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| Friday,
July 20, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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Key
Musharraf errors led to failure: Benazir Understanding
on nine areas : Pak 3 Indian
asylum seekers escape Indian
adviser for Canada’s FM
Lanka
firing on protesters: 1 dead |
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162
Muslims’ bodies found Put
pressure on Arafat: Israel Taliban
advance halted
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Key Musharraf errors led to failure: Benazir London, July 19 “It was startling to witness his puerile brinkmanship where the Indians called the bluff, the Pakistan People’s Party chief said, adding the “summit did prove that whilst politicians come up with agreements, declarations are difficult for Generals”. Commenting on the summit, the self-exiled leader facing corruption charges in Pakistan, said: “Time was always running short — and then extended. Musharraf departed when sources leaked that the talks would continue the next day.” She said the entire world was watching the Agra summit and expected a joint declaration but eventually “there wasn’t even a joint statement.” “Blaming Pakistani politicians for succumbing to army pressure, some in India believed they could do business with the army instead. They found a self-confessing powerless army chief who said he’d have to live in India in his old Neharwali house if he had signed a declaration. The civilian leaders signed Simla, Islamabad and Lahore (agreements). All honourable agreements,” she said. Stating that diplomacy is the art of the possible, she said “political leaders are trained in the art of give and take. General Musharraf is a military dictator. When he speaks, others jump to attention. If they don’t, they are locked away. Ms Bhutto said Musharraf made key “errors” in the trip. “He failed to build an internal consensus of legitimate political forces. He relied on an inefficient team which failed him previously. With good advice, he could have stayed an extra day. Exhausting the other side is a pretty elementary diplomatic trick. Instead he left in a huff,” she noted. Islamabad was keen for declaration and New Delhi knew it. This was confirmed by a Pakistani delegate who told the Gulf News, “I went up to Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh and told him he could write what he wanted, we would accept it,” she said. Stating that it is extraordinary, she said. “It is little wonder that Jaswant Singh wanted another day of talks to put in his wish list when the Islamabad side offered such accommodation.” “If there is a legacy to this summit, it is that New Delhi managed to match Pakistan’s commitment to the Kashmir dispute with an equally vocal and high profile repetition of “cross border terrorism,” Bhutto said. She recalled that since 1993, when diplomat J.N. Dixit offered Pakistan Kashmir as a separate agenda item at the Commonwealth conference at Cyprus, the Indian side was willing to include Kashmir as the bone of contention. “But the interpretation of that contention is different to Pakistan’s,” she said. “Narrowing the focus to the words on a draft statement, usually successfully manoeuvred by diplomats, is ignoring the larger picture. That picture involves tense relations between two nuclear capable states that fought three wars and are daggers drawn at the line of control in the Kashmir valley. Ms Bhutto said that a nervous world community pushed both leaders towards the negotiating table to lessen tensions that may prove fatal for South Asia housing one fifth of humanity.” But Musharraf, she said, was hampered by his dependence on a military constituency wedded to militancy. “He lacked a popular mandate and desired his nation’s highest constitutional posts. Given his agenda, ambitions, army, America and Afghanistan, Musharraf played his cards well, except for the late-night departure.” Buying international time and goodwill in the run up to the summit, he seized the presidency, assumed draconian powers under the National Security Council, got another tranche of the IMF loan and persecuted opponents,” she said. “In extending an invitation to Prime Minister Vajpayee, he held out the promise of another summit. More time to choreograph a domestic political scenario by October 2002,” she noted. The summit, according to Ms Bhutto, revealed fatal flaws in the personality and background of the general. “First, his impetuousness dramatised by sudden departure for Islamabad. Second, the deep wounds he evokes in both India and Pakistan. “The Indian Air Chief refused to salute him repaying the earlier Lahore refusal to salute Vajpayee and demonstrating solidarity with his troops in Kashmir,” she said. “In Pakistan, the ghosts of Kargil watched Musharraf. Kargil was Pakistan’s biggest setback since Dacca’s fall in 1971, she said, adding, “there is something undignified and unsavoury about Musharraf, the architect of the operation, scorning the lives lost.” It was therefore argued that a new government should enter negotiations after elections conclude in October 2002.”
PTI |
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Understanding on nine areas : Pak Islamabad, July 19 Pakistan High Commissioner to New Delhi Jahangir Ashraf Qazi has said the two sides has selected three areas to be dealt with at the political level. For the purpose, the foreign ministers will often meet to address the issues of Kashmir, peace and security and drugs and narcotics. India had made it clear yesterday that the two countries would have to begin afresh on the basis of the Simla Agreement and Lahore Declaration and not on what transpired at Agra, where no agreement was reached. Previously, all three issues were clubbed along with the rest of the issues, under the Indian framework of a “composite dialogue”, Mr Qazi said in an interview to Pakistani daily ‘The News’. “Matters related to “peace and security” were given the top priority in the list of issues drawn by India for “composite dialogue”. But, thanks to the understanding reached at Agra, Kashmir now gets the first place. Not only that, India and Pakistan will now discuss it at political level,” he said. “Twice during the Agra summit, both countries came to accord a central position to Kashmir at the political level. But for some problems within the Indian delegation this could not be materialised in the end,” he said. However, he declined to identify from where the last minute hitches came from. Significantly, Mr Qazi said Pakistan would not be satisfied in getting a central position to Kashmir but would also press for inclusion of Hurriyat leaders in the talks. “We are also trying hard to make the Indians understand that at some point of time inclusion of APHC is definitely needed if we are serious to resolve the Kashmir problem. We do not say that there are no other political parties in Kashmir. But Hurriyat represents an overwhelming majority of the people there. It has to get political space it genuinely deserves,” he said. On the achievements of the summit, Mr Qazi said the top leaders of both the countries have agreed to have summit meetings once a year, besides the Foreign Ministers, expected to meet twice a year. Mr Qazi also said that Gen Musharraf’s India visit changed his image a great deal. “A peculiar image was drummed up about him since the Kargil days. After October 12, 1999, (military coup) the media here concentrated more on his appearances of a cut and dry soldier,” he said. The High Commissioner described President Pervez Musharraf’s breakfast meeting with Indian editors as a “coup”. However, he disagreed with the perception that the telecast of the meeting had spoiled the summit.
PTI |
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3 Indian asylum seekers escape Sydney, July 19 Immigration officials said the escapees from the Villawood centre were eight Afghanis, five Somalis, four Algerians, three Indians, one Pakistani, one Iranian and one Iraqi. “The 23 are believed to have escaped through the drainage system in the early hours of the morning,’’ the immigration department said in a statement. A spokesman at the department said the police had been alerted and were working with immigration teams to recapture the men. “The search is ongoing, I wish we could say we’ve captured a few of them, but unfortunately that is the state of play at the moment,’’ the spokesman said. The breakout from the Villawood centre in Sydney’s western suburbs is the latest in a string of escapes, riots and violence at the country’s detention camps, which house mostly Middle Eastern asylum seekers for months or years at a time while their refugee claims are being processed. About 2,500 illegal immigrants are housed in Australia’s detention camps awaiting a decision on their claims for asylum. The policy of mandatory detention in the mostly outback camps has drawn fierce criticism from human rights groups, including Amnesty International. The overnight escape was the second breakout from Villawood this year.
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Indian adviser for Canada’s FM Toronto, July 19 Sanjeev Choudhry, appointed to advise Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley on his native country, told IANS: “I feel thrilled as now I will be able to make some contribution to India and help in formulating Canadian foreign policy in regard to India.” Choudhry(32) whose parents migrated from India in 1958, was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia province. He graduated from Saint Mary’s University in 1990 and was the first Asian to be elected president of the students union in Atlantic Canada. For two years (1993-95) Choudhry worked as a columnist for The Chronicle-Herald/Mail Star, Atlantic Canada’s second largest daily newspaper. He then became executive assistant to the Nova Scotia minister for economic Development, Tourism and Culture and joined the foreign service in 1995. Choudhry was till now serving as Manley’s press secretary after finishing his term as Assistant Trade Commissioner in the Canadian consulate in Mumbai late last year. As press secretary during the last few months, he was Manley’s chief spokesman on most Canadian foreign policy issues.
IANS |
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Lanka firing on protesters: 1 dead Colombo, July 19 Hospital sources here said a man who was injured in the police action died after admission in the hospital while condition of three others was “critical”. Police sources, however, denied any death had occurred but admitted seven persons were injured, two of them seriously. Soldiers with Uzi machine pistols guarded street intersections in the capital today to help police block tens of thousands of protesters from demonstrating against the suspension of parliament. The UNP had said it would send 100,000 protesters into the streets to cripple the capital in protest against President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s suspension of parliament on July 11. Meanwhile, Opposition leader Ranil Wickremasinghe accused the People’s Alliance government of trying to
assassinate him during the rally by firing at his vehicle. Mr Wickremasinghe said he had spoken to Inspector-General of Police and informed him that the firing at his vehicle was “deliberate”. “I was not hurt thanks to my securityman.” The riot police put up barricades on all approach roads to the city to prevent the rally by the United National Party (UNP) and its supporters, but several parliamentarians removed the barricades and ran into a wall of policemen armed with batons and shields. Several shops and schools in the city were closed amid fears of clashes between marchers and the police. City streets gave an empty look. The US State Department also cautioned its citizens of increasing political unrest. “It appears that Sri Lanka may be entering a period of increased civil unrest and mass political demonstrations,” a department statement addressing American citizens said. Sri Lanka’s Opposition has raised the stakes in its battle to topple the ruling People’s Alliance by vowing to oppose the impending referendum and to impeach Ms Kumaratunga for her hurried prorogation of the legislature on July 10. The referendum will ask citizens if they want a new constitution. As executive president elected directly in 1999, Ms Kumaratunga can continue till 2005. PTI, IANS, AP |
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162 Muslims’ bodies found Sarajevo, July 19 Amor Masovic, the head of the Muslim-led-Commission for Missing Persons, said exhumations have been carried out at different sites across the Balkan country, where about 20,000 people, of them 17,000 Muslims, are still unaccounted for. Masovic said 64 bodies believed to be those of Muslims killed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre had been exhumed since July 9 from the Glogova “secondary grave” in a wooded ravine near the eastern town of Bratunac. Another 20 bodies have been located and prepared for the exhumation, and many more were expected to be found, he said. It is believed that the remains of victims of the Srebrenica massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men, regarded as Europe’s worst atrocity after World War II, had been transferred from the original burial site to the Glogova grave after the war.
Reuters |
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Put pressure on
Arafat: Israel Jerusalem, July 19 In a telephone conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, Mr Sharon “made it clear that the current situation is unacceptable to the state of Israel and responsibility for the grave situation is Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat’s,” his office said in a statement. Mr Sharon told Mr Ivanov that he considered it vital that the international community “exercises heavy pressure on Arafat, speaks in a unified voice against terrorism and unequivocally condemns terrorism.” “Israel is not talking about a reduction in terrorism but the complete cessation of all terrorist activity in order to enable progress to be made towards a political settlement,” he added.
AFP |
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Taliban advance
halted Kabul, July 19 “The Taliban attacked towards Kalafgan but failed to advance,” said Zubaidullah spokesman for opposition commander Ahmad Shah Masood. Speaking from hilltops in nearby Eshkamesh district, he said the exchange of heavy artillery was continuing but he could give no details. The opposition’s claims could not be independently confirmed but a report from the private Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said the Taliban had gained ground with the attack. It said the militia broke through the opposition’s frontline at Lataband, 25 km southeast of Taloqan. “We have captured Kutal-e-Lataban .
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