Gorbachev to return to active politics
MOSCOW, Oct 10 — For the first time since his debacle in the presidential polls in 1996, the last President of erstwhile Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev has announced that he will return to active domestic politics.

Militiamen clash with MNF
Bishop Belo’s plea for refugees’ return

DILI (East Timor), Oct 10 (AP, DPA) — One militiaman died and two were “possibly” wounded in separate weekend gunbattles with multinational force (MNF) peacekeepers moving to assert control of East Timor’s border and block incursions by pro-Indonesian gangs, officials said today.

The firefights brought to three the number of clashes in the past four days, resulting in three deaths. These have sparked fears that the Indonesian-trained militants were mounting a guerrilla campaign in a bid to partition the province.

One militiaman was killed yesterday when a group of 12-15 paramilitaries attacked a five-man New Zealand patrol at Alto Lebas, village 110 km south-west of Dili, Col Mark Kelly said today.

The remaining attackers scattered toward the border, two kilometres away, the Chief of Staff of the peacekeeping force said.

An Australian platoon in the north-western corner of East Timor came today under fire near the border town of Motaain.

“The patrol returned fire, possibly hitting two militia members,” Col Kelly said in a statement.

All the militia members escaped, including two thought to have been wounded by peacekeepers’ fire, he said.

Reporters who accompanied the convoy, however, said the peacekeepers appeared to have been fired on, not by militia, but by Indonesian soldiers and that the two wounded were evacuated by an Indonesian army vehicle.

In Dili, East Timor spiritual leader, Bishop Carlos Belo, today appealed to the international community to pressure Indonesia to free the 260,000 East Timorese trapped in Indonesian West Timor.

“More pressure, talk more. Keep on talking. Pressure your (Australian) government, the USA the European Union to pressure in Indonesian Government to allow these people to come back”, Bishop Belo told reporters.

“They are not happy. They are threatened by Indonesia and the militants”. the Bishop told reporters after celebrating Mass in the burned-out home that stands on Dili’s waterfront.

It was Bishop Belo’s first mass in East Timor since returning from a brief exile last week.

The Indonesian authorities in Kupang, the capital of West Timor, say at least 260,000 East Timorese are living in camps in the territory. Many were forced out of their homes at gunpoint during a two-week reign of terror by pro-Jakarta militias, following a landslide independence victory in the UN sponsored referendum.

Bishop Belo said militiamen who has not committed crimes against East Timorese could be allowed to stand in a coalition government, but others should be brought to justice.

“If they don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t beat (the people) they can participate. But for the others, justice should be done for them first”, he declared.

BRISBANE: Indonesia will not be invited to a planned conference of defence ministers from countries involved in the multinational intervention force in East Timor, Australian Defence Minister John Moore said today.

“It is not contemplated (Indonesia) would be (invited) because they are not part of the forces in East Timor, but that doesn’t mean to say we are anti-Indonesia,’’ Moore told Reuters in Brisbane.

Relations between Australia and Indonesia have soured over Australia’s leading role in the UN-mandated international force for East Timor (Interfet).

But Mr Moore said he did not believe the meeting, tentatively set for the northern Australian city of Darwin, would further strain Australia’s relations with Indonesia. Details of the talks are still to be arranged.

Germany would be the next nation to join the multinational intervention force in devastated East Timor, Australian Defence Minister John Moore said.

Fourteen countries are currently part of the Australian-led international force for East Timor (Interfet). About 5,000 troops are deployed in the war-torn territory, with the number to rise to more than 7,000 over the next two weeks.

Russians destroy rebel convoy

GROZNY, Oct 10 (AP) — Russian troops attacked a convoy taking suspected rebel separatists to a city near Chechnya’s border with Dagestan and destroyed eight vehicles, military officials claimed today.

The convoy was travelling towards Khasavyurt in eastern Chechnya yesterday when it came under Russian artillery fire, a spokesman at the federal press centre in Dagestan said. Eight vehicles were “eliminated,” he said, without providing the exact casualty figures.

Khasavyurt, which is on Chechnya’s eastern border, could have been used as a staging area for a raid into neighbouring Dagestan.

The Russian air force was intensifying air attacks on Chechnya, a Chechen military spokesman in the capital, Grozny, said. “Until this morning, the bombing has not ceased, not even for one hour,” spokesman Vakha Ibragimov told Interfax news agency.

He said air raids struck targets in the regions around Grozny and the towns of Urs-Martan and Achkoi-Martan in the south of the republic. There was also long-range shelling of Chechen targets Dagestan, Mr Ibragimov said.

Russian ground forces invaded Chechnya two weeks ago and now control the northern third of the breakaway republic. They want to establish a security zone in Chechnya to prevent Muslim separatists from attacking neighbouring regions in southern Russia.

Reports reaching Moscow said that since the start of the ground offensive in Chechnya 10 days ago, Russian units had brought the northern third of the republic under their control.

But Interfax news agency quoted one Chechen commander as saying that Russian tank columns had been beaten back near the Terek river.

Indians’ role in US politics

WASHINGTON, Oct 10 (PTI) — Indian Americans now wield significant influence in US politics and figure prominently in the effort to repair Indo-US relations, the Washington Post has said.

The influence of Indian Americans was demonstrated during the Kargil conflict when US President Bill Clinton pointed this to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at a meeting held in Washington to end the conflict, the newspaper said yesterday in its front-page report.

“The rise of Indian Americans as a powerful and effective domestic lobby coincides with the emergence in India of a stable and increasingly self-confident government,” it said.

The Post said the lobbying effort reflects a widespread belief in the Indian-American community that India has not been taken seriously in Washington.

“It is long way from Kashmir to the booming high-tech corridors of northern Virginia and Silicon valley. But you wouldn’t know it from the deluge of e-mails that flooded congressional offices in June,” it said referring to the Kargil incursion.

“As Indian troops fought to repel a Pakistani incursion in Kargil, key staff members were bombarded with demands from Indian immigrants for a resolution condemning Pakistani aggression.”

“Lawmakers complied and a few days later, in a White House meeting, Clinton cited congressional pressure in urging Sharif to withdraw his forces,” the paper quoted two senior US administration officials as saying.

The Washington Post said, “It rankles many Indian Americans that India is not among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and that no American President has visited the country since Jimmy Carter did so in 1978.”

However, the Indian immigrants have emerged as one of the nation’s most dynamic ethnic communities and have the highest average household income $ 60,903 of any Asian-Pacific ethnic group, it said.

The Post said Indian Americans, who had begun to organise into groups did not feel shy about translating their economic success into political clout. The latter boasted a Washington area membership of 165 Indian American Chief Executives, whose companies employed nearly 20,000 persons.

Shia body threatens civil war

ISLAMABAD, Oct 10 (PTI) — A leading Shiite organisation has warned of an Algeria-like civil war situation in Pakistan if attack against Shiite Muslims was not stopped immediately and ordered arming of the members of the community to defend themselves.

The warning came from the head of the front-ranking Shiite organisation the Tehreek-e-Jafriya Pakistan (TJP), Allama Sajid Naqvi, yesterday even as three more Shia Muslims were gunned down near Sargodha in Punjab by unidentified assailants.

Mr Naqvi, however, accused the militant Sunni organisation the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) of carrying out the killings of Shia Muslims across Pakistan while rejecting earlier government contention that Indian intelligence agency RAW was involved in the spurt of sectarian violence.

The involvement of RAW is “out of question”, Mr Naqvi was quoted by the English daily “Dawn” as saying at a press conference in the frontier town of Dera Ismail Khan. “It is a fact that the SSP is directly involved in the bloodshed and if the situation remains unchanged, the country will plunge into a civil war like that of Algeria,” he added.

In view of the unabated killings of the members of the Shiite community the TJP, a former ally of Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League, has now changed its policy and, “now the security of lives and properties of the Shia sect is our priority number one,” he said.

Population rise rings alarm bells

NEW YORK, Oct 10 (DPA) — On October 12, every person on the earth will have exactly 5,999,999,999 fellow humans, according to calculations by the United Nations.

That date has been designated the “day of six billion” by the UN statisticians, and it is one which is a matter of both hopes and fears not just for population policy experts.

Will mankind succeed in slowing down the population growth enough to assure that there is enough space, food and water for everyone?

Or, will the high growth rate, especially that in the developing countries, remain so that the inevitable effects will be misery, starvation, and a threat to the future of all living creatures?

The world population growth rate was running at a record high 2 per cent annually, even reaching 2.5 per cent in the poorer nations. Today the average rate is 1.33 per cent.

The pessimists have often been proved wrong, among them 18th century Englishman Robert Malthus, one of the early pioneers of the science of economics, who direly warned about the situation in his “essay on the Principle of Population’’ back in 1798.

Malthus’ warning regarding population growth and declining farm yields due to soil depletion. Without “abstinence from sexual intercourse’’, he warned, there would be misery, hunger and diseases, resulting in rising mortality rates. At that time, there were just around one billion people on earth.

Life expectancy is rising: today it is 65 years, or 20 years more than back in 1950. The problem of care for the elderly will also increase.

People never could be taught to accept the “abstinence from sexual intercourse” which Malthus, a clergyman, preached as the most effective all-purpose cure.

But there have been — with the exception of the Vatican, which strictly rejects artificial birth control no matter what the population growth may be — efforts by humankind to try to reduce the number of births.

China, with its 1.3 billion people, has achieved considerable success with its stringent one-child per family policy.

India, which already has one billion people, wanted to go a different path. First Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru worried more about the build-up of large-scale industry than about the population growth.

When his daughter Indira Gandhi tried to make up for lost time with a programme of mass sterilisations in the 1970s, she was voted out of power.

“Our masses will accept no forced methods of family planning,’’ says demographer Ashish Bose. Indian politicians also know this, and as a result, India’s population is growing by 18 million annually.

By UN data, the average woman in Asia bears 2.6 children. In Latin America the figure is 2.7, while in North America it is 1.9 and in Europe, 1.4.

Gorbachev to return to active politics

MOSCOW, Oct 10 (PTI) — For the first time since his debacle in the presidential polls in 1996, the last President of erstwhile Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev has announced that he will return to active domestic politics.

“I never change my idea, I have been throughout a social-democrat,” Mr Gorbachev declared yesterday and vowed to work for launching a United-Democratic Party in Russia, NTV reported.

Speaking at the congress of Russian Social-Democrats, his first public appearance since the death of his wife Raisa last month, the former President, however, said he was yet to decide the mode and means of his participation in the country’s politics due to numerous engagements abroad.

Miss India contest
DUBAI: Miss India worldwide is now being brought to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), allowing members of the non-resident Indian (NRI) community here to participate in the event. The event will be held here on October 20, in which a winner will be selected from among the 140 applicants from the NRI community. The winner will represent the Indian community of the UAE at the Miss India World wide final to be held in New York on November 27. — UNI

Divorce for adultery
SINGAPORE: New found independence is enabling more Muslim Malay women in Singapore to divorce their ageing husbands for adultery, a helpline service reported on Saturday. One out of four Muslim marriages are ending in divorce, said Association of Muslim Professionals (AMP) Executive Director Ismail Ibrahim. Many of the couples had been married for 15 years or more. — DPA

A woman’s laurel
WASHINGTON: Baker and McKenzie, the world’s second largest law firm, has for the first time, appointed a woman, French national Christine Lagarde, to be its new chairman, the New York Times reported on Saturday. The company, a multinational partnership with 2,400 attorneys operating from 60 offices in 35 countries, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. — AFP

Typhoon kills 5
BEIJING: Five persons were killed when a typhoon lashing China’s southern coastal province of Fujian destroyed houses in the city of Zhangzhou, the official Xinhua news agency reported. The storm, which struck on Saturday, also hit the cities of Xiamen and Quanzhou, knocking out power and telephone services and snapping major highway and rail links. — Reuters

Morris West dead
CANBERRA: International best-selling author Morris West has died at his desk at his Sydney home. The 83-year-old Australian creator of novels such as “The Devil’s Advocate’’, “Children of the Sun’’ and “The Shoes of the Fisherman’’ died on Saturday while working on his latest book, “The Last Confession’’, West’s family said on Sunday. — Reuters

Russian missile
MOSCOW: A Russian Zenith missile carried a US telecommunications satellite into space on Sunday from the Pacific Ocean Sea Launch Platform, the first commercial launch from the floating site, Russian agencies reported, citing the control centre. The missile, launched at 0328 GMT (08.58 a.m. IST) was due to put the DIRECTV 1-R satellite into geostationary orbit. — AFP

ICCR award given
BERLIN: Hanna Paulmann has been conferred with this year’s prestigious Gisela Bonn award, instituted by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), in recognition of her accomplishments and exemplary contribution in promoting Indian culture in Germany. The award, instituted in memory of late journalist Gisela Bonn, was given away to Paulmann, a prominent member of the German-India Friendship Society, by Indian Ambassador to Germany Ronen Sen at a function in Stuttgart on Friday night. — PTI