‘Private Ryan’ named best film by LA critics
LOS ANGELES, Dec 14 — Steven Spielberg’s World War ii film “Saving Private Ryan”, has been named 1998’s best movie by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, making it an early favourite for Best Picture honours at the Academy Awards next year.

‘God hates American atmosphere’
ONCE described by George Bush as a man of vision, Sun Myung Moon was a product of the 1970s. The 1990s have not been kind to him. Yet he remains a rich man who owns a bizarre collection of newspapers, magazines and cable television channels and an assortment of universities, golf courses and hotels.Today, the sermons of the ageing and increasingly frail Mr Moon are filled with apocalyptic visions of the USA. “God hates the American atmosphere,’’ he said recently.

‘Monica’ dates

Anti-Israel clauses revoked
Clinton makes historic visit to Gaza

CAIRO, Dec 14 (PTI) — Hundreds of officials of the Palestinian National Council today raised their hands to support the revoking of a clause in the PLO charter calling for Israel's destruction. Israel accepted the Palestinian National Council (PNC) vote on the charter.

The vote came amidst Mr Clinton's visit to the Palestinian-controlled territory of Gaza. Mr Clinton was present when the Palestinian officials got up from their seats and raised their hand to reaffirm the nullification of clauses. "You did a good thing by raising your hand. It has touched the people of Israel," Mr Clinton told the PNC meeting to the loud cheers of the Palestinians.

RAFAH Gaza Strip, (Reuters): US President Bill Clinton began a landmark visit to the Gaza Strip today feted by Palestinian leaders as a boost to their quest for statehood.

The Marine one presidential helicopter flew in from Jerusalem to Gaza’s airport, which opened last month under the Wye river land-for-security deal with Israel that Mr Clinton is now trying to rescue on his three-day Middle East mission.

The control tower was wrapped from the top to the ground in a giant Stars and Stripes and the Palestinian flag for the first visit by a US President to Palestinian-ruled soil.

Mounted Palestinian police guarded the windswept airport as Mr Clinton landed at 1.56 p.m. IST and armed security forces blanketed the impoverished territory, most of which gained self-rule in 1994 under an interim peace deal with Israel.

Two US Snipers were also on alert on the roof of the tower, a Palestinian security official said.

“Welcome to Palestine,” read a sign erected on the road outside the airport, where Mr Clinton and his wife Hillary received a red carpet welcome and bouquets of flowers from Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and his wife Suha.

“We have a dream. Free Palestine,” read a poster in Gaza that showed a beaming Clinton giving a thumbs up and Arafat flashing a V-for-victory sign.

A band player march tunes but national anthems were missing in a sign of the delicacy of a visit Mr Clinton has said Palestinians should not see as endorsing their aspirations to statehood, which Israel opposes.

President Clinton later inaugurated the new airport that was opened last month under the WYE deal.

“I am delighted to be the first President to come to Palestinian territory”, a beaming Clinton told reporters in his brief remarks.

Mr Arafat said “through President Clinton peace will come to Palestinian territory”.

Mr Clinton arrived in Tel Aviv yesterday but decided against flying directly to Gaza as a concession to Israelis, who said it would amount to granting statehood to Palestine.

From the airport, he drove down to Arafat’s seaside home in Gaza for talks to salvage the stalled land-for-security deal, but gave no indication that he had succeeded in ironing out differences between the two sides.

Last night while addressing a joint conference with Mr Netanyahu, Mr Clinton called upon the Palestinians to do more to make the WYE deal work but urged the Israelis not to abandon it altogether.

“The peace process will succeed if it comes with a recognition that the fulfilment of one side’s aspirations must come with and not at the expense of the fulfilment of the other side’s dreams.”

“It will succeed when we all recognise...That ultimately this can and must be a partnership between Israelis and Palestinians,” he added.

He has also stuck to his stand that Israel would not release Palestinian prisoners who have killed Israelis, in a move that has angered the Palestinians to say that Tel Aviv was looking for excuses not to implement the WYE deal.

Meanwhile, Palestinian sources said a compromise had been reached under which PNC delegates could raise hands, stand up or clap when Mr Arafat annuls the offending clauses.

But Israeli officials ruled out any further withdrawals pending a no-confidence vote in Mnesset, the Israeli parliament, next week. Right-wing hawks in Netanyahu’s coalition have threatened to oust him if he goes ahead with the WYE deal.

Netanyahu, unimpressed by President Clinton’s offer to ask Congress to approve $1.2 billion in aid to hasten withdrawals, also said Palestinians must flush out illegal weapons and curb spiralling violence that has claimed several Israeli lives in recent weeks.

But the Palestinians have said they have done much to see the peace process move forward and accused Netanyahu of not being interested in peace.

Mr Clinton’s presence so far seems to have made little difference to the two warring sides, who have adamantly stuck to their stands.But Mr Clinton’s seven-hour visit, which will include talks with Mr Arafat and a keynote speech to PLO leaders, was certain to bolster the Palestinian drive for independence.

“We hope that this visit will herald American recognition of a Palestinian state,” said Mr Zakaria Al-Agha, a Palestine Liberation Organisation executive committee member who was among the 200 guests on hand to greet Mr Clinton.

He compared the visit to one by the late President Richard Nixon to China in 1972 that blazed a trail to US ties with Beijing.

Mr Clinton, labouring like Nixon under the shadow of possible impeachment, is seeking to salvage the accord he brokered between Mr Arafat and Mr Netanyahu at the Wye river, Maryland, in October.

JERUSALEM (AFP): Israel has told US President Bill Clinton that it wants at least a two-week delay in its next withdrawal from the West Bank, due this Friday, to test Palestinian compliance with their commitments under the Wye Peace accord, Israeli officials said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted on postponing the next pullback regardless of whether the Palestinians finalised today as scheduled the cancellation of anti-Israel clauses in their national charter, the officials in the premier’s office said.

NICOSIA (ANI): Palestinian police arrested the leader of the Islamic Jihad group after he threatened to kill visiting President Clinton.

Abdallah Shami, was taken into custody on Sunday afternoon, as he walked from a Gaza city junior high school where he teaches to his home in Shijaiyah district, said a Palestinian police official.

In an interview with the Spanish TV station Antenna 3, Shami had said that if it was not for Clinton’s huge security detail, he would kill the President on arrival at the Gaza Strip.

Asked if he would kill Clinton, he said: “If I could, I would, with every method I can muster. I would not hesitate.

Puerto Ricans’ no to US statehood

SAN JUAN (Puerto Rico), Dec 14 (AP) — Puerto Ricans rejected statehood, according to final referendum results, giving supporters of a commonwealth status a narrow majority in a non-binding referendum on the island’s ties to the USA.

Final results showed 50.2 per cent of voters choosing the “none of the above” option adopted by the Commonwealth Party, while statehood had 46.5 per cent. In a similar non-binding referendum in 1993, commonwealth status beat out statehood by 49 per cent to 46 per cent.

Under commonwealth status, Puerto Rico is a US territory with local autonomy. Its 3.8 million residents can’t vote for President or Congress, which alone can change Puerto Rico’s political status.

US President Bill Clinton has asked Congress to abide by the result of the referendum, but it was unclear what kind of message the “none of the above” victory would send to legislators. Most likely, there will be a bitter and prolonged argument over interpreting the result.

The Commonwealth Party had urged a “none of the above” vote because it objected to the ballot’s commonwealth description, which was written by the Statehood Party and suggests Congress could revoke Puerto Ricans’ US citizenship.

Regardless of the numbers, pro-statehood Governor Pedro Rossello insisted his cause had won, arguing that almost all people who voted for an actual status definition supported statehood. He said he would use that interpretation to petition Congress to make Puerto Rico a state.

“Today, the people spoke and they said statehood is the future of Puerto Rico. The people spoke, and I will obey,” Mr Rossello told thousands of cheering supporters at a victory-type rally while spectacular fireworks lit the sky above his party’s headquarters.

Pro-commonwealth Senator. Eudaldo Baez Galib countered, “If they go to Washington with a petition for statehood ... They would be violating the right to vote of the majority.”

Stained mattress to figure in Anwar trial

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 14 (Reuters) — The prosecution in the sex and corruption trial of Malaysia’s sacked Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim said today it would produce as evidence in court a mattress believed to be stained with semen.

Senior police officer Musa Hassan told the capital’s high court the mattress and a pillow were taken from a suburban apartment where the author of a book said Anwar used to bring the wife of his former private secretary for sex.

Anwar has pleaded not guilty to five counts each of corruption and sodomy in the trial at the core of Malaysia’s civil unrest.

Mr Hassan, Deputy Director of the Criminal Investigations Department of the Federal Police said the mattress and pillow were seized from the Tivoli Villa apartment complex in the Bangsar section of the capital.

“On the mattress I found several patches believed to be seminal fluid”, he said, adding that government experts were conducting tests on the mattress to determine if the semen was Anwar’s.

As Mr Hassan spoke, Anwar looked down and scribbled notes. His wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, listened impassively.

Mr Hassan said the mattress and pillow, as well as blood samples from Anwar, his former private secretary Mohd Azmin Ali and the latter’s wife, Shamsidar Taharin, had been sent for testing.

‘Private Ryan’ named best film by LA critics

LOS ANGELES, Dec 14 (Reuters) — Steven Spielberg’s World War ii film “Saving Private Ryan”, has been named 1998’s best movie by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, making it an early favourite for Best Picture honours at the Academy Awards next year.

The movie, about a platoon’s search for a missing soldier after D-Day, on late Saturday also earned Spielberg the Best Director’s award and Janusz Kaminski the honour for Best Cinematography from the Los Angeles-based critics’ group.

The critics named Sir Ian McKellen Best Actor for “Gods and Monsters”, a film about the friendship struck between a young gardener (Brendan Fraser) and an ageing, openly gay film director, James Whale (McKellen), who is given credit for making horror films their own genre with Boris Karloff’s “Frankenstein” movies.

“Private Ryan” and “Gods”, favourites among critics, are becoming the top picks in the run for the Oscars.

‘God hates American atmosphere’
from Martin Kettle in Washington

ONCE described by George Bush as a man of vision, Sun Myung Moon was a product of the 1970s. The 1990s have not been kind to him.

Yet he remains a rich man who owns a bizarre collection of newspapers, magazines and cable television channels and an assortment of universities, golf courses and hotels.

In the course of a roller-coaster career, Mr Moon attracted the admiration of an entourage of conservatives such as Ronald Reagan and Augusto Pinochet.

Mr Moon recruited tens of thousands of followers across the USA and became famous for presiding over a series of mass weddings, culminating in a 1988 ceremony in Seoul’s Olympic Stadium which entered the Guinness Book of Records when he united 6,516 couples. But his year-long jail sentence for tax evasion in the early 1980s brought bad publicity. It also prompted the church leader to re-examine his relationship with the USA.

In 1984, he told a congressional inquiry that the USA would “decide the destiny of the world’’. Today, the sermons of the ageing and increasingly frail Mr Moon are filled with apocalyptic visions of the USA. “God hates the American atmosphere,’’ he said recently. “Satan created this kind of hell on the earth. It is heading for destruction in the very near future.’’

In a sermon last year, he condemned American women for practising ``free sex just because they enjoy it’’ and denounced homosexuals as “dirty, dung-eating dogs’’.

Yet Mr Moon’s US assets seem to be bearing up in the face of the “satanic’’ onslaught. With the American economy continuing to resist the worst effects of the Asian crisis, his estimated $500 million US empire continues to weather the storm. It boasts private schools, a New York recording studio and a conservative magazine called Insight.

The publication enjoyed brief notoriety this year when its editors invited Paula Jones to the White House press correspondents’ dinner, which was to be addressed by President Clinton.

Mr Moon’s latest obsession is the building of an airport in Jardim in western Brazil, to bring planeloads of visitors to what he describes, with characteristic modesty, as “the new Garden of Eden’’.
— The Guardian, London

‘Monica’ dates

CAIRO, Dec 14 (Reuters) — Lovers of dried dates can now taste “Monica”, the new brand name chosen by Egyptian makers of extra-sweet dates, Al-Ahram newspaper reported.

It said the fruit, dried in a moderately hot oven, was named after former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, whose dates with US President Bill Clinton may cost him his job if the House of Representatives votes to impeach him for his conduct.

Mo Udall dead
WASHINGTON: Former US Congressman and presidential hopeful Morris “Mo” Udall died peacefully in his sleep late on Saturday at the age of 76, a veterans administration official has said. Udall was elected to the House of Representatives in 1961 in a special election to replace his brother Stewart who had left to become President John Kennedy’s Secretary of the Interior. — AFP

President’s denial
NEW YORK: Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has shrugged off any responsibility for genocide in Bosnia and warned of retaliation if NATO uses force to protect unarmed monitors in Kosovo as “Belgrade is responsible for their security”. Denying that he encouraged or gave orders for ethnic cleansing or that Yugoslavia was a haven for war criminals, he said, — PTI

PLA diplomacy
BEIJING: China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which is in the process of massive military modernisation, has taken up military diplomacy in a big way to dispel “fears” among neighbours and other countries alike that Beijing is a threat to them. The world’s largest army is now practising military diplomacy as an integral part of its overall diplomacy and has taken advantage of the reforms and liberalisation for a new look, the official Xinhua news agency said. — PTI

32 miners killed
SHANGHAI: A gas explosion in an east China coal mine has killed 32 miners and injured 10 others, mine officials said on Monday. “A spark touched off the explosion on Saturday,” said an official at the Changguang mine in Zhejiang province. “We don’t know what caused the spark yet,” he said, speaking by telephone. Nine of the injured were seriously hurt in the explosion at the number six mine in Changxing county, about 160 km southwest of the provincial capital of Hangzhou. — Reuters