Saturday, October 3, 1998
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W O R L D | Saturday, October 3, 1998 |
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Clinton increases offer to
Paula
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 German Chancellor-elect Gerhard Schroeder (right) and the possible Foreign Minister, Greens party faction leader Joschka Fischer (left), delivers a statement after their coalition talks in Bonn on Thursday. AP/PTI China, N. Korea major sources WASHINGTON, Oct 2 — China has transferred M-11 missiles to Pakistan and poses a threat to the USA as a significant proliferator of weapons of mass destruction, according to a high-powered US congressional commission.
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McCurry leaves White House |
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Clinton increases offer to Paula WASHINGTON, Oct 2 (Reuters) — President Bill Clinton’s lawyers have increased their offer to settle the Paula Jones lawsuit from $ 500,000 to $700,000, but her lawyers are holding out for $ 1 million, The Washington Post reported today. The newspaper quoted sources close to the case as saying that negotiations between the two sides were foundering in part because Clinton was furious that Jones’ lawyers had claimed that any payment would amount to an implicit admission of his guilt. David Pyke, one of Jones’ Dallas-based lawyers, refused to comment on the Post report. White House spokesman Jim Kennedy also had no comment on the report, Clinton’s personal attorney, Robert Bennett, could not be reached for comment. White House Deputy Counsel Bruce Lindsey had said on Sunday the two sides were discussing a possible settlement of Jones sexual harassment lawsuit. But if Clinton agreed to pay Jones money to settle the case, this would not signify an admission of wrongdoing, he said. The White House is keen to settle the Paula Jones lawsuit so it can focus solely on likely impeachment hearings in Congress about Clinton’s admitted improper relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. But the paper, quoting people monitoring the talks, said both sides had grown “increasingly pessimistic that they will be able to find an amicable deal” and the next few days were considered critical. In his report to Congress independent counsel Kenneth Starr accused Clinton of lying under oath in the Jones case when he denied having a sexual relationship with Lewinsky. Jones is using that
assertion — and Clinton’s admission that he
misled people about the affair — to try to revive
the case which was dismissed in April. |
Police to probe Anwar beating KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 2 (Reuters) — The Malaysian police has formed a high-level team to investigate the alleged assault on sacked Deputy Premier Anwar Ibrahim while in custody. The New Straits Times newspaper said today that the team led by the head of the Malacca state Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Mat Zain Ibrahim, started work yesterday. Other members of the team also include senior police officers of the CID. A federal police spokesman was not immediately available for comment. Anwar told a court here on Tuesday that the police had punched and slapped him after he was arrested on September 20, setting off widespread criticism from rights groups, opposition parties, foreign governments and international groups. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said on Wednesday that his former Deputy might have provoked the police, but later pledged to investigate the allegations of assault. Anwar is being held without bail under the Internal Security Act, which provides for indefinite detention without trial. He has been indicted this week on 10 charges of corruption and sodomy. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He was sacked from his posts of Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister on September 2, with Mahathir saying Anwar was morally unfit to lead the country. ANI adds: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Philippine President Joseph Estrada, World Bank President James Wolfensohn and US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin have expressed concern over reported mistreatment of Anwar Ibrahim. The UN chief said he hoped that Anwar Ibrahim would be treated properly in accordance with the due process of law, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York. In a personal appeal to Mr Mahathir, Mr Wolfensohn has urged the Prime Minister to give a fair hearing to “his friend”, Anwar, who was chairman of the World Bank’s Development Committee. “I’ll probably get caned for saying it, but I think it’s important to remember that he had a real position in our group...and I just hope that the world’s eyes are on him and that he gets a fair chance to state his case,” Mr Wolfensohn said in Washington. Expressing concern at turn
of the events, Mr Rubin said: “I don’t know
anything about the politics in Malaysia but what happened
to him... the way he was treated in prison is deeply,
deeply troubling. Anwar is a highly respected member of
the international financial community and has really been
a great force for great good in many ways,” he
added. |
China, N. Korea major sources WASHINGTON, Oct 2 (PTI) — China has transferred M-11 missiles to Pakistan and poses a threat to the USA as a significant proliferator of weapons of mass destruction, according to a high-powered US congressional commission. The commission, in its report, notes that China has supplied Pakistan with “a design for a nuclear weapon and additional nuclear weapons assistance. It has even transferred complete ballistic missile systems to Pakistan (the 350-km range M-11) and Saudi Arabia (the 3,100-km range CSS-2).” Stating that “China poses a threat to the USA as a significant proliferator of ballistic missiles, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and enabling technologies,” the commission headed by former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and including America’s top missile and intelligence experts, said the ballistic missiles armed with WMD payloads “pose a strategic threat to the US.” “This is not a distant threat. Characterising foreign assistance as a wild card is both incorrect and misleading. Foreign assistance is pervasive, enabling and often the preferred path to ballistic missile and WMD capability,” the report said. China and North Korea were the major sources of Pakistan’s ballistic missiles, production facilities and technology and Islamabad would seek a 2,500-km range missile “to put all of India within range” of its missiles, the report said. “Through foreign acquisition, and beginning without an extensive domestic science and technology base, Pakistan has acquired missile capabilities quite rapidly... Its ballistic missile infrastructure is now more advanced than that of North Korea”. Pakistan’s advancement in ballistic missile infrastructure would support development of a missile of 2,500-km range, which, in turn, would give it the technical base for developing a much longer range missile system. “Pakistan currently
possesses nuclear-capable M-11 SRBMS (short-range
ballistic missiles) acquired from China, and it may
produce its own missile, the Tarmuk, based on the M-11.
In 1998, Pakistan tested and deployed the 1,300-km Ghauri
MRBM (medium-range ballistic missile), a version of the
North Korean No Dong, the commission said, saying it
believed Pakistan had acquired “facilities for its
missile system as well.” |
Gory account of Saddam son’s misdeeds LONDON, Oct 2 (AP) - A former aide to Saddam Hussein’s eldest son has defected to the West, telling tales of murder, torture, smuggling and corruption in Baghdad’s ruling circle. Mr Abbas Al-Janabi, formerly the personal secretary to Odai Hussein, said in an interview yesterday to the Associated Press that he watched his boss kill four men and torture others. Mr Al-Janabi, who defected last spring and is living in hiding in Europe, also witnessed the battle in which Saddam’s two sons-in-law were gunned down after they returned to Iraq following their defection to Jordan in 1995. “It was a massacre,” he said of the killing of the brothers Lt. Gen Hussein Kamel Al-Majid and Lt. Col Saddam Kamel Al-Majid, who had been key figures in Saddam’s security team. The two were lured back to Baghdad with promises of clemency. But Saddam summoned them to one of his palaces and demanded they sign documents divorcing his daughters. When they refused, one of the relatives present threatened to shoot the two brothers. Saddam intervened, and said they should have two days to consider. During the night, however, Odai and other members of the family surrounded the house where Hussein Kamel was staying and opened fire, said Mr Al-Janabi, providing the most detailed eyewitness account to date of the incident. Mr Hussein Kamel was wounded during an ensuing 13-hour gunfight and staggered out of the house, carrying a gun in each hand, he said. As Odai looked on, his gunmen riddled Mr Kamel’s body with bullets, continuing to fire after he fell to the ground dead, Mr Al-Janabi said. When he was lying bleeding, they spat on him,” Mr Al-Janabi said. Mr Al-Janabi, 50, worked for the Iraqi National News Agency and was later appointed editor of the daily newspaper Babel. He lives in hiding, to prevent reprisals from the Hussein family. Saddam, a member of the Al-Tikriti clan, has ruled Iraq since 1979 with help from members of his extended family. That rule was dealt a blow
this week with news that Saddam’s half-brother,
Barzan Al-Tikriti, had refused a summons back to Baghdad
from his post as Iraqi Ambassador to the United Nations
in Switzerland. |
Pizza king donates fortune TWO fast-food millionaires have recently given away vast portions of their wealth — a penance perhaps for the heartburn they have inflicted on legions of their customers — in a case of interesting insight into the American way of charity. Billionaire Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino’s Pizza chain with 6,100 outlets worldwide, has sold 90 per cent of his ownership for $ 1 billion, most going to his charitable foundation which will — indulging his desire as a devout Catholic — build RC schools across America. He has already sold his Chicago Cubs baseball team for $ 85 million and has now auctioned off his yacht, helicopter, jet, and vintage cars in the name of good works. An ardent penitent, he has recently reflected on “how bad a person I really am” and how he has “really got some room for improvement”. At the age of 61, his conversion presumably comes better late than never. Joan Kroc, 70, widow of the man who turned McDonald’s into an international burger chain, last week announced a $ 80 million donation to the Salvation Army, the largest gift in its 118-year history. Her present includes a 12-acre plot in San Diego, California, which will become a community centre with a theatre, a library, a gym, an ice rink, a chapel, a child clinic, and presumably a soup kitchen for the homeless. Kroc got her inspiration from a drive with the Mayor of San Diego around the city’s poorest areas, which she had not seen in 23 years of living there. “It left an impression that would not go away,” she said. It has long been an American tradition to give huge sums to charities or do good works, going back to the 19th century when self-made millionaires donated fortunes, often out of a barely concealed sense of guilt. Pure altruism only occasionally showed. Scottish-born steel baron Andrew Carnegie was perhaps the best example. Although he had only a primary school education, he became fabulously rich through astute business practices and a majority holding in his iron and steel firms. When he purchased Carnegie Steel in 1901, he became $ 260 million richer, putting him well ahead of many of today’s billionaires in modern money. The broadcasting mogul Ted Turner’s recent $ 1 billion gift to the UN caused a stir, but he himself belittled it by pointing out that it was easy money in terms of his recent deal: selling CNN to Time-Warner. Then there are Turner’s ambitions for a Nobel Prize, reported in a biography by Porter Bibb, who wrote that Turner had been telling friends that he hoped one day “to have achieved enough to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize”. Bill Gates, one of the world’s richest men, has been criticised for his lack of generosity. His recent modest gift of $ 20 million to the University of Washington, near Microsoft’s campus-style HQ in the Pacific north-west, will pay dividends in terms of grateful electronics graduates becoming Microsoft job fodder. The classic idea of
“putting back what you took out”, that
motivated the better Victorian philanthropists such as
John D. Rockefeller, seems to have dwindled in
today’s material age. Many know that a canny
donation does wonders for business. Anonymous donations
are strictly for the do-gooding naive these days. Out of
43,000 private foundations in America, fewer than half a
dozen do not carry the name of their founder or the
family. — The Guardian, London |
McCurry leaves White House WASHINGTON, Oct 2 (Reuters) — Mike McCurry leaves the White House as chief spokesman with mixed emotions, happy to get on with his life, maybe make some money, sorry he is leaving with President Bill Clinton still in a peck of trouble.McCurry ends his nearly four-year tenure today as one of the most visible faces of a White House that has seen great emotional swings, from the joyful celebration of Clinton’s re-election to the depths of despair over his extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky.In his last briefing yesterday, McCurry served up a mix of candour, wit and melancholy along with a defence of his decision to stay in the dark about Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky during the seven months before the President finally admitted to it.McCurry is reluctant to get into speculation about the future of Clinton, but said he agreed with comments from former Gen Colin Powell to the effect that some tough, but common sense, punishment of the President short of impeachment should suffice to bring the Lewinsky matter to closure. He said a vote by Congress
to censure the President, a formal condemnation, would
not be the slap of the wrist for Clinton that many
assume, given Clinton’s interest in presidential
history and his own legacy. |
Grandchild from dead son’s sperm sought COLD SPRINGS (Nevada) Oct 2 (AP) — A woman whose 19-year-old son killed himself while playing Russian roulette wants so badly to become a grandmother that she had sperm removed from him while he was on life support. The youth’s mother,
Pamela Reno, a 38-year-old cocktail waitress, wants to
find an egg donor and a surrogate mother to become
artificially inseminated and carry the foetus. She has
had her dead son’s sperm frozen in the meantime. Frozen mummies found in Peru LIMA (Peru), Oct 2 (PTI) — Archaeologists have found six frozen mummies sacrificed to inca gods more than 500 years ago on a snow-capped volcano in Peru’s southern Andes. The mummies were found in
mid-September near the crater of the 5,821-metre high El
Misti volcano, 750 km south-east of Lima. |
Deadline for being buried SINGAPORE, Oct 2 (DPA) —The land-scarce island republic of Singapore has placed a 15-year limit on the length of time a corpse can remain buried in a grave, news reports said today. Starting next month, human remains must be exhumed and cremated after 15 years in the ground or be re-buried in smaller plots, if the religion of the deceased requires burial. “Singapore is a very small and densely populated place with competing demands for land,’’ Public Health Commissioner Daniel Wang told The Straits Times newspaper. “This is not something we like to do, but it is inevitable,’’ he said. A corpse would usually have decomposed fully after 15 years, and the bones would be fragmented, Singapore’s Environment Ministry said. Other places, such as Taipei and Hong Kong, recycle burial sites after seven and six years respectively, The Straits Times said. Plots in Cairo, Istanbul and Mecca are re-used within periods ranging from 40 days to five years. Singapore’s prominent
religions include Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism and
Christianity, all of which allow cremation. |
Army, LTTE hoist flags COLOMBO, Oct 2 (PTI) — Sri Lankan Deputy Minister Anirudha Ratwatte today hoisted the national flag over northern Mankulam town, captured by the Army on Wednesday from the LTTE, while the rebels hoisted its flag over the nearby Kilinochchi town, which it managed to take control from the Army a day before that. General Ratwatte and commanders of the Army, the Air Force and the Navy took part in the ceremony which was held about 1 km from Mankulam junction, state radio said. The LTTE hoisted its flag over Kilinochchi, the clandestine LTTE radio, Voice of Tigers, in its evening broadcast said. Talking to newsmen, General Ratwatte, according to the state radio, said that the fall of kilinochchi was a temporary setback and the Army would regain it soon. He said the LTTE attacked Kilinochchi after realising that mankulam was about to fall to security forces.
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| China celebrates anniversary HONG KONG: China celebrated the 49th anniversary of its founding as Communist republic amid signs of faltering economic growth at 5.5 per cent for 1998, far short of the government’s economic target of 8 per cent. This year’s speech by Premier Zhu Rongji contained the declaration of socialism’s “incomparable superiority and vitality” — but also noted the financial crisis. At the same time the International Monetary Fund issued a report in Washington, slashing its growth forecast for China. The IMF’s world economic outlook said Beijing needed to accelerate financial sector reforms to shelter the economy from regional turmoil. — ANI Arafat’s Moscow visit Ozone hole expands US Consulate blast Pentagon in
N-threat Space station |
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