• UN inspectors resume inspection

Asteroids newest space targets
It has been in space for nearly three years and flown almost 1,500 million miles (2,400 km). But on January 10, the spacecraft Near will finally catch up with its quarry — a huge lump of nickel, iron and silica, 25 miles (40 km) long and about 9 miles (14 km) in diameter, known as Eros.

19 kg RDX seized in Nepal
KATHMANDU, Nov 18 — The Nepal police today claimed to have seized a large cache of sophisticated explosives, including 19 kg of RDX, from a locality here ostensibly "in transit to a neighbouring country.’’

Free trade pact eludes APEC

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 18 (AP) — Pacific rim nations approved a modest set of proposals today to battle the region’s worst economic crisis in decades, following a disappointing summit overshadowed by conflicts over human rights and free trade.

The group’s final statement praised signs of recovery in four of the hardest-hit Asian countries: Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines. It said they must continue adopting the painful IMF reforms.

But the 21-member Asia-Pacific economic cooperation forum also called for more financial assistance from the international community, and endorsed a US proposal to speed emergency loans to the crisis-hit countries.

Despite the strong anti-free market views promoted by this year’s host, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, the APEC statement rejected calls for stiffer regulation of foreign exchange trading or new controls on the movement of capital in and out of countries.

Offering Mr Mahathir a consolation prize, the statement did call for a review of the practices of international credit rating agencies. Mr Mahathir has angrily charged in recent days that the agencies downgrade the debt of developing countries arbitrarily, without proper review. 

The free-trade forum was overshadowed by a diplomatic furore set off by US Vice President Al Gore, and by a disagreement between the USA and Japan, which forced the group to delay a landmark free-trade agreement.

The pact would have slashed tariffs $ 1.5 trillion in world trade. But opposition by Japan to two of the nine sectors proposed — fishing and forestry products — forced APEC to send the plan to the 124-nation World Trade Organisation in Geneva for resolution.

But Mr Gore also announced an agreement with Japan on a joint approach to dealing with the financial crisis, including a $ 10 billion support package designed to help struggling Asian nations.

Half the money will come from the USA and the other half from Japan, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

The assistance, although small compared with the magnitude of the region’s debt burdens, should help assure nervous financial markets that the world’s two largest economies have put aside past bickering over the best approaches to take.

Gore’s decision on the eve of the summit to deliver a speech in Kuala Lumpur sympathising with the host country’s anti-government reform movement caused divisions in APEC’s 21 leaders.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Mr Gore’s remarks could put the nation’s democratic process at risk. And APEC officials from Singapore, New Zealand and Thailand urged the Vice-President to stick to economic issues at the summit.

Nevertheless, Mr Gore defended his speech, saying that nations fighting off economic crises must work as hard to promote democracy. Mr Gore was a stand-in for President Bill Clinton, who stayed in Washington because of the Iraqi crisis.

Anti-government protests by supporters of Malaysian dissident Anwar Ibrahim have occurred in the country since the Deputy Prime Minister was fired, arrested and later put on trial for challenging Mahathir’s 17-year rule with a reform movement.

With Asia in its worst financial crisis in decades, the APEC summit was intended to be a chance for the leaders to recommend measures that would help revive economic growth and stabilise currency and stock markets.   

As expected, the final statement appeared to hew closely to the Clinton Administration’s free-market, pro-IMF handling of the crisis. The IMF has provided a total of nearly $ 120 billion to Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea to help bolster their economies. In return, it has demanded the nations adopt unpopular measures that have sent interest rates soaring and unemployment rising. Not all Asia’s leaders have embraced the IMF formula.

Mr Mahathir has criticised the bailout programmes and blamed Asia’s woes on foreign currency speculators. In September, he banned trading of the national currency outside the country and imposed controls on foreigners trying to pull investments out of Malaysia.

Mr Gore said the new $ 10 billion support package he announced during the APEC meetings would help speed debt restructuring in the region. It is likely to be used to guarantee bonds issued by Asian countries, according to US officials. The proceeds of the bonds would be used to bolster Asian banks, which have some $ 2 trillion in problem loans.

APEC comprises Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the USA and Vietnam.

Israeli House clears Wye pact

JERUSALEM, Nov 18 (DPA) — The Israeli Knesset (Parliament) voted overwhelmingly to approve a land-for-security agreement signed last month with the Palestinians, Israel radio has reported.

Seventyfive of the 120 Knesset members approved the agreement last night, while 19 voted against and nine members abstained.

Approval of the agreement had been widely expected after Opposition members said they would support it. Several members of the governing coalition voted against, or absented themselves from the vote.

The vote was also turned into a vote-of-confidence in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at the request of a Right-wing legislator opposed to the agreement. He had hoped that his manoeuvre would force the Opposition to vote against the agreement, rather than express confidence in the Prime Minister.

Opponents of the accord were unsuccessful in an attempt to have the vote postponed on the grounds that the Knesset had only been shown maps detailing the first of a series of phased Israeli troop withdrawals from the occupied West Bank, as called for in the agreement.

Israel agreed in the land-for-security agreement to pullback from 13 per cent of the West Bank. The first pullback is scheduled for tomorrow.

UK backs plot to remove Saddam

LONDON, Nov 18 (PTI) — Britain will work with the USA in plotting the removal of the Iraqi President, Mr Saddam Hussein from power, the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, has said, warning Baghdad that the next withdrawal of cooperation with UN arms inspectors would mean that Iraqi targets would be hit.

The UK was with the USA looking at ways in which Iraqi opposition could be bolstered with the main emphasis of the two countries being on the removal from power of Mr Hussein, the British PM told the House of Commons on Tuesday.

“We want to see Iraqi people governed by a regime other than that of Saddam Hussein,” he said, making a statement on the weekend events in the Gulf.

“If he (Saddam) again obstructs the work of nuclear inspectors. Then we strike, no warnings, no wranglings and no last minute letters would work,” Mr Blair said.

Reports suggested the USA was expected to increase its support to legitimate opposition groups, the Kurds and Shia factions following the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act which allocated $ 100 million to aid Mr Saddam’s overthrow.

The USA and the UK had been propping up various Kurdish groups over a long time and according to observers now the efforts would be to coordinate the actions of different dissident groups to launch a coup against the Iraqi President.

But, they said, widespread factionalism within the Kurds and the Shiites would make the coordination difficult, if not impossible.

Western military analysts, however, did not rule out the possibility of the USA and Britain using even the flimsiest of excuses to launch new weapons against Mr Hussein as they felt they now had means to hit Saddam’s power-base — the Republican Guards, his hideouts and his so-called chemical, nuclear and biological secret dumps.

Mr Blair himself admitted in the House of Commons that Anglo-American forces were “literally minutes away” from blasting, Mr Hussein’s power bases on Saturday.

UN inspectors resume inspection

BAGHDAD, Nov 18 (AFP) — The UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) for Iraqi disarmament resumed its inspections early today, a United Nations official said.

“The Baghdad monitoring and verification centre has resumed its work and some of our staff are going on inspections”, Ms Caroline Cross, a spokeswoman for the arms inspectors said.

Witnesses saw a dozen UNSCOM cars leaving their compound in Baghdad in groups of three and four.

Asteroids newest space targets
from Tim Radford in London

It has been in space for nearly three years and flown almost 1,500 million miles (2,400 km). But on January 10, the spacecraft Near will finally catch up with its quarry — a huge lump of nickel, iron and silica, 25 miles (40 km) long and about 9 miles (14 km) in diameter, known as Eros.

This close encounter will be of another kind. Near — standing for Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous — will be the first spacecraft to fly round an asteroid, one of the bits of mysterious brickdust flying around the solar system destined to crash into the Sun or a big planet. But it will not be the last.

In January, Stardust will be launched to meet a comet called Wild, and fly through its ghostly coma at 14,000 mph (22,500 kph) to collect a sample of the stardust and then return to Earth. Deep Space 1 will be visiting an asteroid called 1992 KD on the way to Mars.

The Americans want to launch a mission in 2002 to fly past the nuclei of three comets, and another to the planet Pluto and on to the mysterious home of the comets, the Kuiper belt, near the rim of the solar system. For 2003, the European Space Agency has Rosetta, a mission that will visit two asteroids and then land on a comet. The Japanese also intend landing a spacecraft on an asteroid, this time Nereus. But the USA plans to cap them all — the Champollion mission will rendezvous with the comet Tempel 1, land on it, dig up rock and ice, and bring samples back home.

The Galileo space probe has already photographed asteroids on the way to Jupiter’s moons, but space research is about to move into a new phase. Asteroids are no longer seen as way-stations — instead they have become the main destination.

Comets and asteroids are fragments from long-dead stars, left over from the making of the Sun and the planets. Comets are highly visible lumps of ice and dust, asteroids are barely detectable lumps of stone and metal. Both objects helped shape the Earth’s history, and they could go on to shape it in the future.

It was either a comet or an asteroid that crashed into the Earth 65 million years ago, bringing to an end the reign of the dinosaurs. But smaller bits of space rubble hit the Earth all the time. Every year, about 40,000 tons of dust and small stones fall to Earth, lighting up the sky as shooting stars.

Every few decades, something much bigger lands here in the form of a meteorite. Every few centuries, something lands and leaves a crater or destroys an area of forest or raises a tidal wave. In 1908, a huge explosion levelled thousands of square miles of forest in the Tunguska region of Siberia; it was almost certainly an asteroid arriving from the heavens.

So there are a number of reasons for the worldwide interest. Some astronomers want to be prepared for Armageddon — the Bruce Willis Hollywood blockbuster of the same name was at least partly inspired by an astronomer’s warning.

Another group simply wants to understand more about how the universe is made.

The third reason for the interest is that asteroids could represent the wealth of the future. Comets, with their huge packs of snow, gravel and chemicals, are now thought to have provided the water for the world’s oceans. And they could one day be thought of as “roving oases”, providing water for the space colonies of tomorrow.

All of these encounters will be near-miracles of long-distance marksmanship. When Near catches up with Eros in January next year, it will be travelling at roughly 10 times the speed of a rifle bullet, and it will be 163 million miles (260 million km) away from home. And then it will have to gradually circle its prey, bringing six instruments to focus on the asteroid just 21 miles (34km) below it.

Thousands of asteroids wander across the solar system, and for humans they are treasure chests waiting to be opened. Charles Kowal, an engineer on the Near programme, calculated that a nickel-iron asteroid of just one cubic kilometre would contain seven billion tons of iron, one billion tons of nickel and enough cobalt to supply the world for 3,000 years.

— The Guardian, London

19 kg RDX seized in Nepal

KATHMANDU, Nov 18 (UNI) — The Nepal police today claimed to have seized a large cache of sophisticated explosives, including 19 kg of RDX, from a locality here ostensibly "in transit to a neighbouring country.’’

Inspector-General of Police Achyut Krishna Kharel today told newspersons that the explosives were seized from a hotel room in Teku, a south-western Kathmandu locality, but no arrests had so far been made.

The recovery was allowed a police raid conducted after intensive investigations lasting almost six months, IGP Kharel said adding that the police were on the lookout for "a person of Indian origin,’’ heavy-built, dark complexioned and about five feet eight inches in height.

The seizure included, besides 18.75 kg of RDX, a large number of timer switches and pencils, high-power battery cells and electric detonators. Significantly, the RDX was wrapped in cardboard paper bearing PTC (Pakistan Tobacco Company) markings.

Nepal has been in the past few years used as a transit route for anti-India activities by the ISI, a Pakistani intelligence agency.

Annan’s tour
UNITED NATIONS: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has postponed his visit to South Asia for an indefinite period following the Iraq crisis, official sources said on Wednesday. There is no chance of his visiting the subcontinent this year, they said, adding that new dates would be decided in consultation with the governments of the countries he was supposed to visit and that would take some time. His trip had been officially announced, it was known he was planning to visit India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and possibly Nepal. — PTI

E-mail saves life
BOSTON: A Boston doctor used e-mail to tell a solo sailor thousand of miles away how to operate on himself, probably saving the sailor’s arm and possibly his life. The sailor was able to complete a leg of an around-the-world race and arrived safely in Cape Town, South Africa, on Monday, ahead of four of other 14 competitors. “In terms of administering medicine by remote control, this one has got to be right up there as the one to remember,” Dr Daniel Carlin said in Tuesday’s Boston Globe. — AP

Mines flooded
BEIJING: Coal mines suddenly flooded, killing 35 persons and leaving one other missing and presumed dead in south-western China’s Guangxi region, according to a report here. The flood occurred on October 25 at two adjoining mines near the Guangxi city of Heshan, the official newspaper, “Yangcheng Evening News”, reported on Tuesday. It said the mine, which had stopped production since March 11 due to the rains, resumed operations without official approval on October 13. — AP

12 workers killed
BEIRUT: Twelve construction workers were killed and four injured on Tuesday when an external elevator they were using plunged 19 floors to the ground, police sources said. The elevator’s cables snapped because of wear, sending the men crashing to their deaths at a building site in Beirut’s Christian neighbourhood of Ashrafieh, the sources said. — DPA