Islamisation Bill attacked
ISLAMABAD, Sept 5 — The controversial Islamisation Bill came in for sharp criticism on the opening day of the Pakistan National Assembly session today as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif faced some embarrassing moments when a ruling party legislator attacked the proposed legislation.

“Dil Se” a smash hit in Britain IN London it is bigger — screen for screen — than “Godzilla”. While “The Avengers” can barely manage to pull 200 punters into even the big London screens, the same number are being turned away every night from cinemas in the suburbs showing a slushy, low-budget Indian love story.

Currency board ‘not feasible’ in Russia
WASHINGTON, Sept 5 — The head of the International Monetary Fund has said current conditions in Russia make the establishment of a currency board unfeasible there.

• Essentials off Moscow shelves

LTTE calls Lanka motherland
COLOMBO, Sept 5 — For the first time in almost a decade, the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has referred to Sri Lanka as the "motherland" of both the Sinhalese and Tamils and called for peace talks to resolve the ethnic conflict.

UN council may take up missile firing by N. Korea
UNITED NATIONS, Sept 5 — The Security Council is likely to consider the firing of missile by North Korea sometime next week, diplomats have said.

Burton admits child out of wedlock
WASHINGTON, Sept 5 — Republican Congressman Dan Burton, who is also the Chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform which is currently probing President Bill Clinton's campaign financing, has admitted that he fathered a child outside the wedlock.

Lone’s invitation to Taliban flayed

LONDON, Sept 5 (PTI) — Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) and other Kashmiri leaders have lashed out at Hurriyat leader Abdul Ghani Lone describing as “totally irresponsible and shocking” his invitation to the Afghan Taliban militia to come as mercenaries to Jammu and Kashmir.

Accusing Lone of planning to “transform Jammu and Kashmir back into Afghan slavery”, chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Liberation Party, Hashim Qureshi said it was shocking the Hurriyat leader had not learnt lessons from the tragic history of Kashmir enslavement under Afghan oppression for nearly two centuries.

“Has Ghani Lone forgotten the Afghan misrule over Kashmir because the children of Kashmir have not forgotten, the dark days of Afghan Governor of Kashmir Charag Beg — even today mothers frighten their errant babies by telling them Charag Beg is coming,” Mr Qureshi said in a statement faxed from Amsterdam in Holland.

Afzal Tahir, chairman of the PoK Kashmir International Front said, “You couldn’t expect better from Hurriyat leaders’’.

Referring to the report of Amnesty International on mass genocide carried out by Taliban in Mazar-i-Sharif, Tahir said: “Obviously, the Hurriyat is not satisfied with the slaughter of thousands of Kashmiri youth. It is planning a mass genocide in Kashmir.”

“Pakistani mercenaries by their depravity and barbaric indiscriminate killings have already left deep wounds on Kashmiri people and, to top it, it appears Hurriyat leaders would like to invite Taliban bandits to sow killing fields in Kashmir,” Tahir said.

Abdul Ghani Lone’s invitation to the Taliban to come to Kashmir and anywhere else in India was highlighted by Pakistani media here. Apparently it was the plan of the ISI.

Afzal Tahir said: “The whole world was describing the Taliban militia as pariah as they were carrying out ethnic cleansing in Afghanistan. Hurriyat leaders want to set the stage for similar killings in Kashmir.”

Tahir as well as Hashim Qureshi said, “outside forces whenever they had come to Kashmir had tried to enslave the people and statements of Ghani Lone were a slur on the people of Kashmir.”

Both leaders said instead of “foisting more violence on gun weary people of Kashmir”, time had come to launch a democratic struggle to shun guns and violence from Kashmir by driving out the outside Kalashnikov culture.

Taliban ‘massacred’ thousands

LONDON, Sept 5 (IPS)— Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban militia has been accused of “massacring thousands of ethnic Hazara civilians” within three days of taking over the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif last month.

The London-based rights watchdog, Amnesty International, basing its information on eyewitness and survivors’ accounts, said on Thursday that the vast majority of those killed were Hazaras living in the Zara at, Saidabad and Elm Arab areas of Mazar-e-Sharif.

The town —among several strongholds of the ethnic Hazara, Tajik and Uzbek armed opposition groups in northern Afghanistan — fell to the ethnic Pushtuns and fiercely Islamist Taliban forces on August 8.

“This latest information shows yet again how the Taliban disregard internationally recognised humanitarian laws on the treatment of civilians in armed conflict,” Amnesty International said.

Islamisation Bill attacked

ISLAMABAD, Sept 5 (PTI) — The controversial Islamisation Bill came in for sharp criticism on the opening day of the Pakistan National Assembly session today as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif faced some embarrassing moments when a ruling party legislator attacked the proposed legislation.

The Bill, which has already generated a lot of controversy since Prime Minister Sharif announced it on August 28, faced strong opposition in the assembly yesterday.

But the Treasury Benches were in for a shock when a veteran member of the Pakistan Muslim League from Sindh, Mr Abdul Hamid Jatoi, launched a frontal attack on the Bill, saying, “The 15th constitutional amendment for bringing Islamisation could damage the entire federation by isolating smaller provinces”.

“No one has any problem with Islam but why resort to this constitutional amendment? By amending the Constitution, you are doing grave injustice to the smaller provinces”, he said.

“Remember when the country split into two we tried to dissuade Z. A. Bhutto that his policies were breaking Pakistan. This amendment will send a sense of deprivation of the smaller provinces if you resort to simple majority,” Mr Jatoi, one of the framers of the 1973 Constitution, said.

He later told reporters party members were not allowed to express their views on the Bill during the parliamentary party meeting addressed by Mr Sharif.

According to media reports, a number of party MPs also expressed reservations at the parliamentary meeting on Wednesday about the proposed amendment to make the Koran and Sunnah (sayings of the Prophet) as the supreme law of the land.

Opening the debate, Pathan leader Asfandyar Wali Khan strongly opposed the Bill, saying, “We are not opposing Islam. What we are opposing is the fact this amendment is being used to stabilise and prolong the stay of the government”.

He also warned this law had the “potential to eliminate Parliament, judiciary and the Constitution. It is against the very spirit of the constitution”.

Mr Wali’s Awami National Party (ANP) had earlier broken its nine-year-old alliance with Mr Sharif’s PML and had joined hands with Ms Benazir Bhutto’s PPP to fight against the proposed Bill.

Deputy Leader of Opposition of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Syed Khurshid Shah also said that, “we are against the monarchy in the name of Islam”.

Pakistan Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Mohammad Yasin Khan Watoo, however, while defending the Bill said, “the Bill will prove a step towards turning Pakistan into an Islamic welfare state”.

Meanwhile, a delegation of minority members of the National Assembly has also opposed Islamisation of the country.

In a joint press conference, members belonging to Christian, Hindu and other minority communities in Pakistan expressed apprehension that after this Bill they would be treated like third class citizens.

“We have told Sharif that we cannot support the Bill”, they said, adding, “Our testimony will not be accepted and we will be subjected to capitation tax”.

Fundamentalist groups like the Jamaat-e-Islami said the government was not sincere about the Bill but it only wanted to “divert the attention of the masses from actual problems”.

“Dil Se” a smash hit in Britain
By Suzanne Goldenberg in New Delhi and Vikram Dodd in London

IN London it is bigger — screen for screen — than “Godzilla”. While “The Avengers” can barely manage to pull 200 punters into even the big London screens, the same number are being turned away every night from cinemas in the suburbs showing a slushy, low-budget Indian love story.

“Dil Se” (From the Heart), a Bollywood musical about a radio reporter who falls in love with a suicide bomber plotting to blow up India’s President at Delhi’ annual Republic Day parade, made history this week by becoming the first Indian film to break into the British top 10, grossing just over a quarter of a million pounds (US$400,000) at the box office in its first week.

But the biggest surprise of all is that while British Asians have flocked to the film, in India it has pretty well bombed. Even here, many admit they’re going for the soundtrack rather than the film itself.

Munish Kalia, manager of Harrow Safari Cinema, can’t believe his luck. I will keep showing it as long as the crowds keep coming. I think this movie will run for six months, it will just keep on running.” But even as he turns people away, he makes no great claims for it. “Like the songs but I don’t like the movie. People say it’s too slow, too arty.” Though he too is raking it in, Ajaib Sawan of Piccadilly Cinema in Birmingham, central England, is equally unimpressed: “It’s doing good business but people say the film is crap. They’re coming for Shahrukh Khan (the movie’s male lead) because he is so famous.”

Back in Bombay they are already calling it a flap. Director Mani Ratnam admits it got off to a desultory start there, but claims his films are often slow to catch on. “It’s been very good in certain places, particularly abroad, and it is growing as time goes on,” he told The Guardian. “It happens that way when you make a film that it slightly different from the conventional. It takes a little time to pick up. “But Dil Se does prove two things — the previously unrecognised box office muscle of the Asian community and the power of the soundtrack. Bollywood movies have traditionally been sold on their songs, a lesson that Hollywood itself has been quick to take heed of in the wake of the success of Titanic. —The Guardian

Currency board ‘not feasible’ in Russia

WASHINGTON, Sept 5 (AFP) — The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said current conditions in Russia make the establishment of a currency board unfeasible there.

“At this very moment Russia has not, by far, what is needed for a currency board”, said the IMF’s Director-General, Michel Camdessus yesterday.

He said Russia had a “very urgent agenda”, adding it must “stop printing money for the wrong purposes and put the budget in order.”

The establishment of a functioning currency board required a rigorous political economy, strong levels of foreign exchange reserves and a solid banking system, said Mr Camdessus.

He did not exclude the possibility that Russia could put such a board in place in the future.

Yesterday, Russia’s acting Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin had mentioned plans for a currency board as part of his mixed prescription for the ailing Russian economy.

Calling for the short-term reflation to pay off a wages backlog, with drastic belt-tightening later to save rouble, Mr Chernomyrdin promised an “economic dictatorship” to pull his country out of its breathtaking financial nosedive.

Mr Chernomyrdin said he would in time strap Russia to a currency board, a strict monetary regime which combats hyperinflation by tying a currency to central bank reserves.

Essentials off Moscow shelves

MOSCOW, Sept 5 (Reuters) — Staple items like flour, matches, rice and salt had been sold out from a number of Moscow stores after days of heavy buying by shoppers fearing steep price increases.

Even toilet paper — often in short supply during the spartan days of Soviet Communism, and the subject of a hundred bitter old jokes — was unavailable at some places yesterday.

“The last of it was gone a few days ago”, said Valentina Belakova, a store clerk at the Dorogomilovsky supermarket in central Moscow. “We are hoping for a new shipment from France soon. Otherwise it’s going to be newspapers again.”

LTTE calls Lanka motherland

COLOMBO, Sept 5 (UNI) — For the first time in almost a decade, the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has referred to Sri Lanka as the "motherland" of both the Sinhalese and Tamils and called for peace talks to resolve the ethnic conflict.

The positively conciliatory reference was made by Tamilchelvam, leader of the LTTE’s political wing, in a rare interview, to be published in tomorrow’s edition of the Sunday Leader, a weekly published from here.

"We are children of the same mother. This is our country. This is our motherland. We can develop this country if we get together,’’ he said in the interview, which the paper said was held in a rebel-controlled area of the Vanni region in northern Sri Lanka.

The government has barred journalists from travelling to the area and imposed a strict military censorship on all war news, which Tamilchelvam said was to "hide the defeats in war."

The last time, the LTTE referred to the Sinhalese as "brothers" was in 1989, when they joined President Ranasinghe Premadasa to get the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) out of the island.

Their peace talks collapsed no sooner the IPKF withdrew and three years later, Premadasa was assassinated by a suspected LTTE suicide bomber on a Colombo street.

UN council may take up missile firing
by N. Korea

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 5 (PTI) — The Security Council is likely to consider the firing of missile by North Korea sometime next week, diplomats have said.

They said yesterday the USA might bring up the issue in the 15-member council. The Japanese want the council to take up the issue as they consider it very serious, diplomats said.

A senior diplomat said it was understandable as the missile or at least a part of it had crossed over its territory. The Japanese reject the North Korean contention that it had launched a satellite, not a missile.

Meanwhile, Japanese Ambassador to the United Nations Hisashi Owada has been meeting representatives of various countries, diplomats said, but they declined to give the nature or scope of the discussions.

Japan is also expected to bring up the issue in the UN General Assembly which begins its next session on September 9.

The earliest the council can take up the issue is Tuesday as Monday is a holiday in the UN. Diplomats said it might come up later in the week.

Burton admits child out of wedlock

WASHINGTON, Sept 5 (PTI) — Republican Congressman Dan Burton, who is also the Chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform which is currently probing President Bill Clinton's campaign financing, has admitted that he fathered a child outside the wedlock.

Mr Burton, who called President Clinton a "scumbag" and a "man of no integrity" and has befriended all Indian secessionists, made the admission in a statement released yesterday to the Indianpolis Star and News.

The paper said that Mr Burton fathered the child out of wedlock in the 1980s, when he was a member of the Indiana Senate and the woman worked for a state agency. She was now married and lived with her teenage son in central Indiana, it said without giving further details.

"The media began digging into my personal life. They have harassed innocent people in an effort to embarrass me. Friends, relatives and former members of my staff have been probed with a variety of tasteless questions," Mr Burton, who was forced into admission by the probing media, complained in his statement.

Justifying the probe, Indianapolis Star and News Editor said it was a sad fact of the 90s that for "someone who has spoken out and positioned himself on family values kinds of issue, we think it is relevant. It is a character issue."

Microsoft on trial
WASHINGTON: A US judge has rejected Microsoft’s request to delay an anti-trust suit and ordered the computer-chip giant to turn over documents on its competitors, the US Justice Department said. In denying the request for delay, Federal District Judge Thomas Jackson on Friday also ordered Microsoft to turn over documents concerning rival computer-chip manufacturers Intel and Apple, the Department reported. The anti-trust trial against Microsoft, filed jointly by the Justice Department and 20 states, is set to start on September 23. —AFP

80-year-old spy ‘freed’
JERUSALEM: An Israeli court has released to house arrest an 80-year-old Israeli scientist jailed for nearly 16 years for spying for the former Soviet Union. The Beersheba district court said the ailing Marcus Klingberg, former deputy head of the Nes Ziona Biological Institute near Tel Aviv, would serve the remainder of his 20-year sentence at home. A visibly emotional Klingbergs fought back tears upon hearing the court’s parole ruling. “I only hope that I will manage to live a little longer as a free man,” he told reporters. —Reuters