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November 24, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
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MIAMI, Nov 23 — Lawyers for Democrat Al Gore today prepared arguments for the Florida and U.S. Supreme Courts about disputed presidential votes as the battle for the White House intensified even as most Americans took a day off for Thanksgiving. USA asks Pak to back truce offer |
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Lanka rebels kill 7 civilians Thai commandos kill 9 escapees Suu Kyi names lawyers for house case Paniagua is Peru’s interim President Clinton spares turkey
on Thanksgiving
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Russia to broker West
Asia peace talks MOSCOW, Nov 23 (Reuters) — Palestinian President Yasser Arafat is to visit Moscow tomorrow for talks with President Vladimir Putin on the escalating violence in West Asia. Arafat and Israel have repeatedly urged Russia to get more involved in efforts to halt the violence, which has led to more than 258 deaths since September 28. Kremlin spokesman Alexei Gromov said that the meeting had been arranged at the request of the Palestinian side. Israel had said earlier Arafat had signalled a desire to revive deadlocked peace talks and end the two months of violence. Russia is nominally a co-sponsor with the USA of the peace process although it has played second fiddle for a long time. It has called for international efforts to half the violence. Meanwhile, an Israeli was killed in an explosion in the Gaza Strip today, raising Israeli doubts that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat was serious about his desire to end two months of violence and revive peace talks. Israeli television stations said at least one Israeli was killed and at least two people were wounded in what the army said was probably a mortar attack on an Israeli-Palestinian liaison post in southern Gaza on
Thursday. “We are talking about an explosion that hit the Israeli-Palestinian liaison unit’s war room,” army spokesman Ron Kitrey said. “We don’t know yet exactly what exploded.” Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami said US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had told him in a phone call that Arafat had expressed a desire to renew talks which have been severed since the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian fighting. But police chief Yehuda Wilk warned Israelis they should prepare for more attacks like the car bomb. He said security forces would be out on the streets and in public places in greater numbers because of intelligence that more attacks are planned. ‘‘This is not a hermetic system, it is possible to penetrate,’’ he told Israel’s Army Radio. ‘‘I can’t say definitely that it is possible to prevent the next terrorist attack.’’ The Israeli army said in a statement there had been several shooting incidents overnight in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. At least two Palestinians were wounded in clashes early on Thursday near the Gaza-Egypt border. Yesterday, a car bomb exploded next to a crowded bus in northern Israel, killed at least two persons and injuring 62 soon after Israeli soldiers shot dead four Palestinians at a checkpost in the Gaza Strip. Witnesses said the rush hour blast lifted local bus No. 7 off the ground and threw it into a shopfront on the main street of Hadera, midway between Tel Aviv and Haifa. The explosion tore pieces of metal from cars and obliterated shopfronts, leaving a trail of charred and twisted debris. Little remained of the car but its steering column. The Israel Radio said a man and a woman — Meir Brami, (35) and Shoshana Ris (21) — were killed. Hospitals said nine of the wounded, including a burned baby, were in serious condition. A previously unknown group calling itself the Islamic Revolution for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the bombing that ripped through the town of Hadera. Northern region police commander Alik Ron said the bomb appeared to have been activated by a remote control. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak blamed the bombing on the Palestinian authority and vowed to “get even”. UNITED NATIONS:
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has termed the ongoing crisis in the Middle East as “almost a war-like situation” and has said that resolving the problem could take months. On efforts to deploy un forces in Israeli-occupied areas, Mr Annan told newspersons yesterday that he had no breakthrough to report. “What we need to do is not just to bring the violence down but to bring the parties to the table,” said Mr Annan, who is scheduled to meet the fact-finding commission headed by US Senator George Mitchell on November 27 before it starts its work. The commission, appointed by us President Bill Clinton and entrusted with the task of investigating the eruption of violence, suffered a setback when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said yesterday that the time was not ripe for the panel to start its work while violence continued. Palestinians have asked the UN to send a 2000-strong force to protect them in the territories occupied by Israel. |
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Hand count in Miami county refused MIAMI, Nov 23 (Reuters) —Lawyers for Democrat Al Gore today prepared arguments for the Florida and U.S. Supreme Courts about disputed presidential votes as the battle for the White House intensified even as most Americans took a day off for Thanksgiving. Racing against a Sunday deadline for manual recounts that could finally decide the November 7 presidential election, Democrats vowed to challenge a state appeals court ruling late on Wednesday that upheld a decision by Miami-Dade county, Florida’s most populous, to abandon plans to count votes by hand. Mr Gore’s legal team also scrambled to prepare briefs for the U.S. Supreme Court after Republican George W. Bush asked the nation’s highest court on Wednesday to intervene in one of the closest and most contested White House races in history. With 25 electoral votes, Florida is the prize either candidate needs to get the 270 Electoral College votes required to win the White House. Mr Gore was banking on picking up enough votes in Miami-Dade and two other Democratic-leaning counties in south Florida — Broward and Palm Beach — to overtake Mr Bush’s 930-vote lead in the state and clinch the presidency. Without Miami-Dade’s ballots, that could prove difficult, which explains why Mr Gore’s lawyers were so vigorously pursuing every avenue to get the county to keep counting its votes. But the county’s election canvassing board said there was no way to complete the giant task of hand counting nearly 700,000 ballots by the deadline set by Florida’s Supreme Court. Mr Gore’s attorney Dexter Douglass told CNN that Mr Gore would take the matter up with the state Supreme Court. Election officials in Broward had nearly completed their hand count, giving Mr Gore an ‘‘apparent’’ net gain of 137 votes, but were due to review some 2,000 contested ballots. In Palm Beach county, officials planned to rest on Thursday — the Thanksgiving holiday — before meeting again on Friday to scrutinise thousands of ballots that were not punched through completely on Election day, leaving them with dimpled, pregnant and hanging chads. Republican vice-presidential candidate Dick Cheney remained in the hospital on Thursday after suffering what doctors described as a ‘‘very slight’’ heart attack, but he told CNN’s ‘‘Larry King Live’’ in a telephone call that he was feeling ‘‘good’’ and his family planned to bring a home-cooked turkey dinner to his bedside. ‘‘I can report that when they got in there today, they didn’t find any pregnant chads at all,’’ he quipped. Florida’s Republican-led legislature said on Wednesday it might take extraordinary steps, including appointing electors itself, to ensure the state takes part in the December 18 Electoral College. Republican legislators, enraged by what some described as judicial interference in the state’s powers, also blasted Tuesday’s decision by the seven-judge Florida Supreme Court. Republicans said the court’s ruling could make Florida miss a nationwide December 12 deadline to name electors. In Atlanta, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals agreed to consider cases seeking to halt hand recounts of presidential ballots in Florida, despite the Florida Supreme Court ruling that manual recounts could proceed. |
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USA asks Pak to back truce offer WASHINGTON, Nov 23 (PTI) — The USA has asked Pakistan and Kashmiri militant groups to respond positively to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Ramzan ceasefire offer saying that the move is a harbinger of a sustained dialogue that could bring peace in the region. “Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth has been in touch with Islamabad and we urge the Government of Pakistan to respond to the Prime Minister’s announcement in a positive fashion,” White House spokesman Jake Siewert said yesterday. “We saw the statement that was issued by the Pakistan and we know it does not reject the Indian offer. It says that it will closely watch the developments in the region,” Mr Siewert said. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Mr Vajpayee’s ceasefire announcement was fully consistent with President Bill Clinton’s assertion that “there needs to be restraint, respect for the Line of Control, rejection of violence and renewal of dialogue to settle the Kashmir dispute.” Mr Boucher praised the response of the All-Party Hurriyat Conference to the offer and urged hardline militant groups which had rejected it to “reconsider their positions and use this opportunity to begin a process to end the conflict in Kashmir”. MOSCOW: Russia has termed the Indian Government’s declaration of a month-long ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir as an “excellent step” and stressed that “yet another chance” for creating a conducive atmosphere for rejection of violence should not be missed. A Foreign Ministry statement issued last evening said Russia firmly stood for resolution of the Kashmir issue peacefully through bilateral political dialogue between India and Pakistan. It said the “initiative” of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was as an “excellent step” in the direction of the resumption of Indo-Pak dialogue. Emphasising the “key importance” of Indo-Pak dialogue for transition to non-confrontational relations in South Asia, it said Russia urged that “yet another chance” provided by the ceasefire initiative in the direction of generating trust between the two neighbours should not be missed. |
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Lanka rebels kill 7 civilians COLOMBO, Nov 23 (Reuters) —At least seven civilians were killed by Tamil rebels and government troops in Sri Lanka’s northeastern war zone, military officials said today in three incidents. They said mortar bombs fired from a rebel-controlled area killed two schoolboys, aged nine and 11, and injured 10 others in the eastern Trincomalee district. “The mortars hit the school and the nearby bus stand in Muttur town,” said military spokesman Brig Sanath Karunaratne, but local residents said the bomb had only landed near the school buildings. |
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Thai commandos kill 9 escapees BAN THAPSILA (Thailand), Nov 23 (AP) — Thai commandos today shot dead nine inmates who had broken out of a prison and were holding prison officials hostage, the police and witnesses said. All three captives were freed in the raid. The inmates from Myanmar had escaped from the prison in a hijacked pick-up truck and tried to get back home by driving to their neighbouring country. A hostage, who was the prison chief, was seriously injured in the raid with a bullet wound in the head and was unconscious, the police and hospital officials said. He was sent by a helicopter for an emergency operation to Bangkok. Another hostage suffered a minor stab wound in his waist, presumably attacked by the captors, while the third was fine, Ruam Duay Chuay Kan radio reported. An inmate, who said he was a Thai, survived the raid with only a minor injury to his hand, hospital officials interviewed by the radio station said. Hostage Sema Kumphanon, the prison Deputy Director who escaped injury, told state-owned TNN radio that the surviving inmate had actually been a hostage as well, taken by the Myanmar inmates to help open the prison gate during the break-out. |
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Suu Kyi names lawyers for house case YANGON, Nov 23 (Reuters) — Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has appointed three lawyers and an agent to represent her in a court case filed by her brother over the ownership of her lakeside Yangon home, lawyers said today. Suu Kyi’s lawyer, Kyi Win, told Reuters he met the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner twice this week at her residence where she is under house arrest. The pro-Democracy campaigner failed to turn up for a court hearing in Yangon on Tuesday despite promises by the military to allow her to go to court. Adjourning the hearing in her absence, judge U Soe Thein told a Yangon sub-division court the hearing would continue ex parte on November 27. |
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Paniagua is Peru’s interim President LIMA, Nov 13 (Reuters) — Peru’s Congress swore in a moderate opposition lawmaker as interim President yesterday after it declared Alberto Fujimori “morally unfit” to be leader and sacked him following the allegations of government corruption. The Congress head, Mr Valentin Paniagua, a 64-year-old constitutional lawyer seen as having broad appeal in this politically-polarised nation, said his government’s main task would be leading the country to free and fair April elections. The new President immediately named former United Nations’ Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar as Prime Minister and head of a Cabinet of “unity and national reconciliation”. Mr Perez de Cuellar, who headed the United Nations during 1982-1991, ran against Mr Fujimori in 1995 presidential elections. A bespectacled and balding Paniagua — an elder statesman of dull suits and plain ties who contrasts with the charismatic and unpredictable Fujimori — rode in a motorcade to the nearby presidential palace pursued by scrambling reporters, bodyguards and supporters. “After 10 years, democracy has returned to the presidential palace,” he shouted from a balcony to hundreds of flag-waving Peruvians who shouted back :Justice!”. Mr Paniagua’s nomination came after the Congress rejected Mr Fujimori’s resignation — sent from Tokyo, where the former strongman was sheltering from the political storm — and instead fired him on Tuesday night in disgrace. Mr Paniagua was in line to assume the presidency as Mr Fujimori’s two Vice-Presidents, who were ahead of him in the constitutional pecking order, had also resigned. |
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Clinton spares turkey
on Thanksgiving WASHINGTON, Nov 23 (Reuters) — Marking his final thanksgiving in the White House, President Bill Clinton pardoned Jerry, the turkey, sparing the life of the 45-pound gobbler, as Americans prepared millions of his kin for the annual holiday feast. Carrying on a tradition started by President Harry Truman in 1947, Mr Clinton yesterday accepted the National Thanksgiving Day turkey and pardoned it from the ultimate sacrifice. After pardoning Jerry, Mr Clinton visited a nearby food bank and announced new initiatives aimed at improving nutrition of senior citizens and poor families. Up to 90 per cent of American households will eat an estimated 535 million pounds (240 kilograms) of turkey on the Thanksgiving Day today, a yearly tradition honouring the 1621 feast enjoyed by the pilgrims — early settlers form England — after a successful harvest in Plymouth, Massachusetts. |
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