Loss of Bamiyan admitted
TEHERAN, Sept 14 — Iran’s armed forces are on full alert, a senior military official was quoted as saying today by the Teheran press amid a continuing build-up of troops on the Afghanistan border.

Taliban allay fears on Buddha statues
KABUL, Sept 14 — The future of 1,400-year old Buddhist relics remains bleak after the hardline Taliban Islamic militia captured the pro-Iran Shiite Muslim stronghold of Bamiyan city.

Reforms won’t hurt
industry: Primakov
MOSCOW, Sept 14 — Russian Premier Yevgeny Primakov opened his first government session today by urging ministers to quickly draft reasonable economic reforms that can benefit the people.

PLA banned from
exporting arms
COLOMBO, Sept 14 — A $ 80-million deal between the Sri Lankan government and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, to supply weapons to the Lankan army has led to the Chinese government banning the PLA from selling arms.

Robinson takes up Tibet
BEIJING, Sept 14 — UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, has raised the issue of human rights in the predominantly Buddhist region of Tibet with the Chinese Government, a UN press release said here today.

Loss of Bamiyan admitted

TEHERAN, Sept 14 (DPA) — Iran’s armed forces are on full alert, a senior military official was quoted as saying today by the Teheran press amid a continuing build-up of troops on the Afghanistan border.

“Iran’s armed forces are on full alert to safeguard territorial integrity of the country and the enemies of Iran should know that the nation will defend its national identity and prestige against any aggressors,’’ said Mehdi Chamran, head of the Sacred Defence Committee of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Iran would soon have deployed a total of 270,000 troops along most of its 850-km border with Afghanistan, he said.

Mr Chamran’s remarks followed reports that the ultra-Islamic Taliban captured the city of Bamiyan from the pro-Iranian Shiite group Hezb-e-Vahdat. The town had been one of the few remaining spots in Afghanistan outside Taliban control.

The mission in the Tajikistan capital, Dushanbe, of deposed President Burhanuddin Rabbani confirmed the town was captured late yesterday.

Iranian television, also confirming the claim, reported that the Taliban forces were executing thousands of residents of Bamiyan and warned of another “massive genocide’’ in this city.

Iran today was scheduled to collect the remains of eight Iranian diplomats and a reporter of the official Iranian news agency IRNA who were found by the Taliban near the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

The corpses were to be transported by a United Nations plane from Afghanistan either to Mashad in northeast Iran or directly to Teheran.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters): Afghanistan’s Shiite Muslim opposition faction Hezb-e-Wahdat acknowledged today the loss of the key town of Bamiyan to purist Islamic Taliban militia.

A spokesman for the Iran-backed faction told Reuters by telephone from central Afghanistan that its fighters had withdrawn from Bamiyan yesterday to avoid civilian casualties.

But he said fighting was going on at the strategic Shiber Pass area and vowed to defend other parts of Bamiyan province under their control. The faction leaders had fled to the south-west of Bamiyan, to Yakawlang, which has an airfield, he said.

Taliban officials said the militia’s supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar had called on his fighters to reopen supply routes to Bamiyan, which had been besieged for over an year, and asked them to allow civilians to leave.

Bamiyan town is said to have 10,000 Hazara residents and Bamiyan province about 300,000 Shiite Muslims.

DUBAI (PTI): Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei today declared that he was “impatiently” waiting for an action by his country against the Taliban militia government in Afghanistan even as the Islamic militia warned Teheran against any intervention in the embattled country.

Urging the Shiite Muslim faction in the war-torn country to resist the Islamic fundamentalists, which now control 90 per cent of Afghanistan, Khamenei said “resort to god and bravely withstand the Taliban’s aggression. God willing, you will triumph.”

NICOSIA (AFP): A Taliban official said the Islamic militia had rejected Iran’s demands to hand over the killers of nine Iranian diplomats in Afghanistan.

“The killers of the Iranian diplomats are criminals who acted without orders. We are hunting for them and when we find them they will be tried but we will not hand them over to anyone,” Saeedur Rehman, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, told radio Monte-Carlo monitored in Nicosia yesterday.

Reforms won’t hurt industry: Primakov

MOSCOW, Sept 14 (AFP, Reuters) — Russian Premier Yevgeny Primakov opened his first government session today by urging ministers to quickly draft reasonable economic reforms that can benefit the people.

Future reforms have to “make a lot of social sense”, Interfax quoted Mr Primakov as telling a meeting of interim ministers.

“This is a national government, which must care about the interests of Russia and its people,” he said.

Mr Primakov will meet the nation’s top business leaders and bank chairmen later.

The former spymaster is due to consult financiers about an economic reform programme as well as possible government appointments.

Opposition leaders in the state Duma (Lower House of Parliament) had preconditioned their support for Mr Primakov on the inclusion of their deputies in his Cabinet.

Earlier, Primakov had said his government’s economic policies should not sacrifice domestic industry and living standards on the altar of market reforms.

“This government should do its utmost to continue reforms and at the same time correct certain deficiencies that we had in the past,” Mr Primakov told NTV commercial television yesterday.

In his first major interview since being approved as the Premier on Friday by the Duma, he gave few clues about specific economic policies but confirmed a shift in emphasis.

He stressed social welfare and efforts to stimulate growth in the real sector of the economy rather than sticking to the tough monetarist approach of previous Russian governments aimed at keeping inflation down.

“It must be a socially oriented economy,” Mr Primakov said.

“There should be no awful discrepancy under which the majority of the people live below the poverty line. We cannot allow this. No capitalist country allows it. At least they try. In this regard, we need certain corrections which will be made”, he said.

Mr Primakov’s remarks came on the eve of a meeting in London of senior foreign and Finance Ministry officials of the group of seven leading industrial nations. Russian delegates have been invited and are expected to be grilled on plans for reforms.

Leghari plans crusade against Sharif

ISLAMABAD, Sept 14 (PTI) — Former Pakistan President Farooq Leghari has joined the opposition clamour against the Nawaz Sharif Government, saying he is going to launch a “crusade” against its “detrimental” policies, and said the Islamisation Bill was a sequel to the “conspiracy” against the judiciary.

“Mr Nawaz Sharif has nothing to do with the supremacy of Islamic Shariat in the country. But he only wants the supremacy of Itefaq Foundry (the company owned by the Sharif family),” Mr Leghari, who resigned as President last December following differences with Mr Sharif over the judiciary crisis, told reporters in Karachi yesterday.

He said his Millat Party, launched last month, was ready to launch a “crusade” against the “detrimental policies” of the Sharif regime, and added: “I have decided to go to the masses and launch a nationwide movement against the present rulers who have become a security risk now.”

“We will never allow Mr Sharif to play with the integrity and solidarity of the country by announcing detrimental policies,” he said.

Mr Leghari expressed his fears that if the present Islamisation Bill was passed by Parliament, it would empower the Prime Minister to do whatever he wanted to, and added, “we will not permit ‘abbajee’ (Nawaz’s father) and his sons to flout the law.”

“The Nawaz Government has totally failed to run the country as per law, and Ms Benazir (Bhutto) has already proved her incompetence. It has, therefore, become inevitable to get rid of the present rulers,” Mr Leghari said.

The former President has been projecting himself as the third alternative alleging both Mr Sharif and Ms Benazir had failed the country.

Earlier, the Opposition led by Ms Benazir’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Khan Abdul Wali Khan’s Awami National Party (ANP) announced a nationwide stir against the Government by forming a grand alliance on the issue of the Islamisation Bill which is under discussion in the National Assembly.

The largest religious party, Jamaat-e-Islami has also alleged that the Islamisation Bill is nothing but a “drama” to garner support of religious groups on the crucial issue of signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

Jamaat chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed expressed his doubts about the intentions of Mr Sharif.

Taliban allay fears on Buddha statues

KABUL, Sept 14 (AFP) — The future of 1,400-year old Buddhist relics remains bleak after the hardline Taliban Islamic militia captured the pro-Iran Shiite Muslim stronghold of Bamiyan city.

Just hours after Taliban troops entered Bamiyan city yesterday, a religious militia official sought to allay fears and told reporters here he hoped his hardline soldiers would not harm the Buddhas.

Maulawi Abdur Rahman Hotak, Taliban Deputy Minister for Information and Culture, said the preservation of historical monuments was the militia’s duty. During previous attempts to take the central Afghan town, hardcore frontline troops had threatened to explode the two Buddhas — one 38 metres tall and the other nearly 55 metres high — dating back to 622 A.D. The statues have a physical form and human face.

Puritanical Taliban believe physical displays, paintings and sculptures of living images are “idol worship”. Photography of living beings has been banned, and carrying pictures is barred.

An international outcry followed Taliban threats to destroy the Buddhas, with archaeological centres and Buddhist countries such as Sri Lanka leading the chorus in condemning the Taliban attitude.

The Buddhas of Bamiyan represent an alien historical culture for most Taliban who come from Islamic religious “madrasas” in southern Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan.

For more than 1,000 years, Bamiyan was the centre for Buddhist culture, but the Buddhas are now weathered and showing strains of being caught between the crossfire of ethnic rivalry and civil war.

Last year, a Taliban bomb reportedly landed on a mountain top above one of the statues. The impact cracked open a niche which stemmed down to the Buddha’s foundation.

PLA banned from exporting arms

COLOMBO, Sept 14 (PTI) — An 80 million dollar deal between the Sri Lankan government and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), to supply weapons to the Lankan army has led to the Chinese government banning the PLA from selling arms, following reports of widespread smuggling by its officers, The Sunday Times reported here yesterday.

The deal between the PLA’s ‘trading arm’, ‘Bomtec’ and the Sri Lankan Defence Ministry was strongly opposed by the China North Trading Industries Corp (NORINCO), which was the official supplier of arms, the newspaper said in an exclusive report on the arms deal.

Robinson takes up Tibet

BEIJING, Sept 14 (PTI) — UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, has raised the issue of human rights in the predominantly Buddhist region of Tibet with the Chinese Government, a UN press release said here today.

Ms Robinson, after her visit to Tibet and talks with senior officials in Lhasa last week, “transmitted to the Tibet autonomous region authorities a list of issues and recommendations concerning Tibet, resulting from the work of human rights treaty monitoring bodies and mechanisms of the UN Commission on Human Rights,” the release said.

“These recommendations have already been raised with government officials in Beijing,” it said on her meetings with Chinese Foreign Ministry officials here.

Reuters add: Chinese dissidents today urged U. N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson to raise the issue of police brutality in China.

Chinese activists called on Robinson to pressurise Beijing to take action over what they called a number of killings by the police in Wuhan, the capital of the Central Hubei province over the last year and a half.

Robinson, the first U N Human Rights High Commissioner to visit China, also met President Jiang Zemin, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Thais offer kidneys
BANGKOK: Economic hardships have prompted many Thais to offer their kidneys for sale at government and private hospitals and an illegal traffic in the body organs has begun, a news report said on Monday. “Major hospitals have reported cash-strapped visitors coming in every day to openly offer their kidneys, only to be rejected on legal grounds”, said The Nation newspaper in an investigative report. — DPA

Nepal epidemics
KATHMANDU: At least 54 persons have died of encephalitis epidemics in eastern and far western parts of Nepal in the past few weeks, reports said on Monday. The Kantipur newspaper reported from the eastern Nepalese industrial township of Biratnagar that at least 27 persons had died of encephalitis in Morang district, about 300 km west of Kathmandu, in the past few weeks. — DPA

Fergie to wed
LONDON: Britain’s Duchess of York, Fergie, is to wed an Italian count with whom she has been romantically linked since last year, the estranged wife of the count told The Daily Mail newspaper on Monday. Count Gaddo Della Gherardesca’s estranged wife, Michela Valli, said that her 49-year-old husband had told her that he and Fergie were engaged to be married and she had decided to give the match her blessing. — AFP

Viagra sale
BRISBANE: Viagra went on sale in Australia on Monday, amid warnings to men with heart trouble that they should have a medical check-up before using the virility drug. Pharmacies across the country said they would begin filling back orders and were expecting a run of inquiries about the drug, for which the government fast-tracked approval processes in an attempt to stem a growing black market trade. — AP

Emmy awards
LOS ANGELES: NBC’s “Frasier” won a record fifth consecutive award as best comedy series and stars Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce took home acting trophies at the 50th annual primetime Emmy awards. And life got even better for Helen Hunt, who won the best actress honours for her role as Jamie Buchman on the NBC’s “Mad About You”, six months after winning an Oscar for “As Good As It Gets”. — AP

Penguin dung
WELLINGTON: Scientists are delving into dung dropped by adelie penguins perhaps 8,000 years ago in the Antarctic to trace the history of influenza. The New Zealand Government has committed 456,000 New Zealand dollars over three years to a research programme to track the evolution of the disease. — Reuters