Pak SC allows visits to Sethi
ISLAMABAD, May 20 — Pakistan’s Supreme Court today ordered the authorities to allow the family and lawyers of detained journalist Najam Sethi, accused of anti-state activities, to meet him twice a week and give him medicines and newspapers.

Death penalty for Kurdish rebel chief
ANKARA, May 20 — A Turkish court today sentenced a top Kurdish rebel leader to death on charges of murder and Kurdish separatism.

Russia, Serbia endorse G-8 plan

BELGRADE, May 20 (AFP) — The Yugoslav President, Mr Slobodin Milosevic and the Russian envoy, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, agreed on a settlement of the Kosovo conflict within the framework of the UN and Belgrade’s assistance in implementing a G-8 peace plan, a communiqué issued here said.

The two men “had a detailed discussion on the whole of the Kosovo problem and the ways to resolve it,” the communiqué published by Tanjug news agency yesterday said at the end of Mr Chernomyrdin’s visit.

They “consider that the solution can only be political and in the framework of the UN with direct and active participation of Yugoslavia in formulating options based on the G-8 principles,” it added.

Talks would continue in Belgrade on Monday and Tuesday next week.

The G-8 groups Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the USA and Russia.

The Belgrade communiqué was published after the Russian Embassy here said Mr Chernomyrdin wound up non-stop talks with Mr Milosevic and left for Moscow after more than six hours to find a diplomatic solution to the Kosovo conflict.

Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin and Mr Milosevic had discussed a plan by Russia and the seven top industrialised nations to end the Balkan conflict that has left 800,000 Kosovo Albanians displaced and hundreds of people killed.

In a brief statement, Mr Milosevic’s office said: “The solution can be found only politically and within the United Nations and with the active and direct participation of Yugoslavia, starting with the principles of G-8”. It said talks would continue on Monday and Tuesday in Belgrade.

Terms of the G-8 plan include withdrawal of President Milosevic’s military, police and paramilitary forces” from Kosovo. It also include deployment of international civil and security presence — in Kosovo, while NATO wants a well-armed international force with NATO at its core.

Meanwhile, NATO admitted today that a missile fired by one of its warplanes during overnight raids on Belgrade had gone astray, accepting responsibility for a direct hit on a hospital that left three patients dead.

The missile went astray during an attack on military barracks around 1 a.m. (local time), alliance spokesman Jamie Shea said. “Seven laser-guided bombs hit the targets,” he said.

Hospital Director Radisav Scepanovic said two bombs or missiles which struck the hospital damaged the gynaecological department and the children’s wards and injured male and female nurses.

The Dragisa Misovic Hospital is situated in the same residential district as a villa belonging to Yogoslav President Slovadan Milosevic which was hit by a missile earlier in the NATO campaign.

The strikes today, the strongest so far in Belgrade since the NATO campaign started on March 24, came hours after President Milosevic accepted principles of a Kosovo peace plan but demanded that details must be negotiated directly with the United Nations.

BEIJING: China today demanded a timely probe into NATO’s bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia and cautioned the USA against side-stepping the issue by “fabricating groundless charges” like theft of American nuclear weapons technology.

Pak SC allows visits to Sethi

ISLAMABAD, May 20 (AP) — Pakistan’s Supreme Court today ordered the authorities to allow the family and lawyers of detained journalist Najam Sethi, accused of anti-state activities, to meet him twice a week and give him medicines and newspapers.

“I am very happy that some of his human rights have been restored and I will be able to see him,” Sethi’s wife, Ms Jugnoo Mohsin, told reporters.

“But the fact remains that a dignified man was humiliated. They tortured him for eight hours, tore his clothes... He could have died during all this,” she said.

Ms Mohsin submitted an affidavit to the Supreme Court saying her husband was beaten “black and blue” for eight hours by the agents of a domestic investigation agency after he was taken from his home in Lahore on May 8.

Since his arrest, Mr Sethi had been in solitary confinement and had not been told what crime he was alleged to have committed, said one of his lawyers Mr Khalid Ranjha.

“He has lost weight and is ill,” he said.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government accuses Sethi, an owner and editor of the weekly English-language magazine, The Friday Times, of suspected links with RAW, India’s intelligence agency.

But Ms Mohsin dismissed the charges and said her husband’s arrest is a “blatant attempt to curb press freedom.”

“The government wants to close down The Friday Times... It is a press freedom issue,” she said.

India violating LoC: Pak

ISLAMABAD, May 20 (PTI) — Pakistan claimed today that India had violated the Line of Control (LoC) and said it “bode ill” for efforts to improve ties even as Pakistani Army chief Gen Pervez Musharraf warned of “serious consequences” to what he called a “military build-up” by New Delhi across the border.

India is indulging in violations of the Line of Control with heavy artillery shelling”, Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Tariq Altaf claimed here and said: “This would bode ill for the efforts to improve atmosphere since February this year”.

He told reporters that the Indian allegations of the Pakistani Army trying to infiltrate militants into India were untrue, and claimed: “The Indians are, as always, seeking shelter behind the bogey of infiltrations to justify their unwarranted military action”.

Gen Musharraf said the Pakistani Army was “extremely alert” to the “present military build-up by India across the border”, and said “any effort to target Pakistan or violate the Line of Control would produce serious consequences”.

Quoting the Army chief Brig Rashid Qureshi, chief of the Army controlled Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), also denied earlier Pakistani media reports that Pakistan’s Army had captured several Indian posts inside the India-controlled areas.

Brig Qureshi, however, claimed at least 70 Indian soldiers had been killed by the Pakistani Army during the latest skirmishes across the LoC.

He warned India against any move to use fighter aircraft against militants holding up in the Kargil and Dras sectors of the LoC and said it would affect Pakistan and have serious repercussions.

Judicial probe into Zardari incident

ISLAMABAD, May 20 (ANI) — Pakistan Prime Minister Mohammad Nawaz Sharif has ordered a judicial probe into the alleged suicide attempt by Senator Asif Ali Zardari, the jailed husband of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

A state television report said that Mr Sharif had requested the Sindh High Court to appoint an officer to look into the matter.

Zardari was rushed to Aga Khan Hospital in Karachi on Wednesday after he was found in an unconscious state, bleeding profusely from the mouth.

“He (Zardari) was profusely bleeding from his mouth and his face was all covered with blood”. Zardari’s lawyer, Farooq Naik, told reporters at Aga Khan Hospital here. Naik, who held up Zardari’s blood-soaked shirt, said emergency ward doctors had told him that the blood seems to be coming out “from a vertical cut on his tongue made by sharp weapon, like a knife”.

There were counter-claims surrounding the cause of Zardari’s injuries, with police saying it was self-inflicted and officials from Benazir’s opposition Pakistan People’s Party accusing the authorities of making claims to cover up the torture of Zardari.

Karachi police chief Farooq Amin Qureshi said Zardari had injured himself so as to keep interrogators away. “This is the second time he has done that. Earlier it was the suicide attempt with a broken glass, now he has bit his tongue”. Qureshi told reporters at the hospital. “And the only motive behind all this is to avoid interrogation”, he said.

PPP provincial leader Nisar Khuhro told a news conference outside the hospital that the party had called a strike for Thursday in Bhutto’s home province of Sindh to protest against the way Zardari had been treated.

In a letter Benazir wrote to Sindh Governor Moinuddin Haider, she said: “I draw you attention to the fact that my husband, Senator Zardari’s life is in danger at the hands of state terrorism and criminals posing as policemen”.

Pullout from Lebanon in a year: Barak

JERUSALEM, May 20 (AP) — Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak says he can get Israeli troops out of Lebanon ahead of the one-year target date he has set — and he wants to form a broad-based coalition to lower Palestinian expectations in the peace process.

Barak, a former armed forces chief of staff, also said in interviews published today that handing over parts of the West Bank would be extremely painful for him.

The Prime Minister-elect said he would not conduct negotiations with Israel’s neighbours until he has established his government.

Barak has 45 days from next Tuesday — the day the final results are formally published in government journal “Reshumot” to form his coalition. Negotiations begin on Sunday.

The final results were released late yesterday, after the votes of soldiers and diplomats were counted.

Death penalty for Kurdish rebel chief

ANKARA, May 20 (AP) — A Turkish court today sentenced a top Kurdish rebel leader to death on charges of murder and Kurdish separatism.

Semdim Sakik’s sentencing was taken as a sign that Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, who will be tried on the same charges, would also be sentenced to death.

Sakik, who was captured by Turkish soldiers in northern Iraq in 1998, was held responsible for the deaths of 283 persons in 191 acts of violence carried out by the Kurdistan Workers Party PKK.

Irish peace talks
LONDON: British Premier Tony Blair has closed three hours of fruitless negotiations on Northern Ireland at Downing Street by ordering the Catholic and Protestant representatives to return to his office later for further discussions. The goal of the talks on Wednesday was to arrive at a compromise between the two sides that would allow implementation of the peace agreement from Easter, 1998. Blair has worked with his Irish counterpart Bertie Ahern to devise a formula for a compromise, but that formula was rejected as “insufficient” by Ulster unionist leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner David Trimble. — DPA

Major’s long-lost kin
LONDON: Former British Conservative Prime Minister John Major has secretly met a half-brother he had not known existed, The Times newspaper reported on Thursday. The unnamed American is the son of Major’s father, Tom Major-Ball, a circus artist who travelled frequently in the USA. The long-lost relative is said to be older than Major’s eldest brother, Terry Major-Ball, who is 67. — AFP

Ex-spy convicted
STUTTGART (Germany): A 79-year-old former Gestapo agent was convicted on Thursday on charges of assisting the murder of 17,000 Jews at the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland. The court sentenced Alfons Goetzfrid to 10 years in prison, bringing to a close what could be the last major war crimes trial in Germany. During the trial, Goetzfrid denied personally killing anyone, although prosecutors said he previously confessed to killing 500 people at the camp himself on November 3, 1943. Goetzfrid said he only helped reload weapons. — AP

Two acquitted
PARIS: A jury acquitted notorious French mercenary Bob Denard and one of his men of their role in the 1989 assassination of Comoran President Ahmed Abdallah. Prosecutor Paul Bilger earlier called for a 12 to 15-year sentence against the 70-year-old Denard and his former lieutenant, Dominique Ma Lacrino, 46. — AFP

Death penalty for 4
KARACHI: An anti-terrorist court on Wednesday sentenced to death four activists of a small ethnic party, based in southern Sindh province. The men were found guilty of the 1998 killing of a paramilitary soldier who died when a group of men ambushed his Army vehicle. The four men were among 18 persons being tried for the killing. — AP

Forgotten leader
BEIJING: After former Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang tearfully visited student demonstrators in Tiananmen square 10 years ago, he lost much more than his job at the top. For sympathising with the demonstrators and appearing publicly with them Zhao was replaced by current head of the ruling party Jiang Zemin, and stripped of his freedom. Now aged 79, he lives in forced seclusion. Guards prevent even close friends from visiting. — AP

Monk controversy
BANGKOK: A council of Buddhist monks that oversees Thailand’s clergy has refused to defrock an Abbot accused of hearsay and preying on the poor, local papers reported on Thursday. The decision by the Supreme Sangha Council on Wednesday was jeered by more than 100 protesters and lamented by the Secretary-General of Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai’s Cabinet, who attended the meeting. — AP

Climbing records
KATHMANDU: Two Nepalese nationals, including a 15-year-old schoolboy, have set new records in climbing Mt Everest, giving a boost to mountaineering in the country. Arvin Timilsina set a record by reaching an altitude of 8,700 metres on the highest peak, but fell short of becoming the youngest human atop Mt Everest by a marginal distance of 148 metres. The other record was set by professional mountaineer Babu Chhiri Sherpa, 33, who spent 21 hours on the highest peak without an oxygen cylinder. — IANS