Clinton promises more jobs WASHINGTON, Jan 10 — While President Bill Clinton did his best to ignore his legal woes by announcing a plan to create more jobs, Republican Senate majority leader Trent Lott promised his colleagues would be impartial in the upcoming impeachment trial.

‘Kissinger played China against Russia’
WASHINGTON, Jan 10 — Advising Chinese leaders that the Soviets were determined to amass enough nuclear weapons to destroy their country, Henry Kissinger secretly offered China US satellite information and a hot line long before the Communist government gained American diplomatic recognition.

Changes bolster Wiranto’s power
JAKARTA, Jan 10 — Indonesia’s military commander General Wiranto, fighting to restore the dispirited and discredited armed forces, has bolstered his position with sweeping changes among his top officers, analysts said.

Fabled waterfall found in Tibet
WASHINGTON, Jan 10 — Four Americans belonging to a National Geographic Expedition have found a thundering 110 feet high waterfall in a remote Tibetan gorge, National Geographic has revealed.

Sharif stands by army courts

ISLAMABAD, Jan 10 (PTI) — The Pakistani Government would contest the Supreme Court stand on the military court issue, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has said, asserting speedy justice should be delivered in cases pertaining to heinous crimes.

Vowing to question the Supreme Court’s observation on the functioning of military courts and stay of executions for two days, the Prime Minister said the government would apprise the apex court of the situation that necessitated the setting up of military courts.

The government would also present its point of view regarding measures taken to curb terrorism, media reports quoted Mr Sharif as saying.

The military courts came in for a lot of flak from the Supreme Court during a hearing on Friday when it forced the Attorney General to give an undertaking that no death sentence ordered by these controversial courts would be executed till he submitted a detailed report from the government tomorrow.

Human rights groups, including the London-based Amnesty International, had also slammed the military courts for handing out capital punishment after barely a few days of hearing and also the urgency shown by the authorities to hang two persons convicted by these courts.

But Mr Sharif, in a defiant mood said at Lahore yesterday that he favoured cases pertaining to terrorism and heinous crimes be decided “within hours”.

Given the chance, Mr Sharif said, he would uproot the “rotten system” and provide speedy justice since “without providing timely justice the government cannot ensure peace”.

He, however, avoided questions on setting up of military courts in Punjab which continues to witness terrorist activities, including an attempt on his own life last week and killing of 17 Shias inside a mosque.

The military courts were set up in Sindh bypassing the normal judicial process after the dismissal of the provincial government last October following differences between Mr Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League and its alliance partner, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM).

Expressing his determination to restore peace in the port city at all cost as any crisis in the “gateway to Pakistan” would disturb the whole of country, he said: “I have taken up the task of bringing normalcy by rooting out terrorism from Karachi in all sincerity.”

“Free flow of arms is the root cause of terrorism,” he added.

Mahathir in control with Cabinet revamp

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 10 (AFP) — Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad has moved swiftly to reassert control with a Cabinet revamp which puts loyalists in key posts and filled a political vacuum, politicians and diplomats have said.

Mahathir, under pressure to name a deputy and relinquish the Home Minister, named Foreign Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, 59, to both positions in a weekend reshuffle that caught the country by surprise.

The Opposition had demanded that Mahathir give up the Home Ministry, which controls the country’s internal security apparatus after an official finding implicated the police in the beating of his detained former deputy Anwar Ibrahim.

A power gap also emerged in the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) after the September firing of Anwar who headed a large faction in the party which dominates the ruling national front coalition.

Party officials said UMNO members fell in line behind Mahathir’s choice of deputy, easing worries over succession if something happens to him.

Clinton promises more jobs

WASHINGTON, Jan 10 (AFP) — While President Bill Clinton did his best to ignore his legal woes by announcing a plan to create more jobs, Republican Senate majority leader Trent Lott promised his colleagues would be impartial in the upcoming impeachment trial.

In his weekly radio address yesterday, Mr Clinton promised a $ 108-million initiative to boost US exports and create jobs to insulate the USA from the growing economic turmoil elsewhere on the globe.

However, Mr Lott tried to keep the focus on the impeachment. In the weekly Republican radio address, the Senate leader said he was proud of the compromise deal hammered out on Friday by Democratic and Republican senators on the trial procedure.

“All week, we had seemed hopelessly divided,” the Mississippi Senator said. “But after listening to one another, speaking face to face, we came together in the last 15 minutes of our meeting.”

After debating behind closed doors for more than two hours, the senators voted unanimously for a deal that Republicans said left the door open for the appearance of witnesses, and democrats said would allow for a swift trial without them.

The senators agreed that procedural motions would be heard on Wednesday, with the evidence phase of the trial beginning on Thursday.

“We came together in agreement on a fair process the Senate will follow in considering this momentous question before us,” Mr Lott said.

Fair or not, the US public seems to have had enough, almost half of US residents surveyed would like to see the impeachment trial last less than a week, according to a poll released yesterday by Time magazine and CNN.

The poll said 49 per cent would like a short trial, though 38 per cent believe it would last more than two months.

Regardless of the outcome, 62 per cent of those surveyed do not want to see the President removed from office. Mr Clinton’s approval rating stands at 67 per cent, up three points from December 17-18.

The impeachment drama has also lowered public feelings for Republicans — 55 per cent disapprove the way they are handling the trial, while only 35 per cent approve.

‘Kissinger played China against Russia’

WASHINGTON, Jan 10 (AP) — Advising Chinese leaders that the Soviets were determined to amass enough nuclear weapons to destroy their country, Henry Kissinger secretly offered China US satellite information and a hot line long before the Communist government gained American diplomatic recognition.

“We would be prepared, at your request, through whatever sources you wish, to give you whatever information we have about the disposition of Soviet forces,” Mr Kissinger told Huang Hua, the Chinese Ambassador to the United Nations, in 1971.

The specific reference was to Soviet forces deployed during the war that year between India and Pakistan, but Mr Kissinger offered a web of intelligence sharing in meetings with Chinese leaders including Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Chou En-Lai in November 1973.

There are no secrets with (you about) the Soviet Union, “he told Mao. There is nothing we are doing with the Soviet Union that you do not know”.

According to transcripts of top-secret talks Mr Kissinger held as US National Security Adviser and as Secretary of State under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford in the 1970s, he played China against Russia with inventive triangular diplomacy.

The transcripts of secret conversations that may have changed history are being published by the National Security Archive of George Washington University, for release today. They were obtained through freedom-of-information requests and other means, the private group said.

During the 1970s, President Nixon was pursuing a policy of détente with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. At the same time, Nixon was preparing for US diplomatic recognition of China, which eventually happened under President Jimmy Carter in 1979. A secret Kissinger trip of Beijing in 1971, then Nixon’s highly publicised visit in 1972 set the course for the historic change.

Briefing Chou on the Soviets on November 10, 1973, in the Great Hall of the People, Mr Kissinger said it was in the interests of the USA to prevent Soviet nuclear attack on China.

They want us to accept the desirability of destroying China’s nuclear capability, he said, according to a transcript of the conversation.

Instead, he offered China secret military cooperation with the USA, including ideas on how to lessen the vulnerability of your forces and how to increase the warning time before a Soviet attack.

While Chou was interested in the proposal, and met Mr Kissinger several times to discuss a hot line to provide China with strategic US intelligence information, the Chinese did not respond to the offer, wrote William Burr in a commentary on the transcripts.

And it was not till 1998 that China signed a hot line agreement with the USA.

No one alive blamed for Di’s death

LONDON, Jan 10 (Reuters) — An official probe into a Paris car crash which killed Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed has concluded that no one left alive is to blame, British media reports said.

The Sunday Mirror newspaper said the probe, led by French Judge Herve Stephan, began soon after Diana’s death in September 1997 and was completed last week. The paper said it had obtained key segments of the report despite the strict security that surrounded it.

The BBC’s teletext services quoted Judge Stephan as saying in the report that the crash was a result of “excess speed” and “poor control of the vehicle by the driver.”

The Paris sleuths have consistently blamed the crash on the high speed at which Paul drove the car and the criminal level of alcohol in his blood at the time of the accident.

The Sunday Mirror said manslaughter charges against photographers and a despatch rider who pursued the car after it left Ritz Hotel will be dropped.

Photographers who were first to reach the crash scene will face only minor charges, and the managers of the Ritz Hotel will not be tried for corporate manslaughter.

Sophie doesn’t want to be Princess

LONDON, Jan 10 (AFP) — Royal fiancée Sophie Rhys-Jones, who marries Prince Edward later this year, has told the Queen that she does not want to be a Princess because of comparisons with Diana.

According to Sunday’s British Press, Rhys-Jones resents media comparisons of her strong resemblance to the late Princess and wants to be recognised in her own right.

The Sunday Telegraph said she had told Queen Elizabeth that she did not want to become a Princess when she marries the monarch’s youngest son.

Nor does she want to be known as her Royal Highness the Princess Edward, which would be her official title, believing it is old-fashioned to be known by her husband’s name.

The solution would be for the Queen to make Edward a Duke. Royal experts say the dukedom of Cambridge is the most likely.

Changes bolster Wiranto’s power

JAKARTA, Jan 10 (Reuters) — Indonesia’s military commander General Wiranto, fighting to restore the dispirited and discredited armed forces, has bolstered his position with sweeping changes among his top officers, analysts said.

“This reshuffle consolidates Wiranto’s control over the armed forces (ABRI),” University of Indonesia lecturer EEP Saefulloh Fatah said.

But human rights campaigner and a senior figure in the ruling Golkar Party, Marzuki Darusman, said it has put more of the four star general’s own people in the top positions.

“This is a good move. He (now) has a freer hand in reforming ABRI. If the (security) situation gets out of control, the new line-up will enable him to feel he has the back-up from ABRI to handle it,” Darusman said.

Fabled waterfall found in Tibet

WASHINGTON, Jan 10 (PTI) — Four Americans belonging to a National Geographic Expedition have found a thundering 110 feet high waterfall in a remote Tibetan gorge, National Geographic has revealed.

It said, they found the waterfall — one of the last great natural wonders on earth in November that explorers have searched for in vain for more than a century.

Ian Baker, the US scholar and writer, who led the 17-day expedition, told reporters, “As I stood on the edge, gazing down into the mists and spray. I really felt that I was right on the brink of another world.”

Hidden Falls, as the expedition named it, is between 100 and 115 feet high. The Tsangpo river, normally about 300 feet across, narrows to just 60 feet as it roars over hidden falls. “The entire river just rushes through there,” said team member Ken Storm Jr.

Special Oscar
BEVERLY HILLS (California): Canadian producer Norman Jewison (72) has been awarded a Special Oscar for lifetime accomplishments by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, academy President Robert Rehme announced. The Irving Thalberg Memorial Prize will be presented to Jewison during the 71st Oscar ceremony on March 21 in Los Angeles.

Jewison’s films have won more than 10 Oscars, including best film, for “In the Heat of the Night”, and have been nominated 45 times. — AFP

4 die in boat mishap
HONK KONG: Four men died and five were injured on Sunday when a yacht and speedboat collided off Hong Kong, the police said. The accident happened near Tsing Yi Island, northwest of Hong Kong island. Nine men, all in the speed boat, were taken to hospital where four were certified dead. — Reuters

Fossils found
KATHMANDU: An American researcher said she had found fossilised remains of hippopotamuses, rhinoceros and elephants dating back millions of years during a survey in Nepal. Nina Jablonski, a palaeonteologist and visiting Fulbright professor with the California Academy of Science, said she had uncovered the remains of two extinct species of rhinoceros and elephants along with that of the hippopotamuses, which she believes survived till three million years ago in different parts of Nepal. — AFP

Massacre toll
MAKOBOLA: As many as 600 persons were massacred by rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo town of Makobola, residents have said. About 500 civilians, including many women and children, were killed here between December 30 and January 1 in reprisal for an earlier attack by traditional Mai-Mai fighters opposing the Tutsi-led rebellion, the Roman Catholic missionary news agency Misna had reported on Tuesday. — AFP

Monica’s ex-boyfriend
WASHINGTON: Monica Lewinsky’s former boyfriend, who claimed that the two had a five-year affair before she dumped him to start an affair with US President Bill Clinton, is reportedly planning to divorce his wife. “They are truly a casualty of the Monica Lewinsky scandal”, a relative of Andrew Bleiler of Portland, Oregon, said on Friday. Andrew and his wife Kathlyn are separated and plan to divorce, the relative said. — PTI

Fire kills nine
BEIJING: Fire in a department store killed at least nine persons and injured 100 on Sunday in China’s southwestern Sichuan province, Xinhua news agency said. The blaze took more than 500 firemen three-and-a-half hours to control and destroyed the goods in the store. — Reuters

N-reactor in Iran
MOSCOW: Russia has said it would push forward with the construction of an atomic reactor in Iran, a project which has been criticised by the USA and Israel for threatening security in the Middle East. The USA and Israel fear the planned 1,000 megawatt light-water reactor at Bushehr on the Gulf coast will help Iran develop nuclear weapons. But Russia and Iran have repeatedly denied the charges. — Reuters