Pak Press breathes freely now : Najam
ISLAMABAD, Dec 5 — Pakistani journalist Najam Sethi, who was jailed for three weeks during Nawaz Sharif regime for allegedly making anti-government statements, has contended that the Pakistan Press is more free and without pressure in the present military rule than it was during the earlier democratic set-up.

UK hospitals admit ‘stealing’ babies’ organs
LONDON, Dec 5 — Laws on the removal of organs from dead children may be tightened, Britain’s top medical officer has said as key hospitals admitted the practice may have taken place without parents being aware.

B’desh strike hits trade
DHAKA, Dec 5 — Bangladeshis awoke today to another trademark strike by the country’s political Opposition, trying to force the government to resign and call snap elections.

31 die in Maluku clashes
JAKARTA, Dec 5 — At least 31 people were killed in a fresh wave of fighting between Christians and Muslims in Indonesia’s eastern province of Maluku, reports said today.

Chandrika’s popularity dips
COLOMBO, Dec 5 — A fortnight before the crucial presidential polls, an opinion poll said that Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who is seeking a re-election for a second term, suffered a seven point drop in popularity ratings after her government’s recent military setbacks against the LTTE.

Mbeki not to meet Dalai Lama
DURBAN, Dec 5 — Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has arrived in South Africa but will not be meeting the country’s President, Mr Thabo Mbeki, the South African news agency SAPA reported.

Russia seals off roads to Grozny
Moscow allows OSCE’s Chechnya tour

MOSCOW, Dec 5 (DPA, AP) — As Russian forces encircled the Chechen capital, Grozny, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov today said he had invited the head of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to visit the embattled Caucasus republic.

Mr Ivanov told Russian television that he had sent OSCE chairman Knut Vollebaek an invitation to travel to Chechnya on December 14 and 15. He did not indicate whether Mr Vollebaek would be allowed to tour areas of western Chechnya that have been taken by Russian troops after weeks of fighting.

At the OSCE summit in Istanbul last month, Russia has agreed to let Mr Vollebaek tour the region.

Mr Ivanov reiterated earlier warnings against any western interference in the Chechen conflict, which Moscow deems an “internal Russian matter”.

At the OSCE summit in Istanbul last month, Russia had agreed to let Mr Vollebaek tour the region.

Russian forces outside, meanwhile, tightened their grip on Grozny, continuing their air bombardments of suspected rebel positions.

Russian forces also continued to attack Urus-Martan, 20 km south of Grozny. Rebels were reported yesterday as saying roads to the north, west and east of Grozny were closed, and that the road towards Urus-Martan had now also fallen into Russian hands.

Interfax news agency, quoting the Russian military command at Mosdok in north Ossetia, said troops had regrouped south and east of Grozny.

Although the military says Grozny is now completely surrounded, it continued to rule out a frontal assault saying it would continue artillery and air operations against an estimated 5,000 rebels in the city.

The Russian military says more than 6,500 rebels have been killed since the start of the fighting in the Caucasus in August. Forces under the Defence Ministry had suffered 305 dead and 863 wounded.

In the meantime, as Russian bombs and artillery hammered Chechen cities and towns, the rebels are increasingly turning to guerrilla tactics that the Russians have been anxious to avoid for fear of heavy losses, military sources said in Nazran town (Russia) said.

The militants “are taking measures to turn Grozny and Urus Martan into impregnable fortresses, where federal forces would suffer significant losses if they enter,” Russian military spokesman, Col Gennady Alyokhin said today.

Russian artillery this morning shelled and warplanes dropped bombs on the Chechen capital, targeting ammunition depots, rebel command headquarters and communication centres, the military press centre said, according to the Interfax news agency.

Russian Su-24 and Su-25 warplanes yesterday flew 30 sorties and Mi-24 helicopter gunships flew 35 missions, the military said.

Chechnya’s President Aslan Maskhadov also warned that Chechen fighters would try to shift the war into a terrain unfavourable to the Russians.

MOSCOW (UNI): Russian President Boris Yeltsin today said Russia will deploy troops in Chechnya permanently.

Voice of Russia said the President’s decree to this effect will be issued shortly. He also announced various measures for normalisation of situation in the troubled state.

Russian news agency, Novosti, reports that the army headquarter plans to station an entire infantry division and mechanised battalion consisting of 10,000 soldiers.

Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry has accepted Iran’s request to allow the investigation by the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) team to Chechnya to get first-hand experience instead of depending on Western reports about atrocities being committed by Russian troops there.

Iran is currently head of the OIC, but in spite of its rigid Islamic rule has distanced itself from other Muslim states on the Chechen issue, Russian foreign affairs experts feel.

19 LTTE rebels killed

COLOMBO, Dec 5 (PTI) — Nineteen LTTE rebels were killed in different encounters with Sri Lankan troops in the north since yesterday, even as the much-awaited release of two captured soldiers by the LTTE could not take place today due to "logistical reasons".

Eleven rebels were killed yesterday in northern Vanni while eight were killed in northern Jaffna and the north-eastern Welioya region, a defence ministry press note here said today.

Meanwhile, a spokesman of the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) said its officials based in the LTTE-held Puthikudiaruppu could not take possession of the two captured soldiers, scheduled to be released by the LTTE today, due to "logistical reasons".

The ICRC could not make logistic arrangements to transport the soldiers to government-controlled areas in the north, he said, adding they would now by released tomorrow.

The LTTE had yesterday conveyed its intention to release the two soldiers, captured last month when the rebels seized several towns in Vanni.

Seven soldiers have already been released on November 27.

Britain rife with racism: survey

LONDON, Dec 5 (PTI) — Most Britons believe Britain to be a racist nation, with 92 per cent saying discrimination takes place either frequently or sometimes.

“That is higher than anywhere else in the world,” an international millennium survey said.

The survey also found that more than a quarter of Britons believed people were tortured in the country, again the highest proportion of any country in the survey.

More than 50,000 people from 61 countries in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa were included in the poll, a report in the Daily Telegraph said.

Rene Spogard, of Gallup International, who conducted the survey, said there was a positive note to the British findings. “Few countries have the same racial mix as Britain or America where racial discrimination occurrence is the highest.

“It could be seen to show an openness — that the people of Britain are more aware than, for example, the Italians,” it said.

Other figures revealed that a quarter of British people having no believe in religious freedom were fully respected in Britain and only slightly more considered rights on equal pay were respected.

Pak Press breathes freely now : Najam

ISLAMABAD, Dec 5 (PTI) — Pakistani journalist Najam Sethi, who was jailed for three weeks during Nawaz Sharif regime for allegedly making anti-government statements, has contended that the Pakistan Press is more free and without pressure in the present military rule than it was during the earlier democratic set-up.

In an interview to the Voice of America, Sethi, who along with his wife Jugnu Mohsin was the recipient of this year’s International Press Freedom Award by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) of the USA, said ever since the military regime under General Pervez Musharraf came to power no pressure was exerted on the Press to gag freedom.

“It is interesting to note that strict government pressure existed on the Press during the democratic rule. The democratic government was using every sort of pressure tactic to gag the press,” Sethi, was quoted as saying, according to a monitoring report.

Sethi, who won his second international award this year, was pulled out of his bed in the middle of the night in April this year, beaten and put behind the bars for three weeks.

Sethi, Editor of the popular weekly ‘Friday Times’, has been one of the bitter critics of the Sharif government and the action against him was in retaliation to his interview to BBC for a film on Sharif’s alleged corruption.

Sethi, who was an Information Minister during an interim government just before Mr Sharif came to power in February 1997, also demanded that the Information Ministry should be abolished as it had issued some sort of ban on the Press and demanded that there should be a freedom of information act.

He also said people had great expectations from the present military regime in Pakistan but if it failed to fulfil the promises then the Press would obviously start criticising it adding, “we will see whether the government’s attitude remains democratic”.

UK hospitals admit ‘stealing’ babies’ organs

LONDON, Dec 5 (AFP) — Laws on the removal of organs from dead children may be tightened, Britain’s top medical officer has said as key hospitals admitted the practice may have taken place without parents being aware.

The practice has come under great scrutiny after it emerged that a children’s hospital in Liverpool, North-West England, removed the organs from 850 dead infants without parents’ consent.

Seven of Britain’s leading health trusts admitted parents might not always have been aware that their deceased children’s organs had been removed, a BBC survey revealed.

Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson admitted yesterday that changes to the law may be necessary as many parents did not currently understand the “full implications” when signing consent forms.

“We need to have a wider look at the situation. It may need some change to the legislation,” Professor Donaldson told BBC radio.

“There is a big difference between what over the years has developed as a practice within the health service, and what public expectations and concerns are.”

Reuters add: A doctor who took internal organs from hundreds of children who died in a British hospital has denied that he was a villain and said the organs had piled up in laboratory jars because money for research ran out.

The government has launched an inquiry into claims that internal organs were stripped from the children without parental consent after 850 organs were found in a laboratory store at Alder Hey Hospital in the northern city of Liverpool.

Alder Hey has confirmed the organs were stored by the then head of their post-mortem team, Professor Dick Van Velzen.

But the Professor, an expert in cot deaths who worked at the hospital from 1988 to 1995, yesterday said the parents signed consent forms. He said he did some 400 post-mortems at the hospital and organs from earlier autopsies were stored there too.

The doctor told The Mirror newspaper from the Netherlands, where he now works, that he had removed 30 to 40 hearts or lungs a year from children at Alder Hey, hoping to do tests on them.

“There weren’t enough funds to finance research. We had one microscope between three of us,” he said.

Meanwhile, Health Secretary Alan Milburn said the alleged organ stripping raised “major questions about the issue of children’s organ retention in the National Health Service”. The practice may have been more widespread than previously thought.

A BBC survey found that eight out of 10 top National Health Service Trusts took organs or organ samples from dead children without parental consent in recent years.

Ian Cohen, a lawyer representing 70 families of children who underwent autopsies in Liverpool, said they were devastated. “In a lot of cases, there was wholesale organ removal.”

B’desh strike hits trade

DHAKA, Dec 5 (Reuters) — Bangladeshis awoke today to another trademark strike by the country’s political Opposition, trying to force the government to resign and call snap elections.

Little traffic moved in Dhaka except for pedal rickshaws and some town-service buses on the first day of the two-day strike.

The police said security had been tightened to prevent violence by pickets trying to enforce the strike, which disrupted communications and business across the country.

It was the first nationwide stoppage since the Opposition formalised an alliance of four parties led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of former Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia at a meeting on Tuesday.

Earlier, one person was killed and 50 injured in overnight clashes in Dhaka between police and opposition activists who were calling on people to enforce the strike today and tomorrow.

“A transport worker was crushed to death by a bus that passed rushing through the scene of the violence near the National Press Club,” policeman Saiful Islam said.

Witnesses said the violence began when the police broke up the noisy demonstration by nearly 2,000 opposition activists. They said the police fired shots in the air and made baton charges to disperse the crowd. The activists damaged about 30 vehicles and exploded home-made bombs.

The next election is not due until 2001, but Ms Khaleda’s alliance has repeatedly called strikes, paralysing the country, seek early elections. It has enforced nearly 50 days of strikes since Ms Sheikh Hasina won power in 1996.

31 die in Maluku clashes

JAKARTA, Dec 5 (AP) — At least 31 people were killed in a fresh wave of fighting between Christians and Muslims in Indonesia’s eastern province of Maluku, reports said today.

Sectarian violence erupted late Thursday in Taniwel district in the central part of the province, the official Antara news agency reported.

The fighting between the rival religious communities continued till yesterday. Both sides used home-made guns and petrol bombs to set fire to a dozen houses in the district, it said.

Police sources have said the fighting in Maluku, a province about 1,750 km east of Jakarta, has claimed more than 700 lives since it first broke out almost a year ago. Dozens of members of the police, army and marines also have died in efforts to quell the rioting. Human rights activists claim that more than 1,000 people have died since last January.

The province was known as the Spice Islands during Dutch colonial rule.

Chandrika’s popularity dips

COLOMBO, Dec 5 (PTI) — A fortnight before the crucial presidential polls, an opinion poll said that Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who is seeking a re-election for a second term, suffered a seven point drop in popularity ratings after her government’s recent military setbacks against the LTTE.

A second opinion poll carried out by ORG-MARG SMART and published in The Sunday Times today said while Ms Chandrika’s ratings registered a drop, her principle challenger, Mr Ranil Wickramasinghe of the United Nationalist Party (UNP), saw an upswing in his ratings from 12 to 15 per cent.

The survey said the ratings for Ms Chandrika’s policy towards solving the ethnic conflict with the LTTE had come down from 44 per cent to 37 following last month’s military reverses suffered by the army in northern Vanni.

Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan police has beefed up security for Ms Chandrika and Mr Wickrama-singhe, two main contenders in the December 21 presidential poll.

Mbeki not to meet Dalai Lama

DURBAN, Dec 5 (DPA) — Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has arrived in South Africa but will not be meeting the country’s President, Mr Thabo Mbeki, the South African news agency SAPA reported.

The Dalai Lama was “saddened and disappointed” that the South African Government appeared to have given into pressure from China, which reportedly insisted it refrain from meeting the Tibetan leader, his spokesman said.

Tory woman chief
PARIS: France’s Conservative Rally for the Republic (RPR), elected its first woman leader, hoping to breathe new life into President Jacques Chirac’s fractured party. Michele Alliot-Marie (53), a former Sports Minister and Deputy Mayor of the town of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, was elected by 62 per cent of the party’s supporters, beating Chirac’s favourite, Jean-Paul Dele Voye here on Saturday. — AP

Fraud Welsh author
LONDON: One of Wales’s most famous literary sons has been exposed as a fraud, according to a British Sunday newspaper. Richard Llewellyn, whose novel “How Green was My Valley” was made into an Oscar-winning film, was neither born in Wales as he claimed nor called Llewellyn. The author’s real name was Vivian Lloyd and he was born in the London suburb of Hendon, the son of a publican who was admittedly Welsh, the Observer said. — Reuters

Best European film
BERLIN: Spanish director Pedro Almodovar’s film Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother) was named European film of the year at the European Film Academy’s 12th European film awards in Berlin on Saturday. — DPA

Hillary’s poll manager
NEW YORK: Hillary Rodham Clinton named a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development official, who worked on her husband’s 1996 re-election effort, to run the First Lady’s U.S. Senate campaign, her staff has said. The naming of Bill de Blasio, 38, as her campaign manager came a little more than a week after Ms Clinton announced officially that she intends to seek in 2000 the seat from New York. — Reuters

Building collapse: 10 die
MOSCOW: The collapse of a wide section of an apartment building in a southern Russian town killed at least 10 persons and injured six, the police said on Sunday. A spokesman for the Rostov-on-Don police department said a section of the building in the town of Zernograd, some 40 km (25 miles) away, collapsed in a heap on Saturday. — Reuters