Ehtesab charge-sheets 7
ISLAMABAD, Dec 18 — The Ehtesab Bureau here has charge-sheeted and issued a “red warrant” against D.M. Woodroffe, chief executive of HUBCO, and six others for taking $ 400 million in kickbacks and over-invoicing.

Hillary salutes Bill WASHINGTON, Dec 18 — U.S. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton has praised President Bill Clinton as a peacemaker and leader as political turmoil reached a new height over war and impeachment.

Breakthrough in human cloning
SEOUL, Dec 18 — Researchers in South Korea claim to have cultivated a human embryo using human cells — one of the first cloning experiments of its kind.

Rules for more privacy to Iran women soon
MEDICAL rules guaranteeing privacy for women are about to take effect in Iran after years of debate. Female patients will soon be treated by women paramedics, able to buy personal items from women pharmacists and rest in hospital wards free of male intrusion.

S. Korea sinks spy vessel from North

SEOUL, Dec 18 (AFP) — South Korea’s navy today sank an underwater North Korean spy vessel in a gunbattle off the South Korean coast which left at least one suspected infiltrator dead, military officials said.

Troops in the south of the country were on maximum alert as they hunted for possible Communist spies who may have come ashore while the air force and navy searched for bodies and wreckage from the semi-submersible vessel.

The shootout erupted in the early hours as South Korean military and coast guard vessels chased the craft, carrying several commandos, in a 100 km high-seas pursuit, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

“A North Korean semi-submersible tried to infiltrate South Korea via our southern coast before they were spotted by the coast guard late last night,” a spokesman said.

“The submersible was warned to stop as we pursued it, but ignored the warnings and kept fleeing, so we fired warning shots towards it,” Col Park In-Yong said of the dramatic seven-hour pursuit.

“The North Korean soldiers, however, opened fire on our side and finally our navy ship hit the vessel with shell fire and it went down. We are now trying to recover buoyant materials from that area,” he said.

The vessel sank at 3:20 am IST on Friday and the body of a suspected North Korean frogman armed with a grenade was recovered near the sunken wreck, another official said. The remaining crew members were also feared dead.

A South Korean naval boat was slightly damaged in the firefight, the first between South Korea and North Korean troops in two years, but no South Koreans were hurt in the dramatic overnight chase.

The Joint Chiefs said the submersible’s mission was likely aimed at landing armed North Korean agents in the South, officials said, explaining the alert in the force across the region.

The country’s National Security Council held an urgent meeting in Seoul to discuss the incident but vowed to push ahead with trying to prise North Korea out of its isolation through economic exchanges, rather than confrontation.

The 10 tonne semi-submersible was typical of those used by North Korea for covert operations here. Commandos cling on to the motorised vehicle which drags them just under the surface of water.

Military officials said the drama began when the vehicle was spotted by coast guards using night vision equipment about 2 km off the coast of the southern port of Yosu at 1830 IST yesterday.

The military scrambled an Armada of P3-C anti-submarine planes, helicopters and naval patrol boats to track down the vessel, chasing it for about 100 km into the open sea before the shootout broke out.

Ehtesab charge-sheets 7
Red warrant issued to HUBCO chief

ISLAMABAD, Dec 18 (ANI) — The Ehtesab Bureau here has charge-sheeted and issued a “red warrant” against D.M. Woodroffe, chief executive of HUBCO, and six others for taking $ 400 million in kickbacks and over-invoicing.

Apart from Woodroffe, the others charge-sheeted were S. Khurshid Hussain, finance director of the company; Shahid Hassan Khan, special adviser to former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto; Salman Farooqui, former Power Secretary, Daud Beg, former adviser PPIB; M.B. Abbasi, former NDFC chairman; and Ahmar Nadeem.

All the accused, except Khurshid Hussain, have been declared absconders in the interim challan. Khurshid Hussain has been granted interim bail by the Sindh High Court.

“We have completed all the legal requirements and investigation against HUBCO which has been involved in corruption and kickbacks amounting to over $ 400 million”; claimed Ehtesab Bureau chairman, Senator Saifur Rehman.

Rehman said amounting to $ 217m over-invoicing by the company had taken place, adding that it was the second case against HUBCO.

Senator Rehman also alleged that the National Power Company had fraudulently set up three subsidiary companies to make purchases of spare parts and fuel and gas. It also charged Rs17 billion in excess from WAPDA, for which a separate case was being prepared, he added.

He regretted that HUBCO was primarily a $ 0.9 billion project which stretched to $ 1.6 billion.

According to the challan and the charge-sheet circulated to reporters, project developments cost for the purpose of calculating the tariff had been taken as $ 104.52 million against the capped amount of $ 74.019 million. The actual equity received in project company was $ 371.56 million, the Ehtesab Bureau chief said.

The power company was allowed to issue shares at 10 per cent discount against project development costs in August 1994 without confirmation from the Ministry of Water and Power he said.

N. Ireland pact on power transfer

BELFAST, Dec 18 (Reuters) — Northern Ireland’s feuding parties today said they had reached agreement on the transfer of a range of home-rule powers from London to a new assembly in the British-ruled province in the New Year.

The agreement broke a damaging stalemate in the peace process centred on the landmark “Good Friday” accord reached last April.

“This is the major step forward in the implementation of this agreement,” Mr David Trimble, the province’s pro-British Protestant leader, said before shaking hands with Catholic leader Eddie McGrady after 18 hours of talks at Parliament buildings in Belfast.

Mr Trimble, who became the British province’s first minister after the April pact, said the agreement between Protestant and Catholic parties “clears the way” for the transfer of a range of home-rule powers from Parliament in London to a new Northern Ireland assembly early in the New Year.

Mr McGrady, a leading figure in the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, described the agreement as “a very fine Christmas present” to the Irish people.

The Good Friday agreement, signed by rival groups in a bid to end 30 years of guerrilla warfare over the future of British sovereignty, has been stalled for months as parties squabbled about the make-up of its proposed political structures and demands for extremists to disarm.

The overnight breakthrough envisages an executive of 10 ministers, who are likely to be five Protestants and five Catholics.

Duma’s appeal to Monica

MOSCOW, Dec 18 (AP) — Russian legislators agreed yesterday to consider a motion appealing to Monica Lewinsky to help halt the US attack on Iraq.“The state Duma appeals to Ms Lewinsky to undertake corresponding measures to restrain the emotions of Bill Clinton”, said the motion by Nationalist lawmaker Alexander Filatov.

The motion was approved on a vote in the Duma, the lower chamber of Parliament, to be considered for inclusion in a broader resolution denouncing the attack on Iraq.

The attack by the USA and the UK on Iraq was condemned by almost all major political groups in Russia. The Communists, the largest party in the Duma, also mentioned Mr Clinton and his relationship with the former White House intern.

“Many people link it with Mr Clinton’s impeachment and his intimate relations with a certain person, but if these relations develop into such acts of vandalism then all of US democracy is worth a penny,” Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov told a Duma debate.

Hillary salutes Bill

WASHINGTON, Dec 18 (Reuters) — U.S. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton has praised President Bill Clinton as a peacemaker and leader as political turmoil reached a new height over war and impeachment.

“I’m very proud of what our President has been able to achieve, not only in this country but around the world,” Ms Clinton told a glittering White House dinner honouring the Special Olympics for Disabled athletes yesterday.

“At this time, I am particularly proud to introduce a man who shares the values that we are celebrating here tonight — my husband, my partner and our President,” she said, prompting a standing ovation from an audience of some 300, including rock music legend Eric Clapton and several Special Olympics athletes.

Breakthrough in human cloning

SEOUL, Dec 18 (ANI) — Researchers in South Korea claim to have cultivated a human embryo using human cells — one of the first cloning experiments of its kind.

Researchers of the infertility clinic of Kyunahee University hospital here said they had cultivated a human embryo in its early stages using an unfertilised egg and a somatic cell donated by a woman in her 30's.

If implanted into a uterine wall of a carrier, we can assume that a human child would be farmed and that it would have the same gene characteristics as that of the donor," one of the researchers Mr Lee said.

He, however, ruled out any attempt to take the cloning experiment further until their was a social, legal and moral consensus to support it.

Mr Lee said the technique used in the experiment was the one used by Mr Peruhiko Wakayama of the University of Hawaii.

In that technique, researchers removed the DNA material of the nucleus from a mouse egg and injected the nucleus of another mouse into it. The egg was then "chemically activated" into acting like newly fertilised egg, which then started growing.

The embryo was transferred into a surrogate mother, who gave birth to cloned mice.

Rules for more privacy to Iran women soon
From Geneive Abdo in Teheran

MEDICAL rules guaranteeing privacy for women are about to take effect in Iran after years of debate. Female patients will soon be treated by women paramedics, able to buy personal items from women pharmacists and rest in hospital wards free of male intrusion.

Under a bill expected to take effect in the coming weeks, Iranian women will also gain a legal right to demand treatment by female doctors. Whenever possible, female patients will be tended only by women staff.

But ideological purity has been modified by modern medical reality. Proponents of the bill initially demanded that no woman should be treated by a male doctor under any circumstance. They were forced to compromise because there are not enough women doctors in Iran to meet the demand.

The issue has triggered a national debate touching upon religion, culture and whether men are more competent doctors than women. In Iranian society the “purity” of women is a priority; under Islamic law, women are obliged to wear veils and long clothes masking their bodies. Yet, there is a consensus that Islamic texts do not bar women from seeing male doctors.

Proponents of the changes, such as Marziyeh Vahid Dastdjerdi, a gynaecologist and one of a handful of women MPs, say women should not be required to expose their bodies to men.

But critics of the bill argue that prudish women living in villages and small towns, who favour the measure, will lose out because in certain fields, such as neurology and brain science, there are far more male doctors than women.

Four thousand doctors and medical students signed a petition addressed to Parliament, which listed their objections to the measures. They argued that a patient may fall under the knife of an overworked female surgeon, or endure long waits for other types of treatment which could easily be provided by male medical staff.

In recent years, the government has tried to address the shortage of female gynaecologists. After seven years of medical school, students must take an examination to become specialists. In the test for gynaecology, most women are accepted for a limited number of positions even when their scores are lower than those of male competitors.

The clash between medical reality and ideological concern is particularly acute in places such as fertility clinics. Hamid Kashaf, a leading fertility specialist, performs an average of 100 operations per month, a rate he says is 10 times higher than that of his counterparts in the West.

Dr Kashaf said most of his patients were not embarrassed to be examined by him.

“When I examine a patient, a female nurse or a female relative must be present. That’s the law,’’ he said.

Critics are hoping that the lack of state funding will succeed where opposition from the Health Ministry and much of the medical profession has failed. — The Guardian, London

Referendum
UNITED NATIONS: The Security Council has unanimously approved the extension of the 410-member UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara until the end of January 1999. The mission has been helping carry out a UN plan for a referendum to decide whether the former Spanish colony should be incorporated into Morocco, which controls most of the territory, or become independent as sought by the Polisario Front. The approval came on Thursday. — Reuters

15 drowned
DHAKA: At least 15 persons drowned as a boat ferrying pilgrims sank in the Dhaleshwari river on Thursday minutes before docking at the riverport town of Fatullah, 18 km east of the capital city of Dhaka. The state-run radio, quoting the police, said two of the dead were women. It did not say how many people were on board the ferry when the accident took place. Rescue workers salvaged 15 bodies from the river after an eight-hour-long search operation. All passengers were returning home from a visit to a Muslim shrine 5 km upstream. — DPA

Body exhumed
DREZZO: The sound of hammering echoed around a normally quiet village cemetery as the Italian authorities exhumed the body of banker Roberto Calvi, in an attempt to solve a 16-year-old mystery. Known as “God’s banker’ for his close business relationship with the Vatican bank, Calvi was found hanging from scaffolding under Blackfriars Bridge in London on June 18, 1982. — The Guardian

Entities List
WASHINGTON: A leading US non-proliferation expert has warned the Clinton Administration and Congress to be alert to attempts by India to circumvent the Entities List. Gary Milhollin, Director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, said “I am certain that they (India) are going to (circumvent the Entities List). — IANS