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| Tuesday, January 4, 2000, Chandigarh, India  
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Barak not averse to pullout from Golan Lanka parliamentary poll ‘by March 15’ Frozen accounts linked to Yeltsin? Hijacking part of Pak ‘proxy war’ Russians claim key heights’ capture |
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Late pardon saves Iranian teenager TEHERAN, Jan 3 — A teenaged convicted killer, the noose already placed round his neck for public hanging in the Iranian capital, has escaped execution after the father of his victim pardoned him. Bangladesh strike: 33 hurt Peace talks open Indonesian clashes claim 3 more lives Probe begins against Kohl
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Barak not averse to pullout from Golan JERUSALEM, Jan 3 (AP, AFP) — Seeking to reassure a public wary of handing over the Golan Heights, Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Barak has said that opening borders and diplomatic relations with Israel’s longtime enemy Syria is the real key to peace. Before flying to the USA to relaunch peace talks with Syria, Mr Barak said he felt the “burden of responsibility” to achieve an agreement within the year. “We don’t need to wait for another millennium, another century, or even another 10 years to find a way to make peace with our neighbours,” Mr Barak told reporters on the tarmac. Syria has demanded a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights — a strategic plateau captured in the 1967 West Asia war. Mr Barak has implied, but not explicitly stated, his willingness to hand over almost all of Golan Heights and to dismantle Israeli settlements there in exchange for security and normalisation with Syria. Reports in Israeli newspapers have said that Syrian President Hafez Assad is willing to concede little beyond demilitarisation in the zone, a prospect that makes many Israelis — hungry for acceptance among Arab neighbours — nervous. Mr Barak vowed to work toward an agreement that would give Israelis a real feeling of peace and the assurances it seeks on security and water issues. “We (seek) of course an agreement of full normalisation open borders and embassies,” Mr Barak said in an interview with Israel Radio. A statement from Mr Barak’s office said he told the council for the Golan that “he has no illusions regarding the Middle East reality and that the real guarantee of Israel’s existence is not any agreement we might sign, but its security, strategic and economic strength.” Foreign Minister David Levy, en route to Shepherdstown, told Army Radio that Israel would ask President Assad to join the talks to prove he is serious about peace. So far, protocol at the talks has been unbalanced — Mr Barak has headed the Israeli team while Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Al-Sharaa heads the Syrian side. President Bill Clinton will sponsor the landmark talks that are expected to last at least one week. |
Lanka parliamentary poll ‘by March 15’ COLOMBO, Jan 3 (Reuters) — Sri Lanka’s ruling People’s Alliance coalition is planning to call parliamentary elections in March to build on President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s presidential poll win, local press reports said today. The Daily Mirror quoted senior government sources as saying that March 15 had been tentatively fixed as the date for the parliamentary polls. Elections had not been scheduled until August. “We are now working to fix certain positive measures before dissolving Parliament. The dissolution will be announced within a fortnight,’’ the newspaper quoted a senior coalition official as saying. Ms Kumaratunga won the December 21 polls with just over 51 per cent of the vote, defeating her main rival opposition United National Party’s Ranil Wickremesinghe, days after she was wounded in the eye in an assassination attempt in the capital Colombo. The government has blamed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels for the suicide bomb blast that killed 26 persons and wounded more than 100. Doctors in London, where Ms Kumaratunga sought treatment after she was sworn in, have told her she will lose sight in her right eye. Meanwhile, two Catholic bishops from Tamil-dominated northern areas representing a newly formed religious body have gone to the LTTE-held northern Vanni to discuss the new peace offer made by President Chandrika Kumaratunga. Bishops Rayappu Joseph of Mannar and Joseph Sounderanagam of Jaffna have gone to obtain LTTE leader V. Prabhakran’s response to Ms Chandrika’s peace offer, a prominent Buddhist monk and co-founder of Organisation of Religious Dignitaries for Peace (ORDP) Kamburugamuwe Vajira Thera said. ORDP was recently formed by religious heads from Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim faiths to promote peace in Sri Lanka. |
Frozen accounts linked to Yeltsin? NEW YORK, Jan 3 (Reuters) — A dozen bank accounts containing more than $ 15 million frozen by the Swiss authorities investigating Russian money laundering, are suspected of being linked to Mr Boris Yeltsin, Newsweek reported. While Mr Yeltsin’s aides have consistently denied that he has any foreign bank accounts, sources say the accounts in question are not in Mr Yeltsin’s name, but rather are held by offshore companies or in the names of individual businessmen, both Russian and foreign, Newsweek reported yesterday. The Swiss authorities, which froze the accounts last summer, suspect they may be linked to former President Yeltsin, who resigned last Friday, according to the latest edition of Newsweek. The news magazine does not indicate why the Swiss authorities suspect a link. Swiss prosecutors are investigating an alleged multi-billion dollar Russian money laundering scheme linked to Russian politicians, businessmen and their family members, and a separate case involving claims of bribes paid to Kremlin officials. They also believe there are links between accounts in a Bank of New York money laundering case and the frozen Swiss accounts. The Kremlin denies the charges and Russian politicians have said the allegations are politically inspired ahead of elections. The freezing of the accounts does not necessarily imply any wrongdoing, but Mr Yeltsin has been dogged by corruption charges since last summer, when political foes raised the issue and forced an impeachment vote. Mr Yeltsin won the vote. Mr Yeltsin, (68), who resigned suddenly from office on the final day of last year, and his family have been given guarantees of immunity by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. MOSCOW, Jan 3 (UNI) — Ms Tatyana Tyachenko, one of the key members of the presidential administration in Kremlin and daughter of former President Boris Yeltsin, is being removed from her post, Voice of Russia disclosed yesterday night quoting official sources. This is the first major reconstitution of the Kremlin administration following President Yeltsin’s resignation last Friday. Voice of Russia quoting Kremlin spokesman said some other major changes were in the offing. |
Hijacking part of Pak ‘proxy war’ WASHINGTON, Jan 3 (PTI) — Leading Democratic Congressman Gary Ackerman has said the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane was part of Islamabad’s “proxy war” with New Delhi and a “hegemonistic” campaign of certain sections in Pakistan to “dismember” India. The hijacking was “very much a part of a proxy war that India had been confronting in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab for over a decade,” Mr Ackerman said. The hijackers have been identified as Pakistani nationals and their demand to release Maulana Masood Azhar, who is a leading official of the Pakistan-based Harkat ul-Ansar, “again clearly points the finger at certain elements in Islamabad that continue to play a critical role in sponsoring and sustaining terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir”, he said. Rejecting Pakistan’s oft-repeated claim that the core issue between India and Pakistan is Kashmir, Mr Ackerman said “any military or terrorist action to change the status quo in Jammu and Kashmir is unacceptable to international community.” Linking the Kargil conflict and the hijacking incident, he said “just as we saw during the Kargil crisis, the terror of Flight 814 was yet another reminder to the world about who the perpetrators were and who the innocent victims.” He added that such “acts of terror” would not resolve the Kashmir issue, but only strengthen India’s resolve that acts of terrorism, especially those sponsored by the government, must never be allowed to succeed. Calling upon the Clinton administration to conduct a speedy, time-bound review of the various violent Kashmiri outfits operating out of Pakistan and Afghanistan, he urged for a review of the role of Pakistan’s military government and the Taliban in supporting these outfits. These outfits and states should be declared as supporters of terrorism and be blacklisted, he said. Urging the USA to continue working with India and other democracy-loving nations to not only combat international terrorism, but find effective ways to inflict severe retribution on nations or societies that encourage and nurture terrorists, Mr Ackerman called upon the Clinton administration to give India every possible assistance, including relevant, time-sensitive intelligence data, to punish hijackers. |
Russians claim key heights’ capture MOSCOW, Jan 3 (DPA) — Russian military officials today claimed their troops had taken key strategic heights near Grozny in a move of considerable importance for the progress of the campaign to drive out Islamic rebels, Itar-Tass news agency reported. But Russian NTV carried a far less favourable report on the Chechen assault. Russian soldiers in Chechnya rejected official claims that their forces had also taken the north-western Grozny district of Staropromyslovski. The NTV report said Russian special forces and pro-Russian Chechen militias had suffered setbacks in their Chechnya campaign. Casualty figures were considerably higher than those officially admitted by Russian military officials. According to the NTV report, there had been instances of Russian forces coming under “friendly fire”, or being shelled by their own artillery. Russia’s interim President, Mr Vladimir Putin, met President of Ingushetia Ruslan Aushev last evening. No details of their talks were issued. Aushev has publicly come out against the Russian campaign in Chechnya, which borders Ingushetia. Ingushetia has taken in some 2,00,000 refugees since Russia launched its campaign against the Islamic rebels three months ago. |
Late pardon saves Iranian teenager TEHERAN, Jan 3 (Reuters) — A teenaged convicted killer, the noose already placed round his neck for public hanging in the Iranian capital, has escaped execution after the father of his victim pardoned him. Thousands of people who had gathered at the execution site in a street in eastern Teheran cheered, jumped into the air and hugged each other as the noose, hanging from the shaft of a crane, was removed from Morteza Amini Moqaddam’s neck yesterday. Moqaddam had been sentenced to hang for stabbing to death Mr Hadi Mohebbi, a member of the Basij Islamic militia, last month. The stabbing followed an attempt by Mr Mohebbi to stop a friend of Moqaddam from smoking during the Muslim fasting month of Ramzan. Smoking in public, along with eating and drinking, is banned in Iran during Ramzan. The authorities arranged for a speedy trial under Iran’s Islamic eye-for-an-eye penal code to discourage similar attacks against Basij members. But the case attracted great public interest and the victim’s father who by law has the right to demand the killer’s execution or settle for the payment of “blood money” instead or nothing at all, came under growing pressure not to seek revenge. “Pardon him, pardon him” some in the crowd chanted. Moqaddam’s mother, holding up a Koran, stood anxiously by the makeshift gallows for hours, wailing and pleading for divine or public intervention to save her son’s life. The father of the victim told state radio that he had pardoned his son’s killer to show the “magnanimous face” of the militia. Many in the crowd, including some policemen and militiamen, openly sympathised with the convict, whose age has been put at 18 by the authorities and 17 by his parents, or opposed the execution for other reasons. “The gallows are too much for him. They will make him look big with the public. It will create a political atmosphere,” said Mr Ali, a militiaman. Others wanted the hanging to be carried out. “This is a divine ruling. It has to be implemented. This man is a thug. He has stabbed four other persons in the neighbourhood,” another militiaman said. The Basij militia, said to have up to five million members, was created after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It provided much of the manpower on the warfronts in the 1980-88 war with Iraq. Supporters praise Basij members as selfless individuals who risk their lives to defend Islam, but many people are irritated by what they see as the militia’s intrusion into their private lives to impose strict Islamic behaviour. |
Bangladesh strike: 33 hurt DHAKA, Jan 3 (DPA) — Shops and businesses closed and public transport was today off the streets in the capital Dhaka and three other cities as the opposition parties enforced a six-hour general strike across Bangladesh. Bangladesh’s leading anti-government alliance, spearheaded by the main opposition group, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), called the 6 a.m. (0000 GMT) to noon (0600 GMT) shutdown to protest against the holding of local government poll in the southeastern Chittagong port city. The police and witnesses said at least 35 persons were injured in street clashes between supporters of the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and opposition activists in central Dhaka since late Sunday. Several buses were torched and private cars smashed in overnight violence. The opposition alliance claimed foul play in the municipal poll in Chittagong, the principal port city 240 km southeast of Dhaka, demanding the cancellation of the local election widely expected to be won by Sheikh Hasina’s ruling Awami League. Electoral officials reported a large turnout of people who went to the polling stations to elect their local ward commissioners today despite a two-day shutdown call by the Opposition in the port city. Earlier, ruling party candidate Mohiuddin Chowdhury was declared elected uncontested mayor of Chittagong for a second five-year term. |
Peace talks open SHEPHERDSTOWN, West Virginia (AP) — With US President Bill Clinton mediating, Syria headed into a fresh round of talks with Israel today with “open minds and a truthful desire” for peace. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said he felt the “burden of responsibility” to reach an agreement this year. Mr Clinton, who has made West Asia peace a top foreign policy goal for 2000, cleared his schedule to preside over the first day of negotiations at the semi-secluded Clarion Hotel and conference centre just outside Shepherdstown, 110 km northwest of Washington. Mr Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa were expected to focus on four key issues during the talks: security, the normalisation of relations, water rights and how much of the strategic Golan Heights would be returned by Israel to Syria. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who will be closeted with the Israelis and Syrians throughout the negotiations, cautioned that there is “no done deal” yet between the two sides. |
Indonesian clashes claim 3 more lives JAKARTA, Jan 3 (Reuters) — Three refugees seeking a safe haven from communal violence in Indonesia’s Spice Islands were beaten to death today as the death toll from a week of bloodshed passed 500. The three men were killed after they fled to the island of Ternate to escape unrest in neighbouring Halmahera, the official Antara news agency said. Antara said more than 400 persons have been killed in a week of fighting mainly between Christians and Muslims in Halmahera. It did not give more details. |
Probe begins against Kohl BONN, Jan 3 (DPA) — The state prosecutor’s office in Bonn today opened an investigation into former Chancellor Helmut Kohl on suspicion of breach of trust in connection with allegations that he kept secret accounts and accepted anonymous donations that were not declared in line with the German party financing laws. “We will do our very best to carry out the investigation as quickly as possible,” state prosecutor Fred Apostel told Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA). State prosecutors announced last Wednesday they were opening a criminal investigation of Mr Kohl on suspicion of breach of trust. |
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