Jamaat, Hizbul leaders ‘pocket’ funds
LONDON, March 14 — Huge funds have been raised abroad in the name of Kashmir in the past decade and channelled to militant and political leaders on both sides of the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, a top militant leader has said.

MANAMA, BAHRAIN: Bahraini leader Sheik Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, makes his first address to the nation, in Manama, Saturday, pledging to follow his late fathers pro-Western policies. Sheik Hamad took power earlier this month after the sudden death of his father, Sheik Isa, who ruled Bahrain for 38 years. The tiny Gulf island is a key US ally and hosts the regional base for the US Navy's 5th Fleet.
— AP/PTI

• Duty-free imports of tea, garments offered to Lanka

LTTE challenges US anti-terror law
WASHINGTON, March 14 — Two groups — Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran — which were designated by the Clinton Administration as foreign terrorist organisations have challenged the US decision in American court.

Blasts may queer pitch for talks
PARIS, March 14 — Serbs and ethnic Albanians were gathering here today for more talks to end the war in Kosovo, with the USA and European Union pressing for a swift peace deal despite deadly bomb blasts echoing in the background.

Oil prices fall causes overconsumption
UNITED NATIONS, March 14 — The UN is worried that a sharp drop in oil prices is triggering an overconsumption of energy and a rise in demand for luxury cars and heavy duty motor vehicles.

Taliban, Oppn agree on coalition govt

ASHGABAT (Turkmenistan), March 14 (Reuters) — Afghanistan’s warring parties agreed today at UN-mediated talks in the capital of this CIS nation to form a coalition government, exchange prisoners and continue efforts to end years of bloody conflict.

"Both sides agreed to release 20 prisoners each as soon as possible through the ICRC international committee of the Red Cross,’’ they said in a joint statement.

"Both sides agreed to form a shared executive, legislature and judiciary,’’ added the statement issued by the United Nations Special Mission to Afghanistan (UNSMA) on behalf of the two rivals.

Representatives from the purist Taliban militia and the northern-based Opposition coalition held a second round of secret talks in a bid to end the conflict.

The talks were held at the secluded botanical gardens complex and were the second round in as many months to be held in the former Soviet republic. The two sides said in the statement they were to meet again to hammer out outstanding issues.

"Both sides agreed to hold the next round of talks preferably inside Afghanistan at a mutually agreed venue as soon as practical," the statement said.

The statement said the talks took place "in a spirit of sincerity, mutual respect and frankness".

The agreement came after four days of UN-mediated talks in Turkmenistan between the ruling Taliban Islamic Movement and the northern Opposition, which controls about 10 per cent of Afghanistan’s territory along its northern border.

The Taliban have imposed a strict interpretation of Islam in the remaining 90 per cent of Afghanistan it controls, barring women from work and girls from school.

Meanwhile, reports from Islamabad said Pakistan hailed the agreement between neighbouring Afghanistan’s warring parties to form a shared government, calling it a step towards lasting peace.

"It’s a very good start for finding a negotiated solution to establish durable peace in Afghanistan," Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz told Reuters.

KABUL (AFP): The United Nations officially returned to Afghanistan this morning, ending nearly a seven month absence.

"I am very pleased to come to the country for which I am responsible and with this the official return of UN Expatriates officially begins today," Michael Sackett, Director for the UN’s World Food Programme said.

The UN And most foreign personnel were evacuated in August last year after local protests against US Missile strikes on Afghan soil resulted in the killing of a UN officer.

Jamaat, Hizbul leaders ‘pocket’ funds

LONDON, March 14 (PTI) — Huge funds have been raised abroad in the name of Kashmir in the past decade and channelled to militant and political leaders on both sides of the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, a top militant leader has said.

"The Jamaat-i-Islami, main constituent of the Hurriyat Conference, along with its militant wing, the Hizbul Mujaheedin, have ... collected hundreds of thousands of money in the USA, and Europe, mainly the UK and Saudi Arabia", leaders of the Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Party Hashim Qureshi has said.

In his just published book from Pakistan, "Kashmir: Unveiling the Truth", Mr Qureshi has charged that though the money was collected for relief work in Kashmir most of it went into clandestine accounts of Jamaat leaders as well as other militant leaders of Pak-occupied Kashmir and Kashmir.

The book portrays in graphic details vain efforts by Pakistan’s ISI to rope the author and some other Kashmiri leaders in exile here to lure youth from the Kashmir valley for terrorist camps in Pakistan after which he fled Pakistan.

"Get us some young people for training from the valley so that they could be made to fight India on their return", Mr Qureshi quotes top ISI directors as telling him.

"I told them you yourself are an occupying force ... and you want to give us arms to fight India. Such a struggle can only serve your objectives, we will not be party to any struggle which... uses our young people as gun fodder", he says.

The ISI subsequently picked up self-styled JKLF Chairman Amanullah Khan, "a man who hated Kashmiris" to run the terror campaign in Jammu and Kashmir, he says.

USA supplies arms to Arabs and Israel

DUBAI, March 14 (PTI) — The United States of America has concluded deals to supply sophisticated fighters, missiles and other arms worth billions of dollars to the Arab countries region even as it maintained that Israel will have the military edge over its adversaries in the region.

U.S. Defence Secretary William Cohen, who toured the countries in the region to drum up support for continuing air raids on Iraq, succeeded in keeping up a steady flow of arms to one of the most volatile regions.

Mr Cohen last week approved to Cairo $ 3.2 billion in F-16 fighters and Patriot anti-missile batteries that have become a part of the defence system of many countries here after the 1991 Iraq-Kuwait war.

In the long run, Egypt will buy 24 advanced F-16 fighters, each costing $ one billion, acquire 200 M1A1 tanks and a Patriot-3 missile battery comprising 32 missiles, according to the deal closed during Mr Cohen’s Egypt visit. The purchases will be financed partly by the $ 1.5 billion annual military aid the U.S.A gives to Egypt.

Mr Cohen, who ended his week-long nine-nation tour in Israel on Friday, affirmed the U.S.A's commitment to ensure that Tel Aviv’s military power remained "qualitatively" superior to that of the Arab countries.

The U.S.A has proposed to sell the Kuwaiti army 48 U.S. howitzers which was opposed by the Kuwaiti parliamentarians, who said the $ 496 million Paladin guns were not suited for the army and that the government decision was to please Washington.

The U.S. and British fighters extensively use the bases in Kuwait for monitoring flights over southern Iraq.

Mr Cohen also visited Abu Dhabi where he reportedly discussed the UAE decision, announced last year, to buy 80 F16 fighters worth $ six billion and missiles including Amraams worth $ two billion.

The U.S.A now proposes to sell the sophisticated Amraam air-to-air missiles to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain while Israel has already stockpiled them.

The U.S.A Defence Secretary also visited Qatar which had openly criticised the U.S. Bombings on Iraq.

While negotiating most of the sales, the United States of America played up the perceived threat from Iraq whose military backbone has been broken through the sanctions and weapons’ inspections and from Iran which now has a moderate President in Mohammed Khatami who has sought friendship from Iran’s neighbours and the west.

Foreign Secy in Colombo for SAARC meeting

COLOMBO, March 14 (PTI) — Indian Foreign Secretary K. Raghunath arrived here today to take part in the SAARC Foreign Secretaries conference beginning tomorrow at the hill resort town of Nuwara Eliya in central Sri Lanka.

Mr Raghunath along with his Pakistani counterpart Shamshad Ahmed, who is arriving here tonight, would take part in the SAARC standing committee meeting starting tomorrow.

Besides preparing the ground work for SAARC council of ministers conference scheduled to begin from Thursday the two were expected to work out a broad agenda for one-to-one meetings between Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Sartaz Aziz.

Soon after his arrival Mr Raghunath accompanied by the Indian High Commissioner to Colombo, Mr Shivshakar Menon left for the Nuwara Eliya where the SAARC Programme Committee meeting was under way since yesterday.

Pakistan High Commission officials here said Shamshad Ahmed was expected to reach Nuwara Eliya late tonight.

Both Mr Raghunath and Ahmed were expected to begin a series of informal meetings from tomorrow to prepare a detailed agenda for the talks between the Foreign Ministers of the two countries.

Jaswant Singh and Mr Sartaz Aziz were scheduled to arrive here on Wednesday.

Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry officials said the SAARC Programming Committee today discussed calendar of activities under the integrated programme of activities (IPA). It also examined a consolidated report prepared by an independent expert group on the future course of action to be taken by SAARC.

Discussions were held on the report on SAARC Audio Visual Exchange (SAVE), reports of various technical committees and report finalised by the SAARC secretariat on the governing board and budget of the SAARC Meterological Research Centre (SMRC), the SAARC documentation centre, tuberculosis centre, agricultural information centre and SAARC’s human resources development centre.

Delegates from seven SAARC countries: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka and officials from SAARC secretariat took part in the meeting.

Duty-free imports of tea, garments offered to Lanka

COLOMBO, March 14 (PTI) — India has offered to permit duty free imports of specified quantities of tea and garments to Sri Lanka in an attempt to break the deadlock over the implementation of the recently concluded India-Sri Lanka free trade treaty, official sources said.

The treaty signed between Prime Minister, A B Vajpayee and Sri Lankan President, Chandrika Kumaratunga ran into trouble after New Delhi withdrew its offer on the last minute to permit duty free imports of tea and rubber, which were of some export value to Sri Lanka.

However, bowing to the pressure from domestic traders and producer lobbies, India has included both tea and rubber in the negative list of items which would not qualify for duty concessions.

After exchange of negative lists early this month, both countries continued negotiations to narrow down their differences during which India offered to permit duty free import of limited quantities of tea and garments, the source said.

Under the fresh terms India has offered to permit $ 10 million of duty free imports of tea and few million pieces of garments. However, Colombo was yet to react on the Indian proposal.

The differences between the countries were expected to finalised totally early next week with the arrival of the Indian External Affairs Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh and Foreign Secretary, K Raghunath.

Five Pak women’s profile of courage

ISLAMABAD, March 14 (IPS) — It takes more than valour to achieve success in patriarchal Pakistan, said five prominent Pakistani women, among them a former Prime Minister and a rights activist. Benazir Bhutto. "It is not easy being a woman in Pakistan". Leader of the Opposition here, she spoke of the "obstacles’’ in the way of women.

"For women leaders, the obstacles are greater, the demands are greater, the barriers are greater, and the double standards are greater and so are the expectations of those who look at us as role models,’’ she said.

Together with writer Fehmida Riaz, lawyer and rights activist Hina Jillani, dancer Indu Mitha and educationist Zubeida Jalal, the five profiled their "lives of courage’’ at a meeting organised here to commemorate International Women’s Day.

Men see women as objects, said dancer Mitha. "Is it my fault that I am a woman?" she asked.

Quoting one of her teachers, Maharaj Ghulam Hussain Kathak, she said: "When a woman dances the audience forgets the dance and concentrates on her body, and when a male performs his dance is appreciated not body.’’

Mitha, who has been privately teaching classical dance to girls free of charge since 1952, said she is a dancer in a society that considers dancing "obscene and vulgar" and believes that it is not for the "sharifzadi" (from a respected family).

Bhutto lambasted the "double standards’’ in society. Quoting, former British Premier Margaret Thatcher, whom she admires, she said, "If a woman is tough, she is pushy. If a man is tough, gosh, he’s a great leader.’’

In Pakistan, professional women are derided as "pushy, aggressive, cunning, shrewd or strident’’. "These if applied to men in politics would be badges of honour,’’ she declared.

"I once asked a male leader what we female leaders could learn from them and he replied in one word — ‘intrigues’.’’

According to Ms Bhutto, "I believe women leaders are driven by a moral or idealistic passion whereas male leaders love power.’’

"I wondered if my brothers would have been used against me if I had not been a woman. I wondered whether, in different ways, my mother and brother had been used to wage a psychological war against me because women have greater emotional feelings.’’

She said that her husband — in prison on corruption charges since her ouster from power in 1996 — is a "victim of male rage felt by my opponents’’.

Prominent lawyer Jillani has fought for gender justice. Talking about how she became a lawyer, she said it was "anger against statesponsored injustices which forced me to enter courtrooms’’ in the seventies. Jillani set up the first women’s law firm in Pakistan in 1980 and the first legal aid centre in 1986. Recently ‘Dastak’, a refuge for women, was opened in Lahore.

"For all these years I have retained that outrage so I have been able to fight for human rights and against bonded labour, blasphemy laws ...,’’ she said.

Well-known educationist Zubeida Jalal started a veritable revolution by teaching girls to read and write in remote villages of Balochistan province where women simply did not exist. There they believed that if a girl is educated she will write love letters, Jalal said.

But being a writer and a woman during the martial law years in the early eighties was tough on writer Fehmida Riaz who faced constant harassment forcing her into self-exile in India

"I launched a magazine ‘Awaz’ (voice) believing that criticism of the government is healthy ... the reward - 14 cases including that of sedition were filed against me.’’

"Ultimately after 18 months of persecution I left for India,’’ she said, calling on the audience to guard their constitutional freedoms.

LTTE challenges US anti-terror law

WASHINGTON, March 14 (UNI) — Two groups — Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran — which were designated by the Clinton Administration as foreign terrorist organisations have challenged the US decision in American court.

"They are waging the most significant challenge yet to a 1996 anti-terrorism law and the way the State Department designates US enemies", says The Washington Post. They allege they were designated as terrorists by the Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine K. Albright in October, 1997, based on a mostly secret record and with no advance notice or opportunity to respond.

The daily says the cases attack the constitutionality of the anti-terrorism and effective death penalty act, which was passed to keep terrorist organisations from gaining a foothold in the USA.

The two organisations are among 30 on the State Department’s list, a designation that freezes the groups’ assets in the USA, makes it a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison for Americans who provide them money and denies US visas to group members.

Both groups insisted in court that they do not engage in terrorism, only acts of war with specific targets. The State Department maintains that both organisations have carried out assassinations, bombings and other actions that could threaten Americans at home and abroad, the daily adds.

Under the law, those designated as terrorist organisations have one recourse: they can ask the appellate court to review the administrative record to determine if the finding was unjust. Lawyers for the organisations said the groups have a constitutional right to due process, meaning a chance to be heard before the designations are made.

The daily quotes former Attorney-General Ramsey Clark, representing the LTTE, having said in court papers that the anti-terrorism law is the product of hysteria, arguing that "the demagogic cry of terrorism’’ leads to repressive actions.

Justice Department lawyers said the LTTE were responsible for the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, the slaying of Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993 and a 1996 explosion at the headquarters of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka that killed 100 persons.

Blasts may queer pitch for talks

PARIS, March 14 (AFP) — Serbs and ethnic Albanians were gathering here today for more talks to end the war in Kosovo, with the USA and European Union pressing for a swift peace deal despite deadly bomb blasts echoing in the background.

Round one of the Kosovo peace conference, at Rambouillet chateau, near the French capital, went on for 17 days last month but failed to end the year-old conflict in the heart of central Europe.

This time the two sides, and their US, EU and Russian mediators, are meeting inside Paris itself — even as the violence continues in the Serbian province.

Two bombs planted in garbage bins at Podujevo town, and a third in a market at Mitrovica, left six people dead and 66 injured yesterday, according to the Serbian-run media centre in Kosovo’s main city pristina.

It also said a 21-year-old soldier was killed, and three wounded, when their unit was hit by mortar and automatic weapons fire in a clash yesterday with ethnic Albanian rebels near Vucitrn, also in the north.

There was no immediate indication on to who was behind the bombings. But analysts suspected the perpetrators were trying to derail the difficult peace process sponsored by the six-nation contract Group.

Oil prices fall causes overconsumption

UNITED NATIONS, March 14 (IPS) — The UN is worried that a sharp drop in oil prices is triggering an overconsumption of energy and a rise in demand for luxury cars and heavy duty motor vehicles.

"Current growth in energy consumption is driven in part by declining oil prices,’’ warns a 23-page UN report released last week.

The price of a barrel of crude oil has dropped from about $ 20 in early 1998 to about $ 10 — the lowest in decades — sparking a cash crisis among petroleum-exporting countries. On the flip side, the rise in oil consumption is threatening to set off a greater demand for consumer products such as gas-guzzling motor vehicles and high-energy home appliances.

The decline in oil prices also has resulted in sharp cuts in government spending, including postponement of infrastructure projects, in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Nigeria and Algeria — all of whom depend heavily on petroleum exports for their foreign exchange earnings.

Titled "A Comprehensive Review of Changing Consumption and Production Patterns’’, the report will go before a meeting of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development April 19-30.

Meningitis kills 26
JOHANNESBURG: At least 26 persons have died in an outbreak of meningitis in Senegl’s Diourbel City. Health officials on Friday said all necessary steps had been taken to contain the disease. Last month, meningitis killed more than 200 persons, in Senegal’s southern and eastern regions. Health officials said the disease usually hits the country during March-end and June, but it arrived earlier this year. — ANI

Stay atop Everest
KATHMANDU: Babu Chiri, a Nepali sherpa, has planned an overnight stay in a tent on Mount Everest. Speaking to reporters, Chiri said his aim was to spend 20 hours without an oxygen cylinder on the world’s highest peak. The 32-year-old Nepali sherpa, who has climbed Everest seven times before, said he would climb with a Swedish expedition and attempt to stay on top of the 8,848-metre-high Everest on April 26. — ANI

Living with snakes
KUALA LUMPUR: A 51-year-old Malaysian has set a new world record for the longest stay with poisonous snakes when he ended a 35-day stay with 250 reptiles in a cage on Saturday. Mohamed Noor Abdullah, a former zoo keeper, broke the previous record of 27 days set by his son-in-law Othman Ayeb in December, the official Bernama news agency reported. During the feat, Noor said he found the snakes had a pack leader when one of the reptiles prevented a group of 30 others from attacking him. — AFP

Insurance scam?
LONDON: Britain and the USA are investigating whether Lloyd’s of the London insurance market is being used by "American gangsters" as a cover for scams that could cost hundreds of millions of pounds in lost claims, The Sunday Times reported. Several British firms have been raided during the four-month investigation, codenamed "Operation Chain", Lloyd’s spokesman Nick Doak confirmed on Saturday night. — AP

Better policing
WASHINGTON: US President Bill Clinton has announced a series of new measures aimed at restoring shaky public confidence in the police. Nationwide crime was at its lowest level for decades, he said in his weekly radio address on Saturday. But Mr Clinton said he was "deeply disturbed by recent allegations of serious police misconduct and continued reports of racial profiling (racial bias) that have shaken some communities’ faith in the police who are there to protect them," he said. — AFP

No norm relaxation
BEIJING: President Jiang Zemin has ruled out relaxation of China’s controversial one-child family planning norm and urged planners instead to concentrate on rural areas to further curb population growth in the world’s most populated country. Speaking at a conference on population control and resource and environmental protection here on Saturday, Mr Jiang said population control policies deal with a wide range of difficult issues and must not be relaxed. — PTI