement said.

The statement did not say when it would be formed or where it would sit, but most elected members of Parliament are believed to be active. A number have died since the polls, and others have quit their parties or left Myanmar.

The Thailand-based All-Burma Students Democratic Front (ABSDF), one of the biggest and most influential of opposition groups, said the Junta had ignored the will of the people and the international community by failing to hand over power to pro-democracy forces.

Botha pleads against conviction

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 22 (PTI) — Former South African President P. W. Botha has appealed against his conviction and sentence by a court for disregarding the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

Botha was found guilty and sentenced to a fine of 10,000 rand or 12 months’ imprisonment by the court in Goergetown in the western Cape on Saturday and released on bail of 50 rand which was paid by his lawyers.

However, a spokesperson for his lawyers said, “We believe that another court will reach a different decision.”

The Magistrate, who found Botha guilty, said the former President had disregarded all legal requirements for his appearance before the TRC.

The TRC had wanted Botha to appear before it to disclose information about his role in the activities of the former state security council against anti-Apartheid opponents.

A number of former generals and a former cabinet minister have told the TRC that Botha had given the orders for bombing a number of buildings belonging to the South African Council of Churches and trade union organisations.

The TRC Deputy Chairman, Dr Alex Boraine said Botha had brought the conviction on himself.

“We gave him a number of opportunities to appear before the TRC but he has been stubborn. He has refused to recognise the TRC.

Meanwhile, President Nelson Mandela’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) has welcomed the conviction of Botha.

Millions hit by China floods
HARBIN, China: Days of surging river waters undermined a dike protecting a provincial capital Saturday, forcing residents to flee and adding to the swelling numbers of homeless from floods devastating China. Fearful for the safety of Harbin city’s nine million population, military commanders sent frogmen into the raging Songhua river on Friday to plug the leaking levee. But foundations under a riverside pumping station and apartment complex gave way overnight, state television reported. More than a million people in northeast China have been displaced, their homes submerged by the Songhua and Nen rivers, the official China Youth daily reported. — AP

Concave-shaped dam
BEIJING: China has announced plans to build the world’s highest concave-faced dam to meet the rising demand for power in the fastest-developing country. The 325-metre-high dam will be part of the Jinxing hydro-electric power station scheduled for construction along the Yalong river in southwest China’s Sichuan province. The highest dam of its kind in the world, it will fall 10 metres short of the height for a different style dam in Russia which is an earth and stone dam. — PTI

Scramble for aid
MANILA: Two women were killed on Saturday in a stampede as thousands of poor Filipinos gathered outside the presidential palace to seek government aid, investigators and hospital source said. At least 30 persons have also been treated for injuries, Major Romeo Gapus, Commanding Officer of the presidential guard said. — Reuters

New Peruvian PM
LIMA: Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori named a new Prime Minister and Defence Minister as part of a shakeup of Peru’s political and military leaders that has also toppled its top general. In a ceremony in the presidential palace, Mr Fujimori swore in Alberto Pandolfi as the new Prime Minister and Intelligence Chief Gen. Julio Salazar Monroe as the new Defence Minister. Pandolfi had been Prime Minister for two years before resigning in June. Mr Fujimori said the remaining 15 members of his Cabinet would stay. — AP

Waiting for justice
BEIJING: China on Saturday warned Indonesia’s chief of police to stop prevaricating and take action against those responsible for the atrocities committed against ethnic Chinese during civil unrest in May. “Chinese all over the world are waiting for justice to be done in Indonesia so that the souls of the victims can rest in peace,” the official ‘China Daily’ said in an editorial. “But instead of actively digging for evidence and hunting for culprits, Indonesia’s police chief Lt-General Roesmanhadi accused non-governmental organisations of exaggerating reports of rapes and sexual assaults,” it said. — AFP

UN envoy’s report
UNITED NATIONS: UN special envoy to Baghdad Prakash Shah will report to the Security Council on Monday on his mission to Iraq, the United Nations announced. Mr Shah returned on Friday from Baghdad after failing to convince Iraqi leaders to back down on their refusal since August 5 to cooperate with UN weapons inspectors. — AFP

Pill for exercise
DALLAS: Researchers say they have found a genetic switch that tells muscle to convert into the slow endurance tissue seen in aerobics enthusiasts a discovery that could lead to a drug that would stimulate exercise’s natural effects. But researchers warn people not to expect a work out by popping a pill instead of breaking a sweat. The researchers, whose work was published on Thursday in the journal Genes and Development, believe the genetic switch could help create a drug that would help diabetics and heart patients. When people go jogging, molecular events happen in the muscles they are exercising that both enhance their capability to exercise further and improve their health,” said Dr Sanders Williams, leader of a research team at the University of Texas southwestern medical centre at Dallas. — AP