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| Thursday, May 31, 2001, Chandigarh, India  
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PLOTE
member shot dead |
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India’s policy good
for South Asia: expert West Asia meeting fails Lanka lifts ban on military news Pak group
withdraws strike call 4 Bin
Laden men convicted |
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Violence flares up
in Indonesia Pasuruan (Indonesia), May 30 The protests came as parliament met in Jakarta for a session to call for an impeachment hearing against Mr Wahid. Protesters threw home-made stun bombs towards police lines, witnesses said, and burnt tyres in the streets as they repeatedly dispersed and re-grouped. Most shops were closed in Pasuruan and surrounding areas, a hot bed of Wahid support, as the supporters gathered in the town centre. Scores of Wahid supporters, some brandishing sickles, earlier raced through Pasuruan on trucks and motor cycles. They waved banners warning against efforts to topple Mr Wahid. The protesters also hit the streets in Situbondo, 125 km east of Pasuruan, the witnesses said. Yesterday some of them had attacked buildings linked to Mr Wahid’s opponents. Twelve protesters were shot by the police with rubber bullets during yesterday’s violence ,the witnesses added.. There is fear that the political crisis could plunge the world’s fourth most populous nation into violence three years to the month after the bloody downfall of autocratic former President Suharto. Jakarta:
Mr Wahid, fighting to head-off an impeachment hearing, has dismissed a second parliamentary censure over two financial scandals as too vague. In a letter read out on Wednesday to a parliament session set to call for an impeachment hearing against him, Mr Wahid argued that this meant he was not required to formally respond to the rebuke as demanded by the House. Mr Wahid’s reaction to the censure motions has angered legislators, many of whom said this was one reason why they would call on the top legislature to convene an impeachment hearing. “The content of the second censure was vague and out of context,” said the letter, which was read out for Mr Wahid, who was attending a summit of the group of 15 developing nations nearby. The Indonesian parliament also adjourned a key meeting that was expected to call for an impeachment hearing against President Wahid to decide who will chair the session. Immediately after opening the hearing, mps began bickering over technicalities. It was unclear when legislators would resume sitting. The MPs said before the session opened that a majority of factions decided late last night to seek the impeachment hearing against Mr Wahid, a move that will infuriate the Muslim cleric’s fanatical
supporters, many of whom have poured into Jakarta. Meanwhile, a palace spokesman said Mr Wahid will not resign and has urged MPs to drop their calls that he face impeachment hearings. “There is no plan at all for the President to resign,” Yahya Staquf told reporters. Asked about earlier threats by Mr Wahid to declare a state of emergency, he said: “The President will wait until the process in parliament is concluded.” Legislators are expected to continue meeting until late into the night.
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PLOTE member shot dead Colombo, May 30 Vasan, alias Tamil Vasan (35), was returning home with his wife from the PLOTE camp last night at Mannar town when two men approached them and opened fire, reports reaching here said. The victim received eight bullet wounds on his body. Vasan’s pregnant wife was pushed aside before he was shot. One of the assailants was clad in the robe of a Christian priest. They fled on a bicycle after the incident. This is the first time in several months that a PLOTE member has been targeted. PLOTE has a history of conflict with the LTTE. Its founder, Uma Maheswaran, once a comrade-in-arms with LTTE supremo V. Prabhakaran, was shot dead in 1989. Meanwhile, at Velanai in the Jaffna peninsula, a cadre belonging to the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) was killed when an assault rifle carried by one of his colleagues went off accidentally yesterday, a Tamil website reported. According to another version, he was killed in a brawl. The military said today one of its soldiers was killed in Weli Oya district in a mortar attack by the LTTE yesterday while 10 personnel were injured. Troops killed two LTTE militants on Monday night in an encounter at Nagarkovil in the Jaffna peninsula while in the east, a civilian was killed yesterday when a hand grenade was thrown at his house in Trincomalee. Four others were wounded in the attack. Meanwhile, Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga has made light of the opposition’s threat to unseat her regime through a no-confidence motion in Parliament, saying that no parliamentarian from the ruling People’s Alliance would cross over to the other side. “No one in my government is willing to join a disunited group that lacks proper leadership and has lost successive elections,” she told state-run television Rupavahini last night. She also said her government was “fully committed” to holding peace talks with the LTTE and the rebel group should “make use of this unique opportunity”, inviting the tigers to enter into the Norwegian-backed peace talks. “This is the best environment for the LTTE to come to the negotiating table, and they should make the best use of this opportunity,” she said. Mr Kumaratunga rejected the Opposition charge that the economy was on the verge of collapse. “The Opposition first said the International Monetary Fund would not grant a loan to Sri Lanka as the government was mismanaging the economy, and now after the loan has come through, they charge us with selling out the country’s interests,” she said.
PTI |
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India’s policy good for South Asia: expert Washington, May 30 “The best news about India’s emerging nuclear doctrine is that it might dampen rather than accelerate strategic competition in South Asia,” says Ashley Tellis, senior policy analyst at Rand Corporation, considered the Pentagon’s own think tank. In his paper prepared for the National Bureau of Asian Research, based in Seattle, Washington, which is partially funded by the U.S. Congress, Tellis makes the point that “since India believes that its nuclear weapons are useful primarily for deterrence and secondarily for retribution — in case deterrence fails — New Delhi can size its nuclear force accordingly.” India’s nuclear doctrine “therefore provides some assurance that its nuclear arsenal will ultimately consist of a ‘minimum’ deterrent rather than something more expansive.” Tellis’ paper knocks down the contention by the nuclear non-proliferation hawks in the State Department who believe that India’s claim that it requires a nuclear deterrent adds to instability in the region and is likely to set off an arms race in Asia. Tellis acknowledges that “India’s deterrent posture, as exemplified by the notion of the force-in-being with its separated weapon components, centralised but devolving control and strict civilian supremacy over its core strategic assets does represent a unique approach to maintaining a nuclear arsenal.” He notes that “as far as the competition between China and India is concerned, both states have more or less strong commitments to no-first-use policies; both states routinely maintain their nuclear capabilities at relatively low levels of readiness and, most important of all, both states are doctrinally committed to using their nuclear weapons primarily as instruments of retribution in case of deterrence breakdown rather than as tools of defence and war-fighting in pursuit of operational advantage.” In addition, Tellis points out that “neither side currently possesses the technical capabilities to use its nuclear weapons as war-fighting instruments in any but the most primitive ways imaginable.” In the context of India and Pakistan, he says it is not so simple “but nonetheless offers hope for continued stability.” Tellis explains that the “Indo-Pakistani rivalry involves dynamic security competition entailing a high degree of routine violence that is manifested through the active struggle over the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir.” “Pakistan is also a weak state that is highly concerned about Indian threats to its security,” he adds, but notes that “nonetheless, the prospect that India will pursue any military option that places Pakistan in a situation where it has no alternative but to use its nuclear weapons in anger is unlikely.” Tellis points out as an example that “India has made deliberate policy decisions not to expand the counterinsurgency operations in Kashmir to include cross-border operations of any kind, and instead has restricted the employment of security forces for military operations within Indian territory alone.” “Moreover,” he argues, “it is increasingly believed that even in the context of a limited conventional war with Islamabad, a nuclear-armed Pakistan would be unlikely to use its nuclear weaponry against India. Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal is also not maintained routinely at hair-trigger, or even high levels of readiness.” “And if Pakistan is to consider using its nuclear weapons against India,” Tellis warns, “the stark geographic vulnerabilities of Pakistan imply that even a relatively small Indian residual reserve would more than suffice to destroy Pakistan as a functioning state.” In his preamble, Tellis says it’s about time the international community accepted the fact that India is a nuclear weapon state and acknowledged the credibility of New Delhi’s arguments that it requires a nuclear deterrent “against its main nuclear-rival, China, or against an unstable nuclear-capable Pakistan, which maintains close ties with China.”
IANS |
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West Asia meeting fails Jerusalem, May 30 Three Palestinians and three Israelis were killed yesterday, including a recent Jewish immigrant from the USA. Today, the Israeli troops and the Palestinian militiamen fought gun battles at three locations, while the Palestinians fired mortars at Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. There were no injuries. The meeting of the West Bank security chiefs was arranged at the behest of the new US envoy, Mr William Burns, who shuttled between Israeli and Palestinian leaders earlier in the week to discuss how to implement the recommendations of the Mitchell commission, an international body headed by former US senator George Mitchell. At the meeting of the security chiefs, Israel demanded that the Palestinians observe a truce. The Palestinians said, ahead of a ceasefire, Israel must lift a blockade of Palestinian communities and freeze settlement construction. “The meeting ended without result,” said a Palestinian participant, Ribhi Arafat. The Israeli Defence Ministry said Israel demanded that the Palestinians follow Israel’s lead and declare a ceasefire, but the Palestinians refused. Ramallah:
The Palestinians rejected an Israeli demand for a cease fire at a security meeting between the two sides in the town on Tuesday, a Palestinian official, who took part, told
AFP. The two sides were meeting for the first time in a month to discuss the security situation in West Bank. “They (the Israelis) asked us to call a ceasefire as they have, on their terms. We rejected the demand, arguing that it is not us who are firing and that the Mitchell report should be applied fully,” the official, Rebhi Arafat said. A second meeting on the security situation in the Gaza Strip is due to take place on Wednesday, according to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s spokesman, who expressed hope that these meetings “will result in a cease fire and a halt to the violence from the Palestinian side.” Copenhagen:
Meanwhile, Mr Yasser Arafat appealed here on Wednesday for the “urgent” despatch of international observers to Israel and the Palestinian territories to help end the violence there and revive the West Asia peace process. “We are in need of observers from the European Union, the USA and co-sponsors and from everywhere to stop the violence and to protect the peace process,” Mr Arafat told reporters after a meeting with Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson. Mr Persson, whose country holds the presidency until June 30, declined to comment on Mr Arafat’s appeal for observers, but reiterated the need for both Israel and the Palestinians to take immediate steps to end violence between them.
AFP, AP Lanka lifts ban on military news Colombo, May 30 Information Director Ariya Rubasinghe said the decision to lift the censorship on the military news was taken by President Chandrika Kumaratunga. The government had imposed censorship on the military news under Emergency Regulation of 1998. However, the foreign media was exempted from the censorship after some time.
UNI
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Pak group withdraws strike call Karachi, May 30 “We have withdrawn the call after assurances were held out by the provincial authorities that hundreds of our activists will be released in 24 hours,’’ said a spokesman for the radical Sunni Tehrik, or Sunni Movement. Sunni Tehrik staged a strike on Monday, when the port city of Karachi and other cities in the Sindh province shut down as fear of violence kept most people indoors. The group had been demanding the arrest of the killers of its leader Saleem Qadri, who was gunned down with five others on May 18, and the release of 400 of the group’s activists arrested since the weekend. “The government had also assured us that the killers of Saleem Qadri will be arrested before June 5,” the spokesman said. Provincial officials were not immediately available for comment. Karachi was calm today, with schools, shops, offices and public transport all operating. The killings, which Sunni Tehrik blamed on a rival Sunni Muslim group, sparked violence in Karachi and other parts of Pakistan. Sunni Tehrik claims widespread support in the urban areas of the Sindh province, mostly among ethnic minority groups and descendants of Muslims who migrated from India to newly independent Pakistan in 1947.
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4 Bin Laden men convicted New York, May 30 In the verdict delivered by a Manhattan jury yesterday after three months of trial, two face possible death penalty and the rest life terms without parole. The four — Mohamed Rashid Daoud Al-Owhali, (24), Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, (27), Wadih El-Hage, (40), and Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, (36), — were found guilty of conspiring to kill American citizens and attacking its military facilities worldwide.
PTI |
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