Congressional team backs Taiwan
TAIPEI, Aug 10 — The leader of a visiting US Congressional delegation said today that his group backed Taiwan President Lee Teng-Hui’s call for China to treat Taiwan as a political equal.

No ‘trade-off’ in asylum to Dalai Lama
WASHINGTON, Aug 10 — India has denied the “secret’’ trade- off theory, suggesting that New Delhi granted asylum to the Dalai Lama in 1959 in return for an American commitment to train its 400 nuclear scientists who later helped it produce nuclear weapons.

US ships on surveillance mission?
TOKYO, Aug 10 — Two US Navy ships equipped with missile-tracking radar systems have left a US Naval base in southern Japan, sparking speculation that the ships will monitor an expected test-launch of a new North Korean ballistic missile.

Shah to be based in India
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 10 — Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s special envoy to Iraq Prakash Shah is working only part time since August 7 and will be based in India instead of Baghdad, UN officials said.

• Eichmann memoirs to be published
• B’desh cops sent back from Kosovo
• China tested supermissile
• Fear of apocalypse
• Victor Mature dead

Rebels declare Dagestan free

GROZNY, Russia, Aug 10 (Reuters) — An Islamic body in Russia’s troubled Dagestan region declared the province an independent state today, amid Russia’s worst security crisis since the end of the war with breakaway Chechnya in 1996.

The declaration of the Islamic Shura, or council, of Dagestan, was distributed to reporters in the Chechen regional capital, Grozny. Representatives of the Shura told reporters in Grozny the body had met in the Botlikh region of Dagestan, which has been held by guerrillas for four days.

The declaration called on Chechen Islamic organisations to support “the Muslims of Dagestan in their struggle against unbelievers for the liberation of the Islamic state of Dagestan from occupation’’.

A Dagestani police spokeswoman told Reuters by telephone that the region’s authorities did not recognise the Shura as a legitimate body. Sympathisers, including the self-proclaimed head of a shadow government, had been arrested, she said.

Islamic guerrillas seized several villages in the Botlikh region of Dagestan near the Chechen border over the weekend. The guerrillas seized another village overnight two km (one mile) from Botlikh, the region’s main town.

Russian forces have fought back with air strikes. Officials in Moscow met today to discuss the crisis.

MOSCOW:(UNI) Russian General Anatoly Kvashnin has been appointed Supreme Commander of the troops combating Islamic extremists in Dagestan. The latter have made deep inroads into the republic and are being backed by Chechens, according to ‘Voice of Russia’. The rebels are seeking to detach Dagestan from the Russian Federation, following the Chechnyan example.

Gen. Kvashnin and other high-ranking military officials were personally directing operations against the local rebels and Chechnyans from the neighbouring republic, Novosti said. Defence sources here conceded that the situation in the mountainous zones of Dagestan was worsening.

Mercenaries including men from several Arab nations and Pakistanis have been found operating in the “hot zones’’ in Dagestan, according to Voice of Russia.

Some 500 more mercenaries from Chechnya have crossed the borders, into Dagestan and occupied villages in Botlikh district.

18 die in Indonesian riots

AMBON (Indonesia), Aug 10 (AFP) — At least 18 people were killed in new clashes today between Muslims and Christians that forced more than 30,000 people to flee the eastern city of Ambon, hospital sources reported.

Security forces fired warning shots to separate rival sides in the capital of Maluku province where hundreds of people have died in sectarian troubles since the start of the year, police said.

Ambon city police chief Lt-Col Gufron indicated 12 persons had died since yesterday. But a check of local hospitals showed 18 deaths by late today.

Some victims were shot to death by riot police, witnesses said. Others were stabbed or beaten.

Ten houses were set afire when fighting started late yesterday in Ambon town, the capital of strife-torn Maluku province, 2,300 kilometres east of Jakarta.

Malik Selang, an official at Ambon’s main Al Fatah mosque said five Muslims were killed. Four died of gunshot wounds today at the mosque’s hospital. Another died after he was struck by a police car at the height of the riot.

“I believe there are also victims on the Christian side and also among the security personnel,” Mr Selang said. He said gunshots and blasts were still echoing across from some parts of town today.

The official Antara news agency reported that seven other bodies had been taken to the Haulusy public hospital.

It quoted hospital spokesman H.S. Tanamal as saying the victims died after being shot or stabbed.

Fighting broke out last evening in the east of Ambon city where a Muslim district meets a Christian one. Sporadic fighting was still reported today.

Police would not confirm the death toll and said that fighting had abated this morning. Domestic television station SCTV reported 60 people had been shot, but did not detail their condition.

Residents said that before yesterday’s clashes, both Muslim and Christian communities in Ambon city, about 2,300 km east of Jakarta, had been gripped with rumours of attacks.

The violence follows another bout of blood-letting late last month, the latest in a series of clashes which have gone on intermittently since January. Ambon city has been largely wrecked by previous riots.

The once idyllic island of Ambon lies in the heart of the Moluccas, the spice islands of history, where religious clashes have killed more than 400 people this year. Tens of thousands of people are living in refugee camps.

China masses troops along Taiwan coast

HONG KONG, Aug 10 (DPA) — Elite army officers and troops have been moved into provinces near Taiwan, raising fears that China is preparing for a military attack, news reports said today.

The commander of the first army, Zhu Wenquan, a known expert in amphibious warfare, has been appointed chief of staff of the Nanjing region which overseas the Taiwan area, army sources were quoted as telling the South China Morning Post.

The source also said that military leaders were also considering posting a second elite officer, Major-General Ding Shouyue of the 20th group Army, into Nanjing. He is a specialist in urban warfare.

The First Army is one of the peoples Liberation Army’s best equipped units and the appointments were seen as the latest move in a propaganda campaign emphasising Beijing’s determination to combat any move towards Taiwan’s independence.

But yesterday Taiwan’s President Lee Teng-Hui reaffirmed his July nine declaration that relations with the mainland were “state-to-state’’to a group of visiting US Congressmen.

“The Chinese Communists always say they are a central government and we are a regional government. We absolutely cannot accept this,’’he told them.

A military expert was quoted in the South China Morning Post as confirming that more PLA navy vessels had been deployed off Fujian, the nearest province to Taiwan. He said that fighter planes from both sides had been flying past each other heavily loaded with weapons.

Yesterday the Hong Kong-based Wen Wei Po newspaper reported that PLA submarines have been placed in “attack positions’’ near the Taiwan strait. It also said there had been movement of PLA troops along the mainland’s southeast coast and a build-up of patrols in the strait by navy vessels.

TAIPEI (Reuters): Taiwan’s Defence Ministry said today it did not believe an increase in military activity by Communist China would lead to an attack on the island over its demand to be treated as an equal.

The ministry said Beijing was trying to pressure Taiwan with military drills, including flights by mainland Chinese war planes along the “centre line’’ in the Taiwan Strait and the test-firing of a long-range missile.

But those activities were being carried out with restraint and there was no sign that Taipei’s giant rival was considering an invasion of the nationalist-ruled island, the ministry said.

However, the Taiwan President later said Chinese warplanes had recently twice crossed the ‘’centre line’’ of the 160-km-wide strait.

No ‘trade-off’ in asylum to Dalai Lama

WASHINGTON, Aug 10 (UNI) — India has denied the “secret’’ trade- off theory, suggesting that New Delhi granted asylum to the Dalai Lama in 1959 in return for an American commitment to train its 400 nuclear scientists who later helped it produce nuclear weapons.

“To me, the whole theory sounds like a fairy tale. I have never heard this before,’’ said Deputy Chief of Indian mission T.P. Sreenivasan at a panel discussion organised by national security news service here yesterday.

The veteran Indian diplomat was responding to former U.S. Marine Major William Carson’s claim that the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had told the Americans that if India was to accept the Dalai Lama, the USA would have to help India develop nuclear weapons.

“A security assurance is not enough, Mr Nehru said India required its own nuclear guarantee against China,’’ he added. (China would not test a nuclear weapon for more than five years, in October 1964. However, India was aware of China’s nuclear weapons efforts and overwhelming conventional force.

Maj. Carson said though the U.S.A. helped provide the nuclear reactor, President Eisenhower was not willing to make a direct transfer of nuclear weapons technology to India. The U.S. envoys offered Pandit Nehru a compromise. The U.S.A. would accept 400 Indian students into American graduate programmes in the nuclear sciences.

He said the course of negotiations left no doubt that Pandit Nehru would assign the American-trained scientists to produce nuclear weapons. India tested its first nuclear device in May 1974, less than 16 years after Pandit Nehru and the American envoys shook hands over the deal, he added.

Mr Sreenivasan, in response, said, “as far as I know, there is no link between the Dalai Lama’s arrival in India and the arrival of Indian scientists in the USA. Moreover, our nuclear programme has been indigenously developed over a period of time.

“What I know is that the decision to welcome the Dalai Lama to India was India’s own and this decision was dictated by the consideration that the Dalai Lama was the spiritual leader of the Tibetans and that he and his followers had nowhere else to go at that time.’’ Mr Sreenivasan remarked.

He said, “it should also be noted that even though the Dalai Lama and his followers have lived in India for several years and they are treated as our honoured guests, they are not permitted to engage in political activities.’’

Death penalty for rapists

DHAKA, Aug 10 (PTI) — Bangladesh’s Cabinet has approved a new legislation pronouncing maximum punishment of death sentence for rape, kidnapping, acid throwing among others to check increase in crimes against women, official sources said today.

They said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Cabinet yesterday endorsed a new draft legislation replacing the earlier act to introduce capital punishment at the maximum for crimes against women and children.

"The Women and Child Repression Control Act, 1999", would supersede "the Women and Child Repression (Special Provision) Act, 1995", according to the Cabinet decision.

"The new law has been formulated to prevent effectively repression of children and women with stern punitive measures’’, Bangladesh Law Minister Abdul Matin Khasru, who placed the draft, told PTI here today.

The draft legislation will be placed as a Bill before the Jatiya Sangsad (National Parliament) in its upcoming session set to begin on August 29.

He said the Bill would thereafter be sent to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs for scrutiny. After scrutiny it will be discussed in the House.

"I have consulted a large number of experts, NGOs, activist groups and women’s rights bodies before finalising the proposal and hope the Parliament will pass it unanimously in the coming session itself’’.

"We will leave it to the collective wisdom of the Parliament. The Bill would be discussed clause by clause’’, he said.

The sources said the new draft law was approved by the Cabinet at its weekly meeting late yesterday, chaired by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

At present the maximum penalty for trafficking in and raping women in Bangladesh is 10-year jail sentence, sources said.

For speedier trial of those involved in crimes against women and children, it was proposed in the draft law to set up special tribunals to be headed by District Judge or Sessions Judge in each district headquarters.

The minister said there were already 10 such tribunals for summary trial or such cases.

The Prime Minister has expressed determination to curb criminal activities relating to the abuse of women and children.

US ships on surveillance mission?

TOKYO, Aug 10 (Reuters) — Two US Navy ships equipped with missile-tracking radar systems have left a US Naval base in southern Japan, sparking speculation that the ships will monitor an expected test-launch of a new North Korean ballistic missile.

A US Base official confirmed today that the 17,015-tonne “USS observation Island” and the 2,262-tonne “USS Invincible” left Sasebo naval base near Nagasaki, on the southern main island of Kyushu, yesterday.

But the official said it was purely coincidental that the two ships left port on the same day and denied that they were on a joint mission.

“The navy does not discuss the operation of their ships,’’ the official said.

Both ships belong to the US Navy’s military Sealift Command in charge of missile data collection and are equipped with radar systems capable of tracking the launch and flight of ballistic missiles.

“Observation island is widely believed to have monitored North Korea’s launch last August of a missile that passed over Japan and landed in the Pacific.

Japan’s Kyodo news agency today quoted Sasebo base sources as saying that “observation island” would shortly join “the invincible” and “the USS Los Angeles,” a 6,080-tonne nuclear-powered submarine, which, it said also left Sasebo yesterday.

Makoto Momoi, a former official with the research arm of Japan’s defence agency, said the ships’ moves might be a sign that the USA expected a launch was imminent.

Kid’s warning to eclipse watchers

LAND’S END, (England), Aug 10 (Reuters) — An American boy partially blinded by an eclipse has pleaded with British eclipse-watchers: "Please don’t ever look directly at the sun.’’

For 12-year-old David Berger-Jones, his life will never be the same since he caught a glimpse of an eclipse through a telescope at a planetarium in his home town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Flown to Britain by the "Fight for Sight’’ charity to publicise the dangers of eclipse-watching, he admitted yesterday that he hoped for bad weather over Wednesday’s total eclipse of the sun.

"I wish for clouds so people won’t get hurt,’’ he told Reuters.

His mother Darcy said: "Coming down on the train, David kept looking at all the kids and saying that he did hope their eyes wouldn’t get burned.’’

David visited his local planetarium last year to view an eclipse through telescopes and special goggles. He was told they were safe and supervised.

The damage took just seconds. There was no pain but within days, he told his mother about trouble in his left eye.

The sun’s radiation had burned a hole in his Retina. It was as if a cigarette had stabbed him in the eye.

There is no known treatment for solar retinopathy and the blind spot will remain in David’s eye for the rest of his life.

Now he has to wear special goggles when playing his beloved baseball.

"I just hate it when other kids make fun of me, which they do,’’ he said.

Asked what he could now see with his left eye, he said: "There is a black spot covering where your nose is and the rest all around is a blur.’’

Pleading to the millions of people who may be tempted to gaze unprotected at the heavens on Wednesday, he said: "Don’t ever, ever look directly at the sun even if this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.’’

His advice: Turn your back to the sun and use a pin-hole card to project indirect images of the sun onto another card.

"I would keep young children inside,’’ his mother said. "You won’t be able to stop them looking up. Watch it on TV instead.’’

After Britain’s last eclipse in 1927, at least 20 person went blind. Doctors fear that figure could soar this time — despite all the publicity mounted by the government in a public safety campaign.

Congressional team backs Taiwan

TAIPEI, Aug 10 (Reuters) — The leader of a visiting US Congressional delegation said today that his group backed Taiwan President Lee Teng-Hui’s call for China to treat Taiwan as a political equal.

“We strongly support president Lee’s right to address Taipei’s views of the cross-strait relationship. It is our view that the two sides should engage in a dialogue as equals,’’ Benjamin Gilman told mediapersons before departing.

The comments by Mr Gilman, a Republican from New York state who chairs the House of Representatives International Relations Committee, run counter to the Clinton administration’s policy.

The administration does not want to sour Washington’s already fragile relationship with China and does not support Mr Lee’s call.

Mr Lee called on July 9 for contact between Taiwan and China to be considered as “special state-to-state’’ ties.

Beijing, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province and opposes any assertion of sovereignty by Taipei, responded angrily.

The Congress men met Lee, Vice-President Lien Chan, Defence Minister Tons Fei, Vice-Foreign Minister David Lee and the island’s mainland affairs policy architect Su Chi, chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council.

Mr Gilman called on China to stop all activities that might destabilise the region. We expressed concern about Chinese sabre-rattling over President Lee’s state-to-state remarks and its effects on the confidence and security-building in the region,’’ he said of the delegation’s meetings with Mr Lee and other top officials.

Shah to be based in India

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 10 (PTI) — Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s special envoy to Iraq Prakash Shah is working only part time since August 7 and will be based in India instead of Baghdad, UN officials said.

However, they denied that his status has been downgraded from permanent to part time employee following American criticism. His services will now be used on “as needed” basis and he would be paid for the services rendered.

The UN officials also denied reports circulating at the headquarters that he had resigned and said he himself had sought part time status two months ago as the future of arms inspections was uncertain.

Mr Shah, a former Indian Ambassador to the United Nations, has already left Baghdad and it is unclear when he would return.

AP adds: The USA has complained to the United Nations that a US representative was never invited to watch the politically sensitive destruction of vx and other chemical agents in a Baghdad laboratory.

The disclosure of a letter on Monday from US envoy Peter Burleigh to Secretary-General Kofi Annan about the conduct of his special envoy in Iraq, Prakash Shah, coincided with news that Shah has left Baghdad and will now only be working part-time.

Eichmann memoirs to be published

JERUSALEM, Aug 10 (DPA) — Israel will allow the memoirs written by Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann while he was in an Israeli prison to be published, The Jerusalem Post reported today.

The newspaper quoted Attorney-General Eliakim Rubinstein as saying that the memoirs would be released “together with commentary and appropriate accompanying material’’.

A lawyer representing one of Eichmann’s sons yesterday officially asked the Israeli Government for a copy of the manuscript.

B’desh cops sent back from Kosovo

PRISTINA (Yugoslavia), Aug 10 (AFP) — Bangladeshi and Nepalese police officers sent by their governments to take part in the UN police force in Kosovo have been told to go back home after they failed firearm aptitude tests, a spokesman for the UN mission here, Mr Kevin Kennedy, said today.

“They would have been a danger to themselves and to others,” he said.

The decision was made after all but around 12 of the 69-strong Bangladeshi police contingent failed a gun test to see how they would cope with enforcing the law in Kosovo, where arms are still in plentiful supply.

China tested supermissile

BEIJING, Aug 10 (PTI) — China may have tested a new high-altitude nuclear-capable strategic ballistic missile last week for which there is no effective defence even with the USA, defence analysts said here today.

“If the Chinese have tested the high-altitude ballistic missile, with a range of 8000 km, even the United States with its high-tech national missile defence (NMD) cannot intercept it,” one defence analyst said.

We assume that China launched the Dong Feng (east wind)-31 ground-to-ground ballistic missile on August 2 from central China, he told PTI.

According to defence analysts, the missile, launched from a test range in Wuzhai in central Chinas Shanxi province, travelled some 3,000 km and landed in the Tarim basin in Taklimakan desert in northwest Chinas Xinjiang Uygur region.

Fear of apocalypse

TIRANA, Aug 10 (Reuters) — Five Albanian families have taken shelter in a Communist-era bunker in the remote eastern Gramsh region fearing tomorrow’s solar eclipse will mark the start of an apocalypse, an Albanian newspaper reported today.

“There must be some truth in all this talk about a major catastrophe,’’ a 38-year-old member of one of the families told Koha Jone, explaining why 34 persons of the five inter-related families had gathered in the former air raid shelter.

Other villagers said the families, who have taken cattle, food and cooking utensils with them into the 22-metre-long bunker, were victims of local media speculation that the eclipse would be accompanied by a biblical-scale disaster.

Victor Mature dead

LOS ANGELES, Aug 10 (Reuters) — Handsome Hollywood leading man Victor Mature, famed for his roles in the biblical epics of the 1940s and ‘50s including “Samson and Delilah” and “The Robe”, has died at age 86, a relative said.

A cousin, Julia Mature of Louisville, Kentucky, said yesterday the actor died last Wednesday at his home in Rancho Santa Fe, near San Diego, after a three-year battle with cancer.

The news was not made public immediately pending funeral arrangements.

Liberal Democrats chief
LONDON: Britain’s Liberal Democrats elected Charles Kennedy as their new leader, a move likely to cement ties with Prime Minister Tony Blair’s ruling Labour Party. Mr Kennedy, 39, the party’s rural affairs spokesman, beat four rivals on Monday for the leadership in a ballot of 90,000 members to find a successor to former marine Paddy Ashdown as leader of Britain’s third political force. Mr Ashdown, who stood down after 11 years, dragged the Liberal Democrats back from political oblivion a decade ago and forged closer ties between Britain’s two main Centre-left parties. — Reuters

Korea talks fail
GENEVA: Talks aimed at bringing a permanent peace to the Korean peninsula ended with no sign of progress in overcoming the half-century-long confrontation. U.S. negotiators also appeared to have failed in their efforts to persuade Pyongyang to discuss its missile development programme. Pyongyang’s threat to follow up its August 1998 test-launch of a missile that overflew Japan with a more powerful one cast a shadow over the talks although the issue was not formally on the agenda of the session. — Reuters

Plane theft
ASTAN: The Defence Minister and intelligence chief of Kazakhstan have been dismissed in a scandal-over the theft and smuggling out of warplanes to Yugoslavia, the news agency Interfax reported. The report said President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed an order dismissing the two men on Monday, along with senior officials in their two departments and the head of the state-run arms company, Metallist. — DPA

British bombers
DUBLIN: Relatives of people killed in Ireland by a series of car bombs on one day in 1974 will formally file a lawsuit this week seeking damages from Britain, their lawyer said on Monday. Fired by speculation in the media and other unconfirmed evidence that British security forces may have colluded in the attacks, relatives want damages for loss of life and injuries sustained in Dublin and the border town of Monaghan. — Reuters

Nazi victims
HANOVER: For the first time, a German court has ruled that concentration camp inmates forced to work as slave labourers in the Nazi era can sue for damages and wages, the daily Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Tuesday. Three former death camp inmates, now Israeli citizens have filed claim for 40,000 Marks ($22,200) from German Tyre company Continental AG. — DPA