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| Monday, June 5, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
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USA urged to take stern
anti-terrorism steps Lanka links talks with ceasefire West Asia peace talks resume Bosnia de-mining lacks funds Fiji’s ethnic Indians prepare
for exodus |
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Defector says Teheran
behind Panam bombing Diana’s case: key witness
dead Kulsoom plans movement for
Sharif’s release Violence by IRA group feared Indian boy wins spelling contest Blast at Manila airport 6 dead in France plane crash Economics Nobel laureate dead NASA crash-lands satellite
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USA urged to take stern anti-terrorism steps WASHINGTON, June 4 (DPA) — A special commission is urging the US Government to take more aggressive steps to prevent terrorism, including monitoring all foreign students in the USA, loosening restrictions on the CIA and threatening sanctions against such friendly states as Greece and Pakistan, The Washington Post reported today. The proposals by the National Commission on Terrorism, created by the Congress two years back after the bombings of US Embassies in East Africa, are expected to trigger controversy among civil libertarians, parts of the Arab American community and others who question the government’s expanding anti-terrorist effort, already a $ 10-billion annual enterprise, The Post reported. The commission’s 64-page report, scheduled for release on Monday, calls for fighting terrorism with more spending, tighter controls on suspected terrorist fund-raising in the USA and increased pressure for cooperation from other countries. Among its specific recommendations are that President Bill Clinton consider designating the US military — not the FBI or the Federal Emergency Management Agency — as the organisation that should lead the government’s response in the event of a catastrophic terrorist attack on the US Soil. "The threat is changing and it’s becoming more deadly," said L. Paul Bremer III, the commission’s Chairman and a former State Department Ambassador-at-Large for counter-terrorism. He said the commission’s six-month investigation, involving more than 130 interviews around the world, led to the conclusion that a well-financed, fanatical and global terrorist network such as the Al Qaeda, allegedly run by Osama Bin Laden, poses exceedingly difficult problems for the US law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The 10-member commission recommended the repeal of regulations that require senior officials at the CIA headquarters to approve the recruitment of any counter-terrorist informant who may have committed serious criminal violations. Among the other recommendations are possible sanctions against Greece and Pakistan. The commission recommended that the Clinton administration designate them as nations "not cooperating fully" against terrorism under a statute the Congress passed four years ago. As for its
recommendation that the government begin monitoring
foreign students nationwide, the commission concluded
that a "small minority may exploit their student
status to support terrorist activity". |
Lanka links talks with ceasefire COLOMBO, June 4 (PTI) — Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar has said the government is willing to declare a ceasefire in ongoing fighting with LTTE in northern Jaffna provided it is linked to immediate commencement of peace talks. "The LTTE wants a ceasefire linked to withdrawal of troops which is not agreeable to the government but a ceasefire linked to commencement of (peace) talks is a possibility," Mr Kadirgamar told PTI in an interview here. The government was not willing to consider a ceasefire without proper linkages as it had bad experiences with the LTTE in the past. "They regroup and start (fighting) again. We are wary of ceasefire," he said. Stating that the LTTE concept of ceasefire "is putting the government at a maximum disadvantage," Mr Kadirgamar said a ceasefire as a meaningful approach to the solution of the ethnic problem "is something we can consider." The minister said if the talks begin, the government was willing to discuss anything except ‘Eelam,’ a separate state demanded by the LTTE. He said the government was willing to discuss even ‘Thimpu Principles’ being advocated by the LTTE as the basis for talks. The ‘Thimpu Principles,’ enunciated by a number of moderate Tamil parties at the Bhutanese capital during their first round of talks with the Sri Lankan Government under the auspices of India in 1986, included grant of right of self-determination to the Tamils in the island nation. Mr Kadirgamar said the issues included in the principles could be discussed "but we have to see how they fit into the constitution." About the ground
situation in Jaffna, he said "There is a definite
evidence of the army’s resistance stiffening. |
West Asia peace talks resume DUBAI, June 4 (UNI) — Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have been conducting secret negotiations to reach a final peace accord. The talks were being held between Israeli Internal Security Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami and Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council Ahmad Qurei Anu Alaa, regional news agencies said. The two sides had last month also held secret talks in Stockholm, which broke off after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak asked his team to return home in the wake of violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza strip. Mr Barak is optimistic that the talks, which began on Thursday night, will witness progress in view of his recent meeting with US President Bill Clinton in Lisbon. "We expect that my meeting with President Clinton will give new impetus to the negotiations", he told a meeting of his Labour Party. However, Palestinian President Yasser Araft has been quoted as saying in the media that "the Palestinian negotiators will not accept anything less than application of all accords reached and the Security Council resolutions, notably 242 demanding Israel’s withdrawal from all Palestinian and Arab territories". He asserted that the
Palestinians "will not give way on any of their
unalterable national rights, whether the talks (with
Israel) take place in West Asia, in Europe or in the
USA." |
Bosnia de-mining lacks funds SARAJEVO, June 4 (Reuters) — More than four years after its 1992-95 war, mines are still killing Bosnians, but western diplomats and local officials cannot agree on how best to clear them. So far this year, 16 persons have been killed and 10 injured in 19 mine accidents, according to statistics compiled by the U.N. refugee agency, the UNHCR. "It is an absolute disgrace," said Harry Leefe, assistant chief of the Unhcr’s Bosnian Mission, referring to the deaths of three children in Sarajevo in April. From January 1996 to March 2000, there were about 1,200 mine accidents of which approximately 40 per cent were fatal and 20 per cent involved children. Some 19,000 minefields had been identified across the Balkan country. While everyone agrees that risks of mine accidents is running high because of the increase in refugees returning home this year, western diplomats and local officials are divided on how to proceed with the de-mining process. "The whole process is dependent on funding and on how long the international community will remain involved," a western diplomat, asked not to be named, told Reuters. He said the Bosnian Government needed to plan how to deal with de-mining, including setting defined time limits to achieve targets and an exit strategy for the international community. "We are at a crossroads about the de-mining process in Bosnia," another western diplomat told Reuters. According to western sources, there has been a funding crisis in the de-mining process for more than a year, caused by the existence of "too many actors with too many hidden agendas". Several organisations have been involved in the mine clearing operation. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (unhcr) had a programme for 1998-99. The European Commission has invested 13 million euros ($ 12.15 million) in its campaign since 1996, but it focused on assistance for civil protection which it hoped would take over the whole programme after funding expires next year. The NATO-led peacekeeping Stabilisation Force (sfor) has been assisting in the de-mining efforts of the armies of Bosnia’s two regions — the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic. A number of local and western non-governmental organisations (ngos) have also been involved but the funding for humanitarian agencies is drying up. Financial assistance for Bosnia’s three mine action centres has been on hold since the beginning of the year. According to some
sources, western donors are reluctant to put their money
into a process where there has been too much duplication
and which lacks transparency. |
Diana’s case: key witness dead LONDON, June 4 (PTI) — A key witness in the police investigation into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, has been found dead in mysterious circumstances in a remote woodland in southern France, a media report today said. The charred body of James Andanson, a leading paparazzo who hounded Diana and her friend Dodi Fayed in the days before their death in Paris, was found by soldiers on military exercise in a burnt-out car near the village of Nant, the Sunday Times reported today. Andanson, 54, was initially a suspect in the criminal inquiry by the French police into the car crash which killed Diana, Dodi and Henri Paul, their driver, in August 1997. He and his family were questioned about his involvement with the pack of photographers that trailed the couple as they holidayed in the Mediterranean in the week before the crash. Andanson was quizzed about his ownership of a white Fiat Uno, of the sort that clipped the Princess’s Mercedes as it sped into the Alma tunnel, where the accident occurred. Although the car and its driver have never been traced, Herve Stephan, the Judge investigating the crash, concluded that the presence of a white Fiat Uno was a significant cause of the tragedy. Detectives are puzzled by Andanson’s death, which they say occurred in a "very discreet and isolated’’ woodland in the Aveyron region of south-western France. His body was said to have been burnt almost beyond recognition. Although found four weeks ago, Andanson was formally identified by DNA tests only last week, the report said. The paparazzo had been missing since leaving his Paris home at the beginning of last month. The Police said they did not rule out foul play. Lt Col Gerry Plane said although Andanson had been showing serious suicidal tendencies, there would always be doubts about his death. Andanson was in white Fiat Uno at the time of the crash in August 1997. However, detectives said the paint on Andanson’s fiat did not match that recovered from the scrape marks on the Mercedes. The car was seized by
the police five months after the crash from a car dealer,
to whom Andanson had sold it in October 1997.
Andanson’s son, also called James, said last week
that his father never spoke about the Paris crash.
"At the moment, we don’t know why my father
died,’’ he said. |
Defector says Teheran behind Panam bombing NEW YORK, June 4 (Reuters) — CBS Television has said it will air an interview with an Iranian intelligence service defector today, who claims the bombing of a Panam aircraft over Scotland was masterminded by Iran and not Libya. The defector, now in protective custody in Turkey, told the "60 Minutes" current affairs programme that he had documental proof that Teheran was behind the Lockerbie bombing of Panam flight 103 in 1988, CBS said in a note yesterday. A spokesman for the programme said the Iranian, who had been in a refugee camp in Turkey, was now being debriefed by CIA officials. CBS said in a statement that its reporting team "got access just a few days ago to an Iranian defector who claims to be Ahmad Behbahani, the man who coordinated all of Iran’s overseas acts of terrorism for at least the past decade." CBS declined to provide any more information ahead of the programme’s scheduled screening today. Two Libyans, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima, who prosecutors claim were intelligence agents, have been on trial since May 3 at a special Scottish court in the Netherlands, charged with murdering 270 persons of the Panam bombing. Defence lawyers for the Libyans have suggested they will try to prove that Syrian-backed Palestinian extremists were the perpetrators in an act of revenge on behalf of Iran for the destruction of an Iranian airliner by a US warship six months earlier. Prosecutors aim to prove
that the Libyans placed a radio-cassette recorder full of
semtex explosive in a suitcase and smuggled it aboard a
plane from Malta to Frankfurt, where it was checked
through on to the doomed Panam flight. |
Kulsoom plans movement for Sharif’s release KARACHI, June 4 (AFP) — Kulsoom Nawaz, wife of imprisoned former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, has said she will soon begin a public mobilisation campaign for the release of her husband. "They (military rulers) want to eliminate my husband and I will go to every corner of the country to mobilise people," she told AFP in a telephone interview late on Saturday. Ms Kulsoom said the movement would be launched from the southern Sind province, of which Karachi is the capital, although no date had been set. "I will be at the forefront of the movement which will be different from previous political agitations in the country. No buses will be burnt and no one will be hurt," Kulsoom said. "I don’t expect justice from these courts," she said. The 49-year-old Kulsoom said she had found her husband in good spirits after visiting him in Attock Fort jail. Sources within Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML) party say they are divided over whether to launch a movement for the release of the deposed prime minister. "I will be meeting
the party leaders soon to chalk out the strategy,"
Ms Kulsoom said. "They (the regime) are
underestimating me." |
Tamil Tigers ‘defensive’ COLOMBO, June 4 (AP) — Sri Lanka’s Defence Ministry today said its troops had put Tamil Tigers on the defensive in the northern Jaffna peninsula after killing at least 200 guerrillas and knocking out some of their heavy artillery. "This explains the
calm on part of the terrorists. They may be trying to
regroup, but it looks like we have given them a good
beating," Defence Ministry spokesman Brig Palitha
Fernando told reporters. |
Violence by IRA group feared LONDON, June 4 (DPA) — The British counterintelligence is concerned that an Irish Republican Army splinter group has access to a large arsenal and is bent on a new wave of terror in England to show its rejection of current peace moves in northern Ireland, the main British Sunday newspapers report. MI5 believes the real IRA, thought to be behind the bombing of a bridge over the Thames in London on Thursday, possesses half a ton of semtex high explosive, according to the reports. The Hammersmith bridge bombing had used only a small quantity of the Czech-made plastic explosive and may have been intended purely as a propaganda exercise. Protestant and Catholic politicians rejoined the power-sharing executive in northern Ireland the same day after the peace process stalled in February. The real IRA, thought to
number about 100 in total, was responsible for the Omagh
bombing, which claimed 29 lives in August 1998. |
Indian boy wins spelling contest WASHINGTON, June 4 (PTI) — Twelve-year-old Indian boy George Abraham Thampy has won the National Spelling Bee contest, beating 248 contestants after he spelled "demarche" correctly. This was George’s third bid for the championship at the 73rd Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee contest yesterday. The Maryland Heights (Missouri) seventh grader won $ 10,000 for standing first in the Spelling Bee just a week after winning a $ 15,000 scholarship for his second place finish in a Geography competition. Both competitions were held in the US capital. George lives with his parents in a St Louis suburb. He tied for fourth place in the 1998 spelling contest and finished in third place last year. George said that home schooling had helped him because it gave him the flexibility to choose subjects in which he is interested. "Spelling is not a subject taught in (American) schools," he said. For the contest, the participants must be between 11 and 14. They are asked to spell words they are hardly likely to encounter outside the Spelling Bee, like "solivagant" (marked by solitary wandering), "seine" (a large net used to enclose fish), "morceau" (a short, literary or musical piece) and "escritoire" (a writing desk). George became a spelling champion after 15 gruelling rounds of competition and wants to study medicine eventually. He said he had a difficult moment in one of the earlier rounds when asked to spell "emmetropia," meaning perfect vision (George wears spectacle). "But I thought of God and it just popped into my head," he said, adding that he prayed often during the contest. "I told God before the contest that I would do my best," he said. George said that he would share his $ 10,000 prize with his parents because they had tutored and supported him in his quest to win the spelling bee. His father, K. George Thampy, is a biochemist and physician, and his mother, Bina, works full time, teaching her four sons and three daughters. They are both immigrants from Kerala. They decided to home school all their children after being shocked by crime in Houston, where they had lived at the time. Bina Thampy said: "My husband thought it was too dangerous to send them to school there." She said that George had
been participating in the contest since he was six and
would go through the word lists. |
Fiji’s ethnic Indians prepare
for exodus JAMES Chandra believes there is only one way to break the oppressive fear, tension and nerves that have gripped his life since indigenous Fijians launched a coup against the ethnic Indian-led government on May 19. An ethnic Indian farmer, he feels he has to get out of Fiji. "This area is very dangerous, no one wants to stay here," he said. As he spoke he gazed at his fields in the Rewe river valley that supporters of the coup leader, George Speight, have plundered to feed the rebels camped inside the Parliament compound in the capital Suva, an hour’s drive away. "If any country will take us, we will be very happy to go. I think almost all Indians want to leave. There is nothing left for us here." He is not exaggerating. His 9.3-hectare (23-acre) small holding, which 10 days ago was full of the country’s staple root vegetable, dalo, is bare. His two horses and two cattle have disappeared, his house has been trashed and his savings have been stolen. Most of his neighbours have similar stories. "We are all afraid," said Abdul Gani, who lives behind locked iron gates with seven other families. "If we could go, we would." More than 70,000 Indians left Fiji after the last coup in 1987, because of the oppression. Most of the 3,20,000 that remain are struggling to survive as poor farmers, not yet able to shake off the yoke of their ancestors, who were brought from India by the British at the end of the 19th century to work as indentured labourers on sugar plantations. "They were meant to stay only five to 10 years but the British refused to let them leave," said John Ali, an ethnic Indian government minister before the latest coup and one of the hostages released by the rebels. Mr Ali believes that the ethnic Indian community is being victimised because of its relative prosperity, acquired through hard work, as well as its unexpected success in the last general election in 1999. "As petrol and water do not mix, so Fijian culture and commerce do not mix. They are two different things," he said. Indigenous Fijians paint a very different picture of the racial struggle. Many agree with Mr Speight’s claims that the ethnic Indian Prime Minister, Mr Mahendra Chaudhry, was scheming to allow Indians, who make up 44 per cent of the 7,80,000 population, to take over their land. "I don’t agree with Speight’s methods because they are criminal," Manasa Vakaravia, an indigenous Fijian farmer, said. "But I agree with what he is fighting for. Chaudhry wanted to take what is rightfully ours, and had to be stopped." Mr Vakaravia and his friends have been to Suva several times to give moral support to the rebels in the Parliament compound. Mr Speight and some of his followers are younger generation chiefs disgruntled with the long-established hierarchical structure of the tribes, whose leaders still retain many feudal powers in their individual fiefdoms. Fiji consists of 14 geographical provinces and simultaneously three confederacies, divided along tribal lines. While in many areas there are racial divisions, there are also provinces where indigenous Fijians and Indians live side by side harmoniously. The coup has exposed these sources of tension and exacerbated them. Now leaders of the Indian community are demanding international intervention to save them. "If the West claims to advocate universal human rights, how can it just sit back?" Mr Ali asked. "Unless we get help, the Indian community will die an unnatural death. We will suffocate and die." A western businessman
who has lived in Fiji for several years said: "What
we are finding is that with all the overlapping and
competing interest groups, there is a massive power
vacuum. People are unsure who their first loyalty should
be to; their race, their chief or their neighbours.
Solving the immediate political crisis is not going to
change that." — Guardian News Service |
Blast at Manila airport MANILA, June 4 (DPA) — A powerful explosion rocked Manila’s international airport today, damaging a public toilet and shattering glass panels in the latest in a wave of bombings across the country. There were no casualties in the blast at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), the fifth to hit the capital in a month. The explosion, believed to have been caused by a bomb, took place outside the women’s comfort room some 13 metres away from a terminal where arriving passengers are met by relatives, airport security supervisor colonel Manuel Pintado told reporters. "It was a powerful and deafening explosion," said a vendor, who told investigators that before the blast two men had attempted to leave two car stereos with her while they waited for a passenger. She did not accept the package. Pintado said the explosion collapsed the ceiling of the toilet, blasted a crater in the sidewalk and broke glass panels in a nearby buiding. The aviation police detained two suspects shortly after the blast, and security was tightened throughout the airport. The bombing comes amid a
resurgence in Muslim insurgency in the southern region of
Mindanao. The police has blamed the string of attacks in
Manila and other parts of the country to Muslim
separatist rebels who are under attack by the military. |
6 dead in France plane crash BEAUVAIS, (France) June 4 (AFP) — Six persons were killed on Sunday in a plane crash in Thury-en Valois, in northern France, according to first reports from the emergency services. The plane, a Piper
PA-46, was travelling between the English Channel island
of Jersey and Allendorf in Germany, the police said. The
reason for the crash was not yet known, although a
violent storm was under way in the area around the time
the incident occurred. |
Economics Nobel laureate dead CHICAGO, June 4 (Reuters) — Nobel prize-winner for economics Merton Miller, praised as the "founder of modern finance" who helped corporate executives boost their firms’ value for shareholders, has died. He was 77. He earned the Nobel Prize in economic sciences in 1990 for his theories on financial economics, according to a statement by the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, where he was a professor. "Merton Miller is
widely considered to be the founder of modern
finance," Mr Robert Hamada, the school’s Dean,
said yesterday. |
NASA crash-lands satellite WASHINGTON, June 4 (DPA) — NASA officials today brought down a 17-tonne satellite for a deliberate splash landing in the Pacific Ocean. A NASA official told the CNN television that the satellite had made a landing as planned at around 2.30 p.m. about 2,500 miles south-east of Hawaii. NASA had picked a remote patch of the Pacific for the deliberate crashing of the satellite. Earlier all ships in the vicinity had been given a warning. NASA said it decided to
bring down the satellite for safety reasons after a
gyroscope, a control device, failed — a decision
that drew protests from numerous scientists. |
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