Monday, August 2, 1999
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W O R L D | Monday, August 2, 1999 |
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Declare Pak terrorist state:
Senator WASHINGTON, Aug 1 — Congressman McCollum has urged President Bill Clinton that Pakistan be recognised "as the rogue and terrorism-sponsoring state", and India be treated as a responsible great power. |
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 PORTLAND, USA : Dogs Schnitzel, 2, left, and Lesil, 1, ignore each before competing in the best costume contest during the third annual Schnauzer Walk in Portland, Ore., Saturday, July 31, 1999. The pair of miniature schnauzers placed first in the competition. — AP/PTI |
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Israel
gets 3 weeks to enforce Wye pact Bishop’s
comments raise storm Over
50 die in Chicago heat Childhood
abuse caused Clinton’s weakness Lankan
troops kill 8 LTTE men Dhaka
to demand reciprocal transit facility |
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Declare Pak terrorist state: Senator WASHINGTON, Aug 1 (ANI) — Congressman McCollum has urged President Bill Clinton that Pakistan be recognised "as the rogue and terrorism-sponsoring state", and India be treated as a responsible great power. In the backdrop of the Burton Amendment, Pakistan had come under severe attack from Indian sympathisers in the Congress. The Republican from Florida criticised Mr Clinton in a House statement on Friday for going along with a "face-saving exit" out of the Kargil crisis for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. What was perhaps the strongest censure of Pakistan in the post-Kargil situation, even harsher than Mat Delay's earlier statement, the Congressman lambasted Pakistan. As a member of the influential Select Committee on Intelligence, he mentioned three aspects of Pakistan's behaviour during the Kargil crisis that should cause concern to the USA. First, Pakistan displayed intentional reliance on unclear capabilities in order to shield its own aggression. "Pakistan's intentional and unilateral ultimatum, repeated warning to escalate the Kargil crisis into a nuclear war in case India's reaction to the Pakistan aggression threatened to deprive Pakistan of any achievement, exceeds even the most aggressive use of the nuclear card by the USSR at the height of the cold war", Mr McCollum said. He said Islamabad had
demonstrated unwillingness to face responsibility for
actions that amounted to an act of war. "The
acknowledged responsibility and accountability of
sovereign governments are the cornerstones of
international relations and are thus the key to
preventing all-out chaos in an already volatile
world", he maintained. "Indeed, governments
that intentionally break away from this posture are
labelled rogue and are shunned by international
community". He said Pakistan should be treated a
rogue and terrorism-sponsoring state. Given its cynical
use of war-by-proxy and nuclear threats for such a long
time, he urged the international community to deal with
it harshly. He said by showing restraint, New Delhi behaved like the major democratic power India had long claimed to be. India should, therefore, be recognised and treated as a great power by the USA and the rest of the international community, he said. Even in the aftermath of
the Kargil crisis, Islamabad was yet to demonstrate an
inclination to stop its war-by-proxy against India. By
doing along with the face-saving device for Mr Sharif,
the Clinton administration had in effect gone along with
Islamabad's "lies and covered up its rogue-state
actions", he charged. In fact, the Clinton
administration was effectively encouraging other rogues
and would-be aggressors to pursue their objectives
through brinkmanship, blackmail, aggression and
terrorism, he added. |
India target of Osama: Paper WASHINGTON, Aug 1 (PTI) — US law enforcement agencies have identified India as a target of Saudi mastermind Osama bin Laden’s own terrorist network as well as of allied organisations across the globe, The Washington Post said today. Jammu and Kashmir was the target area in India, the paper said, adding the USA and Pakistan also figured in the hit-list along with 18 more countries. The countries listed as targets of Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda group and networks of other fanatical and fundamentalist organisations were India (in Jammu and Kashmir), the USA, Pakistan, Britain, Bosnia, Albania, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Russia (in Chechnya where, as in Kashmir, the fundamentalists were demanding a separate state on grounds of religion), Lebanon and Croatia, the paper said. Pakistan was named as a
target as apparently the terrorist groups wanted to turn
it into a Taliban-style state, analysts said. |
Taliban capture key airbase KABUL, Aug 1 (Reuters) — Taliban fighters today seized opposition leader Ahmad Shah Masood’s key Bagram airbase, the first major prize in an offensive to establish total dominance of the movement’s three-year rule. Opposition sources acknowledged the loss of Bagram, about 80 km north of here, after the Taliban overran Masood’s defences shortly before dawn today. Masood is the military head of the deposed government driven from power by the Taliban, who have shunned world appeals to talk peace with the veteran guerrilla commander. Last Wednesday they launched the long-expected offensive on three fronts north and northeast of the capital to smash Masood’s resistance and extend their control of 90 per cent of the country. Taliban fighters were backed by heavy aerial bombardment and took three hours to move from the perimeter of the Bagram airbase to capture it, Taliban sources said. Fighting continued north and west of Bagram, the sources said, but the Taliban were firmly in control of the airbase, Masood’s key supply route from Tajikistan. The Taliban, who say
they are creating the world’s purest Islamic state,
say two main opposition commanders along with 900 men
have joined the militia in Nejrab, weakening
Masood’s presence in the area. |
Blast damages Kosovo church PRISTINA, Aug 1 (Reuters) — A powerful explosion damaged the new Serbian Orthodox cathedral in the Kosovo capital Pristina early today, a spokesman for the NATO-led Kfor peace force said. “The explosion occurred at the southwest corner of the Orthodox cathedral. We have initial indications of structural damage but no reports of casualties,” Kfor spokesman Major Roland Lavoie told Reuters. He said an investigation was under way. The cause of the blast was unclear. But Kosovo has been plagued by ethnic Albanian violence against Serbs since Belgrade’s security forces quit Kosovo and peacekeepers entered in mid-June. The area around the cathedral was sealed off by NATO troops and a Kfor helicopter circled overhead, beaming down a powerful spotlight in an apparent search for suspects or clues. The 11.20 p.m. GMT blast, which rattled many buildings, sent a column of smoke above the downtown skyline. Kosovo’s former Serbian authorities began building the church about three years ago but did not finish before Belgrade withdrew its military and police from the province. The building’s interior remains largely empty. Most Serb cultural buildings, including ancient Orthodox monasteries, are now under NATO guard and remain intact. But scores of Serbs have been murdered and the homes of many more seized or looted and burned in the absence of the police over the past month and a half. At least half of Kosovo’s 200,000 Serbs have fled the province. DPA adds: Thirty people a week are being killed in Kosovo in a continuing “vacuum of law and order”, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea acknowledged today as a Serbian orthodox church was bombed in Pristina. There are some 35,000 NATO soldiers in the province and the total figure is due to rise. But Mr Shea said: “We lack a system of judges and courts to try those guilty and sentence them once they have been identified.” He said the United Nations was planning to send in 3,000 police officers over the coming months and more than 10,000 Kosovars had volunteered to be trained as police officers. The security situation was “grave but not catastrophic”, Mr Shea told BBC’s “Breakfast with Frost” programme. The bomb blast was heard throughout Pristina, setting off car alarms and sending a large cloud of smoke and dust into the air. Capt Stefan Eder, a NATO spokesman, said there were no indications of any casualties. “There are structural damages,” he said. The Hram Sveti Spasa Church was under construction and had not yet opened. But Captain Eder said officials did not know what caused the blast or who was involved. Other explosive devices were also found inside the church and demolition experts were called to defuse them, reports said. Amid the ongoing
violence, Lt-General Sir Mike Jackson, alliance
commander, said Albanians in Kosovo were behaving as
violently as the Serbs before them and taking advantage
of NATO’s presence to settle scores. |
Israel gets 3 weeks to enforce Wye pact NICOSIA, Aug 1 (ANI, AP) — The Palestinian authority has convened to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to start implementing the Wye river deal within the next three weeks. “The Palestinian leadership hopes that the Israeli side will come to the next meeting with official and actual commitment to carry out the deal and within a time frame not more than three weeks,” the authority said in a statement after a weekly meeting. Aides to Mr Barak and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat are set to start discussion. The authority reiterated its rejection of a proposal by Mr Barak to modify the nine-month-old Wye accord and called on “the Israeli Government not to waste more time after three-and-a-half-years of a total freeze in the peace process”. Mr Barak hopes to fold the second and third phases of the Wye mandated handover of parts of the West Bank into a permanent peace accord with the Palestinians that would address thorny issue, including borders, settlements and the status of Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Mr Arafat’s movement discussed an Israeli proposal in Cairo to delay the handover to Palestinians of more West Bank land under the accord. Mr Arafat met President Hosni Mubarak on Saturday to hear about Mr Barak’s visit to Egypt last week. Palestinian Planning and International Cooperation Minister Nabil Shaath said the group discussed Mr Barak’s idea to merge parts of the Wye accord with final status negotiations. But this proposal was not acceptable, he said. JERUSALEM: Mr Barak is considering easing criteria for the release of Palestinian security prisoners as part of his efforts to revive the peace talks with the Palestinians, a Cabinet minister close to Mr Barak said on Sunday. The prisoners constitute one of the most sensitive issues between Israel and the Palestinians. Under the US-brokered Wye river agreement Israel was to have released 750 prisoners. However, when the first group was released, it emerged that most of them were thieves or other common criminals, not security prisoners — those jailed for anti-Israel acts — and this sparked angry Palestinian demonstrations. Then Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu said he would not release prisoners
“with blood on their hands”. However, the
Palestinians maintained that only 250 of the more than
2,000 Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli jails had
actually killed Israelis. |
Bishop’s comments raise
storm LONDON, Aug 1 (Reuters) — Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, leader of the world’s 70 million Anglican faithful, has triggered a religious storm after questioning the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, a report in The Mail today said. Bishop Carey undermines the central tenet of Christian belief in his millennial message which will tell millions of Anglicans that we “cannot know’’ whether Jesus rose from the dead, said the report. “I can tell you frankly that while we can be absolutely sure that Jesus lived and that he was certainly crucified on the cross, we cannot with the same certainty say that we know he was raised by God from the dead.’’ The report said Bishop Carey’s message, to be given in a few months time, goes on to say that while he firmly believes in the Resurrection, “It goes against human experience and our first instinct is incredulity’’. The Archbishop’s own faith had been “greatly tested and sorely won’’ over the years, said the report. However, Bishop Carey admitted his comments were sure to have “journalists reaching for their pens’’. The Archbishop’s “Jesus 2000’’ message goes on to launch a broader attack on the Church’s record through history, stating it “defamed the name of Jesus’’ by contributing to the Jewish holocaust. The Church establishment played “a part in the victimisation of Jews in the middle ages and in Nazi Germany,’’ Bishop Carey is quoted saying in the report. It had also been “a stumbling block’’ to peace in Northern Ireland, as if that was not a damning enough legacy, he added: “It has also
contributed to the oppression of women, to policies of
imperialism, slavery and the repression of free
speech...all these examples, demonstrate the terrible way
in which we have let Jesus Christ down.’’ |
Over 50 die in Chicago heat CHICAGO, Aug 1 (AFP) — The U.S. death toll from a vicious heatwave in recent days has climbed to 144 with up to 50 fatalities in Chicago in just a 24-hour period, The Washington Post reported today. But after 12 days of swelter, meteorologists said a cold front pushing across the nation might offer some relief. “As many as 50 people died (in Chicago) between 8 a.m. Friday and 8 a.m. Saturday,” Mayor Richard Daley’s spokesman Terry Levin said, adding that a more precise death toll would await confirmation from autopsy results. “It’s deadly heat that is killing people all over the country.” New York recorded its hottest July in history with temperatures above 32 degrees (90 Fahrenheit) for eight days in a row. Officials said the death toll could rise as victims are found, even though the heat warnings were lifted in parts of the mid-west as the cold front swept through a region that had been baked for almost two weeks in abnormally hot, humid weather. Before the Chicago announcement, the authorities had reported 95 deaths in a wide region including the mid-western and north-eastern USA. A 75-year-old man was
found dead in his home after he mistakenly turned on his
heat instead of his air conditioner, the Post said. |
Childhood abuse caused Clinton’s weakness LONDON, Aug 1 (Reuters) — Ms Hillary Clinton, US First Lady and likely candidate for the US Senate, has talked for the first time about why she stood by her man and blamed the President’s infidelity on childhood abuse, said The Sunday Times. President Bill Clinton’s wife said his two-timing “weakness’’ stemmed from a trauma caused by childhood abuse, the report said. Quoting extracts from an interview due to be published this week in Talk, a news magazine edited by ex-New Yorker editor Tina Brown, the report quoted the First Lady blaming the President’s childhood experiences for a chain reaction of philandering. Referring to her husband as a “hard dog to keep on the porch’’, she said dealing with “bimbo eruptions’’ had long been part of their marriage. For many years she believed his weakness was under control until the scandal of his sexual relations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky erupted and at one stage threatened the Presidency. Ms Clinton said in the report that the affair with Ms Lewinsky took place after the death of the President’s father and their friend Vincent Foster. “He couldn’t protect me, so he lied...this was a sin of weakness’’. “Yes, he has weaknesses. Yes, he needs to be more disciplined, but it is remarkable given his background that he turned out to be the kind of person he is, capable of such leadership,’’ she was quoted as saying in The Sunday Times. “He was so young, barely four, when he was scarred by abuse. There was terrible conflict between his mother and grandmother. A psychologist told me that being in the middle of a conflict between two women is the worst possible situation,’’ Ms Clinton said. She went on to describe her vigil for many years to monitor her husband’s “bimbo eruptions”. “I thought he had conquered it. I thought he understood it, but he didn’t go deep enough or work hard enough,’’ she said. Asked whether their marriage could survive the strains of her embarking on a solo political career in the Senate, she said: “He’s responsible for his behaviour whether I’m there or 100 miles away...it is their (the person’s) responsibility whether it’s gambling, drinking or women. Nobody can do it for you.’’ Ms Clinton is currently
on a campaign-style tour in New York. If she decides to
run for the Senate seat being vacated next year she will
be the first President’s wife ever to seek office. |
Lankan troops kill 8 LTTE men COLOMBO, Aug 1 (PTI) — The Sri Lankan army today claimed that its troops killed eight LTTE men and captured 40 sq km of more territory from the rebels in the Tamil Tigers stronghold of the northern Vanni region. An army press note released here said that troops currently moving ahead in all fronts in the jungle terrain of the Vanni region successfully completed yet another phase of a limited offensive affair which began in March. The rebels have not offered much resistance to the latest offensive which began on July 25 and ended yesterday. The army was expected to continue exercise to limit its losses. After the loss of Jaffna town in 1995, the LTTE along with leadership moved into 8000 sq km in the Vanni jungles from where it was currently operating. But the area held by the Tamil rebels was progressively shrinking after the army launched a prolonged action in 1997 to capture stretches of the highway connecting the army held northern Vavuniya town with Jaffna. Since then the army captured about 45 km of the 75 km stretch of the road and later continued to expand its areas in the west and eastern sectors of the region. The army shifted its
strategy early this year and began opening up a coastal
highway connecting north-west Mannar with the Jaffna
peninsula. The LTTE was currently busy resisting the arm
advance on both fronts. |
Dhaka to demand reciprocal transit facility DHAKA, Aug 1 (PTI) —Bangladesh will ask New Delhi to provide facility for transit of its goods through India to Nepal and Bhutan in lieu of the transhipment of Indian goods through its territory and seek duty-free access for 25 export products to the Indian market, Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed said here today. Mr Ahmed told reporters Dhaka would seek duty-free access for the export products on a non-reciprocal basis when modalities for transhipment of Indian goods were discussed at the next meeting of the joint committee of experts. He said during his meeting with Commerce Minister Ramakrishna Hegde in May last, 25 Bangladeshi items of export were identified. These included ceramic, leather products, jute and plastic products and electrical goods. "This arrangement (transhipment of Indian goods) would now enable us to press for duty-free access on those products which had already been agreed in principles," he said. The Commerce Minister said Bangladesh would ask India to allow transit of Bangladeshi goods through the Indian territory to Nepal and Bhutan. "If we find the transhipment not beneficial for the country, we may not go ahead with the proposal," he said. Experts from India and
Bangladesh are expected to meet later this month to work
out modalities for transhipment of the Indian goods
through Bangladesh. |
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| World’s oldest twins turn 107 TOKYO: The world’s oldest living twins celebrated their 107th birthday with a tree-planting ceremony in northern Japan on Sunday. Kin Narita and Gin Kanie, whose names mean silver and gold in Japanese, were born into a farming family in central Japan on August 1,1892. The pair shot to fame at the age of 99 after local politicians visited them on ‘Respect for the Aged Day”. The government designated them national treasures in 1991. —ANI Queen to vote Iraqi air
defence Blast rocks city Moonstruck in
Greece Unhappy Italians |
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