MQM lashes out at
Nawaz Sharif
LONDON, Aug 29 — The MQM which recently broke its ties with the ruling Pakistan Muslim League, has launched a stinging attack on premier Nawaz Sharif and the Army top brass alleging they had failed utterly in preventing “grave violation” of national airspace during US missile attacks on terrorist camps in Afghanistan.

Suspect blames
Osama's outfit
NEW YORK, Aug 29 — A second suspect in the bombing of the US Embassy in Kenya blamed the attack on a terrorist organisation allegedly headed by Islamic militant Osama bin Laden, investigators have said.

Sukhois to be fitted with advanced radar
LONDON, Aug 29 — The most advanced radar under test in Russia, with the capability of tracking 15 targets simultaneously, will be fitted on the Sukhoi SU-MKI aircraft scheduled to be delivered to India in 2000, a senior official with the Russian NHP radar company has said.

MQM lashes out at Nawaz Sharif

LONDON, Aug 29 (PTI) — The MQM which recently broke its ties with the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), has launched a stinging attack on premier Nawaz Sharif and the Army top brass alleging they had failed utterly in preventing “grave violation” of national airspace during US missile attacks on terrorist camps in Afghanistan.

“Both Mr Sharif and Army chief Gen Jehangir Karamat have to “answer to the people of the country (for) their utter failure and ineptness to detect overflights of American Tomahawks over Pakistan and their shabby efforts to malign each other in efforts to stave off the ire of the public”, MQM chief Altaf Hussain said yesterday.

Pointing out to Western press reports that the volley of missiles flew over Pakistan for 15 minutes and two of them dropped on Baluchistan, Mr Hussain asked in a strongly-worded statement: “What were the armed forces doing during this?”

“Both Mr Sharif and General Karamat have to explain the grave implications for Pakistan’s security created by the missile overflights and the moves by the Army and the government to create a smokescreen of confusion” on the issue, he demanded.

Taking exception to the latest explanation given by General Karamat in Beijing yesterday on the issue, he accused the Army chief of “conspicuously not divulging the exact sequence of events since the detection of American warships near Pakistan’s territorial waters at the time of the US attacks”.

“The contradictory statements being issued by Mr Sharif and General Karamat, and the presence of American Gen Ralston in Pakistan at the time of the attacks is either complicity or total failure of the armed forces to safeguard the country and its people,” Mr Hussain said.

“Is Pakistan genuinely a sovereign state or merely a colony of a powerful foreign country?” he asked while castigating General Karamat for holding out “veiled threats” to Pakistani politicians and media, who, he said, were trying to unmask the culprits who had failed in their “sacred duty to defend the country and the people”.

“Every day contradictory revelations are coming to the people through the media adding to their psychological misery in realising that their safety and welfare was not in safe hands in times of need,” Mr Hussain said.

People also have the right to know who permitted the USA to launch the attacks, he said, asking the Army to explain that, “as they had prior knowledge of the US action, what action had the armed forces taken to defend national territory?”.

KARACHI: Cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan yesterday led a rally here against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government and vowed to change the “rotten and outdated” system, witnesses said.

Chanting slogans hundreds of Imran supporters drove in a motorcade through a 5 km route in the heart of the city before dispersing peacefully.

Accusing Mr Sharif of plundering the national exchequer, he said the days of his government were numbered.

Suspect blames Osama's outfit

NEW YORK, Aug 29 (AP) — A second suspect in the bombing of the US Embassy in Kenya blamed the attack on a terrorist organisation allegedly headed by Islamic militant Osama bin Laden, investigators have said.

Mohamed Sadeek Odeh (33) has denied involvement in the attack, which US investigators also believed was orchestrated by Bin Laden.

Odeh, who was arrested on the day of the bombing in Pakistan, was brought to a US courtroom yesterday on charges of murder, murder conspiracy and conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.

He told his lawyer he was a follower of Bin Laden, but insisted he was not part of the bombing plot. He also said hurting civilians was against his religion.

"There were Muslims and there are Muslims," the lawyer, Jack Sachs, quoted Odeh as saying before the furniture salesman appeared briefly in US District Court.

Mr Sachs said of Odeh that it was not his mission in life to injure unarmed civilians."

The complaint against Odeh also set out a wideranging case against Bin Laden, a multimillionaire from Saudi Arabia now believed to be hiding in Afghanistan. The same charges were brought a day earlier against another suspect brought from Kenya, Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-Owhali.

During a brief hearing yesterday, Odeh, said to be either a Jordanian or a Palestinian who obtained Kenyan citizenship in 1994, was ordered held pending an appearance for September 28. Mr Sachs said Odeh studied engineering in the Philippines and had a wife and child in Jordan.

The FBI complaint said Odeh accepted responsibility for the embassy bombings because he was a follower of Al Qaeda, which he believed conducted the attacks. Investigators, however, claimed Odeh was part of the plot.

Odeh allegedly admitted training Islamic fighters who opposed UN forces in Somalia in 1993 and learning enough about explosives at Al Qaeda training camps that he was able to carry out the embassy bombings this month.

He said he travelled to Kenya with a false passport on August 2 and met an explosives expert who led the Kenyan cell of Al Qaeda, according to the complaint. It alleged that he stayed with other members of the group at Hilltop Hotel in Kenya before travelling on August 5 to meet Bin Laden.

Odeh said all bomb plotters except one left Kenya the day before the attack, shaving their beards so they would not attract the suspicions of customs officials, the statement said.

Yeltsin no longer in control: Lebed

MOSCOW, Aug 29 (AFP) — Russian presidential hopeful Alexander Lebed said today that President Boris Yeltsin had “removed himself from running the country” and that power was now devolving towards Parliament, Interfax reported.

General Lebed, who last spring was elected Governor of the vast Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk that may serve as his launch pad for the presidency, said that Russia’s financial crisis could only be solved if all political forces backed acting Premier Viktor Chernomyrdin.

“There is a small, very small chance to control things, so we must support him (Chernomyrdin)”, Lebed said.

General Lebed turned into an outspoken Yeltsin critic after the President ousted him from a top security post in the fall of 1996. The maverick general had accepted the post only months earlier as a reward for backing Mr Yeltsin’s re-election that June.

Asked by a journalist whether he thought Mr Yeltsin should voluntarily retire, General Lebed replied: “Without question”.

AP adds: Mr Yeltsin gathered all his strength at the end of a tense week to deliver a strong and unequivocal message: I will not resign.

“I want to say that I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to resign. I will work as I’m supposed to for my constitutional term,’” he said in an interview on television. “In 2000 there will be an election for a new President and I will not run.”

Mr Yeltsin’s emphatic denial came after days of feverish speculation that the President was about to resign or be ousted as his country plunged into a seemingly bottomless economic decline. He had not been seen in public since Tuesday, prompting reports that he had already stepped down.

But the President rallied back yesterday. He held a series of meetings designed to demonstrate his control and went on television to squash talk of stepping down. His aides insisted he would not bow to opposition demands to share power.

Russians, who have weathered one crisis after another in recent years, were taking the latest one in their stride, too. Short lines formed outside some banks as people tried to change roubles for dollars, but there was little sign of panic.

All currency trades were suspended for a third day.

Russian stocks actually rose by 5.7 per cent, but trading was very light and dealers warned that the rise did not signal a market recovery.

Looking calm and speaking easily, Mr Yeltsin said on television that he was working to restore stability and he believed things could be fixed. He acknowledged the crisis, especially the devaluation of the rouble, would mean more hard times for his people after years of privation.

“It would be naive to say that we’ll take some steps and people won’t suffer,” he said. “However as President, I must say that we’ll take every measure to ensure that people don’t lose their savings. I cannot promise that prices won’t go up, but as president I am obligated to do everything to keep it to a minimum.”

Sukhois to be fitted with advanced radar

LONDON, Aug 29 (PTI) — The most advanced radar under test in Russia, with the capability of tracking 15 targets simultaneously, will be fitted on the Sukhoi SU-MKI aircraft scheduled to be delivered to India in 2000, a senior official with the Russian NHP radar company has said.

No 11 and No 11M phased array radars, currently being tested by scientists and having the capability to engage four to six of the 15 targets being tracked at one time, are being fitted to the next batch of Sukhoi aircraft, NHP Director Yuri Belyi was quoted as saying by Janes Defence Weekly.

“The next batch of Sukhoi will have phased array radar, infrared/laser sensor pods under development and other systems including, for the first time, Indian made computers,” he said.

Under a contract signed recently between India and Russia, the Indian Air Force had already received the first batch of eight Sukhoi fighter aircraft in the interceptor and air-superiority fighter configuration, the journal said.

Mr Belyi said the next batch of eight Sukhois, which India would receive by the end of this year, would be of multi-role configuration with extended ground attack capability.

India sought a delay in the delivery of these aircraft so as to equip them with some more advanced avionics, he said.

Mr Belyi said earlier versions of the aircraft delivered to India would also be fitted with advanced systems like sextant avionics, VEH 3000 head-up displays, totem INS/GPS and liquid crystal multi-functioning displays.

Held for mailing cyanide to docs
WASHINGTON: A desolate cancer patient who was unhappy with people “mistreating” her, has been charged with attempted murder for mailing cyanide to doctors and social workers. The police arrested Kathryn Schoonover (50) while allegedly pouring poison into envelopes and carrying a “hit list” with 100 names. She was arrested outside a post office in Marina Del Rey, near Los Angeles, after people saw her pouring a white powdery substance from a bottle labelled “sodium cyanide” and “poison” into plastic bags and then stuffing them into about 100 envelopes — ANI

Mona Lisa
PARIS: Suggestions that the 15th-century Mona Lisa is due for a restoration work to remove her many layers of yellowing varnish have affronted Paris art experts, reported a French arts magazine. An article by journal Des Arts published on Friday shows the Leonardo Da Vinci masterpiece as it is, next to a virtual version minus many layers of lacqueur, showing the subject with pink cheeks and the background lake a deeper blue. The dispute centres on whether it is worth running the risk of removing the varnish from a portrait which is world-renowned in part because of how it has aged. — AFP

Briton to scale peak
LONDON: Britain’s best-known mountaineer, 64-year-old Chris Bonington, has set out to be the first man to climb Tibet’s most sacred peak. Bonington, the first Briton to climb Mount Everest in 1975, and his six-man team will travel through eastern Tibet on a mission to be the first to scale the 7,600-metre Sepu Kangri mountain. The peak, whose name means the great snow mountain by the sacred lake, lies in the eastern section of the Nyain-Qen-Tanglha Shan range, 320 km north-east of the Tibetan capital Lhasa. — AFP

Venom cure
LONDON: How about a little poison to cure your breast cancer? A team of US researchers said that a protein found in snake venom might fight breast cancer. Reports from Boston quoted the researchers as saying that the protein halted tumour growth by preventing tumour cells from spreading throughout the body and also by stopping them from growing tiny blood vessels to nourish themselves. Biochemistry professor at the University of Southern California Francis Markland said the protein caused a 60 per cent to 70 per cent reduction in the growth rate of breast tumours. — ANI

Ex-spy meets judge
PARIS: Former British spy Richard Tomlinson has met the judge investigating the crash that killed Princess Diana almost a year ago. Tomlinson spent six months in jail for trying to sell his memoirs in breach of Britain’s Official Secrets Act. Sources said Tomlinson claimed that driver Henri Paul, who also died in the August 31 crash along with Diana’s partner, Dodi Fayed, worked for British intelligence. — AP

Poll on royals
LONDON: Almost exactly a year after the death of Princess Diana, more than one in four Britons feel less positive about their royal family than they did 12 months ago, a newspaper poll published on Saturday said. The poll published in The Express, reported that 25.8 per cent of 1,200 adults questioned said after their opinion of the royal family had fallen in the past 12 months, although a slightly larger number, 28.2 per cent, said that their feelings towards the royals had improved. Nearly 42.9 per cent of people said their opinion had remained unchanged since her death. — AP