Sunday, March 7, 1999
today's calendar
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W O R L D | Sunday, March 7, 1999 |
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Indonesia told to uphold
democracy Clinton
wishes Lewinsky well |
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Clinton’s
no to Italy’s claim |
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Probe
into mass graves begins |
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Indonesia told to uphold democracy JAKARTA, March 6 (AP) — US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has urged Indonesian President B.J. Habibie to do all he can to keep East Timor from erupting in bloodshed if the territory chooses independence. “Violence is the enemy of democracy, security and prosperity,” she said yesterday. “We will not walk away,” Mr Habibie responded, according to a senior US official present at their two-hour meeting. Indonesia was the last stop for Ms Albright on a weeklong Asian tour that included visits to Thailand and China. Ms Albright urged Indonesians to stay on the path of democracy, a route they took last May with the fall of the Suharto regime. Since then, the Asian financial crisis has rocked the country economically and socially with Christians and Muslims fighting and demonstrations by anti-government students. At the same time, Mr
Habibie’s government has begun financial reforms and
has scheduled the country’s first democratic
elections in more than 40 years. Ms Albright urged that
elections be “free, fair and open.” |
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WASHINGTON, March 6 (AFP) — US President Bill Clinton said he hoped Monica Lewinsky would have “a good life” and get any help she might need to recover from the traumatic White House sex scandal. “What I hope is that she will be permitted to go on with her life and I hope it will be a good life,” Mr Clinton yesterday said in response to a question at a White House news conference. “This was a pretty tough thing for everybody involved and I wish her well. I hope it works out all right.” He said he did not watch the first television interview with the 25-year-old former White House intern, which was broadcast in the USA on Wednesday. The investigation of Lewinsky’s relationship with Mr Clinton resulted in his becoming the first elected US President ever impeached. He was acquitted last month and allowed to remain in office after a month-long impeachment trial in the Senate. Mr Clinton said he hoped
that “all the people that have been hurt by this,
including totally innocent people will get the help that
they need.” |
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NEW YORK, Mar 6 (PTI) — Paula Jones will get less than one-fourth of the amount that President Bill Clinton paid to settle her sexual harrassment suit. Of the $ 850,000 that Mr Clinton paid, Paula gets only $ 200,000. The rest of the money will be divided among her lawyers and a conservative think tank that supported her. The settlement was tied up in the court since January when Mr Clinton sent Jones an $ 850,000 cheque to end her suit. David Pyke, attorney from Dallas Firm of Rader, Fisher, Campbell and Pyke, which hammered out the settlement with Mr Clinton’s lawyers, $ get 283,000. Lawyer Joseph Commarata was quoted as saying that he and fellow attorney gilbert Davis, who quit when jones refused a 750,000 presidential settlement more than a year ago, get $ 350,000, some of which will come from Jones future earnings. The Rutherford Institute,
the conservative think tank, gets $ 100,000. |
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WASHINGTON, March 6 (PTI) — US President Bill Clinton has said no to Italy’s claim to a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. At a joint press conference with Italy’s visiting Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema here yesterday, Mr Clinton refused to go beyond Germany and Japan in being country-specific when the issue was raised by an Italian correspondent. Mr Clinton, however, said that the US position refusing to name Italy should not be viewed as anti-Italian. For the USA, he said, Italy was a critical country in so many ways. “The United States’ longstanding policy in favour of expanding the Security Council to include Japan and Germany is largely because of the size of their economies and their influence, and their importance for that reason,” he said. “We have recognised that there are countries in the developing world that should have more permanent memberships. So, we have been for expansion in the size of the Security Council to guarantee certain continents and regions a permanent position.” Observers here said that
this had been the consistent position the USA had taken
from the very beginning since the Clinton Administration
began considering the revision of permanent membership. |
China ‘stole’ US nuclear secrets WASHINGTON, March 6 (UNI) — Working with nuclear secrets stolen from a US government laboratory, China has made a leap in the development of nuclear weapons: the miniaturisation of its bombs, says the New York Times, quoting administration officials. The daily says until recently, China’s nuclear weapons designs were a generation behind those of the USA, largely because Beijing was unable to produce small warheads that could be launched from a single missile at multiple targets and form the backbone of a modern nuclear force. But by the mid-1990’s, China had built and tested such small bombs, a breakthrough that officials say was accelerated by the theft of US nuclear secrets from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The espionage is believed to have occurred in the mid-1980s, officials said. But it was not detected until 1995, when American experts analysing Chinese nuclear test results found similarities to America’s most advanced miniature warhead, the W-88. By the next year, government investigators had identified a suspect, an American scientist at Los Alamos Laboratory, where the atomic bomb was first developed. The investigators also concluded that Beijing was continuing to steal secrets from the government’s major nuclear weapons laboratories, which had been increasingly opened to foreign visitors since the end of the cold war. The White House was told of the full extent of China’s spying in the summer of 1997, on the eve of the first US-Chinese summit meeting in eight years—a meeting intended to dramatise the success of President Clinton’s efforts to improve relations with Beijing. White House officials say they took the allegations seriously, as proof of this, they cite Mr Clinton’s ordering the laboratories within six months to improve security. But some US officials assert that the White House sought to minimise the espionage issue for policy reasons. “This conflicted with their China policy,” the daily quoted a US official having said. “It undercut the administration’s efforts to have a strategic partnership with the Chinese.” The daily says the White House denies the assertions. “The idea that we tried to cover up or downplay these allegations to limit the damage to UN-Chinese relations is absolutely wrong,” said Mr Gary Samore, the senior National Security Council official who handled the issue. Yet a reconstruction by
the New York Times reveals that throughout the
government, the response to the nuclear theft was marked
by delays, inaction and scepticism — even though
senior intelligence officials regarded it as one of the
most damaging spy cases in recent history. |
12 per cent hike in China’s defence budget BEIJING, March 6 (PTI) — Amid global concern of a China threat, the nearly 3 million-strong Chinese armed forces today received a massive 12.7 per cent hike in their defence budget for 1999. The enhanced military budget was proposed by Finance Minister Xiang Huaicheng in a speech to China’s Parliament in which he said the government planned to spend 104.65 billion yuan ($ 12.6 billion) this year to maintain and modernise the world’s largest army, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA). Military analysts said the hike would help the PLA to carry on with its ambitious modernisation plans and emerge as a lean but mean armed force. However, they believe China’s actual military spending might be five times greater than officially reported as some arms purchases were not publicised. It’s no secret that the budget officially revealed by the Chinese only reflects part of their actual spending so as to deflect international criticism, an analyst said. He pointed out that China
had pursued an ambitious military modernisation drive
focusing on high-technology warfare since the 1991 Gulf
war, which glaringly highlighted the PLA’s military
backwardness in an era of cruise missiles and
laser-guided precision bombs. |
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COLOMBO, March 6 (PTI) — The Sri Lankan authorities have begun preliminary investigations into allegations of the existence of mass graves of hundreds of Tamil civilians reported to have disappeared after the army recaptured the northern Jaffna peninsula from LTTE rebels four years ago. A team of forensic specialists was flown to Jaffna yesterday, in a military aircraft along with local and foreign journalists to formally begin ‘pre-exhumation’ procedures at Chammani village near Jaffna where over 300 civilians are alleged to have been buried. After obtaining the required judicial permission from a magistrate for this purpose, the police and forensic investigators collected the soil samples from the site to check whether the area had been dug recently to remove evidence, official sources said. International human rights
organisations have alleged that over 600 Tamils went
missing after the army took over the Peninsula in 1995. |
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STOCKHOLM, March 6 (UNI) — A well-known social scientist Prof Gunnar Myrdal, was a British spy during World War II, according to the Swedish armed forces. Professor Myrdal, who later served as Sweden’s Ambassador to India and was a friend of Jawaharlal Nehru, also contributed much economic intelligence to the allies. These facts emerged when the Swedish Government released classified material on Thursday. From the declassified material it transpired that Professor Myrdal, during the period in question, was suspected by the armed forces of providing Britain with “economic intelligence during the war”. The declassified document was entitled “Great Britain’s and Their Allies’ Espionage in Sweden”. Professor Myrdal’s wife, Alva, was also registered for information gathering, it said. However, the couple’s son, Mr Jan Myrdal, a controversial Swedish writer, has for quite a long time steadfastly maintained that both his parents were Nazi spies as well as bona fide Hitler supporters. The report was submitted
to the government in December. |
Khmer Rouge military chief held PHNOM PENH, March 6 (AFP) — Khmer Rouge military chief Ta Mok has been arrested by Cambodian Government forces, a senior official told AFP here today. “It is true that Ta Mok has been arrested, but I do not want to give any details on the arrest at this stage,” co-Defence Minister Tea-Banh said. The one-legged Ta Mok — also known as “the Butcher” — was the latest senior Khmer Rouge figure at large after Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea quit the movement in December. During the brutal “killing fields” 1975-79 Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia — during which up to two million perished through torture, execution, overwork or starvation — Ta Mok served as Pol Pot’s military chief. Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998. Ta Mok has since led rebel
forces, whose numbers have dwindled in recent years,
against Phnom Penh troops. |
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| Poppy fields destroyed BANGKOK: The Myanmar authorities have destroyed 7,094 acres (2,847 hectares) of poppy fields in the country’s hillside regions in the opium growing season, state-run media reported. The poppy fields, located in eastern and northeastern regions, were destroyed between November and February, TV Myanmar said in a dispatch monitored here on Friday. Eastern Myanmar forms part of the infamous “Golden Triangle” poppy-growing region, which includes areas of Thailand and Laos. — AFP “News At Ten” off 3 found dead Ice melting Kiley dead Gen Noriega |
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