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| Tuesday,
May 15, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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Six killed in Philippine
poll violence Jerusalem, May 14 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has rejected a new call for a freeze of Jewish settlements called for by the Mitchell report on the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Geri lends spice to Labour campaign London, May 14 Britain’s ruling Labour Party, hot favourites to win the June 7 elections, has gained a further boost — the support of former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell who once backed Labour’s arch enemy Margaret Thatcher. |
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| Three Maoists killed
in Nepal Kathmandu, May 14 Two women were among three Maoist rebels killed in a fight with the police inside a school, the police said today. The police recovered hand-made bombs and other weapons from the insurgents after the encounter yesterday in the Surkhet district, 460 km south-west of the capital. A Central Asian script found Hardliners’ expulsion puts moderates in driving seat Blair defends donation
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Six killed in Philippine poll violence Manila, May 14 Six persons were killed today alone in separate incidents in the central and southern Philippines, officials said. In the latest incident, a campaign worker of a mayoral candidate in Naga town, Cebu island, was shot dead by plainclothes policemen today in controversial circumstances. Followers of the Mayor of Pitogo town in southern Amboanga Del Sur province were ambushed today leaving one person dead, while a district official was gunned down in Bansalan town in the southern province of Davao Del Sur. Elsewhere today a government militiaman was killed when Muslim separatist guerrillas in the southern island of Basilan attacked an army detachment. A local military spokesman, Col Danilo Servando, said the attack was an attempt to harass voters. A few hours earlier, a village chief seeking re-election in the central city of Cebu was gunned down by suspected rivals before the poll opened, the police said. Unidentified armed men also ambushed two soldiers before dawn today in southern Cotabato city, killing one and wounding the other, Major Julieto Ando said. However, officials said voting closed in legislative and local elections across the Philippines today with reports of scattered violence but none of major disruption. “So far, by and large, compared to past elections, today’s elections were generally okay,” Alfredo Benipayo, Chairman of the watchdog Commission on Elections (Comelec), told reporters an hour before balloting ended at 3 p.m. (0700 GMT). In Matanog town on the southern island of Mindanao, voting was disrupted when suspected followers of a local politician running for Mayor lobbed two mortar shells behind the town hall, causing a stampede among employees, the police said. No one was injured and voting resumed later. Voting in Pantar town, also on Mindanao, was postponed because of irregularities in the preparation of voters lists, Comelec officials said. At stake in the poll were 13 seats in the 24-member Senate, all 262 seats in the House of Representatives and thousands of local posts in the nation of 76 million people. The elections are billed as a test of the legitimacy of newly installed President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Meanwhile, detained former Philippine President Joseph Estrada cast his vote today at a military hospital in greater Manila where he has been since complaining about stomach pains, a presidential spokesman said. Mr Estrada, who is in custody on an economic plunder charge punishable by death or life imprisonment, was flown on Saturday to the hospital from his detention cell at a police camp in Santa Rosa, Cavite, 50 km south of Manila.
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Israel rejects Mitchell report Jerusalem, May 14 “The Prime Minister sees some positive points in this report such as the call on the Palestinian Authority to respect its commitments and take immediate measures to stop the violence. But the accords we have reached stipulate that the chapter on settlements must be discussed within final status negotiations”, Mr Sharon’s office said yesterday. The statement was published after Mr Sharon met with Canadian Foreign Minister John Manley, on a visit to Israel. Mr Sharon’s comments contrasted with those of Israel’s Foreign Minister Shimon Peres who also met with Mr Manley but said after that
Israel had no plans to expand Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. “We have no plans to expand settlements,” Mr Peres told a joint press conference with Mr Manley. “The position of Israel is that there won’t be any more settlements (or) confiscation of land.” A preliminary version of the report by the US-led commission, which was handed to both parties just over a week ago, calls for an “unconditional and immediate halt to the violence” and for a freeze on all Jewish settlement activities. Israel is expected to answer the findings of the commission on Tuesday. The Palestinians should also give a response to the report, the definitive version of which is due to be made public soon. Gaza City: Meanwhile, five Palestinian policemen were shot dead by Israeli troops in the West Bank overnight on Sunday while in the Gaza Strip Israel on Monday launched its most extensive attack in seven months of violence. Palestinian officials said the five were gunned down at a roadblock close to the town of Bitunia near Ramallah, after “Israeli soldiers opened fire in their direction without any reason.” Early on Monday in the Gaza Strip, Israeli helicopters fired missiles into Palestinian targets across Gaza, including those around the headquarters of Mr Yasser Arafat, witnesses said. The Palestinian leader emerged unhurt from the wave of strikes against security buildings, armoured vehicles, administrative offices and other targets along the Gaza Strip, security sources said. Hospital sources added that 15 persons were hurt, none of them seriously. Three or four were hurt during strikes on the sprawling sea-front security base and compound where Mr Arafat lives, works and receives foreign
dignitaries.
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Egyptian breaks law by marrying 21 times Cairo, May 14 Al Said Ragab Sawarka (56) owner of Egypt’s famous Tawhid wa al-Nour department stores, was arrested on May 7, after one of his divorced wives accused him of violating her marital rights by wedding two other women without informing her as he should have done under the personal status law. Immediately the police opened an investigation into Sawarka’s personal life, sifting through layers of hidden secrets and half-truths that led it to an intriguing climax. The probe revealed that between 1964 and 2000, Sawarka had married a record 21 wives, including two sisters and minors who bore him some 15 children. Under Islam, a man can marry up to four wives as long as he is capable of fulfilling their material and financial needs. Despite media reports to the contrary, Sawarka told the semi-official
al-Gomhuriya on Sunday that he had never been married to more than four women at the same time. He also dismissed as untrue reports that he had also had a marital relationship with two sisters at the same time. Sawarka has also been charged with unlawfully marrying minors and forging birth certificates showing that they were above 16 years, the legal age under which girls are allowed to marry. While admitting that he had married a 13-year-old girl, Sawarka denied forging her birth certificate, saying that as in all other cases, he had married her legally and with the consent of her father. “Forgery is not my game,’’ he told al-Gomhuriya, adding that he had not done anything wrong. Out of the 21 women with whom Sawarka was said to have had marital relationships, at least seven were married between 1999 and 2000 alone, according to press reports. For instance, Nabawiya Maher Ibrahim, one of the only two women with whom he claims he still has a marriage contract, was married in August 1999 — the other woman is his first wife, Farida, whom he married in 1964. Samah Saber Mohammed was married on January 29, 2000, and divorced in March of the same year, while Abeer Antar Yassin, who was married in early April, was divorced later in the same month. Meanwhile, Salwa Faiz Saad and Fatma Mohammed Ibrahim lasted for only 18 and 11 days, respectively. Rania Ezat Abdel Hamid, who brought the issue to the attention of the police, was divorced after being married for 41 days. The shortest marriage was to Rabab Shoukri Saed who was married on August 18, last year and divorced on the same day — after only seven hours.
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Geri lends spice to Labour campaign London, May 14 The singer features in Labour’s first party political broadcast, to be aired on major networks today. She is seen making tea and serving it to pensioners. A Labour press release quoted her praising Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie with whom she has worked on breast cancer campaigns. “We all need good parenting with love and guidance and I think Tony and Cherie are great examples to us,” Halliwell said. “We are delighted to have her endorsement,” said Mr Douglas Alexander, member of Parliament and one of the architects of Labour’s campaign. Mr Alexander would not say if Halliwell had been wooed personally by Mr Blair, but as a member of the chart-topping Spice Girls, she once famously endorsed former Conservative premier Margaret Thatcher. No backing has been more important to Mr Blair than that of the top-selling Sun newspaper — first won in 1997 and regained in the run-up to the June 7 poll. But party officials said Halliwell came a close second.
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Three Maoists killed
in Nepal Kathmandu, May 14 The police recovered hand-made bombs and other weapons from the insurgents after the encounter yesterday in the Surkhet district, 460 km south-west of the capital. “Three rebels, including two women, wearing special camouflage uniforms worn by the insurgents, were killed when they clashed with the police inside a school premises at Tatopani village in Surkhet yesterday,” the police said. According to the police, the incident happened after a two-hour cultural show inside the school by the rebels, who were also standing guard outside.
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A Central Asian script found New York, May 14 Evidence of the accomplishments of the unknown people in what are now the countries of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan began to emerge over several decades of excavations by archaeologists of the Soviet Union. But it was last summer that Mr Fredrik T. Hiebert, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania, uncovered a small stone object engraved with four or five red symbols, believed to be an evidence of writing. “They had every aspect of civilisation,” Mr Hiebert said in a telephone interview yesterday, “including urban features such as large buildings and monumental arches”. The only missing element, he said, had been an evidence of writing. Since no one knows who the people were or what they called themselves, archaeologists have given the culture the name Bactria Margiana Archaeology Complex (BMAC) after the ancient Greek names for two lands in the region. Mr Hiebert made the discovery last June in ruins at Annau, Turkmenistan. He described the findings a week ago at a symposium at the University of Pennsylvania and on Saturday at a conference on language and archaeology at Harvard University. Mr Hiebert said the artefact, he found, believed to be a stamp seal made of anthracite, was the “first evidence that we would have of a literate Central Asian society.” Mr Hiebert said other archaeologists had said the symbols on the seal were distinct from contemporary scripts in Mesopotamia, Iran and the Indus river valley. Stamp seals were commonly used in ancient commerce to mark containers by their contents and ownership. The artefact has been dated to 2300 BC, when the pyramids of Egypt had been standing for three centuries, power in the Tigris and Euphrates valley was shifting from Sumer to Babylon and the Chinese had yet to develop writing. Mr Hiebert said that Mr Victor H. Meir, a specialist in Asian languages and cultures at the University of Pennsylvania, told him that some of the symbols resembled Chinese writing, which was thought to have developed several hundred years later. The dozens of settlement ruins of the unknown civilisation stretch east from Annau across the Kara-Kum desert into Uzbekistan and perhaps the northern part of Afghanistan. The area is 480 to 640 km long and 80 km wide. Mr Hiebert described a “vibrant debate” at the Harvard conference over whether the symbols indicated a written language or an experiment in proto-writing. “I don’t know,” he conceded, adding that further excavations might provide greater insight. “One piece of evidence is hardly enough, but it has tremendous implications.”
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Hardliners’ expulsion puts moderates in driving seat Dhaka, May 14 However, political analysts think that the expulsion may lead to cold shouldering of the lesser and fundamentalist parties in the four-party Opposition alliance led by the BNP. The exit of the two is likely to snap the party’s link with Pakistan, at least for the time being. The two expelled hard-liners are Mr Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, BNP legislator, and Mr Anwar Zahid, who was media adviser to BNP chairperson Ms Khaleda Zia till last month. Mr Zahid was unceremoniously removed and replaced by the editor of an English daily. Mr Zahid, a former journalist represented the ultra Left in the party, was blamed by opponents as a collaborator of the Pakistan Army during the nine months of Bangladesh’s liberation struggle in 1971. Mr Chowdhury, the eldest son of former Pakistan National Assembly Speaker Fazlul Quader Chowdhury, was the front leader of the former Muslim Leaguers in the BNP. After the liberation of Bangladesh his father was arrested on charges of collaboration with Pakistan and died in custody in the Dhaka Central Jail. Mr Chowdhury and Mr Zahid have a record of changing parties. The former and his bother Giasuddin Quader Chowdhury, both businessmen, contested and won the 1986 elections as the Muslim League candidates. The elder Chowdhury joined the Cabinet in the Ershad government The brothers were taken in the Jatiya Party of General Ershad. Both Mr Chowdury and Mr Zahid, then Information Minister under General Ershad, resigned together and floated the National Democratic Alliance in 1988. Both contested in the 1991 general elections under the banner of the NDA. The Chowdhurys won the poll, but Mr Zahid lost badly. Later, when the BNP came to power both of them were inducted into the party by Ms Khaleda Zia. In the 1996 poll the result was the same Recent statements by lower functionaries of the BNP demanding expulsion of Mr Chowdhury and Mr Zahid, blamed the two known hardliners of the party for roping in fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), Islami Oikkyo Jote (IOJ) and Rightist Jatiya Party faction, led by former military dictator General Ershad, for a four-party Opposition alliance with the objective of dislodging the Awami League government through relentless street agitations. It is alleged that they were manipulating lobbies to adopt a confrontational course for the party that led to the boycott of parliament since July, 1999, move for en mass resignation of the entire Opposition to force the dissolution of parliament and shutdown programme for long
durations. The Jamaat was dominating these decisions. The BNP rank and file now allege that the party leadership was swayed by their machinations for adopting these programmes, which now has caused erosion in the party’s image as a Party of “behuda hartals”. The moderates in the main opposition party were sidelined because of their influence on the party chief. Through this the moderates staged triumphant come back and were jubilant. The departure of the two hard-liners has put their followers in a tight situation. The BNP has also decided to move parliament and the election commission to cancel the parliament membership of the
Chowdhurys. Mr Gaisuddin Chowdury has not been expelled, but he may quit along with his elder brother. The term of the parliament ends after just two months on July 13. It is speculated that if the Chowdhury brothers contest the coming parliament poll in October they will win even as an Independent candidate. They are so influential that they can disturb BNP candidates in nearby constituencies in south-eastern Chittagong. Another errant party legislator, Major
Akhtaruzzaman (retd), was also expelled last year by the BNP and he lost his parliament membership. The latest development is considered by the political circles as a move by the moderates not to go for sharing seats in the coming election with the JI and IOJ. General Ershad-led JP has already deserted the alliance. However, the fundamentalists are pressed to the wall now and for survival may beg the BNP for some understanding. The development is likely to help the ruling Awami League in the coming elections as the anti-Awami League camp and votes will be divided to the advantage of the
AL. In Bangladesh politics is divided into two currents —the Awami League and allies opposed by anti-Awami League camp, led by the BNP. The Awami League is not yet planning any alliance with any like- minded party.
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Blair defends donation London, May 14 Participating in BBC’s “Breakfast with Frost”, Mr Blair insisted that the brothers had been entitled to give money to the dome from their foundation, “which gives money to vast number of different things.” Mr Blair was responding to a question about reports that the Prince’s Trust had turned down money from the brothers after advice from the intelligence services. He also defended Mr Vaz, the only Minister of Indian-origin in the Cabinet, linked to Hindujas’ application for British Citizenship.
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