 |
| Sunday,
March 4, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
|
Hardliners reject Fiji court’s
ruling 53 Indian Hajis die Sunnis go on rampage, torch five
vehicles Envoy makes bid to
curb Taliban Japanese PM on his way
out? ‘Dolly’ put in
quarantine Dutch formula to cut teenage pregnancies |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Deadline to free
hostages extended Persecuted
Madurese flee Borneo Fujimori told
to appear in court Bush names Taylor to Treasury post China targets zero population growth
|
|
Hardliners reject Fiji court’s ruling Suva, March 3 Comprising major political parties linked to Fiji’s powerful tribal chiefs, the Fiji Forum said it would not accept reinstatement of Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry’s coalition government, which was ousted last year in a nationalist coup. Meanwhile, Mr Chaudhry said yesterday that he wanted to “reclaim the people’s mandate.” Forum Chairman Esira Rabuno said indigenous Fijians would not accept a judgment that threatens their rights. “With us Fijians, we only recognise the great council of chiefs,” he said. “The council will have the last say ... if not, then the country will continue to have problems.” On Thursday, five foreign judges sitting as Fiji’s court of appeal ruled that the interim government of Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase was illegal and ordered President Ratu Josefa Iloilo to recall Parliament. Qarase’s indigenous Fijian-dominated administration was installed by the military after failed businessman George Speight led the May 19 coup that toppled Chaudhry, Fiji’s first ethnic Indian Prime Minister. Prime Minister Qarase and President Iloilo have said they will abide by the court’s decision, and have convened a Cabinet meeting for Tuesday to discuss the interim government’s response. Iloilo has called a meeting of the great council of chiefs for Thursday to consult with them. The tribal chiefs could refuse to accept the court’s decision, leading to a new political impasse and renewed instability. Ethnic Indians, mainly descendants of indentured labourers brought to the country to work on sugar plantations, make up 44 per cent of the population while indigenous Fijians account for about 51 per cent. Relations between the two communities have crumbled in recent years as Indians gained more and more economic and political power in Fiji culminating in 1999 with Chaudhry’s election as Prime Minister. Doubts have been raised as to whether Chaudhry can count on the support of his five-party coalition to renominate him as Prime Minister. Asked in Sydney yesterday if he believed he still had support, he replied, “I think so. It has to be tested on the floor of Parliament.” Chaudhry is due to meet with coalition leaders in Suva tomorrow to plot their course over the coming week. Lawmakers thrown out after a racist coup last year are trying to get Fiji’s Parliament reconvened after the nation’s highest court declared its military-backed government illegal and ordered a return to democratic rule. Local media today reported that more than 40 legislators had signed a petition calling for the 71-seat parliament to sit, far more than the minimum number of 18 signatures needed, according to the Constitution. “All we want is a peaceful solution to our troubles, there is so much suffering out there,” deposed Transport and Tourism Minister Adi Koila Nailatikau, who is leading the call for a resumption of the chamber, told local television and newspapers. AP, Reuters |
|
53 Indian
Hajis die Mecca, March 3 Arab News, quoting an Indian diplomat, said all 53 dead were aged above 60. They were among around 1,20,000 Indians taking part in the Haj, which started in earnest today with a ritual trek to the nearby Mina valley. A record 1.5 million pilgrims have poured into Saudi Arabia, joining around 5,00,000 Saudi and other Muslim pilgrims who live in the kingdom, for the Haj, which is one of the five pillars of Islam.
AFP |
|
|
Sunnis go on rampage, torch five vehicles Karachi, March 3 In another incident overnight, gunmen shot dead a Shia Muslim in the city’s western neighbourhood of Orangi town. The police said Zahid Hussain, 35, a member of the Shia political party, Tehreek-i-Jafria Pakistan (TJP), was sitting in a barber’s shop late yesterday when the assailants barged in and opened fire, killing him on the spot. At least five vehicles including two buses, were torched today as extremists from Sunni group Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) pelted stones and burnt tyres on the roads to disrupt traffic. The SSP had called for a protest against the hanging of its member, Haq Nawaz, on Wednesday for the 1990 murder of Iranian Cultural Centre director Sadiq Ganji. Local administration official Iqbal Hussain Durrani said the strike was later called off after SSP leaders held talks with the provincial government, “but some miscreants still restored to violence.” The police and paramilitary troops have been patrolling the city in large numbers, witnesses said. Nawaz, 33, was the first Sunni extremist to be executed in Sunni-majority Pakistan, where sectarian violence has claimed around 3,000 lives over the past 10 years.
AFP Envoy makes bid to
curb Taliban Islamabad, March 3 Lafrance, who arrived overnight, told Ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef of the world’s strong opposition and presented a message from UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura, according to a report from Afghan Islamic Press (AIP). The fundamentalist Islamic militia said on Thursday that it had begun destroying all statues across the country to prevent idolatry. A former French Ambassador to Iran and Pakistan, Lafrance also has President Jacques Chirac’s blessing for his mission, French officials have said. He is expected to had talks with Taliban supreme leader Mulla Mohammad Omar. AIP quoted the ambassador as saying Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel was available to meet Lafrance but so far nothing had been arranged with Omar. UNITED NATIONS: New York’s renowned metropolitan museum of art has expressed its readiness to save cultural relics of Afghanistan threatened with destruction by fundamentalist Taliban regime. The world body has already conveyed the offer to Taliban but is yet to receive a feedback, a United Nations spokesman said on Friday. Director of the museum, Philippe de Montebello, telephoned Secretary-General Kofi Annan the offer to remove at its cost all moveable sculptures from Afghanistan. Soon after receiving the offer, Annan asked his personal representative for Afghanistan Francesc Vendrell and Pakistan’s military ruler Pervez Musharraf to press the Taliban authorities to let the museum remove the sculptures instead of destroying them. NEW YORK: Major US museums have said they would join any effort to save Afghanistan’s art a day after New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art offered, at its own cost, to rescue ancient statues from destruction by the Taliban. The Metropolitan Museum’s director, Phillipe de Montebello, said on Thursday the museum would be willing to buy and retrieve statues of a reasonable size and put them in a secular environment “where they are cultural objects, works of art and not cult images.”
Agencies |
|
|
Japanese PM on his way out? Tokyo, March 3 Mr Mori boarded a military helicopter bound for Miyakejima, about 180 km south of Tokyo, to inspect the island that had been evacuated six months ago after several volcanic eruptions and fears of a cataclysmic blast. In Tokyo, a tempest was still brewing over his administration with a leading opposition politician saying that the passing of a no-confidence measure was essential for boosting Japan’s sagging stock market and building a brighter future. “There is a feeling all across Japan that we are being trapped. We need to break through this blockade in the current Diet session,’’ said leading opposition lawmaker Naoto Kan of the Democratic Party in an address to supporters. Mr Mori, whose support rating has ranged from about six to nine per cent in recent public opinion poll, is likely to survive the no-confidence measure on Monday, but lawmakers in the three-way ruling coalition look ready to dump the unpopular politician ahead of an upper house election in July. They are trying to distance themselves from Mr Mori, whose almost a year in office has been marred by gaffes and scandals. The political confusion comes at a critical time for Japan’s economy, now showing clear signs of slipping into reverse after a decade of failed attempts to break out of stagnation. Tokyo’s stock market is in serious decline, with the benchmark Nikkei average hitting new 15-year low almost daily on worries about the economy. The Nikkei slumped more than 3 per cent to close at the day’s low of 12,261.80. The coalition partners in the government are expected to back the embattled Mr Mori in the vote and then help in stabbing him in the back. Coalition partner officials said they see the no-confidence vote and keeping Mr Mori as Prime Minister as separate issues and they will decide for themselves how and when to replace him. The New Komeito Party, the number two group in the coalition behind Mori’s Liberal Democratic Party, said they would vote against the no-confidence measure and leave a decision on Mr Mori’s replacement to the LDP. The government got a breather yesterday, when opposition parties decided to delay the submission of a no-confidence vote in Parliament. With the LDP controlling a majority in the lower house, Mr Mori survived such a vote in November and the next was also expected to fail. But with support ratings dropping below 10 per cent and figures in his own party jockeying to choose a successor, time is clearly running out. “The people of this nation now cast an eye as cold as ice on the administration of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori,” the national Yomiuri newspaper said in an editorial.
Reuter, AP |
|
‘Dolly’ put in
quarantine London, March 3 Seven new cases of the highly contagious animal disease were announced yesterday and the police ringed 15 suspect farms in Ireland, while nations from Asia to Europe tightened restrictions on food imports and travellers from Britain. Weekend sporting events, including racing, soccer and rugby, were either cancelled or restricted in Britain. But in a bid to get the food chain going again after livestock movements across the country had been banned, the government announced it would allow limited transport and slaughter of animals, although strict conditions would apply. Walks in the country have been virtually banned as part of the measures to halt a disease whose last major outbreak in Britain was in 1967. In Britain, the first cracks appeared in the united front so far presented in the 10-day-old crisis as Prime Minister Tony Blair blasted supermarkets for strong-arming farmers into producing cheap meat, jeopardising quality standards. Sheep, cattle and pig meat began to be in short supply at British supermarkets because of bans on movement of animals to abattoirs. Efforts were under way to rush in stocks from overseas suppliers in Europe and New Zealand. Buyers at meat markets forecast that prices could rise by up to 40 per cent in the coming week. The disease, which is not a threat to humans, is spread from animal to animal as well as through the air, on people’s clothes or by vehicles. It causes blisters on the hooves and in the mouths of animals, leading to severe weight loss. LILLE (France):
Officials in northern France early on Saturday imposed what amounts to a ban on animals crossing the Belgian border, saying that there were “very strong suspicions” of the foot-and-mouth disease in Belgium.
Reuters, AFP |
|
Dutch formula to cut teenage pregnancies London, March 3 The Dutch should know. The tiny country better known for its cheese, windmills and canals has fewer pregnant teenagers than most western countries. Less than 1 per cent, or 10 per 1,000, 15-17 year-olds in the Netherlands get pregnant each year, compared to nearly 5 per cent in Britain, which has the highest rate in western Europe, and 99 per 1,000 in the USA. “Teenage pregnancy seems virtually eliminated as a health and social problem in the Netherlands,’’ Dr Simone Buitendijk, of the Dutch Institute for Applied Scientific Research in Leiden, told Reuters yesterday. The Dutch have seen a steady drop in the number of young mothers for decades as teen pregnancies have been increasing in other countries. In the early 1970s 4 per cent of live births in the Netherlands were to teenagers. By the late 1990s, the figure had dropped to 1 per cent. “It’s due to a whole mix of things. It is very hard to pinpoint what the major factor is. The liberal attitude is probably one very important determinant,’’ she added in a telephone interview. While other countries have been expounding the joys of no sex, the Dutch have accepted that teens are sexually active and have introduced measures to deal with it. “In Holland teens know about sexuality and about procreation, how it works and what you should do not to become pregnant. Their peers know and it is a very socially acceptable thing to prevent pregnancy,’’ she added. Birth control pills are available at pharmacies and free through a National Sick Fund, a state-funded system that ensures low income people have medical care, and statistics show that Dutch teenagers are using them. In 1995, 70 per cent of sexually active 18 year-olds were on the pill and 40 per cent of students three or four years younger. Eightyfive per cent of teens used a condom, the pill or both during their first sexual experience.
Reuters |
|
Deadline to free
hostages extended Dhaka, March 3 Officials in the Rangmati hill district today said the crisis cell dealing with the hostages was hopeful that the three would be released as formal contact had been established with the kidnappers, ending days of silence. Mr Kalparangan Chakma, Minister for Tribal Affairs, told television networks late yesterday that “contact with the kidnappers has been established, although it is an indirect one.” He said the hostages were in good health. The minister, himself from the dominant Chakma tribe, said the deadline for an ultimatum was extended by a day until tomorrow midnight at the request of the kidnappers. Mr Chakma was hopeful that the crisis would be resolved peacefully by Monday, after the kidnappers were warned that army commandos would launch an operation if the three Europeans were not released unharmed today. The development came as Danes Torben Mikkelsen and Nils Hulgaard and Briton Tim Selby started their third week in captivity in a dense forest around the Kalapahar hill in Rangamati. The Security forces cordoned off the area after February 16 kidnapping. Ms Chakma headed a three-man government negotiation team working to make direct contact with the gunmen who are demanding a ransom of $ 1.6 million and the lifting of the military cordon.
AFP |
|
Persecuted Madurese flee Borneo Palangkaraya (Indonesia), March 3 Though the authorities promised that the refugees will be able to return, but the fear left behind by the massacres made that scenario seem unlikely. The violence that began two weeks ago left more than 450 Madurese settlers dead in Borneo’s central Kalimantan province, where Dayak natives beheaded and hacked their victims to death in a terror campaign to drive Madurese away from the area. Two ships carrying 7,000 refugees departed from the central Kalimantan town of Sampit yesterday and were scheduled to arrive in Surabaya, in East Java, late today. An additional two warships were set to depart from Sampit today carrying 6,000 refugees, said Sampit district head M. Wahyudi Anwar. “The government will do all it can to bring the settlers back to Sampit as soon as possible but for now our priority is their safety,” Mr Anwar said. The Dayak campaign to rid central Kalimantan province of Madurese has largely succeeded, with an estimated 50,000 people having been driven from their homes. Several thousand Madurese refugees were still languishing in a disease-infested camp in Sampit today, waiting for ships to evacuate them. The US Government today announced that it was providing 30 tonnes of food to 15,000 Madurese children under the age of five,” according to a US Embassy statement. The aid will supplement food supplied by the Indonesian Red Cross.
AP |
|
Fujimori told
to appear in court Lima, March 3 Court spokesman Andiolo Zevallos yesterday said Mr Fujimori, who was declared morally unfit for office after he fled to Japan in November, would have three opportunities to obey the order from Judge Miguel Castaneda before an arrest warrant was issued. It was not immediately clear what court date was set. Fujimori, the son of Japanese immigrants, has claimed Japanese citizenship and said he has no intention of returning to face allegations against him. He left Peru amid mounting corruption scandals surrounding his security adviser, Vladimiro Montesinos, who remains a fugitive in hiding. Japan and Peru have no extradition treaty. Japanese Justice Minister Masahiko Komura told reporters yesterday in Tokyo that his government would not hand Fujimori over to Peru if asked to do so because Japanese law did not permit deportation of its nationals.
AP |
|
Bush names Taylor to Treasury post Washington, March 3 The appointment of the Stanford University professor was announced by Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer at a regular White House briefing yesterday. The widely expected move will help the US Treasury, which has been operating with many key senior positions unfilled, get back up to regular staffing levels. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill travelled to Palermo in February for his first meeting of the Group of Seven Finance Ministers without the benefit of a deputy on international affairs. If Mr Taylor is confirmed by the Senate, he will help lay the groundwork for the next G7 meeting in April and set to work determining how the USA will respond to crises, such as the recent economic troubles in Turkey. Mr Taylor, who served on the Council of Economic Advisers under two different presidents and played economic adviser to two presidential campaigns, is a scholar at the Hoover Institution, a California think-tank from which Mr Bush has drawn much talent.
Reuters |
|
China targets zero population growth Beijing, March 3 The Chinese population, which stands at 1.3 billion, will peak at 1.6 billion before it begins to decline, Minister of the State Family Planning Commission, Zhang Weiqing said at a rally yesterday to mark the anniversary of the China’s decision to maintain a low birth rate, China Daily reported.
PTI |
 |
| Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir | Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs | Nation | Editorial | | Business | Sport | World | Mailbag | In Spotlight | Chandigarh Tribune | Ludhiana Tribune 50 years of Independence | Tercentenary Celebrations | | 121 Years of Trust | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
