$ 2 m raised to pay Clinton’s bills
WASHINGTON, Aug 23 — The Clinton Legal Trust said it had raised $ 2.2 million in the past six months, more than what was collected during the previous four years of his presidency combined.

• Clinton’s battle with Starr yet to start

Suu Kyi’s health worsens
Bar on doctors’ visits

YANGON, Aug 23 (AFP) — Myanmar’s junta today warned that an Opposition decision to convene its own Parliament was illegal as the health of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was said to be deteriorating on the 12th day of a standoff with the military.

“Such a move by any individual political party would be in contravention of Myanmar law and seems designed to derail the ongoing discussions between the government and the NLD,” a junta spokesman said in a statement.

The National League for Democracy (NLD), lead by Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi, on Friday said it would convene Parliament elected in the 1990 elections in which Opposition scored a landslide victory. The junta has since refused to relinquish power.

Myanmar’s military government has barred doctors from visiting Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is suffering from kidney problems, her party said today.

Ms Suu Kyi’s non-violent protest on a rural road against the military restricting her from traveling outside Yangon has entered the 12th day. She and three of her colleagues are camped inside a van 32 km west of the capital.

The authorities are refusing to let her proceed to the city of Bassein, where she intends to meet members of her party.

The personal physicians of Ms Suu Kyi were not allowed to see her, said Mr Tin Oo, the Vice Chairman of her National League for Democracy.

They waited for a response from the authorities, but they did not get any. “The authorities did not give any reason. We are trying to get permission today,” Mr Tin Oo, a former General, Defence Minister and Buddhist monk, said.

Ms Suu Kyi’s doctors were permitted to visit her twice earlier in the week. They said after examining her the first time that she was suffering from low blood pressure and some kidney problems. On Friday, they said her blood pressure had improved.

“She has had no food intake for 10 days and is suffering from constipation and can go into shock at any time,” NLD quoted the doctor as reporting, adding that a doctor had been refused permission by the junta to examine Suu Kyi yesterday.

Suu Kyi was committed to staying at the site of the standoff until all NLD members detained or subject to travel restrictions in recent months were released, the statement said.

The junta, sensitive to international criticism, has been at pains to demonstrate it was concerned for her welfare and says it had provided her all facilities as well two drivers and an NLD official accompanying her, with food, water and even music cassettes and outdoor furniture.

A government ambulance has also been deployed at the scene in case she fell ill, it said.

In a statement today the junta repeated its assertion that it was too dangerous for her to continue her journey, citing threats of violence against “prominent persons” by rebel groups.

Chechnya declares war on USA

MOSCOW, Aug 23 (PTI) — Russia’s self-declared independent region of Chechnya has declared an all-out war against the USA for attacking Afghanistan and Sudan and branded US President Bill Clinton as “terrorist number one”.

In a televised press conference yesterday Chechen Vice-President Vakha Arsanov said that by attacking Afghanistan and Sudan, the USA had launched an “undeclared third world war” against the Islamic people of the world, and in retaliation, he had ordered an all-out attack against the USA and Americans on a global scale.

Mr Clinton had been put on the “wanted list” for his crimes against the Islamic people and would be tried according to Shariah laws, Mr Arsanov announced.

He, however, ruled out attack on Americans in Moscow and Azeri capital Baku, which has a sizeable Chechen population, to avoid their prosecution by the Russian and Azeri authorities.

The reaction of President Maskhadov was not immediately available. He has recently been busy in his international drive to seek the recognition of Chechnya’s independence from Moscow.

Russia’s breakaway gun-toting region of Chechnya, a hotbed of terrorism in the Caucasus, had established diplomatic ties with the Taliban regime in Kabul in spite of Moscow’s protests.

ISLAMABAD (AFP): Two men have been arrested for the killing of an Italian UN official in Kabul and they would be tried by an Islamic court, Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar said on Saturday.

In a statement from his southern Kandahar base, he said both men were Pakistanis, the private Afghan Islamic Press reported. It identified one of them as Haq Nawaz and said both would be tried under the Shariat law. The accused have been transferred to Kandahar.

The Taliban chief said if the Islamic court passed the death penalty they would be executed, the Pakistan-based agency reported.

The two officials working for the UN Special Mission to Afghanistan were Mr Eric Lavertu from France and Lieut-Col Carmine Calo from Italy. They were attacked while travelling in a UN vehicle by a number of gunmen yesterday. Colonel Calo succumbed to his injuries while Mr Lavertu suffered minor injuries.

$ 2 m raised to pay Clinton’s bills

WASHINGTON, Aug 23 (PTI) — The Clinton Legal Trust said it had raised $ 2.2 million in the past six months, more than what was collected during the previous four years of his presidency combined.

The legal trust is intended to enable the US President to pay his legal bills in the sexual harassment case brought by Paula Jones and now the Monica Lewinsky case.

More than 17,000 Clinton supporters contributed to the newly-constituted trust.

Many in Hollywood are also among Mr Bill Clinton’s strongest supporters.

The 63 donations of $ 10,000 each, the maximum allowed, received by June 30 included gifts from performers, directors and producers such as Tom Hanks, Barbra Streisand, Michael Douglas, Ron Howard, Norman Lear, Bud Yorkin, Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw-Spielberg as well as studio executives Jeffrey Katzenberg, David Geffen and Henry Weinstein.

A former Democratic Senator and Mr Clinton’s friend David Pryor, who set up the fund, said: “We believe that no ‘first family’ should face such a horrendous financial burden while trying to carry out the work which the American people elected him to do”.

Critics said they did not elect Mr Clinton to dally with a girl old enough to be his daughter.

However, the US President continues to enjoy the support of more women than men — 56 per cent among men and 68 per cent among women.

The Washington Post said feminist organisations, which had been restling internally for months over how to react to the presidential scandal, continue their support, citing the difference between sexual harassment, for which they had condemned Justice Clarence Thomas and Senator Robert Packwood, and what was apparently consensual sex between the President and Monica Lewinsky.

Clinton’s battle with Starr yet to start
by Martin Kettle in Washington

THE White House spin machine on Tuesday carried forward the theme of Mr Bill Clinton’s televised confession by arguing that the President now wanted to put the Monica Lewinsky affair behind him and begin the job of repairing his authority.

The Democratic Congressional leader, Mr Dick Gephardt, spoke in similar terms. But Mr Clinton knows that the Lewinsky scandal is not over. And he also knows that the final, decisive battle with independent counsel Kenneth Starr is yet to come and that it will take place in the Republican-dominated House of Representatives this autumn.

The battle will come when Mr Starr submits to Congress his final report on his four-year investigation into Mr Clinton’s past business and other dealings. This could be as early as the second week of next month.

Much of Mr Clinton’s investigation testimony on Monday, and his defiant late-night broadcast, can best be understood as an attempt to manoeuvre Mr Starr into the weakest possible position from which to launch his assault in Congress.

The Clinton broadcast’s tone of bitterness against the independent counsel, and the reportedly sharp exchanges between the two men during Monday’s 4.5-hour evidence-taking session in the White House Map Room, underline the belief among the President and his closest advisers that he is engaged in a fight to the finish with a vengeful and politically motivated prosecutor.

Mr Starr has tracked Mr Clinton for four years on a host of issues starting with Whitewater, a 1980s land investment in Arkansas. But Mr Starr is expected to focus on the Lewinsky case as the basis for any possible action against Mr Clinton.

A President — as with all civic officers of the USA — can be impeached only for “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanours.” When Mr Starr began his investigations into the Lewinsky affair, he focused on three possible such “high crimes” — perjury, subornation of perjury and obstruction of justice. But the continued denials of all the main protagonists, including Ms Lewinsky in her grand jury testimony earlier this month, have made it more difficult for Mr Starr to prove a Clinton-inspired conspiracy to cover up the affair. As a result, Mr Starr is increasingly focused on the single potential high crime of perjury.

Mr Clinton did not admit to perjury on Monday when he was asked about his earlier on -oath denials of a sexual relationship with Ms Lewinsky. Indeed, he denied it. In his broadcast he said that the answers he gave lawyers in another case in January, when Paula Jones sued him for sexual harassment, were “legally accurate”.

In other words, he did not believe that Ms Lewinsky’s fellatio sessions fell within the definition of sex adopted by the Jones lawyers and endorsed by the trial judge.

If the polls are good for the President in the run-up to the return of Congress on September 8, then he can expect the House of Representatives to lose whatever enthusiasm it now has for impeachment. But if the President’s reputation goes down, the pressure among Republicans for a tougher approach is certain to grow.

A Missouri Republican Senator, Mr John Ashcroft, who has repeatedly called for Mr Clinton to resign, led the impeachment calls again. But senior Republicans such as the House speaker, Mr Newt Gingrich, the judiciary committee chairman, Mr Henry Hyde, and the Senate majority leader, Mr Trent Lott, the men who have to take the key strategic decisions some time next month, were reluctant to comment. They, too, are watching the polls.

Nevertheless, Mr Clinton’s historic testimony, the first by a sitting US President in an investigation directed against him, represents a turning point in the Lewinsky saga. Over the next weeks, the focus in the inquiry will shift from the federal courthouse on Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue where the grand jury sits to the House.

Mr Clinton knows that many of the majority in the 105th Congress were elected as shock-troops in the stalled but still angry Gingrich Republican revolution. But he is also aware that American voters seem forgiving of his private wrongdoings.

He knows, too, that while many Republicans long to remove him, most of them, provided he retains the support of his own Democratic Party, do not hate him enough to hand the presidency to a man who this week is sensibly vacationing far away in Hawaii, Vice-president Al Gore.
— The Guardian, London.

Muslim schools face closure in Sweden

STOCKHOLM, Aug 23 (UNI) — Prime Minister Goran Persson has proposed discontinuation of the Muslim schools in Sweden, in what is seen as an outright bid on the eve of a national general election to woo the increasingly powerful racist vote.

Last year, Mr Persson ordered the Department of Education to carry out an inquiry on the “denominationally, ethnically and linguistically motivated schools run in the country from a segregational perspective”. His proposal emanates from the results of that study.

Explaining his stand, the Social Democrat (SDP), Mr Persson says, “I am concerned that the Muslim schools in Sweden are conducive to creating as potential segregation in the Swedish society.”

Director of the Department of Education Stefan Bolin disagrees with Mr Persson. “The Prime Minister has much that is wrong,” says Mr Bolin.

Mr Persson’s proposal has generated alarm waves among the different Muslim communities around the country. The Indo-Pakistani Muslims living in Sweden total nearly 8,000.

3-D structure of enzyme designed

WASHINGTON, Aug 23 (AFP) — Researchers have generated a three-dimensional molecular structure of the common enzyme in a breakthrough that may overcome resistance to antibiotics, according to a study published yesterday.

Dr Stephen Burley of Rockefeller University in New York writes in the scientific journal, Cell, “The bacterial enzyme’s structure is shared by a superfamily of at least 150 enzymes present in every kingdom of life’’.

Dr Burley and his colleagues determined that the bacterial enzyme’s structure resembled “a cupped right hand wrapped around a cylinder’’. It promotes the transfer of an acetyl group from a donor molecule to a recipient molecule.

“The three-dimensional structure shows us how the enzyme positions both the donor and the recipient so that the transfer can occur’’, said Dr Burley.

Pop music tide sweeps Iran

TEHERAN, Aug 23 (Reuters) - Iranians are increasingly tuning in to the new wave of ‘revolutionary’ pop music, combining state-of-the-art production techniques, western melodies, traditional Iranian elements and lyrics about divine love.On Teheran’s bustling inqlab (revolution) avenue, many young Iranians eagerly ask in music shops when the latest album by Khashaiar Etemadi will be available.

Tolstoy letters back in Russia
MOSCOW: Three letters, whose 90-year journey could be the stuff of an epic novel, have made their way back to a museum dedicated to the man who wrote them: Leo Tolstoy. The letters were written to a young Ukrainian follower of Tolstoy between 1906 and 1909, and carried by his descendants as they were tossed by the political currents of the century. The Sheerman family was persecuted by the Soviet Union and emigrated to Nazi Germany to serve as labourers during World War ii. After the war, the descendants of Vladimir Sheerman emigrated to Argentina, where they live today. — AP

Gorilla dead
BROOKFIELD: A 13-year-old male gorilla who had a 1994 surgery to remove a brain tumour died on Saturday at the Brookfield zoo in Illinois. Chicory recently appeared to be in perfect health, and an autopsy did not reveal the cause of death, said Ms Melinda Pruett-jones, the zoo’s primate curator. — AP

Speakers’ meeting
BAGHDAD: Iraqi Parliamentary Speaker Saadun Hammadi has met his Indian counterpart G.M.C. Balayogi, who assured him of the support of the Indian people in the UN arms inspections crisis, Iraq’s official INA news agency has said. During the Saturday meeting, Mr Hammadi presented “the latest developments in relations between Iraq and the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) charged with disarmament” and “provocative acts of UNSCOM chief Richard Butler, who works at the instigation of the US to prolong the embargo,” INA said. — AFP

Vatican crackdown
VATICAN CITY: With the approval of Pope John Paul ii, a Vatican commission has denounced some writings by Anthony de Mello, a widely-selling India-born Jesuit author, as incompatible with the Roman Catholic faith. In the latest move by Vatican’s watchdogs to crack down on doctrinal unorthodoxy, the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith concluded that while some early books by the priest, who died in 1987, contained “valid elements of oriental wisdom,” there were many “dangers” in his body of work. — AP

Indians upset
LONDON: Local Indians are upset over a British Magisterial court’s decision to allow a cafe owner to keep a $ 20,000 image of Goddess Shakti retrieved from a lake at Great Yarmouth. After an hour-long deliberation earlier this week, the magistrate decided that Sue Bracken, who runs a cafe at Great Yarmouth on the banks of the lake where the jewel-studded idol was found, could keep it.

Protecting monument
WASHINGTON: The Park police placed concrete barriers around the Washington Monument and were searching tourists’ bags because of heightened security following US missile attacks on alleged terrorist sites in Afghanistan and Sudan. Spokesman John Loveland said the barriers were put up because the monument is among the capital’s few major public memorials that a vehicle can park near. — AP