Tarar rejects graft report against PM
ISLAMABAD, Sept 30 — Pakistani President Mohammad Rafiq Tarar has rejected a report sent to him by a former Federal Investigation Agency officer accusing Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of corruption.

Mandela steps in to help Boesak
JOHANNESBURG, Sept 30 — President Nelson Mandela has intervened to help raise funds to cover legal costs of former anti-apartheid cleric, Allan Boesak, in his theft and fraud trial, a Presidential spokesman said yesterday.

Compensation for Kuwaitis

Only govt doctors allowed for Anwar
Wounds self-inflicted, says Mahathir

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 30 (PTI) — Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad today hinted he would appoint a new deputy before the party poll next year even as a court denied bail to his sacked protege-turned-foe, Anwar Ibrahim, for the second time and indicted him on a fresh charge of sodomy.

“This is something I need to consult my party colleagues, I have a duty to consult them,” Mr Mahathir, also the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) president, told reporters here as international condemnation grew over his government’s treatment of Anwar.

With Anwar, who was also UMNO deputy president, sacked on September 2 and deprived of his party membership, the party is without a deputy.

A bruised and battered Anwar was produced for the second time today in court in a sodomy case involving a fashion designer in December 1992, Bernama news agency said.

The court denied him bail despite his pleas of innocence and charged him in a fresh count of sodomy. Yesterday, a lower court indicted him on five counts of corruption and four charges of sodomy.

The court also rejected an application by Anwar’s lawyers for two family-appointed doctors to examine him but allowed government appointed specialists “deemed to be appropriate” to see him, it added.

However, Mr Mahathir was quoted as saying that it was not impossible that Anwar’s injury was self-inflicted.

Mr Mahathir, Prime Minister for 17 years, had initially groomed Anwar to take over as it was time for retirement at 73, but then removed Anwar charging him with corruption and sodomy.

WASHINGTON (AFP): The US State Department has called on the Malaysian Government to investigate allegations made by ousted Deputy Premier Anwar Ibrahim that he was beaten while in custody.

Mr Anwar, who appeared in court in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday with a black eye and a bruised arm, charged that he had been beaten on the night he was detained on September 20.

“We are deeply concerned ... by the reports of police brutality during the incarceration of Mr Anwar,” State Department deputy spokesman James Foley said.

“All governments have a responsibility to ensure the safety of those being held in prison. These reports should be investigated and, if verified, the perpetrators should be brought to justice.”@The State Department also said it was “extremely concerned” by the detentions in Malaysia under provisions of the Internal Security Act and other measures designed to “limit the basic democratic rights of an assembly, free speech and open communication.”

Tarar rejects graft report against PM

ISLAMABAD, Sept 30 (AFP) — Pakistani President Mohammad Rafiq Tarar has rejected a report sent to him by a former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) officer accusing Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of corruption, a Presidential spokesman said today.

The spokesman said the “petition” by Mr Rehman Malik, a former FIA second-in-command, appeared to be part of a “campaign against the Prime Minister to destabilise the lawful government”.

“The petition, “being unwarranted”, has been filed, the spokesman said.

The Sunday newspaper the Observer, citing the alleged FIA report passed on by Mr Malik, had said Mr Sharif siphoned off millions of dollars from his country’s coffers.

The Pakistan Government denied the report calling it “incorrect, mala fide and a figment of the imagination” of Malik, who had been dismissed by Mr Sharif on charges of corruption and misuse of power.

Mr Malik, who is in London, reportedly slipped out of the country after being released on bail.

He was in office during the Premiership of Benazir Bhutto, who was sacked in 1996 by then President Farooq Ahmed Leghari for alleged corruption and misrule.

The Pakistani embassy in London has lodged a complaint against the daily with the Press Complaints Commission, a local daily The News, reported.

Imran Khan, a former cricket hero now leader of the Movement for Justice Party, demanded yesterday the Pakistani Chief Justice take note of corruption allegations against both Mr Sharif and Ms Bhutto.

Case for impeachment ‘weak’

NEW YORK, Sept 30 (Reuters) — Impeachment proponents have a weak case against the US President Mr Bill Clinton, according to legal experts who said that sex scandal charges were not likely to meet constitutional grounds to oust him.

The National Law Journal surveyed a “jury” of 12 constitutional law professors on allegations before Congress that Mr Clinton lied under oath and took other steps to cover up his affair with Monica Lewinsky and stonewall investigators.

Ten of the respondents rejected impeachment as a remedy, saying only the weakest legal argument existed for such action on accusations that Mr Clinton want only abused his powers. A majority also said the nation’s founders probably would not have wanted a President so severely punished for lying about sex.

“On the charges as we now have them .. impeaching the President would probably be unconstitutional,” writes University of Chicago Law Professor Cass Sunstein in the October 5 issue of the law journal.

Independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s allegations that Mr Clinton abused his power by invoking executive privilege and using the judicial system to shield information “is not only frivolous but also dangerous,” says Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School Professor.

Most of the professors, however, said Mr Clinton would probably be impeached if he were a judge. Perjury and misconduct have traditionally been viewed as grounds for impeaching judges, they said, but not presidents.

Meanwhile, in perhaps the oddest analysis yet of Bill Clinton’s current travails, noted American novelist Toni Morrison, claims the President is being persecuted because he is, in fact, a black.

“Years ago, in the middle of the White Water investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President,” the Nobel prize-winning author wrote seriously in the latest edition of the New Yorker magazine.

“After all, Mr Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working class, saxophone playing, McDonald’s and junk food-loving boy from Arkansas.”

But the ultimate proof of Mr Clinton’s hidden racial background for Morrison is the vendetta she sees in independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s pursuing the President in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Mr Starr, she said, is using the same tactics against Mr Clinton that are employed by whites to punish blacks, they believe have too much ambition.

Video on sale

WASHINGTON, Sept 30 (AFP) — Americans who haven’t had enough of the sex-and-lies scandal surrounding President Bill Clinton can now buy the four-hour long video of his testimony before the grand jury.

The cassette went on sale yesterday at $ 9.95 and shot up to 26th place on the bestseller list of Amazon.Com, an internet site selling books and other materials over the internet.

Sino-Indian ties under threat

BEIJING, Sept 30 (PTI) — China’s highly influential Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) seems to be going all out to scuttle normalisation of Sino-Indian relations by planting reports of an impending Indian military strike on China, Indian diplomats said here today.

“We think there is a deliberate attempt being made by the PLA to spread rumours of an Indian attack on China so that they could vitiate the atmosphere and scuttle attempts being made through the diplomatic channels to re-rail Sino-Indian relations, the diplomats said.

They pointed out to recent reports in a leading Hong Kong daily about a possible provocative Indian attack on China and described them as deliberate leaks by the PLA to create an atmosphere of tension and misunderstanding between India and China.

One diplomat pointed out that India has not gone back on any of the confidence-building measures signed between the two countries to reduce tensions on the Sino-Indian border.

Mandela steps in to help Boesak

JOHANNESBURG, Sept 30 (AFP) — President Nelson Mandela has intervened to help raise funds to cover legal costs of former anti-apartheid cleric, Allan Boesak, in his theft and fraud trial, a Presidential spokesman said yesterday.

Mr Mandela was acting in his private capacity because he believed in the principle that a person is innocent until proved guilty, the spokesman, Mr Parks Mankahlana, said.

“The President believes a person should be given adequate legal protection,” Mr Mankahlana said, adding that the intervention came because of a long-standing friendship between Mr Mandela and the cleric.

The flamboyant cleric has been charged with 32 counts of theft and fraud involving more than 1.1 million rand ($ 250,000) of foreign donor funds. The trial began on August 24.

Compensation for Kuwaitis

KUWAIT CITY, Sept 30 (DPA) — Kuwaitis will receive some $ 120.8 million this week as Gulf War compensation after a UN body approved yesterday the distribution of $ 690 million to people who suffered material losses or were forced to flee Iraq or Kuwait during the occupation period.

The Kuwait News Agency (Kuna) said the instalment, the fourth to be made by the UN Compensation Commission (UNCC), will bring the total amount paid to worldwide claimants to almost $ 2 billion.

The instalment covers a total of 207,808 claimants worldwide who were forced to flee either Iraq or Kuwait during the seven-month occupation, and 70,557 claimants who suffered material losses below $ 100,000.

Claimants from Egypt are the largest beneficiaries in the first category and will receive $ 189 million. An additional 42 million will also be paid to Egyptians for their losses under $ 100,000, according to UNCC figures published by the Kuna.

The figures also show that the commission will pay in 100.8 million to Kuwaitis who suffered losses under $ 100,000 and some # 20 million to those who fled their nation.

The war reparation money comes from the cash earned by Iraq under a UN-approved oil-for-food deal that allows Baghdad to sell limited quantities of crude.

Iraq must deposit 30 per cent of those earnings into the UNCC fund.

Was Pope John Paul I murdered?

MADRID, Sept 30 (DPA) - Was Pope John Paul I murdered in 1978 by Vatican hardliners who wanted to prevent him from carrying out extensive reforms within the Roman Catholic Church?

The Vatican has always denied such rumours, but 20 years after the death of the “smiling Pope”, the mystery is thickening again.

Brazilian Cardinal Aloisio Lorscheider has expressed a suspicion that the Italian Pope, who was born Albino Luciani, did not die a natural death.

And in an article in the daily El Mundo, Spanish priest and author Jesus Lopez Saez also lends credibility to claims that the Pope was poisoned just 33 days after being elected to head the Catholic Church in succession to the late Pope Paul IV.

The Church says John Paul’s death on September 28, 1978, at the age of 65 was caused by a heart attack.

But Lopez Saez, who is working on a book on the Pope’s death, believes he died of the effects of a vasodilating medicine (a medicine which causes dilation of blood vessels) which was administered to him against medical advice.

Press reports have claimed that a secret autopsy showed traces of the medicine. “The Pope suffered from low blood pressure, and giving him a vasodilator would have been a criminal act,” doctors told Lopez Saez.

The Pope’s personal doctor has denied prescribing the medicine.

Lopez Saez also points out that the Pope appeared to be in good health before his death and quotes an anonymous source who says the heart attack was hurriedly diagnosed by Vatican doctors who did not consult the Pope’s doctor.

Lopez Saez says the Vatican version of the Pope’s death is riddled with inconsistencies.

The Vatican has, for instance, denied that an autopsy was performed while the Pope’s secretary Diego Lorenzi said one was.

The Vatican says the Pope’s body was discovered by a Bishop, but an “authorised source” confirmed to Lopez Saez that the body was in fact found by a nun, Sister Vicenza, who said she was bullied into keeping quiet about it.

The nun found the dead Pope sitting in bed with papers in his hands, an unlikely position for someone who has suffered a heart attack, the writer said. A secret staircase was found to lead to the Pope’s room.

Notes written by John Paul I indicate that he was about to carry out nothing less than a “revolution” in the Catholic Church, according to Lopez Saez.

He says the Pope wanted to replace several high-placed members of the Vatican hierarchy to counter what he considered an excessive involvement of the Vatican Bank in the world of finance and to implement progressive reforms on questions such as ecumenism and the role of women.

Such plans would certainly have attracted opposition from Vatican conservatives and author David Yallop claimed in an earlier book that the Pope was poisoned by a conspiracy of members of the Vatican hierarchy, bankers and freemasons.

Yallop’s claims remain controversial. The late Pope’s brother, Edoardo Luciani, dismissed the murder theories in an interview with El Mundo.

Although the Church has denied that the Pope planned organisational changes in the Vatican hierarchy, critics still believe that his death stopped reforms and kept the Catholic Church on the conservative course now represented by John Paul II.

Broadcast tower
TOKYO: Japan’s television broadcasting firm, Nippon Television City Corp, plans to build here a 700-metre-high structure that would be the world’s tallest broadcasting tower, company officials said. The tower is intended for terrestrial digital broadcasting scheduled to begin in the Kanto region around Tokyo in 2003 and would be built in Minato ward near the 333-meter Tokyo Tower, which was built in 1958 and is owned by Nippon, the officials said on Tuesday. — Oana-Kyodo

New PTV channel
LONDON: Pakistan Television (PTV) has launched European channel to counter rival Asian networks such as Zee and Sony, which chiefly cater to Indian audience. Launching the test broadcasts of the channel, labelled as Prime TV, Pakistan’s Information Minister Mushaid Hussain said the network was launched to compete with Asian channels like Zee and Sony, whom he dubbed as ‘essentially Indian channels’. The objective of Prime TV being beamed through Oslo-based Scandinavian satellite systems was to ‘present, promote and project’ Pakistani point of view and to bring a competitive edge of PTV. — PTI

Pilot joins Taliban
ISLAMABAD: A pilot in the anti-Taliban opposition flew his airplane to Kabul and defected to the Islamic militia overnight, an Afghan news agency said on Wednesday. The Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said the pilot defected to the Taliban in his Russian Antonov 32 cargo plane after delivering military supplies from Tajikistan to Ahmed Shah Masood, military chief of the ousted Afghan Government. The pilot, Muhammad Khan, had been in contact with the Taliban for the past few days through relatives. — Reuters

Monica’s house
SYDNEY: Monica Lewinsky’s Australian connection grew today with the news that as well as having an Aussie boyfriend, she also owns an apartment here. Rumours that the former White House intern had fled to northern Australia to escape the media glare sent the world’s media flocking to the chic resort town of Port Douglas two weeks ago. Lewinsky’s Australian bolthole is a two-bedroom apartment in the highly unfashionable Sydney suburb of Bankstown.— AFP

Iraq bomb devices
WASHINGTON: US officials were aware of credible reports that Iraq had built and maintained three or four ‘implosion devices’ that lacked only enriched uranium to make 20-kiloton nuclear bombs, but have not been able to corroborate them, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday. — Reuters