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| Thursday, September 14, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
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China’s biggest graft
trial in 4 cities
Hasina asks Pak to apologise DHAKA, Sept 13 — Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed said on Tuesday despite an apparent snub by General Pervez Musharraf at the United Nations, bilateral ties remained unaffected. Putin signs information
security doctrine MANILA, Sept 13 — Flush with ransom payouts estimated at tens of millions of dollars, Muslim rebels still holding 19 hostages are burying their money in secret places in southern Philippines jungles, officials said today. ‘Australia knew of
’75 Timor invasion’ |
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| Plan to pull down Dome LONDON, Sept 13 — Emergency plans to tear down the London’s Millennium Dome were being drawn up last night (Tuesday) after the Japanese bank, Nomura, dramatically pulled out of its US$148m deal to buy the beleaguered attraction. Smuggling of camel jockeys still on NEW YORK, Sept 13 — North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun has cancelled his planned attendance at the UN General Assembly this week, disappointing Washington which had hoped for a second meeting between him and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a State Department official has said. Clinton sued in another case Case filed on ‘Kursk’ sinking
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China’s biggest graft trial in 4 cities XIAMEN (China), Sept 13 (AFP) — The biggest corruption trial in Communist China’s history opened in four cities today with a host of officials facing the death penalty for their role in a multi-billion dollar web of kickbacks and smuggling.
Court officials in the cities of Xiamen, Fuzhou, Quanzhou and Zhangzhou in the southern province of Fujian confirmed to AFP that trials linked to the huge smuggling scam unearthed in Xiamen last year had been opened. A veil of secrecy has been drawn over proceedings and officials refused to give details about defendants or charges. The police clamped a ring of steel around the Xiamen People’s Intermediate Court, blocking all roads around the building and turning away anyone without an official pass. The scandal is
centered around Hong Kong-based Yanhua Group which allegedly paid bribes to escape Customs duties on around $ 10 billion of diesel fuel, rubber, tobacco and other products. The Hong Kong press reports have implicated between 200 and 600 government officials, including the families of some of China’s most senior leaders. Among them are Politburo member and Beijing Communist Party Chief Jia Jingling, Li Jizhou, former Vice-Minister of Public Security, and General Ji Shengde, former head of military intelligence. The Beijing Youth Daily said on its website this week that around 10 senior officials would be sentenced to death for accepting five million yuan ($ 602,000) each in bribes. BEIJING: Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji has called for a crackdown on separatists fighting for an independent Muslim state in the troubled northwestern region of Xinjiang, state media reported. Mr Zhu, who visited Xinjiang last week, stressed the importance of strengthening national unity and social stability in an area inhabited by different ethnic groups, the official news agency said. Xinjiang separatists, mainly the ethnic Uighur Muslims have been involved in frequent and bloody clashes with the Chinese authorities in recent years. Uighurs, who speak a Turkic language and make up a large part of Xinjiang’s population, have been linked to several deadly bombings as well as riots. Mr Zhu said an “iron fist” should be used to crack down on separatists, religious fundamentalists and terrorists, to ensure the success of the government’s plan to develop its economically backward western provinces. Mr Zhu’s visit to the region last week coincided with an explosion on Friday which killed 60 persons and injured 173. |
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Hasina asks Pak to apologise DHAKA, Sept 13 (ANI): Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed said on Tuesday despite an apparent snub by General Pervez Musharraf at the United Nations, bilateral ties remained unaffected. “I don’t see any damage to bilateral ties and I don’t know why Pakistan’s chief executive was so unhappy about my comments on military regimes at the United Nations Security Council” she told a crowded press conference after returning from New York. Asked if Pakistan should apologise for the genocide, which Dhaka says left three million people dead, during the 1971 independence war, she said: “I personally feel they should, but let Pakistan ask their own conscience.” “I said what I said for the sake of democracy, for the sake of the people ... for this if anybody is hurt I have nothing to say as it is something I have always believed in since my childhood. State-to-state relations will continue which was natural whoever is the head of government for the sake of regional peace and welfare of a vast number of South Asians,” she said. She insisted that she did not name Pakistan in her speech and thus was puzzled by Pakistani reaction. A senior Bangladeshi diplomat commented that for the moment Bangladesh would remain silent on the issue and no immediate visit by any official to Islamabad was planned. Ms Hasina said: “We cannot accept any change of government unconstitutionally and I cannot accept a military regime taking over with the power of gun from a democratic government. That is my principle and my ideal.” On reports that she might have spoken out to please India, Hasina said: “We decide what Bangladesh will do. We are an independent and sovereign country.” |
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Filipino rebels burying ransom MANILA, Sept 13 (Reuters) — Flush with ransom payouts estimated at tens of millions of dollars, Muslim rebels still holding 19 hostages are burying their money in secret places in southern Philippines jungles, officials said today. Rather than put their loot in banks, the Abu Sayyaf rebels feel safer utilising underground treasure troves, presidential spokesman Ricardo Puno told reporters. “What I understand is happening is not so much utilisation of the banking system but a lot of burying of assets going on,” Mr Puno said. “According to intelligence reports, they are busy burying huge amounts in the ground,” he said. The money represents ransom payments — in dollars and Philippine pesos — which the rebels received for freeing 24, mostly foreign, hostages they held for up to nearly five months on the island of Jolo, 960 km (600 miles) south of Manila. Officials said the payouts ranged from $333,000 for nine Malaysians and $1 million each for 10 Caucasians who were among a group of 21 people abducted from a Malaysian diving centre in April. The guerrillas also received about $1 million each for releasing a German and a French reporter and about 10 million pesos ($222,000) for freeing two Manila television journalists who were abducted while covering the hostage crisis, the officials said. Two weeks ago, two suspected rebels tried to change $245,000 — believed to be part of the payouts — in a local bank and were arrested. The rebels are still holding two French journalists, three Malaysian resort workers, an American Muslim, and 13 Filipinos. Columnist Neal Cruz of the Philippine daily, Inquirer, sees the day when there will be a massive search for hidden treasure on Jolo if the military succeeds in wiping out the Abu Sayyaf. “I predict that after the bandits have been killed...there will be a new cottage industry: a search for buried treasure with maps purporting to mark their locations being sold to gullible treasure hunters,” Mr Cruz wrote. “We will have a repeat of the hunt for the treasure of Yamashita,” he added, referring to the search for gold bullion and gems which World War II Japanese army General Tomoyuki Yamashita allegedly looted from conquered Asian countries and supposedly buried in the Philippines. |
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‘Australia knew of ’75 Timor invasion’ SYDNEY, Sept 13 (DPA) — Australia
had three days’ warning of Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East
Timor, diplomatic cables released today show. The 885 pages of documents prove Canberra had detailed knowledge of the military takeover of the former Portuguese colony that foreshadowed 24 years of often brutal occupation. East Timor, one half of the island of Timor off Australia’s northern coastline, won independence last year in a U.N.- sponsored referendum that sparked a blitzkrieg by pro-Jakarta militias. Five Australian journalists were killed by Indonesia-backed forces in October 1975, a month before paratroopers rushed up the beaches of Dili. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said he “passed no judgement on the documents other than to state that the Department of Foreign Affairs had no information beforehand of any intention to kill the journalists although it did have prior knowledge of the planned invasion”. The cables will be an embarrassment for former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who far more a quarter of a century has maintained that he did not know Indonesia was about to invade. The documents identify academic Harry Chan Silalahi at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Jakarta as the link man between the Indonesian military and Australia’s diplomats. An October 13 cable from the Jakarta embassy to Canberra reads “Tjan said that the President had recently approved a special budget for the Portuguese Timor operation”. |
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Plan to pull down Dome LONDON, Sept 13 — Emergency plans to tear down the London’s Millennium Dome were being drawn up last night (Tuesday) after the Japanese bank, Nomura, dramatically pulled out of its US$148m deal to buy the beleaguered attraction. In a sign of the deepening crisis enveloping the dome, government ministers have ordered English Partnerships, which own the land the attraction is built on, to examine “all options’’ when it closes at the end of the year. The plans include the possibility of dismantling the dome and selling off the land, a humiliating end to a project once hailed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair as a symbol of “British flair and genius’’. English Partnerships said it was issued with fresh instructions by the government yesterday after Nomura announced that it had “reluctantly withdrawn’’ from negotiations to take over the dome — whose cost has spiralled to US$1.2bn — because of worries about the “black hole’’ in the records of its assets. Only last week David James, the business troubleshooter brought to salvage something from the wreckage of the “greatest show on earth’’, described the US$148m Nomura deal as a “killing...We are selling the place for a fraction of its value.’’ But yesterday, despite protests from Mr James that Nomura’s qualms were a “list of excuses that don’t stand up to scrutiny’’, Guy Hands, head of the Nomura bid, said he could not go ahead while denied access to the report by auditors Pricewaterhouse Coopers which sparked the latest US$66m bail-out last week. Trevor Beattie, a spokesman for English Partnerships, said yesterday: “Now that Nomura has regrettably gone we have been asked to look at all the options for the site.’’ Asked whether this could include dismantling the dome, Mr Beattie said: “Yes.’’ —
The Guardian, London |
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Putin signs information security doctrine MOSCOW, Sept 13 (AP) — President Vladimir Putin has signed a sweeping “information security doctrine” that its authors say safeguard Russians’ right to information and privacy — but which critics say is the latest threat to media freedom.
The 46-page doctrine claims that foreign media operating in Russia is squeezing out Russian counterparts and calls for a law “clarifying” the role of foreign news organisations in Russia, state-run RTR television reported today. The non-binding doctrine, drafted and approved by Mr Putin’s influential security council in
July, has not been published. The Kremlin press service announced today that Mr Putin had signed the Bill on Saturday. Mr Putin, who was elected in March on promises to strengthen the state and Russia’s global clout, has said the doctrine would safeguard journalists’ rights and help tackle computer crimes. He has denied accusations that his government is leading a crackdown on the media. But media freedom advocates have expressed concern about the doctrine since it came under discussion in 1997. Critics of earlier drafts said the government was using new phrases to describe a Soviet-style propaganda machine where speech flowed freely from the government to the people but not the other way around. |
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Smuggling of camel jockeys still on DUBAI, Sept 13 (UNI) — despite a ban on the use of child jockeys in camel racing in the
UAE, children from the subcontinent are still being smuggled into this country by unscrupulous elements for this traditional sport.
The Abu Dhabi police has recovered a 10-year-old boy who was kidnapped from a Pakistani city and handed him over to a welfare trust through the Pakistani Embassy. Local newspapers said Muhammed Zubair would be repatriated to Pakistan following the completion of legal formalities. Recounting the story of his abduction, Zubair said he had been kidnapped by an unidentified person from his village near Gujarat and brought to Abu Dhabi. “I remember the person as he had a red beard. I was sleeping all the time in the plane as he put a handkerchief on my mouth, after which I went to sleep,’’ he told the media. Zubair said he gave his kidnapper the slip at Abu Dhabi airport and hid himself in a bus to reach the city. “A man helped me ... I was weeping on the roadside with nobody to help me when this man found me and took me to the police station.’’ The police immediately informed the Chairman of a Pakistani welfare trust, which traced the child’s parents. Mr Ansar Burney, Chairman of the Welfare Trust, was quoted as saying that the child’s parents belonged to the city of Gujarat. |
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North Korea cancels attendance at UN NEW YORK, Sept 13 (AFP) — North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun has cancelled his planned attendance at the UN General Assembly this week, disappointing Washington which had hoped for a second meeting between him and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a State Department official has said. Pyongyang informed Washington of the cancellation, citing “unavoidable” commitments, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity yesterday. The official could not elaborate on the North Korean explanation, but said it was unrelated to an incident last week in which Pyongyang cancelled its attendance at the UN Millennium Summit claiming its delegation had been “rudely” and “brigandishly” searched at the Frankfurt airport. On Friday, Ms Albright said she had sent, and the North Koreans had accepted, a letter of US regret over the incident and that she hoped to meet Paek at the General Assembly, which begins on Tuesday. Mr Paek had been due to leave North Korea on Sunday and it was not clear if he had ever left. Ms Albright and Mr Paek held a landmark meeting — the highest level talks ever between the two sides — on the sidelines of an Asian security forum in Bangkok in August. |
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Clinton sued in another case WASHINGTON, Sept 13 (AP) — A sexual harassment lawsuit brought by the White House’s assistant pastry chef against her boss, the pastry chef, accuses us president Bill Clinton of failing to make sure such complaints can be reported.
Franette McColloch asserts that Roland Mesnier has subjected her to “severe sexual harassment” since 1991, culminating in stress-related medical conditions and retaliation for reporting the alleged harassment. Clinton is named in the suit because, as President and head of the White House, McColloch’s attorneys say he ultimately is responsible for making sure that there is an avenue for reporting alleged sexual harassment and other civil rights violations. |
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Case filed on
‘Kursk’ sinking MOSCOW, Sept 13 (UNI) — The Russian Military Prosecutor’s office has filed a criminal case against the yet unidentified foreign vessel that reportedly caused the sinking of the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk in the Barents sea on August 12.The prosecutor’s office told Novosti last night that the “cause of the collision was violation of traffic rules by the unidentified vessel.” speculation regarding mistakes by the crew of the ill-fated sub was dismissed and other hypotheses forwarded by the media ruled out. Meanwhile, the commission set up to fix responsibility for the tragedy is meeting at the Rubin, a St Petersburg-based submarine design bureau, and will shortly submit its report to the President. |
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