Hurricane strikes Windies

SANTO DOMINGO (Dominican Republic), Sept 25 (AP) — Rescue workers in the Dominican Republic have recovered at least 80 more bodies, pushing the death toll from Hurricane Georges deadly march across the Caribbean to at least 250Armed forces chief Ruben Paulino Alvarez said on Thursday night 125 were known dead in the Dominican Republic with another 156 missing.

That death toll apparently did not include another 76 bodies which Red Cross official Angel Almanzar said were recovered yesterday by workers in San Juan De La Maguana, a town 195 km west of the capital, Santo Domingo.

In Manomatuey, where a shelter was washed away on Wednesday, three more bodies were pulled from the muck to bring the toll there to at least eight. Along the capital’s seaside boulevard, a woman’s bloated, blanched body washed ashore.

Meanwhile, the hurricane crossed over Cuba last afternoon and was threatening the Florida Keys. In the USA, the national weather service was referring to Georges as the “hurricane that just won’t die”.

Bad news kept coming from throughout the region: 42 dead in Haiti, three each in Puerto Rico and St Kitts and two each in Cuba and Antigua. Everywhere, storm victims struggled to find water, food, ice and other bare essentials to cope with loss and the tropical heat.

In the Dominican Republic, yesterday was the day of the country’s patron saint, Virgen Mercedes. Residents crammed churches to pray for hurricane victims.

At the Mercedes church here, the Rev Jose Arellano Guerrero read the names of the dead from tiny scraps of paper before 1,000 worshippers.

Among the faithful was Ms Carmela Hernandez (80), who lost three fingers when the storm blew a door shut onto her right hand.

I came to see the Mass because I am devoted to the Virgin,” said Ms Hernandez, wearing a bloodded bandage. “It gives me peace,” she said. Suddenly, she doubled over in pain and had to leave.

Reverend Arellano said this year’s traditional street procession was cancelled because downed power lines and broken tree limbs made it too dangerous.

The death toll continued to mount and hundreds were still missing since Georges’ 178 kph winds swept through this nation on Tuesday.

Rescuers searched frantically throughout the Dominican Republic for more victims and army helicopters and a US Coast Guard C-130 airplane and helicopter combed the countryside to assess the damage.

More than 100,000 people lost homes, said President Leonel Fernandez. Airports in La Romana and Puerto Plata were severely damaged.

Throughout Santo Domingo, people wandered with empty plastic jugs searching for water to drink. Many had to settle for filthy brown river water.

The Red Cross prepared to deliver aid to the needy and army soldiers patrolled the capital with rifles to deter looting that surged during the storm. More than 100 persons were arrested late on Wednesday and early yesterday for curfew violations, local television reports said.@@Curfews also were in effect in St Kitts and the US Virgin Islands. In St Kitts, 85 per cent of homes were damaged or destroyed, schools and hospitals damaged and half the crucial sugar crop was lost. Some 3,000 were homeless.

In Cuba, the government reported two persons were electrocuted when they touched live wires downed in the storm, the Mexican news agency Notimex said. Coffee, cacao and banana crops also were damaged and nearly 20,000 homes were flooded in Holguin province.

In Puerto Rico, hundreds were still homeless yesterday, a near total blackout persisted and 28,000 were in shelters. In addition, the storm left $ 2 billion in damage and wiped out hundreds of homes.

Hundreds of federal and local workers began repairing power lines, and the US Army Corps of Engineers provided ice, water and tanker trucks.

Meddling must end in Kabul: Big Five

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 25 (AFP) — The five permanent members of the UN Security Council have renewed an appeal for a ceasefire in Afghanistan and for an end to external arms supplies to all sides.

The Foreign Ministers of the UK, China, France, Russia and the USA expressed “serious concern at the renewed fighting in Afghanistan, causing a growing threat to regional peace and security,” in a statement issued after a lunch with UN Chief Kofi Annan yesterday.

“They called upon the warring Afghan parties to implement immediately a durable cessation of hostilities.

“They warned against outside interference in the affairs of Afghanistan and called for an end to the external supply of arms and ammunition and the involvement of foreign military personnel,” the statement said.

The five welcomed steps taken by Annan, who is sending special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi back to the region soon, and encouraged him to continue his efforts aimed at securing an end to the conflict.

Without referring to the Islamic Taliban militia by name, the five urged “all parties to the conflict to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law” and to specifically respect the rights of women and girls.

Meanwhile, Iran has asked Pakistan to exert pressure on the Taliban to immediately repatriate its prisoners and denied that military build up along the Afghan border was with the intention of any offensive against the Islamic militia, a PTI report from Islamabad said.

Iranian Ambassador in Islamabad, Mehdi Akhoundzadeh, told newsmen here on Thursday that Pakistan was the first country to recognise the Taliban Government and hence it should take lead in the recovery of the Iranian prisoners as, “Afghanistan is a stateless society right now”.

The Iranian Ambassador also reiterated that there had been interference in Afghanistan from other countries in the region though he did not name Pakistan but conceded the recent incidents of killing of its diplomats had its, “spillover on the relationship between Iran and Pakistan”.

KUWAIT (Reuters): Afghanistan’s top diplomat in Saudi Arabia left the oil-rich kingdom after being asked to leave by the Saudi Government due to the presence of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, an Afghan diplomat said.

“The Charge d’Affaires Mawlawi Shihab Ad-Din boarded a plane early this morning to Islamabad and from there to Afghanistan,” the Kuwaiti News Agency (KUNA) quoted the First Secretary at the Afghan embassy in Riyadh Mawlawi Abdul-Wahab as saying yesterday.

In another development Afghan Muslim religious leaders (Ulema) have issued a fatwa asking the ruling Taliban militia to show restraint in dealing with Iran, but warned Teheran that it may face a “jehad” if it invaded Afghanistan PTI reports from Dubai.

The twin fatwa (religious decree) was issued yesterday by some 2,000 Islamic scholars who had assembled in Kabul on a call from Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar to discuss the stand-off with Iran.

Now gene therapy on foetuses

WASHINGTON, Sept 25 (AP) — A genetics pioneer wants to try gene therapy on foetuses in hopes of curing them of deadly diseases before they’re ever born. But first he’s asking scientists and ethicists to debate the experiment because it could for the first time alter a person’s genes in a way that the changes are passed on to future generations.

“We’re talking about something that is a radical departure from anything that’s ever happened before in medicine”, — said Dr W. French Anderson, who performed the first gene therapy in 1990 and now hopes to try it on foetuses. “This is something with profound ethical implications”, he added.

A US panel of genetics experts begins reviewing Dr Anderson’s research plans this week. He’s still two to three years away from the first experiment on human foetuses. But Dr Anderson requested the unusual early review to force a national debate on whether society’s ready.

The debate likely will be hot.

Society needs to face these problems, said Abbey Meyers of the US National Organisation for Rare Disorders, who praises Dr Anderson for tackling the issue. “No one has talked about it. What are the long-term implications of changing genes unalterably for future generations?” he asked.

Dr Anderson wants to inject a healthy gene directly into foetuses during the second trimester of pregnancy to try curing two rare diseases: ADA, which renders the body unable to fight even mild infections and is best known as the bubble-boy disease, and alpha thalassemia, a type of anaemia that in severe cases kills the baby inside the womb. Both diseases are caused by flaws in a gingle gene.

Dr Anderson, now with the University of Southern California, in 1990 used gene therapy on two girls with ADA. It did not cure them but did improve their condition, and today, with additional drug therapy, they’re healthy.

Dr Anderson says gene therapy should work better in foetuses because the healthy genes can slip into more of the tiny patients cells than they can after birth.

But there are some risks, Dr Anderson says. The new gene could accidentally get into the foetus’ reproductive cells, the so-called germline, meaning the genetic alteration would be passed on to that person’s future children. That’s never happened with gene therapy before all genetic changes have affected only the person being operated on.

If the experiment works and the new gene prevents disease then being passed to future generations would be good for that particular family, Dr Anderson says. “But you open up the whole field of genetic engineering of future generations,” he says.

In addition, if somehow the gene messes up his patients, descendants could face even more risk.

The gene therapy could work only partially, meaning a foetus with alpha thalassaemia that would otherwise have died in the womb instead could survive a few sickly years before dying, Dr Anderson says.

There are two main ethical camps, says bioethicist Ruth Macklin of New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who is on the national institutes’ health committee that will debate Dr Anderson’s plans.

Police storm mosque to clear Anwar men

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 25 (AFP) — Riot police stormed Malaysia’s National Mosque today to clear supporters of detained Deputy Premier Anwar Ibrahim as Washington joined the global community to voice concern over his detention.

Scores of armed riot police moved swiftly into the mosque’s main hall after Friday prayers to clear some 5,000 Anwar supporters who were shouting anti-government slogans.

Defiant protesters supporting Anwar, who has been detained since Sunday under the draconian Internal Security Act (ISA), waved Malaysian flags and unfurled banners reading “stop the slander” and “Mahathir a dictator”.

A police helicopter hovered above as contingents of police armed with tear-gas rifles moved swiftly into the mosque to clear the crowd in a 30-minute operation.

Cries of ‘’long live Anwar’’ and ‘’step down Mahathir’’ could be heard in the halls at the mosque, the site of a huge rally just hours before Anwar’s arrest at the weekend.

Protesters spilled out of the mosque and into streets of the capital as police secured the building and and manned road blocks.

Earlier, the USA voiced concern over the detention of Anwar Ibrahim under a law providing for detention without trial.

“We are increasingly concerned by the use of the Internal Security Act to restrict the rights of assembly, free speech and open communication in Malaysia”, said a State Department statement sent by the US Embassy here.

The department voiced concern over the continued detention of Anwar and associates under ISA and “restrictions placed on the activities of Anwar’s wife Wan Azizah Wan Ismail”.

Leaders leave Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, Sept 25 (DPA) — Cambodian opposition leaders Prince Norodom Ranariddh and Mr Sam Rainsy abruptly left the country today after the arrest of eight persons in connection with a fatal explosion the previous day, ahead of the opening of Parliament.

Another opposition leader, Mr Kem Sokha, was in hiding today, claiming the police had surrounded his house here.

A nervous-looking Prince Ranariddh and Mr Rainsy boarded a morning charter flight in Siem Reap, northern Cambodia, bound for Bangkok, witnesses said.

Mr Yim Sovann, a senior member of the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP), was also on the flight.

There was a brief delay at the airport’s security desk as customs officials made phone calls to verify whether the opposition leaders could leave, witnesses said.

A top-level source said Prince Ranariddh and Mr Rainsy left because they feared being arrested for yesterday’s explosion, which the government claims was an assassination attempt against strongman co-Premier Hun Sen.

“That’s definitely the thinking. If they leave, they can choose to come back,” said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity. “If they don’t leave, they might not get the chance to leave. They are extremely nervous,” he added.

The Cambodian government this morning announced the arrest of eight persons in Siem Reap, where the explosion occurred.

US House to vote by Oct 9

WASHINGTON, Sept 25 (AFP) — The House of Representatives would vote on October 8 or 9 on whether or not to launch an impeachment inquiry against President Bill Clinton, Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde has said here.

The House would be called to decide on a “resolution of inquiry authorising the Judiciary Committee to investigate and then to vote on whether to adopt articles of impeachment,” Mr Hyde told reporters yesterday.

If the vote results in passage of the resolution it would mark the beginning of a lengthy process involving hearings and likely dragging on for months that could culminate in a trial of President Bill Clinton before the US Senate.

The House is scheduled to end its fall session on October 9.

The full House vote would authorise Mr Hyde’s Judiciary Committee to launch impeachment hearings and weigh whether or not to impeach Mr Clinton for acts detailed by independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s report.

Sharif's advice to countrymen

ISLAMABAD, Sept 25 (PTI) — Disappointed at his failure to persuade the USA to lift sanctions against Pakistan, Premier Nawaz Sharif today asked his countrymen to become self-reliant, saying "the need for the country to stand on its feet is more than ever before.’’

"It is upto the world whether they lift the sanctions. We should not pin high hopes,’’ a dismayed Sharif told the government-controlled Pakistan Television in an interview in New York.

"The more we expect from the international community the more we feel disappointed. Therefore, lesser the expectations, lesser the disillusionment,’’ Mr Sharif said, while coming to terms with the reality that Washington was not going to lift economic embargoes despite Islamabad’s announced willingness to sign the CTBT before 1999.

Making the announcement at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, Mr Sharif had, however, linked the signing of the treaty with the lifting of the sanctions.

Mr Sharif, who held a 45-minute meeting with US President Bill Clinton in New York on Monday in an attempt to get the sanctions lifted, said: "Pakistan today is a nuclear-weapon state and the need for the country to stand on its feet is more than ever before. There can be no second opinion about it.’’

Mr Sharif’s comments came in the wake of the country’s deteriorating economic conditions worsened by crippling sanctions and growing need for an economic bailout from the multilateral agencies to save the beleaguered economy from sinking.

The text of the press briefing by US National Security Adviser Sandy Berger on the Sharif-Clinton meeting also clearly quoted the US official that no commitment about lifting the sanctions was given by the President.

"Neither did the President give the Prime Minister any particular commitment with respect to what would happen if the Brownback Amendment were enacted, except to say that as the Government of Pakistan made steps along the path of strengthening the non-proliferation regime, we would be in a stronger position to take steps on the sanctions side,’’ Mr Berger was quoted as saying.

The US authorities have been persuading both India and Pakistan to sign and ratify the CTBT since both countries carried at the nuclear tests in May last.

Police hunts for Taslima

DHAKA, Sept 25 (PTI) — The Bangladesh police today launched a hunt to arrest controversial feminist writer Taslima Nasreen following a court order charging her with blasphemy.

The Dhaka court, in a revival of the 1994 case against her, yesterday also ordered the novelist’s property to be seized.

“We have received the order from the court and a police officer has been assigned the job to arrest her,” a duty officer of Dhaka’s Motijheel police station said.

The order by the Dhaka District Magistrate’s court came 10 days after Taslima reportedly returned to Bangladesh after four years abroad.

Meanwhile, Taslima’s family today said it would take legal counsel from Mr Kamal Hossain whose firm was looking after the court cases against the author.

Yeltsin appoints Deputy PM
MOSCOW: President Boris Yeltsin on Thursday formally appointed Russia’s former Ambassador to Greece, Ms Valentina Matviyenko, as Deputy Prime Minister in charge of social policy in the new Cabinet, the Kremlin said. The 49-year-old Matviyenko, nominated by Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, becomes one of the most senior women officials in post-Soviet Russia and takes on one of the toughest tasks in government, amid deepening economic crisis. — Reuters

24 kids die in mishap
LIMA: At least 24 schoolchildren aged between six and 12 and two adults died after a bus plunged off a snaking Andean mountain road into a ravine in northern Peru, the police said. More than 20 other schoolchildren and an adult were also injured in Thursday’s accident when the bus dived about 170 yards down the ravine after travelling on a non-asphalt road toward the town of Jaen. The children were taking part in a school excursion travelling between small villages on poorly maintained roads that usually see little traffic, the police added. — Reuters

Students’ exodus
WASHINGTON: The US Government is worried that foreign students in particular Asians who come to the USA in droves, will soon opt for a university education in Australia, Canada or Britain. US officials, university administrators and business representatives who attended a State Department conference on Thursday expressed concern that the USA was losing its standing as the destination of choice for foreign students.— AFP

UN defrauder held
NEW YORK: Agents from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested a former UN employee accused of defrauding the world body of $ 1.5 million, the authorities said. Krishan Gowandan, (57), a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, is accused of bilking the money from the United Nations Development Programme, according to a statement from the federal prosecutors. — AFP

2 Iranians held
NEW YORK: Security staff at the venue of the ongoing UN General Assembly session have arrested two women for lying to federal agents about a plot to disrupt the deliberations. The women, who were recruited by a prominent Iranian opposition group member, were told to get free passes to the General Assembly’s opening session on Monday. When confronted, the women — Elham Kiamanesh and Elham Zanjani — said they knew nothing about the Iranian men. But a search of their room ended in the discovery of documents and diagrams of the UN Assembly room drawn by Kiamanesh. — ANI

Minister quits
BRUSSELS: Belgium Interior Minister Louis Tobback presented his resignation on Thursday, two days after the violent death of a young Nigerian woman while resisting expulsion from the country, Belga News Agency reported. Mr Tobback told the agency, the police had made a mistake when it tried to deport Semira Adamu on late Tuesday in Brussels. The police should not have allowed one of its members, already sanctioned for violent acts, to attend the forced expulsion of the Nigerian woman, he said. — AFP