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| Tuesday,
October 10, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
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Diplomatic efforts stepped
up to end W. Asia violence Lankan PM escapes
bid on life? Papua clashes leave 40 dead 30 hurt in B’desh row Taliban chief for
pressure on Pak |
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Asian ‘gaur’ cloned! Nobel:
Rushdie, Naipaul favourites Baby hardships to end UN envoy in Myanmar
to meet Suu Kyi
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Diplomatic efforts stepped
up to end BEIRUT, Oct 9 (Reuters) — Racing to avert a military showdown, Russia opened contacts with Hizbollah today to arrange a prisoner swap between Israel and the guerrilla group which seized three Israeli soldiers in Lebanon last week. UN Special Representative in Lebanon Rolf Knutsson urged Lebanese President Emile Lahoud at a meeting here to send more troops to southern Lebanon to control the volatile region. Hizbollah’s capture of the Israeli soldiers deepened world concern that violence could spread to Lebanon and even Syria, widening the conflict that has already set Israeli forces against Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem. Hizbollah said a senior Russian foreign ministry official, accompanying Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov who is touring the troubled region, would meet Hizbollah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, in Beirut today. Meanwhile Mr Ivanov will meet President Lahoud and Prime Minister Selim Al-Hoss. He had talks in Damascus earlier this morning with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov has called for putting an end to violence in the West Asia and a resumption of negotiations after arriving here for talks on the regional situation. In an interview with the Syrian news agency SANA, he stressed that Moscow supported Damascus’ demand for the return of the whole of the Golan Heights occupied by Israel in 1967. jerusalem: International efforts to end the bloodshed in the West Asia redoubled today, but tension was high as an Israeli deadline neared for Palestinians to halt their wave of protests. The UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan was on his way to Israel to use personal diplomacy to end the 11 days of bloodshed in which at least 84 persons, mostly Palestinians, have been killed. The USA and Russia stepped up their efforts and US Officials said President Bill Clinton hoped to arrange a peace summit. Jewish settlers attacked Israeli Arabs’ homes in Nazareth in northern Israel late yesterday, killing at least one Arab and undermining hopes that violence would end before the Israeli deadline expires this evening after the Yom Kippur holiday. Mr Annan will meet Mr Arafat and Mr Barak and plans to meet other leaders in the region, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said. Mr Eckhard said Mr Annan felt it was imperative that ‘“he makes every possible effort to break the prevailing impasse between Israel and the Palestinian authority.’’ A US official said Mr Clinton could go to the West Asia for talks with the Palestinian and Israeli leaders, but no decision had been made yet. RAMALLAH (West Bank): Israeli troops fired live and rubber-coated metal bullets at Palestinian stone-throwers in the West Bank today, wounding at least eight people, witnesses and medical sources said. Witnesses said Israeli security forces had fired live bullets during clashes in several villages around the West Bank city of Nablus, wounding five people. The army banned movement on roads between the villages, they said. On the outskirts of Ramallah, Israeli troops fired rubber-coated metal bullets and teargas at demonstrators protesting against the killing of two Israeli Arabs in Nazareth yesterday. Palestinian officials said clashes had also flared in the West Bank town of Jenin and erupted for a second day in one part of Nazareth. The death toll has risen to 89 people, mostly Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, in 12 days of clashes. PARIS: French President Jacques Chirac has made a series of calls to West Asia leaders in a telephone diplomacy bid in support of international efforts to defuse the growing crisis in the region. President Chirac last night spoke to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as well as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, his office said. |
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Lankan PM escapes
bid on life? COLOMBO, Oct 9 (PTI) — A possible LTTE attempt to assassinate Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ratnasari Wickramanayake has been averted with the police seizing explosives and dynamites from three suspected Tamil Tigers militants hours before he addressed an election rally at his home constituency Iiorana on Saturday, media reports said today. Electioneering for the October 10 Parliament elections ended on Saturday. Media reports quoting local police officials said acting on a tip- off the police recovered six detonators, fuse wire, small quantum of explosives along with dynamite sticks from a newly opened grocery shop nearby the place where Mr Wickramanayake addressed the rally. Three suspects, believed to be supporters of the LTTE, have been detained in this connection. Mr Wickramanayake, was appointed as the Prime Minister in August this year following the resignation of octogenarian leader, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, who was also the mother of President Chandrika Kumaratunga. The police intensified his security following alerts of LTTE suicide bombers stepping up attacks on him ahead of the poll. Meanwhile, many people in Colombo and several other parts of the Sri Lanka fearing the likelihood of large scale violence during the elections tomorrow have stockpiled food and other essential items. Large queues were seen outside petrol stations as motorists filled the tanks of their vehicles, fearing curfew after the polls. The police said curfew could be declared tomorrow night as a precaution to prevent clashes between rival parties during the counting of votes. |
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Poll today COLOMBO, Oct 9 (AP) — Sri Lankan Air Force bombers knocked out a major Tamil rebel gun position in northern Jaffna peninsula today, a day before the country goes to the polls to elect a new Parliament, a government spokesman said. “It was a major success,” spokesman Ariya Rubasinghe said about the attack on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels at Kalmunai Point in the northern peninsula. The rebels have been firing long-range artillery from the position targeting the army. The area is about 15 km south-east of Jaffna. The bombing also destroyed a large bunker connected with a network of trenches. The attack will reduce the risk of rebels firing artillery at Jaffna city during polling. In Jaffna, a former rebel group turned government ally, the Eelam People’s Democratic Party, is contesting all the seven seats. The group is tipped to win most of the seats. Meanwhile, the polls tomorrow will decide the destiny of the war-torn island nation amidst specualtion that a row between the President and Prime Minister is imminent in the event of the Opposition coming to power. Various pre-poll surveys indicated a neck and neck fight between the ruling People’s Alliance (PA) and the United National Party (UNP). Much of the outcome of tomorrow’s election depends upon the behaviour of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which president Chandrika Kumaratunga herself described as “insiduious force” in northern Jaffna and eastern districts. The campaign was marred in eastern Batticaloa and central Anuradhapura when LTTE suicide bombers struck at election rallies killing more than 40 persons including candidates. Mrs Kumaratunga who was re-elected for a second term in December last, can continue up to 2006 as the executive head of the state. |
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Papua clashes leave 40 dead UP to 40 people have been killed and 45 injured in two days of clashes between axe-wielding separatist tribesmen, trigger-happy riot police and migrants in the remote highlands of Papua, the eastern-most Indonesian province formerly known as Irian Jaya. The fighting began on Friday after the police, acting under orders from Jakarta, pulled down the separatists’ “Morning Star” flag flying in the market at Wamena and chopped down the flagpole. The Indonesian President, Abdurrahman Wahid, had allowed Papuans to fly their flag as long as it was flown alongside, and slightly lower, than a larger Indonesian flag. “In the initial clash the police shot dead five locals, which made the people really angry and determined to get revenge,” said Kokombo, a church worker in the town. It is unclear exactly how many had died by Saturday night, but official police sources put the death toll at 30. A local TV station quoted local officers as saying it was 40. However, at least 26 people were buried in a mass grave on Saturday evening in a hasty ceremony that ensured their cause of death could not be determined. The police said they had been hacked to death by locals but community leaders claimed many of the bodies were riddled with bullets. Fifty-nine people were reported to have been arrested — 15 in connection with the killings. There are fears that the violence will spread to as the police enforce orders to pull down the “Morning Star” throughout the area. Locals say there are many such flags flying in the outlying areas, fuelling the potential for further violence. It remains unclear why the authorities have suddenly adopted a more hardline attitude towards the separatists, who had been pursuing a peaceful campaign based on securing the reversal of the 1969 Act of Free Choice through which Jakarta formally annexed the one-time Dutch colony. President Wahid has thus far preferred a conciliatory approach. — The Guardian, London |
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30 hurt in B’desh row DHAKA, Oct 9 (PTI) — At least 30 persons were injured during a clash over cutting an embankment to let out floodwaters in one of the worst flood-hit areas in south-western Bangladesh’s Sathkhira district, the police and media reports said today. The leading Bengali daily “Jugantar” quoting the police and witnesses said the injured included a local union parishad chairman, who led the group to cut the mud embankment at Komarpur in Debhata Upazila (sub-district) in Sathkhira district yesterday. “The two groups fired gunshots and exploded bombs during the five-hour long clash”, an eyewitness said. This led to injury to 30 persons with either bullet wounds or splinters from crude bombs, reports said. |
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Taliban chief for
pressure on Pak MOSCOW, Oct 9 (Reuters) — Ahmad Shah Masood, who leads what little armed resistance remains to Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban movement, said more pressure was needed on Pakistan to end the war in his country. Masood yesterday told Russia’s NTV Television at a base in northern Afghanistan that more needed to be done to bolster Afghanistan’s ousted President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who is still recognised by the United Nations. “All countries in the world community, with the exception of Pakistan, support the government of President Rabbani,” he said. “But we would like the world community to put more pressure on Pakistan, the main instigator of the war in Afghanistan.” |
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Asian ‘gaur’ cloned! WASHINGTON, Oct 9 (DPA) — For the first time, American scientists have cloned an endangered species by using the eggs and the womb of another animal — a cow. According to The Washington Post Sunday, an Asian “gaur” — a hump-backed, ox-like animal native to India and Burma — was cloned from a single skin cell taken from a dead “gaur”. Scientists fused the cell with a cow’s egg, whose own genes had been removed, then transferred it to the womb of another cow, named Bessie. Bessie’s “gaur”, named Noah, is due to be born next month, researchers report in a landmark scientific paper in the latest issue of the journal, Cloning, to be released this week. It is the first endangered species ever to be cloned, and the first cloned animal to gestate in the womb of another species, the Post said. The Massachusetts scientists, who created Noah, are laying plans to clone the endangered Giant Pandas, including perhaps the Washington National Zoo’s Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, who died in 1992 and 1999 and whose cells sit frozen in liquid nitrogen in Frederick. Later this year, they intend to clone a species of Spanish mountain goat that was listed as endangered until nine months ago, when the last known individual died. |
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Nobel: Rushdie, Naipaul favourites STOCKHOLM, Oct 9 (AP) — With V.S. Naipaul and Salman Rushdie among the top favourites to win the coveted Nobel Prizes, the winner in the field of medicine would kick off a week of prize announcements culminating with the prestigious Peace award. The prizes, each worth $ 2,15,000 are always surrounded by speculation. The suspense for the literature award, usually the first announced, was heightened last week when the Swedish academy failed to reach a decision, leaving the timing of that announcement uncertain and pushing medicine to the top slot. The Peace Prize will be announced on Friday in Oslo, Norway. The only hints available are for the Peace Prize. This year the list of probables include US President Bill Clinton and former US President Jimmy Carter for wide-ranging peace efforts as well as former US Senator George Mitchell for his efforts to resolve conflict in Northern Ireland. Other reported nominees are former-Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari and former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin for their Balkan peace efforts; South Korean President Kin Dae-Jung for promoting good relations in Asia; and a town — northern Albania’s Kukes — for accepting 1,50,000 refugees during Kosovo conflict. |
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Baby hardships to end BELGRADE, Oct 9 (Reuters) — Babies born in the biggest maternity hospital in the Balkans are in no way responsible for Yugoslavia’s ruinous wars, yet they are indirect victims of western sanctions. As Yugoslavs looked forward to a brighter future under new President Vojislav Kostunica, hope rippled through the University Clinic for Gynaecology and Obstetrics yesterday that hardships caused partly by sanctions intended to punish former President Slobodan Milosevic for war making would soon ease. “We are so happy, now most probably our babies will live better than us,” said Vesna Nisevic-Milekic, who gave birth last Wednesday to a baby boy named Mataja. Twenty to forty babies are born every day in the 60-year-old hospital, located near the bombed-out shell of the Interior Ministry police headquarters. The police building looks irreparable, but times are also tough in the hospital which suffers from years of neglect. |
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UN envoy in Myanmar
to meet Suu Kyi YANGON (Myanmar), Oct 9 (AP) — A United Nations’ special envoy arrived today on a mission to break the political deadlock in Myanmar, but it was unclear whether he would be able to see Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, currently housebound and denied diplomatic contact. Razali Ismail, a Malaysian diplomat who was appointed in April by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to help reconcile Myanmar’s military regime and the pro-democracy opposition, is on a four-day visit, his second to the country, officials said. A UN spokesman in New York said on Friday that Razali would meet government officials and other politicians, and discuss issues related to a General Assembly resolution adopted in December that urges Myanmar’s government to stop widespread human rights violations. |
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