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| Saturday,
July 8, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
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Rebels’ terms for freeing hostages SUVA, July 7 — Rebels holding 27 hostages in Fiji’s Parliament said today that they would release the captives in return for the resignation of the new civilian government. The rebels also demanded that the military hand over power to tribal chiefs - something the army has refused to do. Crackdown on PML workers Barak softens stance on Jerusalem Window on Pakistan UN given machine to clear Afghan mines
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Ultras kill 12 in Indonesia “Hostage crisis may end soon”
Dhaka for share in
pre-’71 Pak assets
Battle of ‘cards’ hots up Relief to Solomon isles victims Russians praised for
opposing arms treaty
Starr spokesman to face trial
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Rebels’ terms for freeing hostages SUVA, July 7 (AP, Reuters) — Rebels holding 27 hostages in Fiji’s Parliament said today that they would release the captives in return for the resignation of the new civilian government. The rebels also demanded that the military hand over power to tribal chiefs - something the army has refused to do. A meeting between rebel leader George Speight and military leader Commodore Frank Bainimarama failed to take place but lower-level delegations from both sides discussed the latest rebel demands. There was no immediate word on the progress of the talks at the main military barracks outside the capital, Suva. Mr Speight and a band of gunmen charged into Parliament on May 19 and took the government hostage. They still hold 27 captives, including the former Prime Minister. The military took power 10 days later and recently named an all-ethnic Fijian civilian government to prepare for elections. Commodore Bainimarama retained leadership of the country, however. Although the military has met most of Speight’s demands to disenfranchise Fiji’s ethnic Indian minority, including deposing Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry, the first Fijian of Indian ancestry to lead the country, and scrapping the multiracial 1997 constitution, Mr Speight is still refusing to release his hostages. Nearly half the supporters of Fijian rebels holding deposed Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry and most of his Cabinet hostage left Parliament on Friday ahead of a midnight deadline to clear the area and free the captives. “Most of them (the deserting rebel supporters) said they were tired of living in the complex,” said Captain Eroni Volavola, adding 80 rebel supporters had left. Rebel leader George Speight, his gunmen and the rest of some 200 supporters remained inside Parliament. A military exclusion zone around the complex, which comes into full force at midnight (1200 hrs GMT), was deserted. The military, which has warned it might cut electricity and other services to the compound, has said anyone left inside after the deadline would be charged once the crisis ends. The military is standing behind Fiji’s new indigenous Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, appointed to rule for two years ahead of fresh elections, and has rejected Iloilo as President. |
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Crackdown on PML workers ISLAMABAD, July 7 (PTI, AFP) — The Pakistani police today launched a crackdown on supporters of ousted Premier Nawaz Sharif’s former ruling party by arresting scores of them in Punjab province in an apparent bid to prevent his wife from leading an anti-government march tomorrow. The police said it had arrested 165 members of Pakistan Muslim League (PML) and were acting on the orders of the Punjab Government, which has vowed to stop Sharif’s wife, Kulsoom Nawaz, from leading the procession to Peshawar from Lahore. Leading political parties immediately expressed shock and outrage over the mass arrests and claimed 300 workers had been arrested. Lashing out at the military regime, Kulsoom condemned the crackdown and vowed to go ahead with her march. “This step only betrays the military government’s shortsightedness. My march is not for political reasons: it is for the victims of drought,” she told newsmen. “Governments cannot be run through police. What they are doing....will make them unpopular,” said Prof Ghafoor Ahmed, the leader of Pakistan’s main fundamentalist party, Jamaat-i-Islami (JI). Punjab officials said they wanted to “convey a very strong message” that political activity was outlawed. Lahore: Dozens of Pakistan Muslim League (PML) activists as well as senior leaders were seen crammed into police lockups around the city while others had gone into hiding. “I was sleeping at my home when a heavy contingent of police besieged my house and knocked at the door,” one provincial PML leader, Javed Latif, told AFP from his cell, adding the raid occurred around midnight yesterday. “My brother opened the door and as I came out they handcuffed me and took me to the police station. They haven’t told me the charges but I know it’s because of the rally.” Punjab Governor Mohammad Safdar earlier this week promised to stop the rally under laws banning public political gatherings imposed by the eight-month-old military regime in November. “Under the law, you can hold a meeting within four walls but not rallies as planned by her (Kulsoom Nawaz),” he said. |
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Barak softens stance on Jerusalem WASHINGTON, July 7 (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak will arrive at the US-sponsored Mid East summit next week prepared to offer the Palestinians an expanded presence in a reshaped Jerusalem along with admission to thousands of refugees whose families already live in Israel, according to two well-placed Israeli officials. Stressing that the concessions must be matched by conciliatory Palestinian moves, the officials said yesterday the future of Jerusalem was the toughest issue on the table and may be excluded from a settlement between the two sides. Less progress has been made on Jerusalem than any other issue in the negotiations leading up to the summit President Bill Clinton will stage beginning Tuesday at Camp David, Maryland. By contrast, the two sides had made considerable headway on the question of how much land Israel would turn over to Mr Yasser Arafat for a state, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. Mr Barak, for instance, might not insist on retaining the strategic Jordan Valley, provided Israel could maintain a security presence there at least for some time, they said. The unusual disclosure of Mr Barak’s likely stance on core issues at the summit appeared to be part of an effort to project him as a reasonable Israeli leader and to coax matching concessions from Mr Arafat. Publicly, at least, Mr Arafat is demanding transfer of all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem — more land than Mr Barak is prepared to relinquish. And Mr Barak intends to keep Jerusalem united and Israel’s Capital. But Mr Barak was prepared to grant the Palestinians control of day-to-day affairs in their Jerusalem neighbourhoods in exchange for incorporating nearby Jewish settlements into the predominantly Jewish area of the city, the officials said. On refugees, Mr Barak was willing to consider permitting tens of thousands of Palestinians to settle in Israel if they had family members there, but he would not accept the idea that they had a legal right to return, the officials said. The precedent was Israel’s acceptance of 60,000 to 70,000 Palestinian Arabs in a programme of reuniting families. Meanwhile, the Palestinians were asking for $ 40 billion in international aid to set up their state after an agreement with Israel, Mr Arafat’s top economic adviser said. |
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Window on Pakistan WHAT kind of Pakistan does Gen Parvez Musharraf want to create before finally handing over power to an elected government in October, 2003, the deadline set by the country’s Supreme Court? Not a secular, tolerant one. But less belligerent and violence-prone than it is now. He would also like all those who can pay taxes to cough out more and end the black market economy that has a whopping volume of $ 38 billion per year. He is keen to have a decentralised power structure that provides some relief to the harassed common people. His agenda, an egalitarian one to the core, is indeed laudable. But, as he is discovering much to his chagrin, the response is less enthusiastic. There are reasons for this. One, the faith in the capacity of the military to deliver goods has few takers among the elite as well as the common people. Two the General has sent quite fuzzy signals. One example: the government has been keen on documenting the traders and their sales and income in order to assess the total trade volume and make them pay taxes. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have put a condition that unless the government collects taxes, improves the balance of payment position it should not expect any rescheduling of the huge loan of over $ 68 billion. Here attempts by the earlier government under Mr Nawaz Sharif, who himself was the leader of the pack of businessmen, failed. But then this government too has announced many concessions like “no” to spot inspections and taxes only after consulting them. The daily battle with the traders one day in Multan, the second day in Sargodha, the third day in Jhang and the fourth day in Rawalpindi showed that the government after the concession was still only trying at the stage of its documentation drive. In fact, Pakistan’s Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz is largely depending upon this collection. He hopes to decrease the budget deficit from 6.1 per cent of the GDP to 4.6 per cent. He has also promised an unprecedented increase of 25 per cent in social programmes and poverty alleviation, a reduction in the income tax rate of salary earners and various sops to attract new investments in the information technology sector. And to satisfy his military masters, he also sought to increase the spending on defence by 10 per cent. In order to create the promised green land, he has to increase the revenue by 24 per cent. He wishes to enlist more tax payers and cut on the present rates. Spread the net wide is Mr Aziz’s message. This is linked to reducing the size of the black economy. This would require a host of positive steps. One the rule of law, missing so far in Pakistan. Second an end to unwarranted privileges and most importantly, control over the jihadists and mullas, and their militant training camps in madrasas. Here the government also requires the wholehearted
cooperation of the Taliban in Afghanistan. These new rulers, propped up by the Jihadists and the military, are now less amenable to the dictats from General Musharraf. Efforts are also on to deal with the Taliban. Frustrated by brutal sectarian killings, a costly smuggling industry and a growing heroin addiction at home, Pakistan is getting tough with its Taliban friends in neighbouring Afghanistan — a big source of its trouble as Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider feels. It began last month when the military government in Pakistan gave the Taliban a list of 18 military camps where Pakistanis were allegedly being trained. Pakistan demanded that they all should be shut down, Mr Haider said in an interview. As a result, the Taliban closed down the camps at Rishkore and Kargah, both on the outskirts of the Afghan capital of Kabul. But in Kabul the residents who live near these camps said truckloads of Pakistanis were shipped from the camps to northern Afghanistan’s Kunduz province to fight against the Taliban’s northern based enemies. Mr Haider says relocating Pakistanis to other areas of Afghanistan is not good enough. “We told them that ‘we don’t want any Pakistanis fighting in your country. This is your internal conflict. We think you should settle in through dialogue, but if you want to fight and it is manpower you need, then get them from among your own people.” But Pakistan is one of the Taliban’s friends in a world that is deeply critical of their harsh brand of Islamic law and their apparent willingness to give refuge to Islamic militants. Mr Haider says Pakistan has had enough, “We want these people involved in sectarian killings arrested and given back to us, he adds. During meetings, Mr Haider has told the Taliban to arrest and extradite wanted criminals to Pakistan, stop the flow of Arab nationals to Pakistan, help crush the multi-billion dollar smuggling industry and reduce the production of opium, the raw material used to make heroin. But these problems are more than 20 years old and can not be solved easily. For decades the free flow of Afghans and Pakistanis across the border has been tolerated, even encouraged during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, Mr Haider points out. Clearly, General Musharraf is caught in contradictions. He needs these Afghans, Arabs and
lumpen elements from among the clerics and fundamentalists to sustain his proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir, but he does not want them to be there in Pakistan. How could this be possible? Unless he mends fences with India, he should not dream of creating a civil society that respects the rule of law, that pays taxes and develops and egalitarian system and hopes to establish democracy one day. — Gobind Thukral |
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UN given machine to clear Afghan mines ISLAMABAD, July 7 (DPA) — Japan handed over a newly-developed machine to the United Nations in Islamabad today for clearing landmines in the war-ravaged Afghanistan. Japanese Ambassador Sadaaki Mumata, who gave the machine to a representative of the UN Office for Coordinating Humanitarian Assistance to Afghanistan (UNOCHA), said that “preventing and undoing the damages of this devil’s weapon” is a task for the global community “to tackle in concert”. More than 10 million landmines were planted across Afghanistan by the Soviet army during its occupation of the country from 1979 to 1989. Since then, more than 1.3 million mines have been cleared by the UNOCHA. About 2,500 persons are killed or maimed by mines in Afghanistan each year. But Afghan factions who started fighting among themselves after the Soviet withdrawal have laid additional mines. On Wednesday, the ruling Taliban Militia complained to the United Nations that its adversary, the Northern Alliance, sowed mines during the latest round of fighting. |
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Ultras kill 12
in Indonesia JAKARTA, July 7 (DPA) — At least 12 persons were killed and more than 20 wounded when heavily armed Muslim militants attacked a Christian village in the eastern Indonesian city of Ambon, residents and news reports said today. At least 10 Christians were killed and 17 injured when thousands of Muslims from the nearby Liang and Tulehu villages, wielding guns and other weapons, attacked Waai village yesterday morning, said Mr Semi Waileruni, a lawyer at Ambon’s Maranatha Christian Church. Mr Waileruni said hundreds of houses, school buildings and churches at Waai were set on fire by the attackers, prompting thousands of people, mostly women and children, to flee their homes into nearby jungle and mountainous areas near the Moluccas
capital. |
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“Hostage crisis
may end soon”
MANILA, July 7 (AFP) — All 37 hostages held by Muslim extremists in the southern Philippines are safe, with a breakthrough in the 10-week-long crisis possible soon, the government said today. But it cautioned that friction among guerrilla factions over potential ransom money could muddle the situation. “All I can say is that the discussions continue and there have been some indications that there will probably be some results, but beyond that I cannot be specific,” said Mr Ricardo
Puno, the President’s press secretary in a media briefing here. The optimism was based on the talks between chief government negotiator Roberto Aventajado’s emissaries and the Abu
Sayyaf, who are holding 20, mostly foreign hostages they kidnapped from Malaysia on April 23, as well as 13 Christian preachers who went to the Guerrilla hideout last weekend. |
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Dhaka for share in
pre-’71 Pak assets
DHAKA, July 7 (DPA) — Bangladesh has reiterated its claim to a share of federal assets of Pakistan prior to the country’s break-up from Islamabad’s rule in 1971, Foreign Ministry officials said today. The Foreign Secretary, Mr C.M. Shafi Sami, said Bangladesh had a substantial claim to the assets and the matter was recognised as an outstanding bilateral issue between the two countries. The claim was reiterated following a recent statement by Pakistan’s military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf in which he had reportedly ruled out the possibility of paying any compensation to Dhaka for damages in the 1971 war which led to Bangladesh’s independence. “Bangladesh is making all-out efforts to realise its share of the pre-1971 Pakistani federal assets by resolving the long-standing issue,” Mr Sami said. |
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Battle of ‘cards’ hots up BERLIN, July 7 (PTI) — A battle of ‘‘cards’’ between Germany’s federal and state governments is hotting up with both offering temporary visas to experts from India and other non-EU countries to overcome an acute manpower shortage. Close on the heels of the federal government’s the US-style greencard proposal to bring in 20,000 computer specialists, southern German state Bavaria unveiled its alternative by approving ‘‘Bavarian blue card’’ to help companies recruit foreign computer specialists. The decision by the state Cabinet early this week came as a July 14 vote nears on the national ‘‘green card’’ plan mooted by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in the Bundesrat (Upper House of German Parliament), which represents Germany’s 16 states. The Schroeder government is confident of the passage of the ‘‘green card’’ scheme and intends to enforce it from August 1. An estimated 10,000 foreign specialists have applied for visas including about 2,000 from India to take computer work in Germany, according to the federal labour office in Bonn. As part of the nation-wide debate preceding the Parliament vote, Interior Ministers belonging to Opposition Christian Democrats and its sister party the Christian Social Union-ruled states met in Munich recently to chalk out their strategy. The Opposition parties, which have expressed reservations over the ‘‘green card’’ scheme, are yet to give unconditional support to Mr Schroeder’s move. ‘‘The ‘green card’ still can fail,’’ said Michael Ziegler, a spokesman for the Bavarian Interior Ministry. If the ‘‘green card’’ does clear Bundesrat, he said employees still could use the ‘‘blue card’’ if they worked in Bavaria. Bavaria’s Interior Minister Gunther Beckstein has said the ‘‘blue card’’ would be more flexible than the special visas proposed by Mr Schroeder. |
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Relief to Solomon
isles victims
HONIARA (Solomon Islands), July 7 (AP) — In a major peace initiative, the government today announced it will pay compensation to victims of 19 months of ethnic fighting. In a speech marking the country’s 22nd Independence Day, new Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare announced that his government would pay $ 10 million (US $ 1.9 million) in compensation at a ceremony on the Australian naval supply ship
HMAS Tobruk moored off the capital, Honiara. “Blood money” will also be paid to relatives of about 60 persons killed in 19 months of
fighting. |
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Russians praised for
opposing arms treaty
BEIJING, July 7 (AFP) — China has praised Russian efforts to maintain a landmark arms treaty in the face of us plans to build a national missile defense system. Both, China and Russia are opposed to the us plans, triggered by the possible threat from rogue states such as North Korea, saying that they would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. “We appreciate the position of the Russian side in opposing the revision of the treaty,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said yesterday at the ministry’s regular briefing. “China and Russia have already started cooperation in this regard and will continue to intensify cooperation in further maintaining the strategic balance in the world,” he said. Mr Sun’s comment came after Wednesday’s meeting between Chinese President Jiang Zemin and his Russian counterpart Vladimir
Putin, where the two leaders emphasised the “unshakeability” of the
ABM Treaty. |
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Starr
spokesman to face trial WASHINGTON, July 7 (AP) — The former spokesman in the investigation that led to US President Bill Clinton’s impeachment has been charged with criminal contempt and ordered to stand trial next week in a case involving news leaks. Charles Bakaly is being prosecuted by the government before US District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson, who as the chief judge of the federal court in Washington, oversees matters involving grand jury secrecy. A trial has been scheduled for July 13, according to documents at the U.S. District court. |
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