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August 10, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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Lanka seeks to give boost to SAARC Benazir blames Taliban for downfall
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3 die in blast at Enron power plant Hawks deal may
be in jeopardy Musharraf to unveil
democracy ‘roadmap’ US-India drive against smugglers ‘a success’
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Lanka seeks to give boost to SAARC Colombo, August 9 Mr Kadirgamar told top officials of the seven South Asian member countries on Thursday that they had to activate SAARC, flagging after a three-year decline, before the leaders’ summit scheduled for late December in Nepal. “Our detractors have celebrated the demise of SAARC, saying it has outlived its usefulness and it ought to be put to rest,” Mr Kadirgamar told Foreign Secretaries and other delegates at a meeting in the Sri Lankan capital. “But the meeting here confirms that our commitment to building a shared future is very much alive. We are meeting at a crucial time in the history of regional cooperation.” He urged the Foreign Secretaries to draw up a “reinvigorated summit agenda” for the heads of state meeting later this year. He glanced over the inertia bedeviling the association saying it was “due to logistics rather than matters of substance.” The senior officials are meeting for their third special session after the last conclave in New Delhi six years ago. Alongside the SAARC meeting, bilateral talks between India and Pakistan, and India and Sri Lanka will also be held. Indian Foreign Secretary Chokila Iyer paid a courtesy call on Mr Kadirgamar on Wednesday and is due to meet her Pakistani counterpart, Mr Inamul Haq on Friday. Since the foreign secretaries’ special session in New Delhi in 1995, a leaders’ summit and a ministerial meeting were held in 1998 and 1999 in Sri Lanka, but tension between India and Pakistan forced the shelving of the 1999 summit. The regional grouping of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka came to a virtual halt when India refused to attend the Kathmandu summit in 1999 after a coup in which General Pervez Musharraf deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. An Indian external affairs statement had sought postponement of the summit on “account of the military coup d’etat in Pakistan and the consequent concern and disquiet expressed in the region and beyond.” The ongoing SAARC committee meeting was originally scheduled for June 8, but was put off following the massacre of Nepal’s King Birendra and his entire royal family on June 1. It was delayed a second time when India and Pakistan held their summit in Agra. Mr Kadirgamar said work on a regional free trade treaty was lagging behind, although the South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement (SAPTA) was initially slated to be ready this year. Mr Kadirgamar said two draft regional cooperation treaties, one on women and children and the other on drug trafficking, was being held up waiting for the leaders to sign them. Despite the slowdown, however, Mr Kadirgamar said professional and civil society groups had met under the SAARC umbrella, helping to maintain “people-to-people contact.” The spadework for the SAARC sessions began on Tuesday when officials started preparatory work on the foreign secretaries’ agenda here ahead of the main meet. The two-day official-level meeting had at least two representatives from each member country.
IANS |
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Benazir blames Taliban for downfall Johannesburg, August 9 Benazir who was on a fleeting visit to South Africa, said: “I have been thrown out of government by Taliban forces. They deny people freedom and discriminate immensely against women and minorities.” “People like (Saudi renegade) Osama bin Laden bankrolled the moves for the vote of no confidence against my government in 1989,” she alleged, adding that the Taliban tried to crush her party and family because they “are the most popular threat to the Taliban politics and aspirations.” Benazir who lives in self-imposed exile in Dubai, was chief guest at a women’s conference attended by 100 top South Africa women on the eve of National Women’s Day on Thursday, a holiday to commemorate the role of women in the struggle against apartheid. She said South African women had advanced so far on the political front and the constitution had special provisions to protect their rights. She lauded former President Nelson Mandela and President Thabo Mbeki for having the largest representation of women in national government anywhere in the world. “South African developments are an inspiration to other parliaments and something for women in other countries to strive for,” Benazir told the daily Citizen here. Benazir called herself “a modern gypsy,” drifting from one country to another to drum up support for the removal of Pakistan’s military leader and President Pervez Musharraf, who had ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless coup two years ago. Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League party had earlier ousted Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party from power. Elaborating on the Taliban angle, she said: “They are very powerful and an entrenched institution with armed people. They go to any extent to crush their opponents. However, the welfare of Pakistan is too important to shy away from.” “It is social and political stability there (Afghanistan) that will give confidence to thousands of Afghanis living as refugees in Pakistan to return home voluntarily and rebuild their homes.” On her self-imposed exile after being charged with corruption, on which charges her husband Asif Ali Zardari is still in a Pakistani prison, Benazir said: “I did not want to be silenced through improper imprisonment, otherwise they would have succeeded to break up my party and the democratic forces. “In Pakistan, we have institutionalised perjury. People are being tortured to tell lies and my husband has been repeatedly tortured instead of being prosecuted in a proper legal way.” She said since she was ousted “Pakistan has been plunged into deeper anarchy.” Benazir does not trust Musharraf to return the country to civilian rule. She called for support from the international community to achieve this goal. She said South Africa holds a strategic position to assist her in her bid to influence Commonwealth countries, the rest of Africa and possibly even the European Union to take a stand against “Musharraf’s systematic erosion of democratic principles and human rights violations.” IANS |
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Germany, France moot ban on human cloning United Nations, August 9 In a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the two countries urged him to take initiative and put the item on the agenda of the next session of the General Assembly in September. Simultaneously, they circulated a draft resolution, which if passed would have the Assembly establish a committee to write an international treaty banning human cloning. The two European nations took the initiative to create international opinion against human cloning within days of some of the scientists at a meeting in Washington asserting that they would go ahead with the research in human cloning despite fears of clones having deformities or short lives. In a joint statement yesterday, the two countries said they would undertake a global diplomatic effort to win support for their cause which would seek to “establish ethical barriers against research in reproductive cloning of human beings”.
PTI |
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3 die in blast at Enron power plant London, August 9 Two persons died on the spot in yesterday afternoon’s mishap, and one person succumbed to burn injuries. Another workman has been admitted to Middlesbrough General Hospital with burns. The Health and Safety Executive and Enron have begun investigations into the incident, with the energy major’s Chief Executive Officer flying to Britain to take charge of the inquiry. The blast occurred close to a transformer but was confined to a small area, Inspector Sue Coates said. According to an eyewitness, a gas cylinder had fallen into a tank causing the explosion. He, however, confessed ignorance about the contents of the tank.
PTI |
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Hawks deal may be in jeopardy London, August 9 The Guardian newspaper today said a $ 1.4 billion deal for the sale of 66 jets appeared to be in deep trouble after suggestions that India had decided to buy a cheaper Russian aircraft. According to sources in the Indian Defence Ministry, the government had virtually ruled out purchasing the advanced jet trainers, despite 16 years of negotiations, the newspaper said. India had apparently decided that the price per plane was not acceptable and was instead considering buying the Russian MiG-At, according to India’s Star News TV. Several hundred jobs at the company’s production line in Brough, East Yorkshire, in northern England, were also at risk, the newspaper added. BAE systems spokesman Mike Peters said today “We are still in detailed and close discussions with the Indian Government over the sale of the Hawk as their next generation jet trainer. “We are confident that we will continue those discussions. We are confident that we will go ahead with this sale to India.” He declined to confirm the figures for the cost or number of aircraft involved quoted in the Guardian story.
AFP |
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Musharraf to unveil democracy ‘roadmap’ Karachi, August 9 “President Musharraf will announce the “roadmap” for democracy on August 14, which will lead to the restoration of a parliamentary form of government,” Secretary for Information Anwar Mahmood said today. General Musharraf will address around 178 chiefs and deputy chiefs of local bodies who have been elected in phased polls throughout the country since December last year, he said. “I cannot say with authority, but he may announce the date for (general) elections,” Mr Mahmood said. The non-party local assembly elections, the last stage of which were underway in 11 districts today, are part of electoral reforms designed to end what General Musharraf calls the “sham democracy” of previous governments.
AFP |
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US-India drive against smugglers ‘a success’ Washington, August 9 Recent success came in Operation Firm Grip, a coordinated effort by INS working with law enforcement bodies and airline security officers of the host country to identify those smuggling aliens into the USA, the service said in a press release. Spanning six nations spread across two continents, the operation targeted alien smugglers in Colombo, Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Amsterdam. Conducted mainly through passenger screening of more than 800 flights at major international airports, Operation Global Reach helped in intercepting 45 individuals involved in smuggling alien to the USA and other western countries. Overall 415 persons were intercepted on various offences related to fraudulent documents, it said. More than 45,000 host country officials and airline personnel were trained in fraudulent document detection under the operation launched in 1997, the release said, adding they intercepted more than 74,000 fraudulently documented aliens attempting to transit these countries to the USA. The operation yielded notable results in June, 2001, when INS completed two multinational smuggling investigations, resulting in thousands of arrests. The largest multinational anti-smuggling operation ever documented in the western hemisphere brought into custody 75 smugglers and illegal document vendors, it added. In another similar operation titled Operation Crossroads, the USA cooperated with Canada, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama and Peru to detect alien-smugglers, the release said. International law enforcement officers in these countries interdicted 7,898 individuals, with 5,500 being repatriated after immigration processing by the transit countries, it added.
PTI |
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