Germany eases laws on immigration
BONN, May 23 — Germany has enacted a new liberalised immigration law making it easier for many of the country’s seven million foreigners to become citizens after its Parliament reforms the controversial citizenship rules.

‘Titanic’ inspired rescue work
SINGAPORE, May 23 — The Swedish Captain of the cruise ship that burned and sank off Malaysia said the film ‘‘Titanic’’, motivated his crew’s training and that the evacuation of about 1,100 persons went like clockwork.

A US security blunder
WASHINGTON, May 23 — After President Bill Clinton took the office, the Energy Department allowed two of its most sensitive nuclear weapon labs to halt background checks on foreign guests to cope with soaring numbers of visiting Chinese and Russian scientists. Officials now concede the move was a security blunder.

Over 400 die in Pak cyclone

KARACHI, May 23 (AP) — Villagers and soldiers recovered at least 400 bodies and rescued thousands of survivors from the receding water of a cyclone that submerged thousands of villages in the southern Sindh province, witnesses and officials said today.

According to PTI, the death toll is 250.

Rescue workers picked up dozens of bodies suspended in trees and dragged many more from bushes and mud as the swollen sea receded leaving behind devastated villages and thousands of persons stranded in water, witnesses said.

Hundreds of persons were still missing and feared drowned, with little hope that their bodies would be found soon, officials said. They feared many bodies had been swept out to sea.

The cyclone smashed into the Arabian Sea coast Thursday packing winds of 273 KPH that submerged thousands of villages in the coastal Thatta and Badin districts of Sind province.

The two districts are located 50 km and 125 km, respectively, from the port city of Karachi.

Soldiers used boats and helicopters to rescue thousands of survivors, but many more remained stranded in remote villages.

“The Government is doing all it can ... But we were not prepared for a calamity of this magnitude,” Sindh Governor Moinuddin Haider told reporters late yesterday.

At least 164 bodies were recovered from Raj Malik village in Thatta district, said an official Dr Mumtaz Uqali, who was interviewed over telephone.

“Bodies were strewn on trees and rolled in mud,” he said. The dead were being buried in mass graves of 10 to 15 bodies, Dr Uqali said.

Yesterday, 11 paramilitary soldiers were swept away by a powerful current during a rescue attempt, Mr Haider said. Their bodies had not yet been found, he said.

“Rescue operations are still going on... We can’t say for sure how many more are dead. The death toll will certainly rise,” said Mr Nazar Mohammad Baloch, a Sindh provincial government official.

Government officials said about 100 fishing boats with more than 6,000 persons are still missing.

Many survivors were suffering from exposure and there was fear of an outbreak of disease as the water recedes, authorities said.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced Rs 50 million ($ one million) in financing for relief efforts, but Mr Haider said at least Rs 300 million ($ 6 million) was needed.

Water and power supply lines were destroyed, as was the communications network. It will take months to restore these utilities, Mr Haider said.

A large number of cattle also were killed, authorities said.

Villagers said they received no prior warning of the cyclone. Mr Haider said residents of the area were warned but did not evacuate their villages.

Many of the fishing villages battered by the cyclone were small and poor, said residents of the area. Most homes in these villages are made of flimsy material, like straw and mud.

Pak Army ‘duplicates’ Afghan tactics

LONDON, May 23 (PTI) — The Pakistani Army is duplicating Afghan war tactics in Jammu and Kashmir in a bid to dominate strategic heights in key sectors along the Line of Control (LoC) overlooking vital highways, Jane’s Defence Weekly has said.

‘‘The incursions by Afghan mercenaries in the Dras-Kargil sector appear to be part of a plan to dominate the strategic heights,’’ Jane’s quoted a South Asian expert at the Royal United Service Institution, Mr Damon Bristow, as saying in its latest issue.

“The incursion appears much bigger and more heavily armed than the Indian authorities are letting out,” the prestigious weekly said. “It could well be aimed at cutting off the vital Srinagar-Leh highway,” it said.

“The Harkat-ul-Ansar and its sister group, Lashkar-e-Toiba, are assisted by Pakistan’s military intelligence agency and share the common goal of Pakistan’s complete control of Jammu and Kashmir,” The Telegraph had reported.

These groups are closely linked to the Afghan Taliban and Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.

Mr Bristow said the latest incursion followed a pattern revealed by earlier ones. “Earlier, groups such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Harket after illegally crossing the LoC would concentrate on the South Kashmir hinterland, which had little Indian security presence.”

The sector behind the Verinag mountains was vital as it overlooked the Jammu-Srinagar highway, he said. “So you see the pattern of the mercenaries appears to be to reconnoitre all these vital highways, may be for future conflict calculations.”

Mr Bristow, however, said he did not foresee any conflict escalation from the reported incursions. “There appears no strategic objective as the incursions have been cleared from vital heights overlooking the Srinagar-Leh highway” he said.

“Even if the mercenaries dig in at best they can stay for a month or two, after which a heavy snow would leave them no option, but to cross back into Pakistan,” Mr Bristow said. “There can be no long term stay as their way back through the Deosai marshlands into Baltistan would be treacherous” he added.

He said India would be justified in straffing the area to push the infiltrators out.

“I don’t think Pakistan at this stage would risk a war in support of Kashmiri insurgency,” he said adding the stakes with infusion of nuclear bombs and missiles were too high.

“It appears Pakistan is seeking to provoke India to use airpower so as to attempt to bring Kashmir under international attention again,” Mr Bristow said. It could also be an attempt to deflect attention away from the volatile situation within the country.

The London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies had, in its latest report, warned that Pakistan was facing a very “volatile situation” with the ISI-backed private militia threatening violence.

It said though groups such as the Harkat and the Lashkar were instruments for use by the Pak Army in Kashmir, their actions within the country had sparked off violence “at a level never seen before.”

The Telegraph said in recent years groups such as the Harkat-ul-Ansar had extended their ISI brief in Kashmir and “may pose a serious threat to the security of Pakistan and South Asia.

“Earlier, it was the ISI giving the agenda. In near future, it could be the other way around,” he said.

NATO targets air base in Belgrade
Move to deploy more troops

BELGRADE, May 23 (Reuters) — Serbian anti-aircraft units went into "extraordinary forceful action" in Belgrade early today, unleashing a barrage of fire as low-flying aircraft were heard over the city, the Yugoslav news agency Beta said.

Sirens wailed across the capital some 45-minutes before midnight, giving warning of impending attack.

Residents and the agency reported several explosions at about 2300 GMT yesterday with Beta adding that "sounds of airplanes in low flight were heard".

BRUSSELS (DPA): NATO is preparing to deploy an increased ground force in Kosovo. British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said on Sunday as NATO warplanes took advantage of clear weather to target Serbian military equipment in Kosovo and electrical power facilities in Yugoslavia.

The troops, whose numbers are to increase from a planned 28,000 to between 40,000 and 50,000, could go into the province as Serb forces are withdrawing.

His comments, on BBC TV's "Breakfast with Frost" programme, mark a significant hardening of NATOs stance and follow his intensive visit to Washington.

In Brussels, NATO issued a long list of hits from air strikes over Kosovo, with a spokesman saying that an array of Serbian military equipment had been destroyed, ranging from tanks and ammunition depots to aircraft.

Electrical power in large parts of Yugoslavia was disrupted for a time on Sunday after NATO war planes hit the country's second-largest power plant in the Belgrade suburb of Obrenovac, Serbian radio said the plant suffered severe damage, jeopardising power and drinking water supplies to large portions of Serbia.

Belgrade's Batajnica military air base was also targeted overnight, along with a number of industrial suburbs, according to Belgrade reports.

Air alarm sirens sounded in the capital as Yugoslav anti-aircraft batteries sent up a deafening barrage of fire against the warplanes which were heard over the city.

In addition NATO carried out devastating strikes against communications centres and fuel supplies in the northern province of Vojvodina, along with targets in Kosovo, the Belgrade reports said.

Bomb strikes were also felt in the northern city of Novi Sad and the southern Yugoslav city of Leskovac, where a small airport was hit and three small private planes destroyed, the Beta news agency said.

The escalation in the air strikes coincided with a report by the New York Times that NATO was facing an urgent decision within the next three weeks on whether to deploy ground troops in order to avert a humanitarian catastrophe next winter.

The times quoted senior NATO officials in Brussels as saying the alliance faces a mid-June deadline on the issue deployment of an invasion force — which could number over 150,000, including the initial contingent of peacekeepers and support troops, would be a mammoth undertaking requiring timely decisions on which units to send, reserves to mobilise and tons of armour and ammunition to ship.

UN Council makes progress on deal

LONDON, May 23 (ANI) — The European Union’s envoy to resolve the NATO conflict Mr Martti Ahtisaari has said in Stockholm that Russia and the western powers broadly held similar views on major issues on a Yugoslav deal.

“The important thing is that on the main issues we see eye to eye. Everyone involved in this exercise has accepted the G-8 countries position,” he told reporters.

Key points in agreeing to a joint plan to end the war in Kosovo are timing of events, including a NATO ceasefire, that could bring peace, and NATO’s role in any peacekeeping force for Kosovo.

Russia which opposes NATO bombing, wants to limit the role of NATO troops in any peacekeeping force. “Composition of the military component is not a political issue.In the first instance it is a practical issue,” Mr Ahtisaari said.

The main objective in Kosovo will be that we can create conditions that those out of country or displaced can return.

The UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan who starts an official visit to Sweden on Tuesday, told reporters the Security Council had made some progress in moving towards a resolution on Kosovo.

“There has been some progress in the Security Council but there is still some distance to travel before we have an agreement in hand,” he observed.

Later Mr Ahtisaari met the UN Secretary-General and briefed him on his talks with Russian Balkans envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin and US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott in Moscow.

Meanwhile, the German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has said he would continue to support NATO’s air strikes against Yugoslavia until they achieved their goal, despite weakening public support in Germany for the bombing campaign.

NATO’s desire to minimise both its own casualties and harm to innocent civilians meant the air strikes were taking longer than man people had expected, Mr Schroeder told the newspaper Bill am Sonntag.

Nearly two months into NATO’s offensive, criticism is rising in Germany over the increasing amount of “collateral damage” — in which non-military targets caused by stray missiles and bombs have been hit and civilians killed.

Germany eases laws on immigration

BONN, May 23 (PTI) — Germany has enacted a new liberalised immigration law making it easier for many of the country’s seven million foreigners to become citizens after its Parliament reforms the controversial citizenship rules.

The Bundesrat(the Upper House) gave the final approval to adopt legislation which will come into effect on January 1 next bringing to an end one of the fiercest debates in the five-decade-old post-war Germany.

The new citizenship law envisages granting German passports for the first time to children born to foreign residents who have at least one parent who has been in the country for eight years.

The citizenship reforms package, which was one of the campaign pledges of the ruling coalition of Social Democrats and Greens in the last September elections, has been however, watered down following strong attacks by the Conservatives.

Children, including those born after January 1, 2000, will be allowed dual nationality until the age of 23 and at that age they will have to decide for one passport or the other.

‘Titanic’ inspired rescue work

SINGAPORE, May 23 (AP) — The Swedish Captain of the cruise ship that burned and sank off Malaysia said the film ‘‘Titanic’’, motivated his crew’s training and that the evacuation of about 1,100 persons went like clockwork.

‘‘I don’t know what the Captain of the Titanic was thinking, but as far as I was concerned, everyone had to be saved, whether it was a crew or a passenger. A life is a life,’’ Capt Sven Hartzell, 56, told The Straits Times in an interview published today.

Before his crew saw the disaster film about the sinking of the Titanic cruise liner, he said some were not very attentive during weekly training sessions.

‘‘But after they had seen the film, all of them suddenly became very attentive and followed instructions carefully,’’ he said.

‘‘Perhaps it was because they knew they were working at sea and what they saw in the film could well happen to them.’’

The interview took place yesterday at Mr Hartzell’s hotel in Penang, Malaysia, where he remained to help the authorities with their investigation into the sinking.

In the interview, he gave no clue as to how the fire started in the engine room, when he and his crew became aware of it or why no rescue vessels were called for until the passengers were being put into lifeboats, although they had been herded onto the deck hours before.

Many passengers complained that they were gathered from swimming pools, lounges and other points on the ship and made to wait on the deck, where parties were organised and beer was served. They said there was plenty of time for them to be escorted to their rooms to get dressed and collect valuables. They also felt an earlier call for rescue would have saved them up to six hours in lifeboats on the choppy, pitch-black seas.

Mr Hartzell was quoted in the interview as saying that the passengers were not allowed to go back to their rooms because the fire had knocked out much of the power, and most of the ship was in darkness.

A US security blunder

WASHINGTON, May 23 (AP) — After President Bill Clinton took the office, the Energy Department allowed two of its most sensitive nuclear weapon labs to halt background checks on foreign guests to cope with soaring numbers of visiting Chinese and Russian scientists. Officials now concede the move was a security blunder.

While direct evidence has not emerged of espionage by the visitors, congressional investigators found at least 13 scientists with suspected foreign intelligence ties were allowed into the labs without proper CIA or FBI scrutiny.

Five of those scientists were allowed into the Sandia laboratory at Albuquerque, New Mexico, while eight visited the Los Alamos laboratory, also in New Mexico, that US officials believe had been a target of Chinese espionage for more than 20 years, the investigators said.

Security checks, mandatory before 1994, were reinstated last November amid growing Clinton Administration worries about Chinese espionage at the government’s premier weapon labs.

While US officials had no evidence that nuclear secrets were lost to any of the 4,409 Russian and Chinese visitors between 1994 and 1998, when background checks were reinstated, they had no guarantee that information did not escape.

Envoy’s wife sparks off controversy

COLOMBO, May 23 (PTI) — A UN diplomat’s wife has sparked off a major diplomatic row in Sri Lanka by posing for a photograph alongside a reclining statue of Lord Buddha at a pilgrimage centre in southern Matale.

The Sri Lankan Government has taken strong exception to the “sacrilegious act” and threatened to initiate legal action against her as well as the Buddhist monk who allowed the pictures to be taken, media reports said here today.

“This is a shameful act and an insult to our culture. We must take firm action,” the reports quoted Cultural Affairs Minister Lakshman Jayakody as saying.

The Cultural Department asked the Attorney-General to initiate proceedings and would ask the Foreign Ministry to inform all diplomats here about proper conduct at places of worship, the reports said.

Plea to Pak
ISLAMABAD: The global human rights watchdog Amnesty International (AI) has called on the Pakistan Government to end the death sentence for children, and deplored the re-arrest of Mohammad Salim, (14), on murder charges. Speaking of Salim, Menno Kamminga, a member of the International Executive Committee of the AI, told a press conference: “For a state to kill its children by hanging or by firing squad is a barbaric and blatant disregard of children’s rights.” — DPA

Gaddafi suspect
LONDON: Britain’s Sunday Times says the government is hoping to restore normal relations with Libya in spite of evidence that the country’s leader, Mr Muammar Gaddafi, personally ordered the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing. A foreign office spokesman on Saturday declined to comment, saying the destruction of Pan AM flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, with the loss of 270 lives was now before a Scottish court. — Reuters

Iraqi sanctions toll
BAGHDAD: Nearly 8,000 Iraqis died of disease in April as a result of the UN-imposed sanctions, a health ministry statement has said. Inflammation of the respiratory system, diarrhoea and the effects of chronic malnutrition killed 5,335 children under five, said the statement carried by the official news agency, INA on Saturday. — AFP

Mountaineers killed
BEIJING: Two climbers died on the Mount Everest this month, both on the descent after having scaled the world’s highest peak, official media said on Sunday. “One climber died during the descent after (the Ukraine team) reached the peak,” the Xinhua news agency reported. The agency also said one climber from the “Polish and Belgian teams” died on the way down after reaching the summit on May 18. — AFP

Lankan crusade
COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgmar has begun a southeast Asian tour to lobby governments and prevent Tamil Tiger rebels operating in the region, officials said on Sunday. — AFP

Tower leans less
PISA: The Leaning Tower of Pisa is leaning a little less thanks to an experiment aimed at making the monument settle better into the ground, experts have said. In February, workers started removing soil from under the tower’s base. The digging is carried out through 12 tubes, inserted 6 meters into the ground. Going into the experiment, the tower leaned some 6 degrees four meters (13 feet) — off the perpendicular. — AP

Fundraiser pleads guilty
WASHINGTON: Democratic Party fund raiser Charles Yah Lin Trie, an old friend of President Clinton from his Arkansas days, has pleaded guilty to breaking campaign finance laws. He agreed on Saturday to cooperate in the Justice Department’s investigation to find whether any of the money for Mr Clinton and the Democratic Party in the last election came from or on behalf of the People’s Republic of China, and if not, from where and for what purpose. — PTI