Serbs claim downing 3 NATO planes
BELGRADE, April 19 — NATO blasted the areas of Pristina and Novi Sad in the 26th night of air raids on Yugoslavia, while the Serbs claimed to have shot down three North Atlantic Treaty Organisation warplanes.

Dhaka court rejects pleas
Mujib aides’ killing
DHAKA, April 19 — A Dhaka court has rejected the petitions filed by two accused in the 1975 jail killings of four top aides of Bangladesh’s founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in which they had prayed for making a reference to the high court for quashing the charges brought against them.

Jail uniform for Zardari

Ecevit set to be Turkish PM again
Drubbing for Islamist Virtue Party

ANKARA, April 19 (DPA) — Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit and Devlet Bahceli of the extreme Right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) emerged as the big winners of yesterday’s elections.

With a lead of around seven seats, Mr Ecevit is expected to be called upon by President Suleyman Demirel to attempt to form a government.

The MHP provided the biggest surprise of the election. The party, which polled only 8.2 per cent in the 1995 election, won over 18 per cent of the vote with two-thirds of the vote counted today enough to win it 128 seats in the 550-seat parliament, the NTV private television station reported.

Mr Ecevit’s DSP easily won the highest percentage of the vote — at around 21 per cent. But due to the party’s support being concentrated in the cities, the party won 135 seats — only a few more than the MHP.

Five people died in election violence in three separate incidents across the east and southeast, but the elections were generally regarded as peaceful. Isolated cases of election fraud were reported but they were not expected to change any results.

What sort of government will come out of yesterday’s elections is now being debated throughout the country. Party leaders have said little about their intentions but no leader has ruled out any possible scenario.

Newspapers today said the most likely outcome would be a three-party coalition between the DSP, MHP and the Motherland Party, with Mr Ecevit remaining Prime Minister. While the DSP and MHP may be on opposite sides of the political spectrum, they are both extremely hawkish on foreign policy and on Turkey’s treatment of Kurds.

“A DSP-MHP coalition is possible because they are both based on nationalist views,’’ one political analyst told Deutsche Presse-Agentur DPA.

He said the capture of rebel Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdulla Ocalan in February in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi had not only boosted the vote of the Prime Minister’s party — as predicted by pre-election polling — but also that of the MHP.

“After the abduction of Ocalan, the people turned to the nationalists,’’ the analyst said.

Other analysts said the MHP picked up votes from the Centre-Right parties and from the Islamists Virtue Party.

Mr Emre Congar, former Under-secretary of the Culture Ministry, said MHP leader Devlet Bahceli had managed to convince voters that the party was no longer linked to the mafia. In this way, the MHP became a viable alternative for voters sick of Centre-Right parties and the Virtue Party.

Virtue, Anap and the True Path Party (DYP) suffered severe setbacks as they all dropped more than five percentage points. Virtue is set to win 112 seats, Anap 85, and the DYP 88 seats in the new Parliament.

The main Kurdish Party — People’s Democracy Party — taking part in the election, was unable to enter Parliament after obtaining just 4 per cent of the vote. The party was able, however, to win a number of municipalities in the mainly Kurdish east and southeast, including the regional capital of Diyabakir.

China won’t carry out N-tests: Li

BEIJING, April 19 (PTI) — China will not conduct further nuclear tests and wants India and Pakistan to end their arms race to alleviate tensions in South Asia, former Premier Li Peng has said.

Though China is a country with nuclear weapons, it firmly sticks to the commitment not to conduct further nuclear tests, Mr Li, China’s top legislator, said referring to Beijing’s moratorium to nuclear tests announced in 1996, the official media reported today.

China was very much concerned over the nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan last year, which aggravated the tension in South Asia, Mr Li, who just returned from a six-nation tour, including Pakistan and Bangladesh, told reporters here.

The front-page report in the official China Daily said that China as a close neighbour to both India and Pakistan did not want to see an arms race between the two South Asian rivals as it would lead to tension.

Meanwhile, the official Chinese media said “wrong policies” led to the fall of the Vajpayee-led coalition government in India.

“Wrong policies pursued by India’s 13-month-old Vajpayee led coalition government were the main cause of its own collapse”. State run Xinhua new agency commented yesterday.

Although Beijing has not responded officially to the fall, Xinhua quoting political analysts in the country, said “the government had spent so much time on infighting. But little on how to run the country well, leaving the people disillusioned with it”.

It said the government had realised very few election promises it made to the public.

Pak police ‘abusing powers’

ISLAMABAD, April 19 (IANS) — Pakistan’s Law and Justice Minister Khalid Anwar has admitted that the police is abusing its powers and a lot of injustice is taking place in the country.

“Most killings in Pakistan are related to sectarianism. Isn’t it a pity that in a country created in the name of Islam, people belonging to different sects mercilessly kill one another in the name of religion? There is no act as un-Islamic as the act of a Muslim killing another,” Mr Anwar said in an interview to The Voice magazine.

He said the tradition of police abusing its powers dates back to the pre-Partition days. “The menace is widely spread throughout the country, particularly in Punjab (province),” said Mr Anwar.

Police performance is greatly hampered as a result of inadequate facilities in terms of weapons and infrastructure. While most terrorists possess latest automatic weapons, the majority of our policemen have access only to .330 rifles. They do not even have proper transportation facilities,” he said.

According to Mr Anwar, poverty also created law and order problems in the country. “Most people who cannot afford proper education for their children send them to ‘maulvis’ or priests. Here sectarian hatred is the chief ingredient of the only intellectual diet that the child receives. He learns that killing someone belonging to a different sect would directly land him in paradise. It’s a tragedy indeed,”he said.

But if you examine the situation from the point of view of the child’s father, who cannot clothe, feed and educate him, the only option he is left with is to entrust his child into the custody of a local ‘maulvi”, Mr Anwar said.

Serbs claim downing 3 NATO planes

BELGRADE, April 19 (AFP) — NATO blasted the areas of Pristina and Novi Sad in the 26th night of air raids on Yugoslavia, while the Serbs claimed to have shot down three North Atlantic Treaty Organisation warplanes.

Some three dozen explosions were heard in the Kosovo provincial capital, Pristina, in three series between 1.10 pm and 10.04 pm yesterday with no indication of the targets.

The Serbian TV station, RTS, said two NATO planes were shot down at around 4.00 pm and the third just after 7.00 pm when an AFP correspondent saw, a trail of smoke descending to the northwest of Pristina.

RTS said the plane crashed on Mount Cicavica, 20 km from the city.

Despite numerous claims by Belgrade, NATO has so far only admitted losing one aircraft, a sophisticated US Stealth fighter shot down early in the campaign.

The headquarters of the provincial government in the centre of Serbia’s northern city of Novi Sad was hit early today by a NATO bomb or missile, RTS reported.

Pictures showed that windows had been blown out in the building, seat of the government of Voivodina province, but no fire was visible.

NATO has bombed the symbol of Novi Sad and Viovodina, a building which can be found in the encyclopaedia of European architecture and in which no strategic or military decision was taken,” the head of the provincial government, Mr Bosko Perosevic, told RTS.

Tanjug news agency said initial information indicated that the strike at 1.30 pm had caused no casualties.

WASHINGTON (PTI): The Clinton Administration appears to be relying on the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which it had previously denounced as a terrorist organisation, to provide the ground troops necessary for NATO to hold Kosovo after the air war.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, appearing on ABC-TV on Sunday, reiterated her faith in the air war and said that when a point is reached in the air war, when Mr Milosevic’s power will be so damaged that he cannot exercise it in Kosovo. “There will be a change in the balance of forces on the ground” in favour of the KLA.

She said Mr Milosevic was the “best recruiter for the KLA” and that it was gaining more people.

NEW YORK (DPA): The USA wants NATO to plan ways of blocking deliveries of oil to Yugoslavia by sea, The New York Times reported on Monday, saying that such deliveries had continued as allied warplanes had bombed refineries and oil storage installations on land.

Citing allied officials in Brussels, The Times said that when the Americans requested a plan at a closed-door meeting of allied delegates last week, they ran up against objections from France.

French officials reportedly questioned whether there was a legal basis to stop and search ships without a new resolution from the UN Security Council and expressed fears that such actions would widen the conflict.

A London report said the confusion surrounding a daylight NATO air attack on a civilian convoy in Kosovo flared up again on Monday with three new twists reported in the British press.

In the first, it is claimed that an RAF Harrier pilot warned US planes not to launch the attack in which 64 refugees died.

The Express says the Harrier GR7 pilot on a search-and-destroy mission saw there were civilian vehicles among Serb military traffic.

Love triumphs over war

PAPHOS (Cyprus), April 19 (AFP) — Love triumphed over the war in Kosovo when a US man married his Serbian sweetheart in Cyprus after the pair could not get visas to be wed in either of their homelands.

Steve Reese, a 31-year-old Catholic from the eastern state of Maryland, exchanged vows with orthodox law student Tatiana Tomanovich, 23, in the resort town of Paphos on the west coast of this Mediterranean island yesterday.

“I’m very happy to be married but wished it could have happened under better circumstances,” Reese said.

Neither knew anyone in Cyprus and staff from their hotel stood in as best man and bridesmaid for the couple, who were planning to wed in Belgrade in August.

But with NATO war planes pummelling Tatiana’s native Serbia, the couple decided it would be impossible to plan a wedding for this summer.

They came to Cyprus, Reese said, “because it was the only country where neither of us needed a visa”.

The Bishop of Paphos presided over the ceremony, which was witnessed by over 10 persons, most of them journalists.

Dhaka court rejects pleas
Mujib aides’ killing

DHAKA, April 19 (PTI) — A Dhaka court has rejected the petitions filed by two accused in the 1975 jail killings of four top aides of Bangladesh’s founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in which they had prayed for making a reference to the high court for quashing the charges brought against them.

The petitioners, Mr K.M. Obaidur Rahman and Mr Nurul Islam Manzoor, both former ministers, were among the 21 persons, including several former army officials, accused of involvement in the 1975 killings in Dhaka Central Jail.

The rest 13, a majority of whom are former army officials, are still absconding.

The court fixed May 2 for framing charges against the 21 accused in the case.

The four leaders— Tajuddin Ahmed, Syed Nazrul Islam, Capt Mansur Ali and Ahmed Kamruzzaman — who played a key role in Bangladesh’s (formerly East Pakistan) liberation struggle in 1971, were shot dead inside the jail after they were arrested during the post-coup Khondokar Mushtaq regime.

Jail uniform for Zardari

ISLAMABAD, April 19 (UNI) — Mr Asaf Ali, husband of former Pakistan Premier and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chief Benazir Bhutto’s jailed husband, has now been enlisted as a regular prisoner after a court last week ordered a five-year jail term for the couple, besides a fine of $ 8.6 million and disqualification from politics.

After being enlisted as a regular prisoner, Mr Zardari was made to wear the usual jail uniform for the convicts.

Jasraj honoured
TORONTO: The University of Toronto on Monday honoured noted Indian vocalist Pandit Jasraj for his outstanding contribution in the field of classical music. “The university’s Faculty of Music Distinguished Visitor Award for the year 1999,” carrying a citation and a medal, was presented to him by the Chancellor of the university, Ms Rose Wolf, at a simple function held here. — PTI

AIDS deaths
HARARE: More than 1,200 Zimbabweans are dying each week from AIDS, President Robert Mugabe said acknowledging for the first time the enormity of an epidemic whose existence the government had previously underplayed. In a speech marking the 19th anniversary of Zimbabwe’s independence, Mr Mugabe on Sunday said a national AIDS council would be formed to unite all sectors of the nation against the epidemic. — AP

Aid for Tajikistan
MOSCOW: The United Nations’ top anti-drug official has promised Tajikistan $ 6.4 million to tighten border controls and help combat drug trafficking in the central Asian nation, a news report said. Mr Pino Arlacchi, Director of the UN’s programme against drug trafficking and organised crime, on Monday announced the funding after meeting Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov in the Tajik Capital, Dushanbe. — AP

Flight to Tripoli
TRIPOLI: With two bumps and a round of applause, an Egyptair airbus 320 roared into Tripoli on the airline’s first direct flight into the Libyan capital since U.N. Sanctions were imposed seven years ago. Tripoli’s Governor and Libyan aviation officials greeted the flight from Cairo, Egypt, on Sunday serving cake and soft drinks beneath a portrait of Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi to the 130 arriving journalists and Egyptian lawmakers, airline and aviation officials. — AP