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| Saturday,
August 4, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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Hillary gets Bush nominee defeated
No ready N-arsenal with India: US
study
Don’t allow UN
monitors into Pak, Lashkar asks govt |
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Editor sentenced
to hang in Pak Abu Sayyaf men kill 4
Christians Tribunal for E. Timor atrocities
ordered General gets 46 yrs’ jail for
genocide Court clears Thai PM
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Hillary gets Bush nominee defeated Washington, August 3 Ms Clinton argued that as the Commissioner of the agency, Ms Gall’s record in protecting consumers’ interests against corporations had been dismal. Ms Gall will remain on the three-member commission till 2005. She was originally appointed by former President George Bush Sr in 1991 and was reappointed by former President Bill Clinton in 1999 as the Commissioner. White House expressed its disappointment at the defeat. “Mary Gall did not lose today. Bipartisanship lost today,” spokesman Ari Fleischer said. However, Commerce Committee Chairman and Democratic Senator Ernst Hollings disputed it and said that Ms Gall received a fair hearing and was deemed unfit to run the commission. Meanwhile, Senate Democrats said yesterday that they would fight any Republican effort to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling, a key plank in the White House’s proposed energy policy. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts said he would use the parliamentary technique of filibustering, or blocking, any Senate floor debate on drilling in the wilderness area. “I will filibuster any effort to drill in the refuge, it will never pass the Senate,” Mr Kerry said in a statement. The US House of Representatives yesterday passed a wide-ranging energy Bill that included opening about 2,000 acres of the refuge’s 19 million acres. President George W. Bush, a former Texas oilman, has made drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a central issue in his plan to reduce the US dependence on foreign oil imports. The government estimates have said the refuge could hold up to 16 billion barrels of crude oil. The US market consumes close to 20 million barrels of petroleum a day and must import about 56 per cent of that amount. The refuge, located on Alaska’s remote northern coast, is home to polar bears, caribou and about 160 kinds of migratory birds. In a decisive victory for President George W. Bush, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has beat back a far-reaching patients’ Bill of rights and approved one with stricter limits on lawsuits against health plans. The Republicans said the 226-203 vote would ensure that millions of Americans have access to emergency care, clinical trials and medical specialists while discouraging “frivolous’’ lawsuits against health maintenance organisations (HMOs) and insurance companies over treatment decisions that result in injury or death.
Reuters |
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6 hurt in London bomb
blast
London, August 3 “Six persons have been brought in so far, none with major injuries,’’ said a spokesman at Ealing Hospital, which received the blast victims. He added that a policewoman was among those hurt. Witnesses in the vicinity of the explosion near the Ealing Broadway London underground and rail station saw at least three persons hurt. One was lying on a stretcher with back injuries, a second was wearing head dressing and a third had received treatment to one arm. Dozens of policemen were on the scene, on a street lined with pubs, restaurants and shops near the busy station, immediately after the blast. A police spokeswoman said police had been warned, with a “threatening phone call... that a car bomb was in Ealing’’ around half-an-hour before the device blew up. The huge blast just before midnight sent up a large cloud of smoke, blew out windows in local shops and homes and triggered panic among young people spilling out of pubs. A water main burst, flooding the street. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, on an official visit to Latin America, condemned the violence. “The Prime Minister believes that violence of any kind is both wrong and pointless,’’ his spokesman told reporters in Mexico City. British security experts said they believed the attack had all the hallmarks of the Real IRA. It comes at a delicate time in the Northern Ireland peace process, with rival parties studying “take-it-or-leave-it’’ proposals from Britain and Ireland which vow to cut British troop numbers but demand the Irish Republican Army disarms.
Reuters |
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No ready N-arsenal with India: US
study Washington, August 3 The study, titled “India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture: Between Recessed Deterrent and Ready Arsenal,” notes that India’s objective is to create a “force-in-being,” which it describes as a nuclear deterrent that consists of available but dispersed components. Essentially, it consists of unassembled nuclear warheads, with their components stored separately under strict civilian control, and dedicated delivery systems kept either in storage or in readiness away from their operational areas — all of which can be brought together as rapidly as required to create a usable deterrent force during a supreme emergency. According to the study by Rand — considered to be the Pentagon’s own think tank — the implications of such a force for the USA are many, and in this regard argues that any effective U.S. policy in South Asia must first acknowledge that nuclear rollback is currently not a viable option for India. The study, authored by Rand’s senior policy analyst Ashley
Tellis, suggests a regional restraint regime of some sort could be sustained if the USA committed to a deepened engagement with New Delhi and willing to live with a degree of ambiguity about India’s strategic capabilities. It states that the Indian Government’s decision to resume testing in 1998 was a result of growing pressures for a strategic deterrent in the aftermath of the cold war. Ultimately, it says, a new, more risk-acceptant Government in India used the opportunity afforded by Pakistan’s test firing of Ghauri — a new missile acquired from North Korea — to resume nuclear testing. India’s development of a force-in-being, the study says, represents one stage in the country’s slow maturation into a true nuclear weapon power, and it recommends that U.S. policymakers, in coping with such an India, shift U.S. regional strategy from the prevention of proliferation to the prevention of war.
IANS |
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Don’t allow UN
monitors into Pak, Karachi, August 3 Lashkar chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed aired his organisation’s reaction to the latest resolution of the UN Security Council on Afghanistan at a press conference here yesterday. “To allow the monitors operate on Pakistani soil would be an un-Islamic act. The government should not allow the US agenda to be fulfilled against our Afghan brethren,” said Saeed.
ANI |
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Editor sentenced
to hang in Pak Lahore Many Pakistani journalists and human rights organisations suspect Afridi’s biggest crime was to cross paths with the authorities, particularly the powerful Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF). In a letter smuggled out of his cell, the former Editor of the Frontier Post told the Guardian that he was tortured and that his conviction last month was politically motivated. “I spent a good 17 days in ANF custody. They gave me electric shock, physical and mental torture,” he wrote. “People in this country should know the truth of that illegal and pre-planned conspiracy against me.” As well as being sentenced to death for the offence, Afridi was fined Rs 2 million ($ 31,000).
The Guardian, London |
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Abu Sayyaf men kill 4 Christians Zamboanga (Philippines), August 3 Two villagers managed to escape after the attack yesterday night on the island of Basilan, 900 km south of Manila, officers said. Nine villagers were set free and one of them brought back a message from the gunmen that the others would be killed unless a military offensive on the Abu Sayyaf was halted, army chief Lieut-Gene-Jose Calimlim told reporters. The Abu Sayyaf is holding at least 21 other hostages on Basilan, including a US missionary couple kidnapped in May. “Probably... because the heat is so strong, the Abu Sayyaf had to do this retaliatory action or diversionary action,’’ President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said. The attack came as the two larger Muslim groups in the Philippines signed a unity agreement which could lead to an overall peace deal with the government. The police said they recovered four beheaded corpses near the raided village, near a known stronghold of the guerrillas early on Friday. The dead were identified by family members as among the abducted
villagers. Reuters |
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Tribunal for E. Timor atrocities ordered Jakarta, August 3 Megawati signed a presidential decree to establish a tribunal to prosecute at least 18 army and police officers, including several generals, as well as pro-Jakarta militias that launched a murder, rape and arson spree in the territory after it overwhelmingly voted for independence from Indonesia, spokesman Bambang Kesowo said. Meanwhile, ousted President Wahid returned home today from a medical check-up in the USA after his humiliating impeachment last month. Mr Wahid had claimed his removal for alleged corruption and incompetence was unconstitutional and remained holed up in the presidential palace for three days before announcing he would visit the USA, effectively conceding defeat. In the meantime, President Megawati Sukarnoputri today formally reappointed Gen Suroyo Bimantoro as Indonesia’s national police chief, reversing his dismissal that helped precipitate the ouster of former head of state Abdurrahman Wahid. Wahid dismissed Bimantoro on July 1 and named Lieut-Gen Ismail Chaerudin as acting police chief on July 19. Wahid’s opponents said the police chief could only be replaced with the approval of Parliament.
DPA, AFP, AP |
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General gets 46 yrs’ jail for
genocide
The Hague, August 3 Krstic (53) was sentenced to 46 years in prison — the court’s harshest penalty yet — for the grisly mass excutions of Muslims fleeing the UN “safe haven” in eastern Bosnia, in Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II. Almost 8,000 Muslims were slaughtered after Srebrenica fell in July, 1995, to Serb forces, of which Krstic was a commander. “In July, 1995, General Krstic, you agreed to evil,” presiding Judge Almiro Rodrigues told the defendant, who lost a leg in a mine explosion and was allowed to sit for the verdict. “Knowing that the women, children and old people of Srebrenica had been transferred, you are guilty of having agreed to the plan to conduct mass executions of all the men of fighting age. You are therefore guilty of genocide, General Krstic. Krstic had denied eight counts — two of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and one of violations of the laws or customs of war. His lawyer said he would appeal.
Reuters |
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Court clears Thai PM Bangkok, August 3 Judge Kramol Thongthammachat told reporters that the court had ruled that Mr Shinawatra had not deliberately concealed some of his wealth during the 1990s. Had he been found guilty he would have faced a five-year ban from politics. The local television quoted judges as saying the court had voted 8-7 in favour of clearing Mr Shinawatra. The court was due to announce its ruling imminently. Mr Shinawatra, Thailand’s most popular leader for years, had always denied wrongdoing, saying his failure to declare all his assets was the result of an ‘’honest mistake’’. Reuters |
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The Hague, August 3
