2 Iraqis killed in air attack
BAGHDAD, April 2 — Two persons were killed and two buildings destroyed today in an air strike by US and British planes in southern Iraq, in the first such incident for two weeks, the official INA news agency said.

Albania’s SOS for more trucks, aid

BRUSSELS, April 2 (Reuters) — Albanian aid officials in Tirana today urgently sought more trucks to evacuate the swelling number of Kosovo refugees fleeing what many called unbridled attacks in the southern Serbian province by Yugoslav troops enraged by NATO raids.

There has been an extraordinary influx in the last couple of hours, Mr Andrea Angeli, spokesman for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe”, said by telephone last night. “There have been more than 20,000 today and we simply cannot count them any more. We urgently need 200 trucks to move these people elsewhere”.

An estimated half a million people have been dislodged from their homes by a year of conflict in Kosovo,” many of them since NATO first unleashed its planes and Cruise missiles on March 24. Albania and Macedonia have borne the brunt of the exodus.

Despite growing calls from media commentators and defence experts for an invasion force to protect Kosovo’s dominant but dwindling ethnic Albanian population from further expulsions, a senior NATO diplomat said here yesterday that it would take more than 200,000 troops to do the job and the 19-nation alliance did not plan to embark on that course.

He said there was concern that the Yugoslav campaign of expulsion was moving very fast while NATO’s air campaign was grinding down and chipping away at the Serb war machine.

But even if President Milosevic expelled thousands of ethnic Albanians, NATO was determined to stick to its air campaign and ensure that they would eventually return to their homes.

Moscow: Russian Parliament has shelved indefinitely ratification of a key nuclear disarmament treaty because of NATO air strikes over Yugoslavia, a leading member of the state Duma said today.

On a day when the Duma, the lower house of Parliament, had originally planned to open a debate on START-ii, deputies refused point- blank to look at the ratification bill due to the Kosovo crisis.

The House’s Defence Committee Deputy Chairman Georgy Arbatov told AFP that deputies were unlikely to return to the strategic arms reduction treaty soon given the sharp dispute between Moscow and the West over the Balkans. START-ii has languished in the Duma’s tray for six years.

“From a political point of view it is impossible to consider the law while a war is going on,”. Mr Arbatov said. “It is clear that Parliament will not consider it.

“If the conflict is resolved on the basis of a compromise and the war is stopped...We could move onto a new stage in our relations with the West and the USA,” he said.

No Army pullout from J-K, Pak told

ISLAMABAD, April 2 (PTI) — The Foreign Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh has ruled out any third-party mediation on the Kashmir issue and dismissed Pakistani demands to pull out the Army from the valley as a confidence building measure.

“Our security forces are in Jammu and Kashmir in response to an unabated proxy war,” the minister said in an interview to a leading Pakistani English daily ‘The News’ yesterday, turning down a suggestion that India withdraw its troops as a confidence building measures.

He also made a veiled attack on Pakistan’s backing to terrorist groups operating in the state.

The Kashmiris, he said, “have been victims of violence perpetuated by foreign mercenaries recruited, indoctrinated, trained, financed and infiltrated into India by extremist organisations and official agencies from beyond our borders.”

However, the minister was optimistic that ties between two neighbours would look up following the “pathbreaking” Lahore Declaration in February.

He brushed aside Pakistani allegations of human rights violations in the valley by Indian troops saying, “Our democratic institutions are vigilant in ensuring that human rights and fundamental freedoms are upheld.”

Mr Jaswant Singh, who was interviewed by Editor of The News, Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani Ambassador to the USA, dealt at length on a host of bilateral issue besides the crucial issues of peace, security and nuclear non-proliferation.

Mr Singh ruled out the possibility of third-party mediation on Kashmir saying, “India and Pakistan are committed to resolving all outstanding issues bilaterally under the Simla agreement. There is no scope for third-party mediation.”

He said, “there is no need even for the involvement of the UN as both countries speak the same language and do not require interpreters.”

The Lahore Declaration as also the MoU signed by foreign secretaries are “landmarks in bilateral ties”, he said and denied that the two sides differed over the interpretation of the historic declaration.

“Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz and I agreed that the declaration commits India and Pakistan to build trust and confidence, develop mutually beneficial cooperation and intensify efforts to resolve all outstanding issues including Jammu and Kashmir. This is the common interpretation.”

Turning to the nuclear issue the minister said the West’s non-recognition of India as a nuclear power hardly matters as “India is a nuclear weapon state. This is not a status for others to confer.”

He, however, reaffirmed New Delhi’s desire to hold talks with Islamabad on confidence building measures on both conventional and nuclear weapons.

“We remain ready to engage in discussions with Pakistan on both nuclear and conventional confidence building measures,” he said.

Referring to India’s policy of no-first use of nuclear weapons, he said, “India does not consider nuclear weapons as weapons for war fighting” and dubbed Pakistan attempts to link conventional and nuclear weapons as “misplaced”.

Regarding the CTBT, he said India was committed to what Mr Vajpayee announced at the UN last year but dismissed the possibility of accepting a moratorium on fissile material production.

“It is not possible for India to agree to such a suggestion at this stage,” he said. “India is, however, ready to participate in negotiations on the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT).

Nuke subs to have Cruise missiles

WASHINGTON, April 2 (PTI) — Deadly cruise missiles would be mounted on USA’s nuclear-powered trident submarines and will be adapted to carry troops to far off places further enhancing their striking power, media reports said here today.

“Defence News” reported that four US trident submarines “may be converted into the so-called stealth ships, each carrying 154 cruise missiles and transporting 100 special operations force troops”.

At present, four ballistic missiles submarines are part of the Navy’s 18-boat fleet, each loaded with 24 long-rang nuclear-tipped missiles.

The four surplus submarines could then be converted into underwater “battleships”, said, Andrew Krepinevich, member of the National Defence Panel which advises the Pentagon.

The cost of converting the four tridents is estimated at $ 2 billion.

The tridents are much larger than the two lafayette class special operations submarines — James Polk and Kamehameha — now in service.

Meanwhile, the US experimental Theatre Missile Defence (TMD) system has failed for the sixth time during a test launch at New Mexico.

The $ 3.89 billion system missed its target during the test on Monday.

Mr Thomas a Corcoran, President, Lockheed Martin Space Centre, was, however, upbeat saying: “We came very close to hitting this target within 30 metres or less and we are encouraged by that.”

But Pentagon was discouraged by the failure of the test. “I think it (the TMD) will eventually hit something,” said Mr John Pike, a defence analyst at the Federation of American Scientists.

25 million people deprived of a state
by Mohan Bhatt

WITH the millennium drawing to a close, most people of one ethnic group or the other all over the world with different culture, language, etc have their own state or some degree of autonomy. But there are a people who are still struggling for freedom and for a place of their own where they can allow their culture to flourish: these are the Kurds.

A part of their homeland —Mesopotamia — is the cradle of civilisation, yet they remain subjugated and oppressed by the Turks. The Kurds have come into the limelight with the dramatic arrest of their leader, Abdulla Ocalan or “Apo” as he is known, as he was leaving the Greek embassy in Nairobi last month. Following sustained Turkish pressure, the Greek embassy seems to have failed to hide the fact that the Kurdish VIP was being sheltered there and news leaked out to the US & Israeli intelligence who, it is said, may have passed it on to the Turks, leading to his sensational arrest as he was being moved out.

Ocalan is one of founders of the Pratia Karkari Kurdistan or PKK set up in 1978 to fight for freedom for the Turkish Kurds, numbering 13 to 15 million who form 20 per cent of Turkey’s population. In all the Kurds number over 25 million.

The Kurds are a sizeable minority in Iraq ( 4.5 m comprising 23 per cent of the population ), Iran ( 6 m comprising 10 per cent of the population ) and Syria with pockets in the CIS areas of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, besides Afghanistan and even Lebanon. An overwhelming majority (75 per cent ) of the Kurds are Sunnis, but a substantial portion profess Alevi, a variant of Islam resembling Christianity (as it preaches equality of sexes). Two other parties of Kurds, are the Kurdish Democratic party led by Masoud Barzani and Patriotic Union of Kurds led by Jalal Talabani, which are based in northern Iraq. A third party, Kurdish Democratic Party is based in Iran. A few MPs in Turkey belong to the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party or Hadep.

This century has been a period of repression and treachery for the Kurds. Hounded out of the plains by Iraq and Turkey, they are confined to the south-eastern region of Anatolia in Turkey (they are a majority in 10 of the country’s 72 provinces ) and the northern areas of Kirkuk and Mosul in Iraq. They are despisingly called “mountain Turks” by the Ankara Government have no identity, leave alone the right to propagate their language and culture. Saddam Hussein even used chemical weapons on them to force them to leave their well-entrenched hideouts.

One wonders whether Ocalan, now at a heavily fortified jail on the island of Imrali in the Sea of Marmara off the Bosporous Straits, will get a fair trial. It seems unlikely with the Turks not allowing Ocalan’s Dutch lawyer even to meet him. With its abominable human rights record, Turkey’s army and police have the blood of over 30,000 Kurds (sustained during their 15-year-old drive to suppress them) on their hands. The Turkish jackboot has proved to be ruthless on them leading to thousands of them being forced to take to the gun.

Ocalan is no terrorist. Though he has Marxist leanings , he is a leader of an oppressed people struggling to win freedom for them. Most probably, a kangaroo court will hand him the death sentence or he may be killed by firing squad. But will the Turkish rulers be able to kill the hopes and aspirations of 14 m Turkish Kurds for autonomy, if not freedom? This remains a question which only time can tell.

The protests by the Kurdish diaspora, over 1 m strong all over Europe and Western Asia, is an index of the pent-up feelings of this repressed ethnic group,whose crime it seems, has been that they wanted to be free to promote their language, customs and culture.

What Kurds of different areas lack is a sense of purpose and unity. Had they united and put up a combined demand, say for preserving their multiplicity of languages and various strains of the homogenous Kurdish culture, perhaps they may have been given a large degree of autonomy.

For example, the rival factions of Iraqi Kurds ( Barzani and Talabani groups ) have never came to the aid of the PKK in their fight against the Turkish army, which had the solid backing of the USA, owing to its CENTO links.

The Western nations, led by the USA, have shown indifference to the Kurds plight. They are bothered about the minority in N. Ireland and now the Kosovar Albanians but when it comes to a large ethnic group such as the Kurds, which is being persecuted by the Turks and Iraqis, they look the other way. Though the USA has set up a no-fly zone in N. Iraq to ostensibly protect the Kurds, there is no love lost between them because the USA finds Saddam Hussein to be the bigger evil.

Will the world see another leader of the stature of Abdulla Ocalan who can cut the Gordian knot and unite the Kurds of various hues to lead them to their cherished goal freedom?

2 Iraqis killed in air attack

BAGHDAD, April 2 (AFP) — Two persons were killed and two buildings destroyed today in an air strike by US and British planes in southern Iraq, in the first such incident for two weeks, the official INA news agency said.

“US and British fighters, coming from Kuwait and Saudi airspace, violated Iraqi airspace in the south of the country at 11.30 a.m., before being intercepted and repulsed by our fighters and missiles,” a military spokesman said.

The incident broke a two-week lull in almost daily strikes by their aircraft in the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq.

Scottish poll
EDINBURGH: The ruling British Labour Party has opened up a clear lead over the Scottish National Party (SNP) in the contest for the Scottish Parliament, according to an opinion poll. Paradoxically, the System Three opinion poll for Glasgow’s The Herald newspaper published on Thursday also found majority support for the SNP’s controversial plan not to implement Labour’s one penny cut in income tax in Scotland if it wins power. In terms of seats in the Parliament, Labour emerges comfortable as the largest party with 60 seats in the poll, but five short of an overall majority. — AFP

Paul McCartney
LONDON: Grieving former Beatle Pual McCartney has found comfort in the company of textile designer Sue Timney following the death of his wife Linda, The Daily Mail reported on Friday. Ms Timney (52), who is separated from her husband, had been spending time with McCartney in his farmhouse, the paper said. It quoted an unidentified friend as saying, “It is wonderful for Paul to have company and Sue is a great cook and a caring person. They are extremely close.” — Reuters

Trip deferred
BEIJING: Pakistani Army Chief Pervez Musharraf has postponed his trip to China giving credence to media reports that he may be replaced soon. The army chief’s visit scheduled for April 5 has been postponed, an official of the Pakistan Embassy said here, adding that General Musharraf had some sudden pressing engagements at home. — PTI

Broadcast Com
SANTA CLARA: The Internet search-engine firm Yahoo reported on Thursday it had signed an agreement to buy Broadcast Com in a share swap that analysts said was valued at some $ 5.7 billion. Broadcast. Com runs an Internet site specialising in live audio and video broadcasts. The acquisition combines the web’s leading aggregator and broadcaster of streaming audio and video programming with one of the world’s leading web networks serving more than 50 MLN unique users per month, Yahoo said. — AFP

US motion on China
LONDON: Days before Chinese premier Jiang Zemin’s much-awaited trip to Washington, the USA has introduced a motion seeking censure of Beijing’s rights record at the UN human Rights Commission (UNHRC) meeting in Geneva. The USA introduced the motion at the UNHRC on Thursday in an apparent reprisal for Beijing’s criticism of NATO airstrikes on Yugoslavia breaking an informal understanding among members not to bring resolutions against each other. — PTI

Prayers offered
YANGON: More than 1,000 well-wishers attended a Buddhist ceremony at Myanmar Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s home on Friday to mark the seventh day of mourning her husband. Fifty three monks chanted prayers at Ms Suu Kyi’s lakeside Yangon home for Michael Aris, a British academic who died on his 53rd birthday on Saturday of prostate cancer. Diplomats and officials of Ms Suu Kyi’s national League for Democracy were among the congregation seated on mats for the ceremony. — Reuters