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Monday,
August 13, 2001, Chandigarh, India  
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Taliban sentence 8
foreign aid workers
36 hurt in suicide bombing in Israel Awami League for poll on Sept 15 No evacuation of Orient House: Sharon |
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White
farmers flee black invaders
UK breather
to N. Irish parties 5 new faces in Khatami ministry Fiji police ‘knew'
of coup
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Taliban sentence 8 foreign aid workers Kabul, August 12 The aid workers — two Americans, four Germans and two Australians — would be expelled from Afghanistan within 48 hours of serving their sentence, ruled Mullah Mohammed Omar. The aid workers, who were arrested exactly one week ago, operated Shelter Now International, which is part of a Germany-based Christian humanitarian group called Vision for Asia. Also imprisoned were 16 Afghan staff. A spokesman for the group said Bibles and other Christian literature, confiscated by the Taliban, were for the personal use of the workers. Last week, the Taliban displayed several Bibles translated into the local Dari language, as well as Christian films about Jesus Christ, also translated into Dari language. Salim Haqqani, Deputy Minister of the Taliban’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, says the material was translated into local languages so that it could be used to convert Afghan Muslims to Christianity. The Taliban, who espouse a strict brand of Islamic law, have forbidden proselytising. For Afghans the penalty for proselytising is death, but for non-Muslim foreigners it is a jail term and/or expulsion. Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister today said foreign diplomats awaiting visas to see eight foreign aid workers held in the country will not be allowed to see the detainees. “If the purpose of issue of the visas is to visit the detainees then that’s not suitable,” Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil said. “But if they want to come and meet the authorities for talks, that’s not impossible,” he told a news conference. Diplomats from the three countries have been waiting for days for visas to be issued by the Taliban in the hope of seeing the eight. Meanwhile, a report from Dubai quoted Muttawakil as saying that foreign aid workers held on charges of promoting Christianity could face up to five years in jail if found guilty. Muttawakil told the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper that Afghani authorities were still investigating the 24 staff of the German-based agency, detained since last week on charges of trying to convert Afghan Muslims to Christianity.
AP, Reuters |
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36 hurt in suicide bombing in Israel
Jerusalem, August 12 Ambulances were rushing to the scene of the blast in the Wall Street cafe, where the blast occurred just three days after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed himself and 15 other persons in a crowded Jerusalem pizzeria. Security forces sealed the area off and explosives experts were searching for other devices in the busy shopping centre where the cafe was located. Israel has been on high alert for weeks, fearing Palestinian revenge attacks after the government stepped up its policy of killing militants it said were planning more bombings.
AFP |
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Awami League for poll on Sept 15 Dhaka, August 12 The Awami League of Sheikh Hasina appears ahead of its main rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in terms of preparedness for the country’s eighth general election and has already finalised its list of candidates for the 300 seats of the Jatiya Sangsad (Parliament). With the schedule yet to be announced, the Awami Laegue (AL) has demanded that the elections be held by September 15 so that the entire process is complete by the October 11 constitutional deadline. In an interview with private Ekuskey television, Ms Hasina cited bad weather in October as one of the reasons to hold early elections. BNP chief and former Premier, who was at the forefront of the vigorous oust-Hasina campaign, Begum Khaleda Zia is now not too eager about early elections. She has asked the Election Commission not to announce the schedule unless a “congenial atmosphere” is created by recovering illegal arms and arresting terrorists. She has also demanded the transfer of what she termed “pro-Awami elements” in the administration to ensure free and fair elections. Meanwhile, large-scale transfers of officials have stirred up a controversy with the AL alleging that they were made as per lists submitted by the four-party alliance led by the BNP. Over a 1,000 officials from top bureaucrats to local police station officials have been transferred recently. The Chief Election Commissioner has hinted that elections will be held by the first week of October, while three election commissioners favour late September. According to the Constitution, elections have to be held within 45 days once the schedule is announced. Ms Khaleda Zia started her formal election campaign from Sylhet. Interestingly, Ms Hasina is also understood to begin her campaign from Sylhet. Sources said she would begin the campaign from August 22 on her return from Saudi Arabia.
PTI |
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No evacuation of Orient House: Sharon Jerusalem, August 12 The report said Israeli soldiers closed off the area, evicted 15 workers from the building, shut down broadcasts and searched the building. The Israeli Army said in response that the building was part of the governor’s compound, which Mr Israeli soldiers occupied early on Friday morning in response to a suicide bombing in Jerusalem on Thursday afternoon, which killed 16 persons, among them the Palestinian militant who carried out the attack. The radio quoted the army as saying that Palestinian cameramen arrived at the building and tried to film Israeli soldiers in the governor’s compound. The soldiers then entered the building and removed the cameramen. Earlier today, Israel Radio reported that Palestinian security forces had arrested six suspected militants accused of participating in the planning and execution of Thursday’s suicide bombing. The radio said three of those held were believed to be activists in the militant Hamas Islamic organisation and the other three belonged to the Islamic Jihad. The Palestinian Authority said in a statement released last night that one of the men was Abdullah Barghouti, accused of leading the Hamas cell in the West Bank city of Ramallah that carried out the bombing. The arrests were demanded by US Secretary of State Colin Powell and other international politicians. US Special Middle East Envoy David Satterfield, meanwhile, is scheduled to meet Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon, who has rejected criticism of Israel’s military reaction to the bombing. The Premier was reported as saying that that Israel would not evacuate the Orient House, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem. The Orient House takeover provoked demonstrations by Saturday in East Jerusalem and prompted Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah organisation to call a general strike in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Jordan and Pakistan were among several countries that condemned Israel’s takeover of the Orient House. Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Saturday repeated its “decisive condemnation” of the bombing and said the Israeli response marked “a serious escalation of tensions”. Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts gathered pace in an international drive to pressure Israel and the Palestinians to prevent violence spinning out of control.
DPA, Reuters |
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White farmers flee black invaders Harare, August 12 Despite pledging that they would stay and ‘fight to the last man’ to protect their property, most of the Chinhoyi farmers piled the few possessions they could gather into their vehicles and fled from gangs of looting ‘war veterans’ who have already attacked 19 farms. The exodus followed the arrest last week of 23 farmers for retaliating against the state-sanctioned invaders, and was essentially a recognition that white Zimbabweans are no longer protected by the laws of their land. The convoy, organised by the Commercial Farmers Union which has been at the forefront of opposition to President Robert Mugabe’s plans to redistribute land held by white farmers, included almost all the farmers in the region. Between 40 and 60 families have already gone, said Vernon, a farmer in Banket, 70 miles north-west of Harare and bordering Chinhoyi, the centre of Mugabe’s latest land-grab. As the whites moved out in two convoys heading for Harare and Kariba, the so-called veterans of Zimbabwe’s revolutionary war against white rule moved in. By midday yesterday, 19 farms in Doma and Mhangura, areas outlying Chinhoyi, had been looted, following nine the previous day at an estimated cost of $ 1m in damage.
The Observer, London |
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Women fare better in divorce London, August 12 There’s nothing triumphalist about Kidman’s body language - no punching the air or giving the finger to an imaginary Tom Cruise. Instead she appears to be throwing herself to fate. Kidman’s confidence that this is the right decision (even if she was hustled into it at an unseemly pace by her ex-husband), is shared by millions of other women around the world. For all the evidence, both statistical and anecdotal, suggests that women fare better in divorce than men. She has been pictured in Australia with a separated girl’s most important friend — her mother. If, as reports suggest, Nicole is planning to move with her children back to her home country, she can count on a good network of female family members to help take the strain of single motherhood. It is this ability of women to create strong sustaining networks of female friends which gets them through the worst days of divorce, says Helen Wilkinson, an associate of Demos and author of the forthcoming “Smart Marriage”. “Even if she is in a good relationship, a woman will have close girlfriends with whom she talks about everything that is going on her life. If the marriage breaks up, she still has that support system in place.” Men, by contrast, are much more likely to report that their spouse is their sole confidante: lose the marriage and they lose their best friend.
Observer News Service |
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‘Kursk’ crew kin
mourn their dead Vidyayevo (Russia), August 12 As morning drizzle gave way to clear skies, the families observed a moment of silence in the small Arctic port of Vidyayevo before placing bouquets at a monument. Women sobbed and men wiped their eyes as a brass band played a dirge. Small children clung to their mothers’ fingers. A new stone in honour of the 118 victims of the Kursk disaster was added to the simple hilltop monument which honours all Russian submariners lost at sea. An international team of divers is working on the floor of the Barents Sea, bolting cables to the 150-metre (490-foot) submarine so that it can be hoisted to the surface next month. The $65 million salvage project aims to fulfil a promise President Vladimir Putin made to the families of the crew to bury them on shore. Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov, commander of the Russian navy and the highest ranking Russian official to attend the ceremony in Vidyayevo, told the mourning families that finding out the cause of the sinking remained “task number one”.
Reuters |
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UK breather to N. Irish parties Belfast, August 12 Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid, who suspended the power-sharing administration on Friday, signed an order to bring it back to life again at midnight on Sunday. The move gives feuding Protestant and Catholic politicians another six weeks to try to settle their differences over guerrilla disarmament. Mr Reid used a legal loophole in the 1998 Good Friday peace accord which allows him to suspend the Assembly temporarily and gives him another chance to search for the solution that he said on Friday was “tantalisingly close”. “The important point is that we re-establish these institutions quickly,” Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen said on Saturday after meeting Mr Reid. The peace process was plunged into crisis when Protestant leader Davic Trimble resigned as the provincial government’s first minister last month, leaving Mr Reid with the choice of calling fresh elections or ordering the suspension. The IRA issued a statement on Thursday confirming earlier pledges to put its arms “completely and verifiably beyond use”, but Mr Trimble and his Ulster Unionists demand action not words.
Reuters |
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5 new faces in Khatami ministry Teheran, August 12 The new ministers are all moderate reformers in line with his previous Cabinet. As expected, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh kept his post. Analysts say the moderate President’s reshuffle did not meet popular expectations for a more outright reformist Cabinet intent on implementing wide-ranging political and economic change.
Reuters |
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Fiji police ‘knew’
of coup Suva, August 12 However, now a new document has revealed they had no orders to act. And as a result, the focus has again switched to Police Commissioner Isikia Savua who has held onto his position despite suspicions that he was part of the coup. Deposed President, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara earlier this year said he believed Savua was part of the takeover, despite being cleared by a secret judicial inquiry.
AFP |
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