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Speight moved to island Military warns rebels of ‘drastic action’ SUVA, July 29 — Fiji’s military today extended its emergency powers and moved detained rebel leader George Speight and several supporters to a makeshift new prison on a small island off the capital Suva. Taliban cut oppn
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NASA to
launch better Mars Rover PASADENA (California), July 29 — NASA has announced plans for a bigger, better Mars Rover to be sent to the red planet in 2003 for a landing a year later, and the space agency said it was even considering launching two rovers at the same time to roam separate areas of the planet’s surface. Chelsea plans to
skip studies Fujimori sworn in amidst riots Saddam: the gentleman and the ‘dictator’ |
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Speight moved to island SUVA, July 29 (Reuters) — Fiji’s military today extended its emergency powers and moved detained rebel leader George Speight and several supporters to a makeshift new prison on a small island off the capital Suva. The military also issued an ultimatum to rebel supporters occupying a barrack in the town of Labasa, to release their hostages and leave by midnight Sunday or face “drastic action”. Rebels have occupied the barracks on Fiji’s second main island of Vanua Levu for almost three weeks but the army is demanding they surrender their arms and release the soldiers held captive. Speight and his supporters plunged the country into political crisis when they stormed Parliament in May in the name of indigenous Fijian rights, toppling the government of ethnic-Indian Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry and holding him and most of his Cabinet hostage for 56 days. Speight, who was given an amnesty when he agreed to free the hostages and return the rebels’ weapons, was arrested on Wednesday and is being investigated for treason over allegations of a threat on the life of President Ratu Josefa Iloilo. Fears that Speight’s arrest could spark major unrest around the country have not materialised. But the military said it was extending its emergency powers for another 14 days from today. The extension will allow a continuation of the night curfew in Suva and checkpoints on key roads around the country which have been in force since martial law was declared on May 29, during the hostage crisis. A military spokesman told Reuters Speight and other rebel leaders were being moved “for their own safety and security” rather than to prevent them escaping from their cells at the military headquarters in Suva. He would not say if threats had been made against them. “George Speight and six of his supporters are now held prisoner at Nukulau island”, the military said in a statement. Lieutenant Alipate Mataitini told Reuters a decree had been issued declaring Nukulau and nearby Makuluva island, used by Fijians as picnicking grounds, as a formal prison zone. “It is now off bounds to everyone else,” he told Reuters, declining to say how many soldiers would guard the rebels. Among the seven taken to Nukulau were Speight’s spokesman Jo Nata, former special forces head Ilisoni Ligairi, lawyer Tevita Bukarau, and Ratu Timoci Silatolu. Troops on Thursday launched a teargas raid on a village school near Suva where about 400 rebel supporters were camped, detaining them and leaving one man dead. With Speight and his key supporters behind bars, a new interim government was sworn in on Friday by Iloilo, which did not include any of the rebels’ nominees. The 20-member all indigenous Fijian Cabinet has one ethnic Indian among eight Assistant Ministers and has been rejected as “discriminatory” by Chaudhry’s coalition. Indians make up 44 per cent of Fiji’s 800,000 population and dominate the hard-hit sugar and tourism-based economy. |
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Taliban cut oppn supply line KABUL, July 29 (Reuters) — Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban today cut a vital opposition supply line in the country’s north, Afghan sources said. They said the Taliban forces had seized the old and new towns of Nahrin linking Commander Ahmad Shah Masood’s main stronghold of Panjsher valley with northern Takhar province on the border with Tajikistan. Mr Abdullah, a senior opposition spokesman, speaking by satellite telephone from an unidentified location in the country’s north, confirmed the loss of the supply line and said fighting was continuing around Old Nahrin town in Baghlan province. Nahrin was briefly captured by the Taliban, but the opposition won it back. Mr Abdullah said the opposition would attempt to recapture it. “Yes, its loss can be seen as a big victory for the Taliban, but it could also be the start of serious problems for them as the people will not sit quietly,” he told Reuters. The fighting for Nahrin erupted yesterday a day after the united nations said it wanted to boost efforts to seek peace and end two decades of conflict in Afghanistan. The latest development came days after the Taliban arrested Mr Bashir Baghlani, a key loyalist commander in Baghlan province, on charges of trying to switch over to the opposition. The Commander was now in custody in the Taliban’s main stronghold in the southern city of Kandahar. Mr Abdullah said many of Mr Baghlani’s fighters had already joined the opposition. Mr Abdullah said that in addition to an unknown number of military casualties in the latest fighting, more than 50 civilians had been killed in Taliban air raids. Meanwhile the supreme Taliban leader Mr Mullah Omar ordered a ban on poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, the world’s largest producer of opium. In a statement issued on the Taliban-controlled radio yesterday, he ordered farmers to stop growing poppy, from next spring. “Anyone resorting to cultivation will be punished by the Islamic emirate” Mr Omar said. It is for the first time that the Taliban had called for a total ban on the cultivation of poppy. |
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NASA to
launch better Mars Rover
PASADENA (California), July 29 (Reuters) — NASA has announced plans for a bigger, better Mars Rover to be sent to the red planet in 2003 for a landing a year later, and the space agency said it was even considering launching two rovers at the same time to roam separate areas of the planet’s surface. Still smarting over the loss of the Mars Polar Lander and a Mars Orbiter last year, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said yesterday that the 2004 rover mission would land on the Martian surface in the same way as the phenomenally successful 1997 Mars Pathfinder sojourner mission. That landing entailed a soft parachute descent with the Pathfinder base vehicle and the Sojourner Rover encased in a huge airbag which bounced along the surface of the planet before coming to rest. The Polar Lander was to have landed on three tripod-like legs but its fate was never determined. |
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Chelsea plans to skip studies WASHINGTON, July 29 (AP) — Chelsea Clinton plans to skip the start of school at Stanford University this fall in part to campaign for her mother, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is pursuing a Senate seat in New York, a White House spokeswoman has said. Chelsea Clinton (20), is due to begin her senior year at Stanford. She plans to return to the Palo Alto, California, campus at midyear, after her mother’s race for the seat being vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. She also wants to spend more time with her father as he closes his two terms in office, said Ms Clinton’s spokeswoman, Liss Muscatine on Thursday. “Chelsea is taking off the fall quarter to experience and enjoy the final months of her father’s presidency, and to support her mother and father in their various activities,” Muscatine said. Chelsea Clinton has accumulated additional credits while at Stanford and will still graduate on time in the spring of 2001, Muscatine said. Stanford assistant registrar Susan Maher confirmed the plan and said it is not unusual for Stanford students to sit out an academic quarter to do volunteer work or pursue other interests. It is not clear whether Chelsea Clinton will campaign separately from her mother, or whether she will assume any formal speaking roles in campaign events. NEW YORK: Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign won the endorsement of two gay advocacy organisations on Thursday, the Empire State Pride Agenda and the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign. “Ms Clinton is the clear leader on every single issue of importance to the lesbian and gay community,” said Tim Sweeney of the Empire State Pride Agenda during a news conference on the steps of City Hall. Ms Clinton was cited for her support of civil unions providing legal recognition for gay couples; for favouring homosexuals being allowed to serve openly in the military; for supporting laws against hate-crimes; and for backing abortion rights. Another organisation, Housing Works, which provides housing for homeless people with AIDS, defended Lazio, pointing out his support for funding for housing and jobs for AIDS patients. “Lazio has real achievements in the area of HIV/AIDS,” the group said. |
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Fujimori sworn in amidst riots LIMA, July 29 (Reuters) — Peru’s President Alberto Fujimori was sworn in for an unprecedented third term as thousands of protesters clashed with the police in riots that killed six persons trapped in a burning bank. The police fired tear gas shells at anti-Fujimori demonstrators in colonial downtown Lima, blocks away from the swearing-in ceremony, yesterday and protesters burnt the headquarters of the National Electoral Board while Mr Fujimori, elected in a May vote and widely considered tainted, was pledging reform in his inaugural address. An official of the human rights office said six persons died after they were trapped in a state bank set alight during the riots. Some reports said the victims were bank security guards. At least 84 persons were arrested and 49 protesters taken to hospital, including three, who had been shot. A foreign reporter was hit in the eye by a tear gas shell fired by the police. Opposition lawmakers, some wearing gas masks to protest the heavy handed policing, shouted insults at the 62-year-old leader and walked out of the swearing-in ceremony. |
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Saddam: the gentleman and the ‘dictator’ BAGHDAD, July 29 (DPA) — They call him a “dictator’’, the “butcher of Baghdad’’ and a “megalomaniac’’ — there’s hardly an insult that hasn’t been hurled at Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Yet guests who were welcomed to the West Asian country this year remember his “long, firm handshake’’ and tell of a “polite, very hospitable man able to conduct the intelligent, historically — informed conversation with a high degree of concentration.’’ Visitors are struck by Saddam’s “penetrating glance’’ as well as by his “incredibly self-confident demeanour’’. Saddam frequently corrects interpreters as they put his Arabic remarks into English Saddam is also convinced that the “Arab nation’’ is behind him and that Iraq will ultimately surmount all obstacles in its way. “If you didn’t know who you were dealing with you would think you had just met a perfectly normal, cordial person,’’ said one politician who prefers not to be named. In what has become a standard work “the republic of fear’’, Iraqi Kanan Makiya describes Saddam Hussein’s political style as a blend of “mistrust, suspicion, conspiracy and fraud. Like the old leaders of Mesopotamia Saddam is more afraid of losing face than he is of the entire US arsenal.’’ Born in the village of Auja near Ikrit on April 28, 1937 Saddam grew up fatherless and among petty criminals. He quickly learned to prevail and use weapons to rid himself of opponents. His second tenet was equally writ large: you don’t get anywhere without a strong family behind you. In 1963 Saddam married his cousin Sajida and so entered the sphere around the subsequent President Hassan el-Bakr, who he succeeded in July 1979. Since that time the three Abu-Nasir clans, with whom Saddam is related, have occupied all the key posts in the state, the security apparatus and the Army. During three decades at the top Saddam has left behind a bloody trail. A coup in 1968 was followed by show trials against Jews, the persecution of Shiite Muslims and communists, The execution of opponents in the party and army, eight years of war against Iran, a poison gas attack against Kurds in August 1908 and finally the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Saddam also has a vision — using weapons of mass destruction to turn Iraq into the leading Arab and regional superpower and protective force and he does not take kindly to people who stand in his way. Despite the debilitating effect of united sanctions, observers agree that Saddam still has his hands firmly on the reins of power. According to the US business magazine Forbes, Saddam’s private fortune has increased in the past two years from $ 3 to 5 billion, enough to buy the loyalty of a lot of people. Former UN Chief Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter believes there is “virtually no chance whatsoever’’ of Saddam being overthrown from within. Every officer is a product of post-1968 Iraq, that is after the Baath Party seized power that year. In addition, the years of confrontation have enabled Saddam to forge a “unique Iraqi identity’’ and a “perverted sense of pride’’ at having defied the West for so long. Ritter regards it as “unthinkable’’ that Iraqis would want to take “fort Saddam’’ by storm. Special security units along with the four brigades of republican guards provide complete bodily protection. Key members of the closer circle are the 40 murafiqin or escorts. They search the rooms where Saddam sleeps. The vehicles used to transport him and even the fishing rods used if a spot of angling is on the agenda. At the top of the pyramid are Saddam’s four closest associates, his son Kussia in charge of security, “troubleshooter’’ and cousin Ali Hassan el Madshid. Bodyguard Rokan Abdel Ghafur, and the second most influential man in Iraq, Administrative Secretary Abid Hamid Mahmud. |
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KABUL, July 29 — Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban today cut a vital opposition supply line in the country’s north, Afghan sources said.
They said the Taliban forces had seized the old and new towns of Nahrin linking Commander Ahmad Shah Masood’s main stronghold of Panjsher valley with northern Takhar province on the border with Tajikistan.
