Comfortable win
for SPD
BONN, Sept 28 — Opposition Social Democrats headed by Mr Gerhard Schroeder and its preferred coalition partner, the environmentalist Greens Party, scored a comfortable majority in the 14th German national elections inflicting a crushing defeat on Helmut Kohl’s ruling coalition, ending the 16-year rule of Europe’s longest serving leader.

• Germans ignored Schroeder’s affair

India, Pak hog space in
The New York Times
NEW YORK, Sept 28 — It’s been a long time since The New York Times has reported extensively on any South Asian leader’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly.

Japan regrets US N-tests
TOKYO, Sept 28 — Japan today regretted the US fourth subcritical nuclear test carried out at a time when India and Pakistan were preparing to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Jones-Clinton accord ‘soon’
SAN ANTONIO, Texas, Sept 28 — An agreement may be reached “soon” between former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones and US President Bill Clinton, spokesman for the White House and Jones have said.

Clinton unfit to be President: Perot
WASHINGTON, Sept 28 — Former US presidential candidate and Reform Party leader Ross Perot has joined in the call for Bill Clinton’s resignation, charging the beleaguered President as "an embarrassment to America and unfit for Presidency".

Netanyahu, Arafat agree to summit
WASHINGTON, Sept 28 — The leaders of Israel and Palestinians met President Bill Clinton today and agreed to return next month for a summit aimed at resolving the final details of an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.

Robot insects for spying
LONDON, Sept 28 — Robot insects capable of flying military spy missions inside buildings are being developed by a Cambridge University scientist.

Comfortable win for SPD

BONN, Sept 28 (PTI) — Opposition Social Democrats headed by Mr Gerhard Schroeder and its preferred coalition partner, the environmentalist Greens Party, scored a comfortable majority in the 14th German national elections inflicting a crushing defeat on Helmut Kohl’s ruling coalition, ending the 16-year rule of Europe’s longest serving leader.

The Social Democrats (SPD) won 298 seats getting an additional 46 seats while the Greens secured 47 seats to get a working majority of 345 in a House of 669 members, according to official results.

The SPD polled 4190 votes, up by five per cent.

Mr Kohl’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and its sister Bavarian Party (CSU) managed only 245 seats, down by 49 seats and the ruling coalition’s junior coalition partner (Free Democrats) had to settle for 44 seats.

Fiftyfour-year-old Schroeder, who is set to become Germany’s new Chancellor, helped his party to score the highest-ever seats in 14 elections even as a strategy is being worked out on the formation of a coalition government to rule Europe’s largest country.

Top officials of Social Democrats began informal discussions with leaders of the Greens soon after it became clear that a new coalition would govern Germany.

Mr Schroeder has already indicated he would be working to have a “stable government” with a clear majority while at the same time not totally ruling out the option of a grand coalition with the ousted Christian Democrats.

Negotiations between Social Democrats and Greens will continue for several days on forging common positions before getting together for a “red-green” coalition for the first time in Germany’s history.

There is no immediate deadline on government formation under the German Constitution and it could be as long as one month before Mr Schroeder gets to move into the fortress-like Chancellor along the Rhine here.

Mr Schroeder, who is minister-president of lower Saxony, will officially take office when the country’s Head of State Roman Herzog hands him an official document marking his appointment.

Before that, the Lower House of Parliament (Bundestag) must vote Mr Schroeder into office with a simple majority. The new Parliament must meet before October 27 and until then 67-year-old Kohl, hailed as the unification Chancellor, will formally stay in office as the head of the government.

Leaders of the also LDU held a meeting to decide Mr Kohl’s successor after he resigned as party’s chairman, owning moral responsibility for the defeat.

Mr Schroeder’s victory also meant that left of centre parties will govern Europe’s four largest countries — Germany, UK, France and Italy.

Mr Schroeder, who won on the electoral plank of “need for a change” and the unemployment issue, was greeted by world leaders including US President Bill Clinton, British Premier Tony Blair and the French Prime Minister L. Jospin.

Spain remains the last conservative bastion, which has been steadily crumbling in the past few years, as Social Democratic leaders in Europe hoped that Mr Schroeder would help advance a common leftist agenda, especially on job creation.

“For Europe’s ascendant left, these are heady days of seemingly unparalleled power’’, according to analysts.

“The Left has an opportunity to influence the EU that it does not want to fritter away”, an analyst said, adding that Socialists can no more blame others for problems facing their countries.

With Mr Schroeder’s victory, social concerns are expected to be back at the centre of the European agenda. Mr Schroeder said here late last night that any new policy could be successful only if it does not ignore the social aspects.

Germans ignored Schroeder’s affair

BONN, Sept 28 (Reuters) — Gerhard Schroeder studied the campaign tactics of Bill Clinton, but the German could teach the American a thing or two when it comes to surviving sex scandals.

Schroeder abandoned his third wife just over a year ago in the midst of a steamy affair with a journalist about half his age. Astonishingly, the affair took flight in front of group of journalists on a Press junket.

But it barely made a ripple in the German media and certainly didn’t hurt Schroeder’s political career, as proved by the Social Democrat’s overwhelming election victory yesterday over Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

Schroeder, 54, married his 33-year-old mistress Doris Koep three weeks after divorcing his third wife Hiltrud, 48.

Politicians in Germany and throughout continental Europe can get caught with their pants down and will hardly ever suffer the kind of pillorying that Clinton has experienced.

In fact, many ordinary Germans view sexual infidelities from their ageing leaders as a sign of health and vigour. Will Brandt and Helmut Schmidt were certainly never hurt in politics by their well-known attraction to the opposite sex.

“It shows that his spirit is still young,” said Hans, a Berlin taxi driver, when asked if he was bothered that Schroeder had left his third wife for the blonde journalist. “It shows that he’s dynamic.”

German newspaper editors and publishers refuse to print stories about politicians’ infidelities because they say they are private matters that have no effect on the public. They also admit that they and their journalists have affairs as well.

German scribes also fear being ostracised for breaking the unwritten rule against reporting on such indiscretions.

They ignored for years Finance Minister Theo Waigel’s affair with a former Ski champion. It was only when she became pregnant and he announced plans to divorce his wife and marry again that the media printed anything on the story.

But editors contend the German public really doesn’t seem to care. And a random sampling of opinion seems to confirm that.

Germans have been appalled by the threat to Clinton’s presidency because of the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. A Hamburg newspaper announced it would stop publishing articles on the subject after readers complained they were tired of it.

“It’s sick, what they are doing to Clinton in America,” said Anna, an 18-year-old student. “Politicians are normal people too. Why can’t they have their own private lives?”

Her friend Lena said there was nothing wrong with having three former wives. “It’s not like he was married to four women at the same time or anything.”

Juergen Kirscht, a 59-year-old salesman, said it was irrelevant how many times Schroeder had been divorced.

India, Pak hog space in The New York Times

NEW YORK, Sept 28 — It’s been a long time since The New York Times has reported extensively on any South Asian leader’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly.

It’s unprecedented in the annals of The Times that the paper has reported back to back the speeches of the Pakistani and Indian Prime Ministers at the UN General Assembly and followed it up with a favourable editorial lauding their forward thinking on the nuclear test ban issue.

On September 24, the day after Sharif’s speech, The Times headlined its front page story to state, “Pakistan pledges A-bomb test ban if sanctions end.” It subheaded the story with “India response awaited” and “US welcomes move but wants action before easing curbs — Kashmir talks set.”

The next day, reporting on Vajpayee’s speech, The Times headlined its story, “New Delhi pledges to sign world ban on nuclear tests.” Once again there were subheads talking of Vajpayee’s speech signifying a case of India “Matches Pakistani offer” and “India, like Pakistan, says its promise is linked to talks on lifting sanctions.”

Both stories were written by the newspaper’s senior United Nations correspondent Barbara Crossette, who was the New Delhi bureau chief for The Times during the tenure of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

On September 27, in an editorial titled, “Nuclear gain in South Asia,” The Times lauded India and Pakistan for declaring their intention to sign the CTBT. “The announcement could reduce tensions in one of the most volatile parts of the world,” it said.

However, the newspaper, which often reflects the US foreign policy thinking, advised that before lifting sanctions imposed in response to the nuclear blasts last May, Washington should “press India and Pakistan to reach additional curbs on the production of weapons-grade nuclear material and the development and deployment of missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.”

The Times noted Vajpayee’s announcement that India was willing to sign the CTBT was indeed a “major turnabout”. Pakistan, it noted, had “long said it would sign the treaty if India would.” India had denounced the treaty as unacceptable as long as the USA and other nuclear powers refused to eliminate their own weapons.

Continuing to shower kudos on Vajpayee and Sharif, The Times said since they both “sit atop shaky governing coalitions, it took political courage for them to make their pledges.”

“Mr Vajpayee,” it noted, “is under pressure from his own camp to press India’s claim to be seen as equal with China and other nuclear powers.”

It also praised the Clinton Administration “for getting two countries that have fought three wars in the past 50 years to achieve a measure of progress.”

“One key to the agreement was that India is not being challenged by the USA in its demand that the problem of Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-dominated state, be settled in negotiations with Pakistan without intervention from the United Nations or other outside influences,” the paper said.

The editorial acknowledged that “tremendous obstacles remain in the way of a true rapprochement on the Asian subcontinent. Both Mr Vajpayee and Mr Sharif will no doubt try to link their signatures to promises of American sanctions being eased and other steps.”

The paper admitted that it had urged President Bill Clinton, who was supposed to visit India and Pakistan this fall, to reconsider such a trip after the nuclear blasts in May. “Such a trip may still be premature, but the President should keep up the progress and schedule a trip, perhaps next year, as a spur to Indian and Pakistani agreements.”

The editorial predicted that “with rising tensions in South Asia, including threats of a war between Afghanistan and Iran, the region looms as a more important security concern than ever,” a reason perhaps for The Times to deign to take notice of one of the least noticed regions of the world. — IANS

Sharif’s assets: Pak Opposition
demands probe

ISLAMABAD, Sept 28 (AP) — Pakistani Opposition parties today demanded that corruption charges against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif be investigated following a report in a British newspaper accusing him of tax evasion and siphoning millions of dollars from his country’s coffers into personal bank accounts.

"Mr Sharif is corrupt and should be thrown out of power," Mr Munawar Hasan, general secretary of Jamaat-e-Islami, told the Associated Press.

"After this report, the Prime Minister should resign, otherwise the people will throw him out and take back every penny he plundered from the national wealth," he said.

The Observer, a British Sunday newspaper, quoted a report prepared by the Pakistani federal investigation agency which said the Sharif family was involved in tax evasion, loan defaults and had "phantom" bank accounts.

The 200-paged report was given to the newspaper by FIA’s former second-in-command Rehman Malik.

Mr Malik was arrested soon after Mr Sharif returned to power, a move that came as apparent reprisal for his investigations of graft charges against Mr Sharif during his first term. Mr Malik was later released and he fled to London in June after an assassination attempt.

In Islamabad, a government spokesman dismissed the allegations as "wild, incorrect and malicious," while Mr Sharif’s son, Mr Hasan Nawaz, said the report was baseless. There was no immediate comment from Mr Sharif.

Meanwhile, Ms Benazir Bhutto has warned that the report would lead to political instability in the country and, "may even lead to the winding up of the existing political set-up".

Japan regrets US N-tests

TOKYO, Sept 28 (PTI) — Japan today regretted the US fourth subcritical nuclear test carried out at a time when India and Pakistan were preparing to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

“In my view, it is extremely regrettable that this happened at an important time when India and Pakistan are about to sign the CTBT,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiromu Nonaka said.

“Japan’s position advocates a world without nuclear arms and the issue (of subcritical nuclear tests) should be discussed in the context of nuclear arms reduction,” he said.

The USA conducted the tests in the desert of Nevada on last Saturday.

The Japanese Government said the subcritical test issue should be discussed at international fora.

Hiroshima Mayor Takashi Hiraoka yesterday said the American subcritical tests made it perfectly clear that the USA had no intention to give up its nuclear weapons and, therefore, there was no prospect of nuclear disarmament.

“It was this hopeless situation that had led India to conduct its tests in may that were followed by Pakistani tests,” he said.

A Tokyo-based group of Japanese scientists in a letter to President Bill Clinton, which was sent to the US Embassy here, criticised the test as running counter to international voices urging elimination of all nuclear weapons.

The USA will conduct two more subcritical nuclear tests by the end of this year, according to US Energy Department.

Jones-Clinton accord ‘soon’

SAN ANTONIO, Texas, Sept 28 (AFP) — An agreement may be reached “soon” between former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones and US President Bill Clinton, spokesman for the White House and Jones have said.

“Discussions are on,” said White House Deputy Counsel Bruce Lindsey yesterday. “The fact that here are conversations suggests some willingness to discuss the possibility of a settlement.”

Lawyers for Jones — who charges that Clinton sexually harassed her in 1991 when he was Arkansas Governor — also confirmed the talks.

“I am confident that negotiations will continue throughout next week and maybe a deal will be struck soon,” Jones’ attorney David Pyke told NBC Television yesterday.

Pyke added that the talks “are not so close to settlement that I can say it is imminent”. “We have put an offer on the table that should be accepted,” he said without offering further details.

Talks concerned a possible agreement in which Jones would withdraw charges filed immediately after her initial case was dismissed in April, a source close to the talks said.

In exchange, Jones would demand financial compensation of $ 700,000 to 900,000 the source told AFP.

If Clinton agrees to a settlement involving “a substantial amount that would mean...he is truly admitting that he has done something wrong here,” Pyke said.

Clinton unfit to be President: Perot

WASHINGTON, Sept 28 (PTI) — Former US presidential candidate and Reform Party leader Ross Perot has joined in the call for Bill Clinton’s resignation, charging the beleaguered President as "an embarrassment to America and unfit for Presidency".

"Clinton has become an embarrassment to this great country and unfit to be President," Mr Perot said, addressing a Reform Party convention in Atlanta, Goergia, yesterday.

"If he (Clinton) loves his country, he will (have to) go," Mr Perot said in an apparent reference to Mr Clinton’s sex-and-perjury scandal, which has beseiged the US Presidency.

Charging Mr Clinton with lack of "moral and ethical standards", he said, America’s first President George Washington could not tell a lie when asked if he cut down his father’s favourite cherry tree, "but we have a President who cannot tell the truth."

Mr Perot called for a change in the Democratic Party leadership, saying Mr Clinton had "forfeited the right to lead this country".

Netanyahu, Arafat agree to summit

WASHINGTON, Sept 28 (Reuters) — The leaders of Israel and Palestinians met President Bill Clinton today and agreed to return next month for a summit aimed at resolving the final details of an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.

"I believe that we all agreed that we have made progress on the path of peace," Mr Clinton said in the Oval Office as Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood beside him.

"There has been a significant narrowing of the gaps between the two parties across a wide range of issues that were in the American initiative we have been working on for months," Mr Clinton said in announcing the October summit.

"To be candid, there is still a substantial amount of work to be done until a comprehensive agreement can be reached," Mr Clinton acknowledged following a session with both the leaders that lasted for more than one hour.

US officials said the summit, which Mr Clinton first unsuccessfully tried to set up back in May, would be held "in the greater Washington area" in the middle of the month but that an exact date and location had not been determined.

Robot insects for spying

LONDON, Sept 28 (Pool-GNA) — Robot insects capable of flying military spy missions inside buildings are being developed by a Cambridge University scientist.

The craft, called an entomopter, will use a chemical engine to flap wings like a moth, crawl about and flit from in-trays to out-trays taking photographs and recording conversations for transmission to satellites.

The British news, The Daily Telegraph, said that since batteries were too heavy and combustion engines too big the entomopter was to be powered with reciprocating chemical muscle.

The entomopter would fly through an open door, window or ventilation shaft of a building. It would use ultrasonic detectors to avoid obstacles and chemical detectors to locate humans at which to direct sound recorders.

A name that annoys
BONN: If your surname happens to be Hitler and your parents christen you Adolf, life is not going to be easy. But a retired Austrian truck driver was quoted in a German newspaper on Sunday as saying he never changed his name out of respect for his mother and father. “I often thought my life would have been a lot easier if I had another name,” 60-year-old Adolf Hitler told the Welt Am Sonntag newspaper. Hitler was attending a conference “for people with infamous names” in Braunau, an Austrian town just across the border from Germany. — Reuters

Thief loses hand
DUBAI: An Afghan convicted of theft had his right hand chopped off in the Saudi holy city of Mecca, the Saudi Interior Ministry said. The man had been found guilty of theft inside Mecca’s Grand Mosque, which houses Islam’s holiest shrine, the Ministry said in a statement broadcast on Sunday on Saudi state-run television. — Reuters

TB endangers lions
JOHANNESBURG: Lions in South Africa’s famous Kruger National Park are being ravaged by an incurable and deadly bovine strain of tuberculosis which could kill them all, according to an agriculture official. “Lions are dying like flies,” Johan Krige, a Deputy Director in the Department of Agriculture, said in the Sunday Times. Mr Krige said the entire lion population of the park could be wiped out in five to 10 years if the disease was allowed to spread unchecked. — AFP

No regrets
BONN: The only surviving doctor to have practised medicine at Nazi Germany’s Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II said he had no regrets and defended his work as “important for science”. Asked in an interview with Der Spiegel magazine if he was burdened with a guilty conscience, Hans Muench, (87), who headed the Waffen-SS Institute of Hygiene replied “for having been there in retrospect, no, naturally.” — AFP

Prayer errors
KABUL: Taliban leader Mulla Mohammad Omar has warned that Afghan citizens failing to correctly recite Islamic prayers after the expiry of six-month moratorium would be punished, Radio Shariat has reported. Omar ordered all local Mullas to ensure that the residents know how to correctly offer their five-times daily prayers. The order warned that after a moratorium expires in about two months examiners charged with fostering virtue and suppressing vice (known as religious police) would punish both Imams and followers for failing to pass the test. — AFP

Afghans held in Nepal
KATHMANDU: The immigration authorities arrested 17 Afghan nationals on Saturday while they were trying to cross over to Tibet using forged passports, a domestic news agency said. Nine of them carried forged Canadian passports and the rest Spanish passports and planned to travel to Britain via Tibet and Hong Kong, the national news agency quoted Ratna Bajracharya, Chief District Officer, as saying Mr Bajracharya said they claimed to have bought the fake passports in Chennai. — AP