50 pro-Anwar activists detained
KUALA LUMPUR, April 17 — Malaysian police detained dozens of youth outside a mosque here today in a surprise roundup ahead of a planned march by supporters of ousted Deputy Premier Anwar Ibrahim.

Another solar system found
WASHINGTON, April 17 — Another solar system has been discovered in the Milky Way galaxy, which is home to the earth, but scientists say it might not be hospitable to life.

‘Pak missiles indigenous’
ISLAMABAD, April 17 — Gen Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff, has said the missiles test-fired this week were indigenously built and superior to Indian missiles which, he alleged, were produced with borrowed technology from Russia.

Benazir vows to return home to fight Nawaz

LONDON, April 17 (ANI) — Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on Friday termed her conviction by the Ehtesab Bench of the Lahore High Court as a political drama staged to keep her away from the people of Pakistan and vowed that she would return home to directly fight Nawaz Sharif and his henchmen.

“They have been trying to take away my liberty and freedom for five years. They want to break my link with the people,” she told a Pakistani newspaper at the House of Commons. The people of Pakistan would not let it happen to their leader, she added.

Benazir said she would definitely resist the decision by going to the Supreme Court against the “politically-motivated” conviction. She said she did not expect justice from a judge whose father was one of those judges who hanged her father 20 years ago.

Responding to a question as to how she took the decision, the leader of the opposition said: “I was shocked beyond belief as it was an unjust action.” She reiterated that the court was biased and the prosecution politically motivated.

The former Premier said she was very upset about the decision but vowed to contest it and sought people’s support. She said: “I think the people of Pakistan know that I am being punished for voicing their aspirations.”

She expressed the hope the decision would strengthen her party rather than weaken it and said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was not good for the country as he was bankrupting it.

She also called for fresh elections, saying: “There is widespread unemployment and corruption and he has lost the mandate to rule the country.”

Answering questions from a group of journalists, the leader of the Opposition slammed her conviction on corruption charges as miscarriage of justice and accused the government of dragging the country towards dictatorship.

“It is gross miscarriage of justice. My conviction and detention is a draconian step towards a Sharif dictatorship in Pakistan. The world’s democratic leaders must take all active measures to ensure that the rule of law is upheld,” she said.

Saying the charges were based on “forged documents”, Benazir said: “The government had provided false evidence to foreign governments, intimidated and arrested my defence lawyers, and extracted perjured testimony through the use of torture.”

She welcomed a statement by the private Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) describing the verdict as a questionable exploitation of the accountability process for political ends, and emphasised: “The record clearly shows that I am innocent of these outlandish charges.”

The former Premier accused Nawaz Sharif of “undermining” the due process of the law and said he himself was guilty of serious financial irregularities. “None of these gross violations have been taken up by a court in Pakistan. But we have been denied public trial and denied the right to unfettered defence,” she said.

Benazir said she plans to return to Pakistan in a couple of weeks time.

Indo-Pak talks to continue

ISLAMABAD, April 17 (IANS) — India has said it wants to move ahead with the process of expanding cooperation and promoting people-to-people contacts with Pakistan, and expressed the hope that composite bilateral dialogue will be held soon.

The Indian High Commissioner, Mr G. Parthasarathy, said on Friday that diplomatic-level consultations between New Delhi and Islamabad were now in progress to hold an early meeting of experts from the two sides to follow up the confidence-building measures agreed to in Lahore in February, NNI news agency reported.

Mr Parthasarathy returned from New Delhi on Thursday after holding consultations there about the coming expert-level talks on non-proliferation and security issues.

He said the two sides could work out details of an agreement on advanced notification of missile tests and other points, including avoidance of accidental or unauthorised use of nuclear weapons, contained in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed during the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee’s, Lahore visit in February.

The Indian envoy said meetings between the foreign secretaries in New Delhi and between the defence, home, culture and water resources secretaries, as well as the surveyors-general in Islamabad could be held shortly after the expert-level meetings.

He said there was a clear decision by India to move ahead with the process of expanding cooperation, enhancing ties and promoting people-to-people contacts with Pakistan and there was unanimity on the need to strengthen friendship with all neighbours.

New Delhi also remains committed to a ministerial-level dialogue on humanitarian issues involving the release of civilian prisoners, Mr Parthasarathy said, adding that the two sides could soon conclude an agreement on the issue. He said arrangements for Pakistani tourists to visit India would soon be put in place.

Declining to comment on the confidence motion in Indian Parliament against the Vajpayee government, Mr Parthasarathy said it was part of the Indian democratic and political process.

The Seth-Rushdie rivalry?

LONDON, April 17 (IANS) — One Booker prize, two competing novels with similar themes of love and music both by Indian writers or at least of Indian origin, published and publicised about the same time. And now public readings from the novels by the authors in different parts of London the same evening.

The great Vikram Seth-Salman Rushdie rivalry? Or just sales promotions by book agents turned into the sort of story the media loves?

“Any such battle to create bad blood between Salman and me will not succeed, not on his part and not on mine”, Seth told an audience at the Nehru Centre here after a reading from his new novel ‘An Equal Music’.

Rushdie, reading from his novel ‘The Ground Beneath Her Feet’ at another hall on Finchley Road, also on Thursday evening, thinks much the same, his friends say.

“It’s such a lazy way of treating the publication of two novels”, Seth told his audience. No mean competition here, Seth says, “and I’m sure Salman thinks the same”.

The two authors did not, after all, conceive their novels and then write them to get at each other. Matters of love and music are not so special as to become a coincidence if two authors write about them, Seth says.

Think about the differences then. Two very different novels, of course. But Seth, the Indian, writing a story of love narrated by Michael about English characters in a novel set in London, Vienna and Venice. Rushdie, who disowns being Indian and British and Muslim by turns, goes back invariably to a narration by an Indian character he calls Umeed Rai Merchant.

Seth spoke of his training in Indian classical music from Pandit Amarnath, who was a disciple of Amir Khan. He’s himself not quite a skilled amateur, he insists, but there is music in his language, if not always formal verse. From Hindustani vocal to Western classical was not such a long step. “I can’t speak German, but I can sing it,” he says.

The musicians that people the novel have their own relationship with music. “I can’t be saddled with all the prejudices of my quartets,” Seth says. But the writing is not overtly ‘musical’. “Too direct an analogy between the book and a music from would detract from the book,” he says. Besides, “you can’t do music in prose.”

It wasn’t hard to write of English characters as an Indian. The English language has given Indians “access to Western ways of thinking,” he said at the meeting. But he couldn’t quite have done it if he had not lived and studied in England and made several close English friends.

Rushdie’s world of music is of a different order. It’s the love of two Indian-born musical superstars, rock singer Vina Apsara and composer-performer Orpheus Cama. That love story, as the names suggest, a largely symbolic, the sort of thing considered more ‘literary’ in the English departments of universities.

But after readings from the two novels the same evening in London, the last word belonged perhaps to a retired bureaucrat leaving the Nehru Centre. “Either way, it is Indian writers who are the front-runners for writing in English,” he said.

Dark spot in Tokyo’s history

TOKYO, April 16 (AP) — Tucked behind railroad tracks in an industrial corner of Tokyo’s gray sprawl, a huge stone Buddha stands guard over a quiet, lonely graveyard.

The Buddha has stood for centuries, but it is on few maps and no sightseeing tours. It is known as the Beheading Buddha,’’ and marks the site of an execution ground where as many as 200,000 people were killed and buried.

Workers digging at a construction site recently unearthed more than 100 skulls and generated a good deal of interest in this long-forgotten dark spot in the history of Tokyo.

The discovery was widely covered by the Japanese media and was followed by a formal archeological excavation.

“It’s amazing how it has aroused people’s awareness,’’ said Ryosho Mizuno, priest of the nearby Enmeiji Temple. Some people are even coming in groups to see.’’

As many as 105 skulls were dug up. Many bore the telltale marks of the Samurai Swords.

The site was one of two main locations in the capital used for executions during Japan’s feudal period. It was a killing ground for about 220 years until it was closed about a century ago.

Historians say as many as 2,00,000 persons were beheaded by Samurai Sword and their heads buried in a shallow mound without cremation. Their bodies apparently were buried elsewhere since only skulls have been found at the site.

Today, the beheading ground is virtually unmarked.

Enmeiji the temple of prolonging life, and another Buddhist Temple manage graveyards in the area, and small memorials to the dead are displayed on their grounds.

“There is a deep-rooted notion that the dark side of history should be erased as quickly as possible,’’ said Hideaki Iyoku, curator of the Criminal Museum of Tokyo’s Meiji University. “But if we turn away from the negative side of the past, we won’t be able to grasp history well.’’

The execution site was brought back into the public eye by a construction worker digging a trench to lay cable for a railway project. At just over 3 feet below the surface, he found human skulls atop a wooden chest.

Police and district Education Board officials were called in, and they eventually dug up the 105 skulls.

“Deeper down, there could be more skulls,’’ said Akiko Yano, a researcher present at the dig.

She said the search was halted because of the watery condition of the ground. By law, the owner of the land or the construction company must pay for such excavations, and officials determined they had done enough.

Still, researchers said the find was significant.

50 pro-Anwar activists detained

KUALA LUMPUR, April 17 (AFP) — Malaysian police detained dozens of youth outside a mosque here today in a surprise roundup ahead of a planned march by supporters of ousted Deputy Premier Anwar Ibrahim.

At least 50 young men were seen being herded into two police trucks after being separated from worshippers emerging from the down town mosque on the first day of the Muslim New Year.

The police was seen checking the identities of those leaving the mosque after early afternoon prayers, with some being ordered to squat on one side before being led into the trucks.

A police officer said earlier that an initial seven youths were detained after being identified from photographs of earlier demonstrations.

Several dozen riot police were patrolling the area.

Another solar system found

WASHINGTON, April 17 (PTI) — Another solar system has been discovered in the Milky Way galaxy, which is home to the earth, but scientists say it might not be hospitable to life.

Three planets were found orbiting the Upsilon Andromedae star which is 44 light years away from the earth. Two independent teams from four institutions announced yesterday after 11 years of study.

Though the new solar system does not appear hospitable to life, the discovery”implies planets can form more easily than we ever imagined, and that our milky way is teeming with planetary systems,” astronomer Debra Fischer of the San Francisco State University and a member of one of the discovery teams told reporters.

Stephen Maran, a spokesman for the American Astronomical Society, said: “this is the one we have all been waiting for.”

The findings raise questions as to “how this planetary system engendered three superplanets. This will shake up the theory of planet formation,” said Robert Noyes of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the second team which included members from the high altitude observatory in Boulder, Colorado.

Earth’s home galaxy, the milky way, contains over 200 billion stars. This is the first time anyone has detected more than one planet around any of them.

‘Pak missiles indigenous’

ISLAMABAD, April 17 (IANS) — Gen Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff, has said the missiles test-fired this week were indigenously built and superior to Indian missiles which, he alleged, were produced with borrowed technology from Russia.

“The successful test-firing of missiles by Pakistan on two consecutive days has demonstrated the superiority of Pakistan in missile technology”, NNI news agency quoted him as saying.

Briefly talking to reporters at a function hosted on the occasion of the Armed Forces Day of Iran, General Musharraf said the Pakistan Army had achieved excellence in technology.

“It’s a baseless propaganda by our enemies that our missiles programme is assisted by anybody,” he claimed.

Three executed
BEIJING: Two men found guilty of murdering a former senior Chinese official were executed here on Friday while another person was also handed out the same punishment for attempting to smuggle in millions of yuan in forged currencies, the official media reported on Saturday. Ma Ke (18) and Jiang Tao (46) were executed for murdering a former director of the Meteorology Bureau Zou Jingmeng during a robbery attempt in February. — PTI

Gandhi’s grandson
JOHANNESBURG: Former Indian High Commissioner to South Africa Gopal Kirshna Gandhi will be conferred with an honorary degree by the University of Natal in Durban in recognition of his efforts in promoting closer ties between the two countries. Mr Gandhi, a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, will be one of several personalities to be bestowed with the honour, a spokesman of the university said. — PTI

Monica may shift to UK
LONDON: Monica Lewinsky, the former White House intern whose affair with President Bill Clinton nearly toppled the US President, is planning to move to Britain to make a fresh start, The Times reported on Saturday. British actor Sir Ian McKellen, who has struck up a friendship with Lewinsky, told the newspaper that she feels the British press is more sympathetic towards her. The Times said she was likely to seek a home in the British Capital. — AFP

Guerrillas kill 5
DHAKA: At least five persons were killed by suspected Marxist extremists in western Bangladesh near the country’s border with India, newspaper reports said on Saturday. The Bengali language daily “Ittefaq” said the dead included a village mayor, a school teacher and a bank clerk. It said the brutal killings were carried out in Boliarpur village on the outskirts of Meherpur town early on Friday. Three of the victims were gunned down while two others had their throats slit open by the attackers. — DPA

19 killed in China
BEIJING: Nineteen persons, including five children, were killed when a fire broke out in a furniture factory at Nanyang city in Henan province, an official report said on Friday. The factory stocked with inflammable articles caught fire in the wee hours yesterday, Xinhua news agency said. — PTI

Overture to Libya
STUTTGART (GERMANY): Libya can join the European Union’s Barcelona process only after the United Nations lifts sanctions and Tripoli fully accepts the Euro-Med dialogue principles, said a statement on Friday after a meeting of 27 Euro-Med foreign ministers. A nine-person Libyan delegation took part at the two-day meeting here as a non-participatory guest. — DPA

Student kills principal
MULTAN: A disgruntled student on Friday shot and killed his college principal after the principal refused his request to declare a holiday, the police said. Abdul Rehman Sungera, head of the Pakistan Muslim League student wing in Multan, wanted the government technical college closed to let people attend a Muslim League rally, they said. The principal, Shahid Ameen, refused and was shot, the police said. — AP

Iraq situation
UNITED NATIONS: Britain and the Netherlands have proposed replacement of the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) with a new enlarged body besides allowing Iraq to sell as much oil as it could to by food, medicines and other essential commodities but food, medicines and other essential commodities but keeping the sanctions intact. In a proposal submitted to the Security Council on Thursday the two countries mooted a reconstituted monitoring agency to replace UNSCOM. The British-Dutch proposal suggests if Baghdad refuses to allow the new body into the country, it should monitor the situation outside Iraq borders. — PTI