US options on N-tests kept open

WASHINGTON, Oct 7 (PTI) — The USA, debating a consensus among lawmakers over an early vote on CTBT, could resume nuclear testing, even if it ratifies the treaty, to ensure the safety and reliability of its nuclear deterrent, Defence Secretary William Cohen and a top defence official have said.

If at any point of time the USA was unsure about the safety and reliability of its nuclear deterrent in the absence of tests, the President could withdraw from the treaty and resume testing, Mr Cohen and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Henry Shelton, told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday.

However, they said the US capability to conduct tests without “explosions” was superior to any other country and in 10 years this capability would improve further.

Backing Mr Clinton’s plea to ratify the CTBT, Mr Cohen and General Shelton said, without its ratification it would be difficult for the USA to prevent the development of newer weapons by Russia and China and plan about “India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, North Korea or anybody else.’’

Yesterday, while Mr Clinton made a fresh appeal to Senate to ratify the treaty, US senators had offered to postpone a vote on the CTBT to 2001, until a new President took over.

The two admitted that any system of verification under the treaty might not detect all low-yield weapons but argued that it would be adequate to prevent the development of reliable newer weapons by the above countries.

Meanwhile, a group of 32 Nobel Laureates in physics have urged the US Senate to approve the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), calling it “central to future efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons,” says The New York Times. They said US approval was imperative and would mark “an important advance in uniting the world in an effort to contain and reduce the dangers of nuclear arms.” The plea was conveyed on Tuesday by the American Physical Society, the world’s leading group of physicists.

BERLIN: Delegates at the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) review conference have urged the international community to accelerate “political momentum” required to facilitate the treaty for coming into effect at the earliest.

Participating in a debate, “Conference on facilitating the entry into force of the CTBT” which began in Vienna yesterday, they called on countries whose ratifications were required for the treaty to become legally binding to do so as expeditiously as possible.

Without identifying those responsible for the delay in implementing the treaty negotiated three years back, they asked nuclear-weapon states to ratify the CTBT quickly and non-signatories to become a party to it.

While the USA, China and Russia are three of the five original nuclear powers to have signed but not ratify the CTBT, India, Pakistan and North Korea are yet to sign in the list of 44 nuclear capable states whose signing and ratification are mandatory for it to come into effect.

Without naming India or Pakistan, the speakers wanted the countries that are non-signatories to the treaty to observe a moratorium on nuclear tests pending their signature and the treaty’s entry into force.

Delegates also voiced grave concern over the implications of the nuclear tests last year in South Asia and felt that the acceleration of the ratification of the CTBT would contribute to success of the review conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in April 2000.

Upto the opening of the conference yesterday, a total of 154 countries had signed the CTBT and 51 states’ signatories had deposited their instruments of ratification.

US aid for Kashmir ‘on resolution’

WASHINGTON, Oct 7 (PTI)— US Assistant Secretary of State Karl F. Inderfurth has offered international rehabilitation and reconstruction aid for Kashmir if India and Pakistan can reach a solution for the problem bilaterally, taking into account the wishes of the people of Kashmir.

Inaugurating the South Asia Institute at the School of International Studies at John Hopkins University, here yesterday, he said India and Pakistan could reach a long-term solution for Kashmir if they approached the issue “with a dose of realism and dose of creativity to determine what are the ways that the various needs of all parties can be met.”

“We are hopeful,” said Mr Inderfurth, “that is the direction in which the parties will travel and the USA will support them in every step all the way.”

He did not spell out the content of the US ideas of “realism” and “creativity” but made it clear that the USA “does not believe that it is for the USA to either propose a solution nor can we influence a solution.”

However, he warned the two nations that although the “Lahore bus took a detour, was diverted to Kargil” and the process of reconciliation derailed, it had to be brought back on track so that the “threat of a possible nuclear exchange can be averted with a certain degree of confidence.”

He emphasised that the USA believed the only way the longstanding and fundamental differences between India and Pakistan, dating back to the “very painful 1947 period,” could be resolved was by the parties themselves.

The USA, said Mr Inderfurth, would support that process and that is why President Clinton had become personally involved in this effort.

“One of the purposes of Clinton’s trip to the region next year,” said Mr Inderfurth, “will be to try to encourage that kind of process during his term in office. He has seen that take place in the Middle East, in Northern Ireland. We now see some reconciliation taking place between Greece and Turkey. We think that it is something overdue for that kind of effort to take root in South Asia.”

Window on Pakistan
The shadow of sectarianism

The spurt in sectarian killings for the past few days in Karachi, Peshawar,Dera Ismail Khan, Gujranwala and other places in Pakistan have upset almost every section of society. Nearly 35 persons, most of them Shias, have been done to death in five days. Fears are being expressed that if effective measures are not taken urgently, the situation may have serious consequences.

Jang and The News, both belonging to the same group of newspapers, have come out with incisive reports, saying that Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, confidant and brother of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, has blamed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan for the intensification of sectarian tension in Sindh and Punjab, the two key provinces of his country. His contention is that the killing of the Shias is the handiwork of the terrorists who came from Afghanistan. The Taliban leadership does not recognise Shias as part of what it calls "Ummah" and hence the pogrom---another proof of how dangerous their interpretation of the Islamic tenets is.

Anyway, Mr Shahbaz Sharif's reading of the emerging scenario has forced the Pakistan government to ask the Taliban regime to close down the terrorist camps being run in Afghanistan, and there are indications that Mullah Umar, the supreme Taliban leader, has agreed to do so.

The development indicates that there must have been some prior understanding between the Pakistan government and the Afghan rulers about these camps.Otherwise the matter could not have been sorted out so easily and smoothly. It was all right for the Pakistani regime so long as the misguided youths trained in subversive activities were creating trouble in India. But now that they have begun to strike inside Pakistan the Nawaz Sharif government has got alarmed. One should never forget that the monster of terrorism is nobody's friend, not even of its creator.

There is another theory with regard to the sectarian killings being mentioned in Pakistani newspapers---that India's RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) is behind these gory happenings. Its author is Pakistan's Interior Minister, Chaudhry Shujat Hussain, Jang says. He is trying to justify his theory by alleging that India is doing this to prevent Pakistan and Iran from coming closer. However, most newspaper commentators are of the view that the Nawaz Sharif government has floated this theory through Mr Shujat Hussain to hide its own inefficiency in handling the problem, which has been persisting for a long time but has now assumed dangerous proportions. Maulana Fazal Mohammad of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam has warned that the situation can lead to a civil war if not handled effectively and urgently.

In an editorial on October 4, The News says:"The minister (Mr Shujat Hussain) cannot have it both ways: he cannot expect the public to buy that the government has no responsibility in performing its core function of maintaining internal security and argue that RAW is launching all these sectarian attacks....As for his allegations against the two key opposition parties (the PPP of Ms Benazir Bhutto and the MQM of Mr Altaf Hussain), that surely is a little more than a vain attempt to derive political mileage out of a veritable political crisis of internal security."

The Frontier Post, a left-leaning daily, carried a more pointed editorial attacking the government for its failure to deal with those nurturing terrorism in what they call madarsas. The paper points out: "The real difficulty is the lack of political will on the part of the government to come to wrestle with this menace earnestly. Who doesn't know what are the fountainheads of this unending sectarian tide? Are those groups and organisations that are preaching rabid sectarianism so openly and publicly anything unknown to anybody?"

Perhaps the government agrees with the stand taken by The Post as it has given the impression that a plan has been finalised to strictly monitor the activities of these madarsas. But is the Pakistan government really serious?

—Syed Nooruzzaman

Russia rejects EU mediation offer

MOSCOW, Oct 7 (AFP) — Russia today flatly rejected a European offer to help mediate an end to the crisis in Chechnya, insisting it did not need outside help in dealing with the breakaway republic.

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgeny Gusarov was quoted by Interfax as saying that Moscow “does not need” a mediator between the Russian authorities and the leaders of Chechnya, where federal forces are engaged in a massive military campaign to crush Islamic militants.

“Mediation between the (federal) centre and subjects of the federation is completely incomprehensible,” Mr Gusarov added.

The offer came as a troika of senior EU officials was in Moscow for talks with Mr Gusarov’s boss Igor Ivanov, the Russian Foreign Minister, to discuss the refugee crisis sparked by the conflict.

The EU team was expected to deliver a tough message to Russian officials on the Chechen crisis, raising the plight of tens of thousands of Chechen refugees and human rights issues.

It also intended to offer Moscow the “good offices” of the European Union and the Council of Europe in resolving the conflict, the head of the Council of Europe, Mr Walter Schwimmer, said in Strasbourg yesterday.

Russian forces poured en masse into the rebel republic on October 1 for the first time since the disastrous 1994-1996 Russian-Chechen war, seizing control of the northern third of Chechnya.

Floods kill 100 in Mexico

TULANCINGO (Mexico), Oct 7 (AFP) — More than 100 persons died as torrential rain pounded Mexico, causing rivers to burst their banks and sending tonnes of mud and rocks hurtling down mountainsides, officials said.

The authorities feared the toll could rise further as another 100 persons were reported missing. In addition, an estimated 200,000 persons had to flee their homes, many of which were damaged or entirely destroyed.

In the eastern state of Veracruz, where 14 deaths were reported, several hundred people stood atop their roofs awaiting rescue.

USA ‘playing’ political games

MOSCOW, Oct 7 (AFP) — The Kremlin defended itself yesterday against a burgeoning US money-laundering investigation that has already led to three indictments and accused Washington of playing political games that may leave Russia bankrupt.

President Boris Yeltsin’s personal envoy to the G-7 group of leading industrial nations said Washington policy-makers were blinded by biased US media coverage of charges that Russia laundered up to $ 15 billion through New York banks.

Mr Alexander Livshits said Russia had thus been unfairly stripped of a promised $ 640 million payment from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) urgently expected here this month.

Mr Livshits was responding to news from New York that US federal prosecutors had obtained indictments against three persons and brought charges against three Russian companies in connection with a vast money-laundering scandal.

Compromise on F-22 plan reached

WASHINGTON, Oct 7 (Reuters) — House-Senate negotiators have agreed on a $ 267 billion defence spending Bill that keeps alive the embattled F-22 Stealth fighter programme but pins its future on whether it passes a battery of flight tests.

The compromise on the radar-evading fighter was sealed by a House-Senate Conference Committee yesterday after weeks of bitter negotiations that held up completion of the fiscal 2000 Defence Bill and frayed relations between the House, which wanted to cut the F-22 programme, and its Senate supporters.

The final deal, which became public last week, commits about $ 1 billion for the air force to purchase up to six test warplanes, including $ 277 million in advance funds to go toward the purchase of 10 F-22s in fiscal 2001.

London train crash toll may touch 100

LONDON, Oct 7 (AFP) — The death toll could rise to more than 100 in one of Britain’s worst post-war train crashes, emergency workers at the scene told the Press Association today.

The police has so far confirmed that 27 persons died, but said the toll was likely to mount much higher as it continued to comb the blackened and mangled wreckage of Tuesday’s crash outside London’s Paddington station.

More than 150 persons have been injured and 47 were in hospital yesterday, 25 of them in a serious condition.

Emergency upheld
CARACAS: The Supreme Court of Venezuela has rejected a lawsuit aimed to nullify the assembly’s declaration of a “legislative Emer-gency”. In a 9-5 ruling, the court dismissed the lawsuit by Congressional Vice-President Henrique Capriles. The court ruled that the assembly is not limited by the current constitution and that the legislative Emergency is legal. However, it also put limits on the assembly, saying for instance that it cannot dissolve the Supreme Court. — AP

Timor clash
DILI: In their first clash with an anti-independence militia group since arriving in East Timor, peacekeepers shot and killed two militiamen on Wednesday during a failed ambush, the leader of the international force said. Two Australians were slightly wounded when the gang tried to ambush their convoy, said Australian Major-Gen Peter Cosgrove, head of the troops that arrived in the devastated Indonesian territory on September 20. — AP

India excluded
WASHINGTON: The US House-Senate conferees have excluded India from a list of few nations that will have to receive special congressional approval before the allocation of foreign aid. The House passed the Foreign Operations Bill on Tuesday by 214 to 211 votes. One of its clause had included India in the list of the countries who required a special approval for foreign aid allocation. Pakistan has been included in the clause for a number of years and it remains there. — PTI

Witness bankrupt
KUALA LUMPUR: The woman who first accused Malaysian ex-Deputy Premier Anwar Ibrahim of sexual misconduct has been declared bankrupt. Ms Ummi Hafilda Ali and her advertising firm failed to pay more than 300,000 ringgit ($ 78,947) owed to a signboard supplier, The Star newspaper said on Thursday. Ms Ummi, 32, was a star witness in Mr Anwar’s corruption trial which sentenced him to six years’ jail in April. — AFP