Yeltsin govt feeble, says Speaker
MOSCOW, Nov 27 — The Speaker of Parliament’s Upper House has spoken for stronger parliamentary powers, citing the growing feebleness of President Boris Yeltsin’s government.

Israel tightens security
ISRAEL recently announced a US $ 11.5 million security plan to prevent millennium fanatics from attacking holy sites in Jerusalem, as the police revealed that Christian cult members linked to a suicide pact had arrived from the USA.

Jiang presses history point
TOKYO, Nov 27 — Chinese President Jiang Zemin today refused to left up on Japan’s notorious war history after getting only a lukewarm apology at a landmark summit to strengthen ties.

Relief after 32 years of detention
SINGAPORE, Nov 27 — A long-time Singapore political prisoner freed from restrictions today 32 years after his arrest said the government decision was belated and called for an end to detention without trial.

Aging stopped after coma
LONDON, Nov 27 — The case of a 46-year-old woman who stopped aging after suffering a brief coma 15 years ago, is causing a stir among medical experts in Italy.

N. Korea’s no to N-site inspection

TOKYO, Nov 27 (AFP) — North Korea today angrily rebuffed US pressure for access to an underground complex suspected of being used to revive its nuclear weapons programme.

“We declare once again that our underground facility is not related with nuclear activity and that, accordingly, we will not in the least allow any inspection of the facility,” the Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

“It is unimaginable that we, who regard our sovereignty as our life and soul, will meet the US brigandish demand for inspection which as good as a search of other’s house,” the Pyongyang mouthpiece, monitored here, said.

The USA has told North Korea the 1994 nuclear agreement could be scrapped unless it opens up the suspect site for inspection.

Under that agreement, North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear programme in return for alternative energy including two light water reactors and fuel oil as well as improved ties with Washington.

The underground site was spotted by intelligence satellites earlier this year in Kumchunri, 40 km north-west of Yongbyong, where the North’s already-declared nuclear facilities exist.

Washington has suggested that activity at the site points to attempts by North Korea to revive its nuclear programme.

The US State Department said North Korea asked for millions of dollars, perhaps as much as $ 300 million, to allow a US inspection of the suspect complex.

Meanwhile, Mr Obuchi has emphasised his concern about North Korea in the wake of its shock missile launch over Japan earlier this year.

“This missile test by North Korea created considerable concern and the suspicion over secret nuclear facilities only increases this concern,” he said in a speech at the opening of a special session of Parliament today.

The USA and North Korea have recently engaged in a rising war of words with Pyongyang threatening to scrap a landmark nuclear accord with Washington over US calls for an inspection of a suspected underground nuclear site.

Japanese PM says sorry for scandals

TOKYO, Nov 27 (AFP,Reuters) — Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi today apologised in a key policy address for corruption scandals that have led to the Defence Minister’s resignation and one arrest in his party.

The Defence Minister, Mr Fukushiro Nukaga, resigned on November 20 to take responsibility for a military procurement scandal shaking the defence administration.

And a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Mr Yojihiro Nakajima, was arrested in late October on suspicion of misusing about $ 100,000 worth of public subsidies.

“It is very regrettable that I have to mention a breach of trust case over defence equipment procurement at the start of this important Parliament session, Mr Obuchi said.

“I offer a heartfelt apology over the incident that crushed the people’s trust in government agencies”, the Premier said during his policy speech on the first day of an extraordinary session of the Diet or Parliament.

The session is to approve an extra budget for the financial year to next March to help haul Japan out of recession.

Mr Obuchi also cited the Nakajima arrest.

“It is very regrettable that a fellow lawmaker was arrested on suspicion of misusing political party subsidies,” he said.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa said he would resign shortly after just four months in the job.

“Remaining in the Cabinet would go against my belief,” Mr Miyazawa told a regular news conference. “But I cannot predict the timing” of a resignation, the 79-year-old minister said.

The Finance Minister, who was once Japan’s Prime Minister, is expected to step down by the end of the year after he gives up the leadership of a powerful faction within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

“I will work to avoid being called stagnant in the job,” Mr Miyazawa said. He will pass the leadership of the faction to Koichi Kato, another senior party member.

Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi told reporters he had read newspaper reports about the imminent resignation of his Finance Minister “but I have not asked him about it”.

Army officers to probe Karachi cases

ISLAMABAD, Nov 27 (UNI) — Pakistani President Rafiq Tarar has amended the armed forces ordinance empowering military officers to investigate all offences in the port city of Karachi.

Earlier, the government had decided to set up military courts to try those involved in heinous crimes, including murder and terrorism. Last night’s ordinance withdraws the authority of the Governor or the federal government to decide which cases were to be investigated and tried by the military courts. It would now be entirely upto the military authorities to investigate and try cases which they considered appropriate.

Ever since the government decided to establish military courts, there had been popular criticism and it was alleged that the police was corrupt, had lost credibility and might involve innocents as a measure of victimisation.

Since the military intelligence network was considered the most effective in Pakistan, it was natural to empower the military to carry out investigations and collect hard evidence relating to cases to be referred to military courts.

Yeltsin govt feeble, says Speaker

MOSCOW, Nov 27 (AP) — The Speaker of Parliament’s Upper House has spoken for stronger parliamentary powers, citing the growing feebleness of President Boris Yeltsin’s government.

“The government is as squishy as cabbage in the fall,’’ Yegor Stroyev, Speaker of the Federation Council, yesterday said in an interview published in Komomolskaya Pravda.

Stroyev is normally a reliable ally of Mr Yeltsin, but he joined a growing number of presidential supporters who have distanced themselves from Mr Yeltsin in recent days. Stroyev, a moderate, said the weakened President was not able to use the extensive powers granted to him under the Russian Constitution.

“There is a flow of accusations against the President for having sweeping powers unrivalled by any other President, but these powers end at the Kremlin walls,’’ Stroyev said.

Mr Yeltsin remained hospitalised yesterday, undergoing treatment for pneumonia, the latest in a series of illnesses that have turned him into a part-time President and fuelled concern about his ability to serve out the remainder of a term that runs till mid-2000.

The Kremlin released no new details yesterday on the President’s condition.

Meanwhile, Valentin Pokrovsky, a doctor and the President of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, who has examined Mr Yeltsin in the past, said on Thursday that the President “seems rather tired and not quite healthy.”

He said though he didn’t have any information about Mr Yeltsin’s latest illness, “Mr Yeltsin’s inability to govern must be certified by doctors, and since the issue isn’t raised, it means the doctors don’t think it necessary.”

The Communist-led opposition in Parliament’s Lower House has pushed for a Bill that would require a medical check-up of the President, with the results made public. So far, the move has failed.

Israel tightens security
from David Sharrock (Jerusalem)
and Chris Reed (Los Angeles)

ISRAEL recently announced a US $ 11.5 million security plan to prevent millennium fanatics from attacking holy sites in Jerusalem, as the police revealed that Christian cult members linked to a suicide pact had arrived from the USA.

Refusing to give details, Jerusalem police commander Yair Yitzhaki confirmed that 10 members of Concerned Christians, a doomsday cult based in Denver, Colorado, were in Israel.

The alert was raised after US cult watchers warned that the group might head to Israel on orders from their leader, Monte Kim Miller. Miller, a former salesman for the soap company Procter & Gamble, disappeared after predicting Denver would be razed by an earthquake on October 10. Members of his sect sold their belongings in the belief that the end of the world was coming and told relatives they were going abroad with their leader.

Miller first came to public notice in the mid-1980s when he preached against cults in fundamentalist churches in Denver. But latterly he had adopted cultist practices as he warned of an apocalypse and sent letters to the churches that had welcomed him, accusing them of “Satanic” preaching.

“The Lord’s grace has been with the Church for 2,000 years but his judgments are ready to begin,’’ he told a Denver television station two years ago. “Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Now we are to go to our deaths as well.”

Miller has said he will die in Jerusalem in December, 1999, and be resurrected three days later.

Mr Yitzhaki declined to elaborate on the whereabouts of the cult members in Israel. “Every additional word I say could harm the very important work being done now,” he told Israel radio.

“The matter of messianic activity with the approach of the year 2000 is one we have been dealing with for a very long time,’’ he added.

Asked about suicide attempts by cult members, he said: “We are also preparing for that possibility, which is relatively new compared with the other threats against the Temple Mount.’’

The Temple Mount, known to Muslims as Haram as-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary, is within the walled Old City of Jerusalem. Considered to be the site of the first and second Jewish temples, as well as the site of the Al Aqsa mosque —Islam’s third-holiest site — it is one of the most sensitive areas in the West Asian conflict. An assault on the site would undoubtedly trigger violence and undermine the Israeli-Arab peace process.

The US $ 11.5 million will be spent upgrading security at the Temple Mount amid concerns that Jewish or Christian extremists may attack the Al Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques. Some 400 policemen and security devices such as closed circuit television cameras and sensor pads will be deployed, Israel radio said.

Some Christian cults believe the destruction of the mosques will lead to the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple, hastening the end of the world and the second coming of Christ.

— The Guardian, London

Jiang presses history point

TOKYO, Nov 27 (AFP) — Chinese President Jiang Zemin today refused to left up on Japan’s notorious war history after getting only a lukewarm apology at a landmark summit to strengthen ties.

“My visit, which comes on the 20th anniversary of our friendship treaty is to promote friendly relations between the two countries,” Jiang told members of a Buddhist Japanese opposition party the Komei.

“But to achieve that objective it is important to understand history in the right way.”

Japan’s war-time aggression in China remains a thorn in ties, and even though the two countries formally resumed diplomatic ties in 1972, Jiang’s six-day state visit is the first by a Chinese President.

China says 20 million persons died during and after the 1937-45 war with Japan.

Relief after 32 years of detention

SINGAPORE, Nov 27 (AFP) — A long-time Singapore political prisoner freed from restrictions today 32 years after his arrest said the government decision was belated and called for an end to detention without trial.

“It is a belated move”, former MP Chia Thye Poh — once known along with now South African President Nelson Mandela as one of the world’s longest-held political prisoners — told AFP by telephone as a restriction order on him lapsed today.

“It is already 32 years and the best part of my life was taken away,” said the 58-year-old Chia, a former university lecturer who was 26 when he was arrested in 1966 after joining a radical breakaway faction of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP).

Aging stopped after coma

LONDON, Nov 27 (ANI) — The case of a 46-year-old woman who stopped aging after suffering a brief coma 15 years ago, is causing a stir among medical experts in Italy.

Elena Cappelli, a furniture restorer from Lucca now called “Sleeping Beauty”, told the Italian magazine Liberal this week that time seemed to have stood still since she emerged from coma in 1983. She claims that she went into coma for three weeks after suffering a fit of asphyxia while polishing furniture.

“Ever since then, I have had a precise sensation which has never left me, that I have stopped growing old,” Cappelli was quoted as saying. There had been “no plastic surgery miracle”, she added, “only physical well-being and a normal metabolism”.

The newspaper quoted medical specialists as pondering over whether the “condition” might really have been triggered by something other than coma.

According to the report, the asphyxia was never clinically explained. Francesco Antonini, a gerontologist, said, “Although Cappelli’s story recalls the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty, it may have a genetic explanation.”

Love in wartime
JERUSALEM: Italian film director Roberto Faenza is well accustomed to the difficulties which can be experienced on set, but shooting for his latest movie, “The Lost Lover”, in Israel and the Palestinian territories required the tact of a diplomat. The central theme of the story is a Romeo and Juliet type of romance between a Jewish woman and an Arab man, still very much a taboo in Israel. The script is based on the novel “The Lover” by Israeli author A.B. Yehoshua, published in 1977. A complicated love story is set amid the aftermath of the Yom Kippur war of 1973. — DPA

Biggest bell
NANTES: The world’s biggest clock is to be made in a foundry here next month before being shipped to the USA for celebrations marking the year 2000, officials said. Mr Paul Patton, Governor of the US state of Kentucky, and Mr Jean-Marc Ayrault, Mayor of this western French town, said on Thursday the clock, weighing around 30 tonnes with a diameter of four metres, would be cast on December 11. The clock is to be installed in the millennium monument in Newport Kentucky, a complex featuring a 300-metre tower, a museum and shops to be constructed in the next few years. — AFP

Near-miss in air
HONG KONG: Six Russian fighters narrowly missed colliding with two Jumbo jets, including one from New Delhi to Hong Kong, when they took off unannounced from the Zhuhai airport in southern China, it was reported here on Friday. The six SU-27 fighters were cruising on a path parallel with a Boeing 747 flight from New Delhi to Hong Kong and another Jumbo jet en route to Haikou from Xiamen, the Beijing-backed Wen Wei Po daily said. — AFP

Bad sex award
LONDON: Sebasitian Faulks won perhaps the least welcome prize in literature and refused to turn up to claim it. The British author was on Thursday awarded the Literary Review’s annual bad sex award for his Novel, “Charlotte Gray.” But for the first time in the prize’s six-year history, the winner declined to attend the awards ceremony in London. The point of the prize is to illustrate what literary carnage can ensue when bad sex happens to good and not-so-good writers. — AP

Photo exhibition
LAHORE: A Japanese photo exhibition depicting the horrors of the atom bomb opened here with the sponsors calling on Pakistan and India to forsake nuclear weapons. “Let there be no more Hiroshima or Nagasaki,” said Mr Nogochi Hiroya, a trade union leader from Japan, the world’s only country to suffer an atomic attack. Mr Hiroya, Deputy Secretary-General of the Japanese Trade Union Council, said the nuclear tests by Pakistan and India in May were of no use. — AFP