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| Thursday,
November 16, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
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She holds the balance in White House race Indian’s death Pak armed forces
launch war-games |
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Pak turning blind eye to minority attacks Clinton asks Arafat
to end violence
Poverty forces them into flesh trade Japanese PM vows to stay
on
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She holds the balance in White House race FLORIDA’S controversial Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, emerged on Tuesday as the official with the potential power to determine who wins the US presidential election, after a court ordered her to use her ``discretion’’ in accepting late manual recounts in the tightly contested state. In an anxiously awaited verdict in the state capital, Tallahassee, Judge Terry Lewis upheld a deadline laid down by Ms Harris, a Republican activist, for all the state’s 67 counties to certify their final tallies by 5 pm local time on Tuesday. However, in a two pronged ruling, Judge Lewis said Ms Harris must consider late results arising from hand counts demanded by the Democrats in four counties. She would have the power to reject those results but could not do so “arbitrarily” and would have to exercise “sound discretion”. Democrats were quick to seize the political initiative in the wake of the ruling. Warren Christopher, Mr Gore’s troubleshooter in Florida, said: “Under this decision we now have a vehicle for the full, fair and accurate tabulation of the votes of the citizens of Florida.” Standing at his side David Boies, a high-powered Democratic lawyer, warned: “If the Secretary of State refuses to accept amended returns based on the recount and violates what the court rules is her duty then we may be back in court.” In a state where George W Bush has a lead of only 338 votes in preliminary results, Ms Harris’s “discretion” over the manual recount could decide who moves into the White House on January 20. Democrats have pointed out that she campaigned actively for Mr Bush and was appointed by his brother, Jeb, the Governor of Florida. A spokeswoman for Ms Harris said she would listen to reasons for late results “based on what the counties tell her” but she emphasised the legal weight of the 5pm deadline. As the large, mainly Democratic counties of Miami-Dade and Palm Beach had not even begun a manual recount of votes by the time of the ruling, Ms Harris’s 5pm ruling would have the effect of locking in Mr Bush’s narrow lead in Florida, the state which is almost certain to decide the presidency. In that case, Mr Bush’s lead in Florida could only be threatened by absentee ballots by Floridians living abroad, such as the armed services and Jewish Americans living in Israel, whose votes have to be counted by midnight on Friday. Absentee ballots have historically tended to favour Republicans. When Katherine Harris was elected Florida Secretary of State she said modestly that she was not seeking prominence greater than that which came with the job. Two years later, the responsibilities discharged by 43-year-old Ms Harris include elections in the state, and it is for this that she will be remembered across the world after imposing a deadline of 5 pm today on certification of the results. Ms Harris, a Republican who has served in the state Senate, is a friend of Jeb Bush, the state’s Governor, and sat on the election committee of Jeb Bush’s brother George W. Bush. “She is a long-standing supporter of Governor Bush and I think her statement has to be seen in that context,” Warren Christopher, the Gore campaign’s chief emissary to Florida, said yesterday. In private, other Democrats described her as a crony of the Bush brothers. The Secretary of State is a member of one of Florida’s grandest political families and is the richest member of the Cabinet, her personal wealth put at $ 6.6m, unremarkable, however, in a system that makes one in every four members of the Florida Senate and House of Representatives a millionaire. The average household income in the state is below $ 30,000. Her grandfather, a fruit-growing magnate, served in the state legislature and her father was active in democratic politics. “Everyone I knew growing up was a Democrat,” she says. Once she entered politics, there was an early controversy — she accepted campaign contributions of over $ 20,000 from a workers’ compensation insurer that were later ruled illegal. Since she took office there have been rumblings over the number of flights she has taken at taxpayers’ expense — 34 in six months last year, all but two of them over long weekends.
— The Guardian, London |
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Indian’s death HONG KONG, Nov 15 (DPA) — An Indian lawyer died in a Hong Kong hospital after being allegedly discriminated against by Chinese doctors because of her race, it was reported yesterday. Harinder Veriah, 33, told her husband hours before her death in the hospital that she was “at the bottom of the pile here.” Her husband, prominent
British journalist Martin Jacques, said during yesterday’s inquest that he was shocked and asked her what she meant. “She said: ‘I am the only Indian here. Everyone else is Chinese’”, he said. “She felt she was being discriminated against in the hospital on the grounds of her colour,” he said. She was taken to Hong Kong’s Ruttonjee Hospital after suffering an epileptic fit on New Year’s Day. She died the following evening after suffering a second fit, The South China Morning Post reported. Jacques, a former Deputy Editor of The Independent who moved to Hong Kong with his wife in 1998, said on the day after his wife was admitted, he twice asked a doctor on duty what was happening. The doctor responded that she was not his patient and did not reply when asked who was taking care of her, Jacques said. “I was very angry with his attitude,” he said. “If in England a doctor treated me like that, I would have given him a piece of my mind and complained to his superior,’’ Jacques said. |
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Pak armed forces
launch war-games ISLAMABAD, Nov 15 (PTI) — The Pakistani armed forces have launched integrated field military exercises in various zones to test post-nuclear environment and limited war concepts following the Kargil crisis. The winter war-games which would involve key formations like huge armoured contingents and warplanes are being conducted to “test new concepts” and would continue for two months, the News International reported quoting senior military officials. The paper said a major war-game involving armoured regiments, artillery formation, warplanes would unveil at gujranwala facing India’s Gurdaspur district on November 24 in the presence of the Chief Executive General Pervez Musharraf. Senior military officials identified Bhawalpur and Mangla region as other areas were similar large scale wargames would be conducted. Officials claimed that the war-games were not at large levels and were being conducted well within Pakistani boundary and thus did not require prior notification under 1991 agreement between Pakistan and India. They said the exercises would also include Pakistan air force and that these would in agreement between Pakistan and India. The exercises would also include Pakistan Air Force. The paper said in addition Turkey and Pakistan would also conduct joint military exercises involving special forces in Cherat in Baluchistan. |
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Pak turning blind eye to minority attacks HUMAN rights groups yesterday
(Tues) accused Pakistan’s military government of turning a blind eye to attacks on a minority religious sect which have left 10 people dead in the past fortnight. In two separate incidents worshippers from the Ahmadiyya sect were attacked as they prayed in their mosques in Punjab province. The 3.5m Ahmadiyyas in Pakistan were declared non-Muslim in 1974 and it is a criminal offence for them to practise or preach their beliefs. Amnesty International said the killings came after months of religious tension, protests against the Ahmadiyyas and the desecration of their graves. In the first attack two weeks ago, four gunmen drove up to a prayer meeting in
Ghatialian, near Sialkot, viewed as a sacred site by the sect. They fired automatic weapons into the crowd, killing five and injuring 10. The local police station, which has no telephone, was slow to respond and the gunmen escaped. “The official silence around the religiously motivated murders on October 30 and the lack of police investigation have directly contributed to a climate in which extremists feel encouraged them to harass, attack and kill members of the country’s religious minorities,’’ Amnesty said. On Friday, a Muslim leader held a march against the small Ahmadiyya community living in Takht
Hazara, a village near Sargodha. A mob broke into the sect’s mosque and killed five people, including two children, mutilating their bodies with axes before burning down the mosque. The Human Rights Commission said it had detected organised targeting of minorities across the country in recent weeks. In Karachi and
Hyderabad, in Sind province, “literature of hatred’’ was being distributed in mosques, said the commission’s chairman, Mr Afrasiab
Khattak. In particular, groups working in development and women’s rights were being fiercely
criticised. “All across the country there appears to be a deliberate attempt to cleanse non-conformist forces. The environment of hatred and intolerance is expanding by the day,’’ Mr Khattak said, adding that more lives could be lost. Two days after the latest killings, President Muhammad Rafiq Tarar told Sikhs that religious minorities were living in harmony and peace. “Our religion and constitution guarantees the rights of all the minorities,’’ he said.
— The Guardian |
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Clinton asks Arafat
to end violence BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Nov 15 (Reuters) — US President Bill Clinton pressed Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to stop the Arab-Israeli violence during a lengthy telephone conversation, the White House said today. “He pressed the Chairman to take immediate steps to end the violence,” White House spokesman Jake Siewert said of the 50-minute telephone call between the two men after Mr Clinton arrived in Brunei late yesterday for an Asia-Pacific summit. Mr Clinton’s conversation with Mr Arafat follows his meeting in Washington on Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Mr Siewert said US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spoke to Mr Barak after Mr Clinton’s conversation with Mr Arafat, urging the Israeli leader to carry out last month’s agreement at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. That agreement, which laid out steps, including troop withdrawal, unraveled almost as soon as it was agreed on October 17. The USA has been working since to try to end the cycle of violence. JERUSALEM: An Israeli Cabinet Minister said today that Israel would be forced to drop its “policy of restraint’’ after four Israelis were shot dead by Palestinian gunmen in drive-by shootings. “It is not possible to continue in the policy of restraint, and I repeat myself, it is not possible to continue this way and no one should fool themselves that they will shed the blood of Jews and we will sit quietly,’’ Cabinet Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Israel’s Army Radio. Mr Ben-Eliezer, who participated in late-night talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and senior military officials, declined to say what had been discussed at the meeting. “I can tell you that the situation is deteriorating. There is no doubt the situation has significantly worsened,’’ he added, referring to Monday’s ambushes that killed two Israeli soldiers, a woman settler and a truck driver. Palestinians and human rights groups have accused Israel of using excessive force to quell seven weeks of violence in which at least 217 persons, most of them Palestinians, have died. |
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Another Osama! MOSCOW, Nov 15 (UNI) — Islamic extremists have got another Osama bin Laden! Moscow’s popular daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta has quoted Omar Baqr Ahmed, a Britain-based Syrian, as having told a news conference in London that he had forwarded hundred thousand pounds to Muslim fighters in Chechnya and that the international Islamic outfit he headed had militant training centres both in the
UK and the USA. Pakistanis, Afghans, and Turks underwent intensive training at these centres before they left for Chechnya, which received 200 militants belonging to his outfit every year, he said. According to the Russian defence sources, up to 1,500-2,000 foreign mercenaries were at present fighting in the restive province against federal forces. |
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Brother sues
Suu Kyi over house YANGON, Nov 15 (AP) — Aung San Suu Kyi has been sued by her brother for half-ownership of her home in a new crisis for the pro-democracy leader, who for years has faced political harassment by the military government, sources said today. Ms Suu Kyi was subpoenaed to appear next Tuesday before the Yangon district court to answer the suit filed by her US-based elder brother Aung San Oo for partition of the property, said the sources, speaking on condition of anonymity. Under the Myanmar law, children can inherit the parents’ property equally irrespective of sex. The reason for the suit was not known. Ms Suu Kyi (55) refused to accept a hand-delivered subpoena and the court had it posted on her house gate yesterday, said the sources close to Aung San Oo’s lawyer Kyaw Thura. Aung San Oo, a US citizen in his late 50s, is known to disagree with his sister’s strong political views, and the two are believed not to be on speaking terms. Ms Suu Kyi’s two-storey lake-front villa at No. 54 University Avenue in Yangon was her prison from 1989 to 1995, when she was held under house arrest without trial on national security charges. No reaction was available from Ms Suu Kyi on the suit because she has been confined to her house since September 22. |
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‘Take joint
steps' to check terrorism UNITED NATIONS, Nov 15 (PTI) — India has called for concerted steps to fight international terrorism which, it said, with its links with religious extremism, drug trafficking and illicit trade in arms posed a threat to peace, democracy and development. “International terrorism is an evil that affects all societies and particularly plural, open democracies,” its representative Narinder Singh told a General Assembly Committee. Participating in the debate on international terrorism, he pointed out, without naming Pakistan, that India has been the victim of cross-border terrorism which has claimed thousands of innocent lives over the last decade. In this connection, he commended the Indian-drafted comprehensive international convention against terrorism that a working group of the committee is considering. India has submitted a revised draft on the basis of consultations with the member states and Mr Narinder Singh expressed hope that it would help reaching an agreement on various issues during the working group’s meeting in February. India, he said, would exert all efforts to reach a consensus on all remaining issues. “Given the widespread incidence of terrorism, and its direct impact on the illegal trade in narcotics, small arms, and organized crime, there is an urgent need to conclude a comprehensive convention on international terrorism.” Such a convention would effectively supplement the existing conventions and deny safe havens to terrorists anywhere in the world, he added. |
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Poverty forces them into flesh trade MOSCOW, Nov 15 — Had it not been for the long queue for tickets at St Petersburg’s Central Railway Station, Lara Matveyeva might never have found herself working in a German brothel — one of hundreds of thousands of East European women unwittingly sold into prostitution in the West. As it was, the slow movement of the queue provided an ideal forum for recruitment. The tedium of waiting was lifted by the appearance of a friendly, well-dressed woman behind her. Enticed into conversation, Lara told her that she was returning home to a job and a town that bored her. The woman replied that she had a friend in Germany who was looking for help with the housework for a few months, and that if Lara was eager for a change she could put them in touch. The money would be bad, but she would be required to do little except water the plants and feed the pets; most importantly, it would be a chance to travel. Only mildly surprised by this stranger’s desire to be kind, Lara accepted. A few days later she was travelling by bus to Hamburg. A Russian woman was there to meet her at the bus stop, accompanied her to a flat nearby and took her passport from her — for safekeeping. After three days she told Lara, then 24, that there was no housework to be done, so she would have to work as a prostitute. Intelligent and well-educated, it nevertheless took her six months to escape from imprisonment in a series of bars and nightclubs in Hamburg and its suburbs. Most of the other Russians she met there had given up even trying to return home. Even now that she is back in her small provincial town on the southern border with Ukraine, she remains so anxious about reprisals from the people who organised her trip that she refuses to reveal her real name. Her horror at her own experience and at the scale of the problem in Russia motivated her — in spite of the dangers — to start tackling the problem. She was one of the participants at a conference of 43 anti-trafficking organisations from 25 regions of Russia and six former Soviet republics that finished last week. These groups hope to combat a phenomenon that, according to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, has swept up something like 500,000 Russian women in the past decade (although the trade’s clandestine nature makes it impossible to estimate accurately the numbers). Activists say that, despite its scale, human trafficking is still not treated seriously by the Russian government. The trade stems from a mixture of poverty, naivety, a weak legal system and a prevalence of well-organised criminal groups. Ignorance lies at the heart of the problem. According to MiraMed, the charity that organised this month’s conference, around 90 per cent of the women trafficked abroad are unaware that they are headed for a career in the sex industry. The small ads columns of provincial newspapers are filled with advertisements encouraging young, attractive women to apply for work as waitresses in Italy or barmaids and nannies in Germany. With the economy in Russia’s remote regions deeply depressed, many women are desperate for an escape. The novelty of travel in the West remains high, while awareness about life there is low. Not suspecting any possible threat, the women — mostly in their teens or early twenties — are easy prey. For the groups organising the trafficking there are few obstacles. Compared with selling drugs or weapons abroad, trade in women is highly profitable and relatively risk-free. Unlike guns or drugs, women can be sold over and over again, acting as a regular, long-term source of income. And, crucially, in Russia there is still no specific legislation which decrees the trade in humans illegal. The few women who make their way back to Russia have no recourse to the law. Even now, two years after her return, she has told none of her friends or family about what happened in Germany; they believe she spent an uneventful few months as an au pair. Each of the new recruits was presented with instant debts to their pimps of around $1,000. The bar’s exits were monitored by security cameras, heightening the sense that there was no escape. When the woman who had first pushed her into prostitution decided she was no good at it, Lara was sold on to a man for $1,000, the sum of her ‘debts’. It was only when his bar was raided and she was arrested that she realised the police was not as terrifying as she had anticipated. The main conclusion to come out of this month’s anti-trafficking conference was the need for greater information. |
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TOKYO, Nov 15 (Reuters) —Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori has rejected a ruling party rival’s efforts to oust him and vowed to stay in his job, as Cabinet ministers warned that a political vacuum could hurt the economy. But reformist challenger Koichi Kato vowed to battle on, saying that a change at the top would be the best medicine for Japan’s economy as it struggles to recover from a decade of stagnation. Mr Kato’s challenge has prompted speculation that Mr Mori’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) — the biggest partner in the ruling coalition — could split as it did seven years ago when the party was briefly out of power. But he stressed today that he did not intend to leave the long dominant party. Mr Mori, one of Japan’s most unpopular premiers in years, told parliament he was committed to carrying out his official duties. “I will do my best to pass key Bills in parliament. I have no intention of asking Cabinet members to resign,” he said, stressing that his priority was to ensure a full economic recovery with the help of an extra budget now under deliberation. Party elders backing Mr Mori, whose public support is sinking fast according to an opinion poll yesterday, have scrambled to calm the situation. The LDP's partners in the ruling coalition have urged the party to settle its internal feud quickly. Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, grand old man of Mr Kato’s 45-member ldp faction, said now was not the time for a political vacuum. “The economy is currently passing the baton to private demand, with the situation delicate and critical,” he told parliament. “I have told Mr Kato that it’s not good to create a political vacuum under such conditions. I have not changed my mind on that.” If party power brokers want to retain Mr Mori, they must ensure that Mr Kato does not convince his faction and the 19 supporters in the faction, led by a long-time ally, to support the no-confidence motion planned by the opposition parties against the latter this month. Mr Kato appears to be hoping for support from ldp lawmakers angry over the Lower House election setback suffered under Mr Mori’s lead in June and worried about a re-run in the Upper House poll in July, next year, unless the party ditches the premier. Mr Miyazawa has tried to play down the rift, saying that there was still room for Mr Kato to have his views heard within the ldp. Mr Kato reiterated that he had no intention of leaving the ldp, but said only a change in policies could revive the economy. “Those who are saving most are people in their 20s and 30s,” he said in a radio interview. “If we don’t create a society in which the young generation has hope for the future, the economy won’t improve. “Only I can change Japan,” he added. Mr Kato declined to specify what his next move would be, saying that the priority was to enact key legislation now pending in parliament. The current session ends on December 1. |
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