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Saturday,
August 18, 2001, Chandigarh, India  
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Opposition MPs defy Chandrika on suspension Washington, August 17 The USA is unlikely to designate Pakistan as a state sponsor of international terrorism for fomenting cross-border insurgency in Kashmir, despite the evidence India has provided Washington over the years. Cops deny bribery in A-I blast case MiG trainer obsolete,
says Russia’s air chief Four Falungong organisers jailed Four suspected members of the banned Falun Gong sect (L-R) Xue Hongjun, Liu Xiuqin, Wang Jindong and Liu Yunfang, stand on trial at a Beijing court on
Friday. — Reuters photo |
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American millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett sits next to his balloon capsule as final preparations for takeoff begin in the township of Northam in this August 4,
2001, file photo. — Reuters photo Shuttle astronauts complete spacewalk DNA helps solve crime £ 1 treatment for heart disease
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Opposition
MPs defy Chandrika on suspension Colombo, August 17 One hundred and thirteen MPs from various parties — a majority in the 225-member House — met in the parliamentary complex under the chairmanship of opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe and passed half a dozen resolutions in a show of strength and defiance against any attempt to extend the suspension of Parliament, which now stands prorogued till September 7. “We will sit on that day regardless of any attempt by the executive to stop our deliberations in parliament,”
Wickremesinghe said. The main resolution said “Parliament has the right to determine its sessions commencing September 7 and sit from time to time and that such sittings cannot be suspended, prorogued or stopped in any manner whatsoever otherwise than by parliament.” The combined Opposition’s move, which had the support of two other members who were not present in the city today, came as a pre-emptive measure against the extension of Parliament’s prorogation. Under the constitution, the president can prorogue Parliament for a maximum of 60 days — which she did from July 10 — but the Opposition fears that the government may make further attempts to evade voting on a no-confidence motion pending against it in the House. Meanwhile, in an unexpected move, 38 Deputy Ministers have resigned from President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s Cabinet even as a Sinhala political party demanded the arrest of a Cabinet Minister and a member of Parliament for having toured the LTTE- controlled area in Wanni. The state media described the en masse resignations as a ‘voluntary offer’. They said it was a display of solidarity with the President and a move to strengthen her hands and foil attempts by the Opposition to subvert the government. The Kumaratunga government was reduced to a minority on June 20 after the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) crossed over to the Opposition. The Opposition with 115 MPs in a House of 225, had presented a no-confidence motion against the government. Sensing a defeat on the floor of the house, the President prorogued Parliament till September 7. In the meantime, the LTTE today accused the Sri Lankan Government of scuttling the Oslo-brokered peace efforts and called for a end to the decade-long bloodshed, a report said. He said the LTTE did not want the civil war to continue and believed it was possible for diverse ethnic groups to live in harmony in their “traditional homelands independently and peacefully”. The LTTE leader, a former field commander of the rebel forces, declined to own responsibility for the July 24 suicide attack on the Katunayake Air Force Base and the adjoining international airport here but said the “Tigers and the Tamil people are happy that the fighter jets that were used to bombard the Tamil-dominated areas have been destroyed”.
PTI, UNI |
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USA may not brand Pak terrorist state Washington, August 17 It is also unlikely that Pakistan-based Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)-sponsored Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), which US intelligence sources too believe is responsible for the recent massacres in Kashmir, will be named a foreign terrorist organisation (FTO), notwithstanding the cumulative terrorist actions carried out by this organisation. That the Bush administration, like former President Bill Clinton’s earlier, has no intention of designating Pakistan a terrorist state or even acknowledging that Islamabad fosters terrorism in Kashmir was made clear by a senior National Security Council (NSC) aide and several senior administration officials. Harry Thomas, NSC official and Director, South Asia, who served in New Delhi for three years under former US Ambassador Frank Wisner, implied at a special White House briefing to a select group of Indian Americans that naming Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism would take it the way of Afghanistan. Thomas said: “It is in no one’s interests for Pakistan to be a failed state. We don’t want Pakistan becoming another Afghanistan. We don’t believe Pakistan is a state sponsor of international terrorism.” “I am very sympathetic to the victims of terrorism” in Kashmir and “I understand the terrorism problem,” but “it’s a stretch to say that the Government of Pakistan is a state sponsor of international terrorism.” A senior official said naming a country a state sponsor of terrorism “is essentially a policy decision,” but that assertions such as those by Thomas do not necessarily mean “we are being totally dismissive of the idea.” “If we have reason we will name them a state sponsor of terrorism. But it does require a certain amount of proof and we don’t have that. It’s a smoking gun kind of thing in some sense. You have to be able to link the Pakistani Government to incidents of real terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir.” “An attack on a police post is not a terrorist attack. But acts of real terrorism, like massacring a village, setting off a bomb in a bus stand, things like that, have to be linked directly to the Pakistani Government. “Just because a terrorist organisation is based or operates from Pakistan does not mean Pakistan is a state sponsor of terrorism.” When reminded that the State Department’s own annual “Patterns of Global Terrorism” report had acknowledged credible reports of official Pakistani complicity in terrorist activities in Kashmir, he said: “Credible reports mean that there is some information that seems to hang together pretty well, but it is not proof. It’s something that merits further examination.” The report said: “Pakistan’s military government headed by Gen Pervez Musharraf, continued previous Pakistani Government support of the Kashmir insurgency, and Kashmiri militant groups continued to operate in Pakistan, raising funds and recruiting new cadre.” It noted activities by the “largest of groups,” the LeT, in Kashmir and said the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, “continues to be active in Pakistan without discouragement by the government.” Diplomatic observers say with the new administration’s efforts to resurrect US-Pakistan ties, the last thing on its mind would be to name Pakistan a state sponsor of international terrorism. A senior official with the State Department’s Counter-terrorism Bureau said listing an organisation as an FTO had to follow a consensus reached by several agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in addition to the State Department. “This is for the purpose of US domestic law so that we can prevent Americans from giving money to the Lashkar. To do that though, we have to come up with sufficient proof that it will stand a challenge in the US court. But all officials interviewed by IANS concede the relations with a particular country and the sensitivities involved — in this case Pakistan — clearly played a major part in the political decision.
IANS |
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Cops deny bribery in A-I blast case Toronto, August 17 John Ward, a spokesman of the Air-India Task Force of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) that is investigating the case, denied any such offer had been made to Lal Singh, now in jail in Punjab’s Jalandhar city. Ward told IANS on telephone, “All I can tell you is this man is not a witness at all. We never offered him sums of money that he is saying we did and that is what I can say about this matter.” According to news reports, Lal Singh was questioned on three occasions by the Canadian police and was twice offered money in exchange for evidence. When asked whether the RCMP team went to India twice to meet Lal Singh, Ward said, “I know they did speak to him but whether they went to India or not I can’t tell you.” Two persons — Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik — were charged in October last year with the murder of 329 persons on board the Air-India plane that crashed in June 1985.
IANS |
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MiG trainer obsolete,
says Russia’s air chief Moscow, August 17 The air force chief, General Anatoly Kornukov, has said he is opposed to the induction of the advanced jet trainer (AJT) in his force as it is equipped with an obsolete engine, business daily Kommersant reported. A team of Russian experts recently made a presentation on the MiG-AT to the Indian Air Force (IAF) after New Delhi’s negotiations with British Aerospace Systems for the purchase of 66 AJTs ran into problems. Russia has been trying to sell the AJT to India for almost five years. The MiG-AT, developed with French help, has not yet entered serial production. “The MiG-AT has been equipped with an engine of day-before-yesterday,” Kornukov was quoted as saying by Kommersant. The Russian Defence Ministry is yet to decide whether to induct the MiG-AT or the Russian-Italian made Yak-130 as the new AJT for the Russian Air Force, said sources close to the defence establishment. Kornukov’s latest statement is being perceived here as a rejection of the MiG-AT in favour of the Yak-130. Kommersant said that the MiG-AT’s engine — the Larzac 04-R20 — was obsolete as it was manufactured in the 1970s for an experimental vertical take-off French aircraft, which never entered serial production. Russia has been negotiating with India to push the MiG-AT since 1996 though authorities here have not yet certified the AJT. Kornukov’s opinion on the MiG-AT may deal a serious blow to the reputation of the AJT and create problems in negotiations for its sale to India, defence observers said.
IANS |
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Four Falungong organisers jailed Beijing, August 17 The Intermediate People’s court found the four guilty of “intentional homicide by organising, masterminding, instigating and assisting” Falungong followers to commit suicide, the official Xinhua news agency reported. All four were given sentences of life imprisonment or seven to 15 years in prison by the Beijing court. In a separate judgement of the court, Liu Baorong, a woman accomplice with a much lesser role, was exempted from criminal penalty.
PTI |
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US balloonist lands in Brazil
Brasilia, Brazil, August 17 Fossett put down early Friday near the border with Uruguay in southern Brazil. “We believe he is in fact on the ground,” Judith Leicht, a spokeswoman for the mission, told a news briefing Friday was Fossett's 13th day in the air since lifting off from Australia's west coast but weak winds had pushed him only a little more than half way around the globe. The announcement to abandon one of the last remaining old-style aviation challenges came after he had fought thunderstorms for nine hours, some of which dumped snow and ice on the silver-colored, towering balloon. The 57-year-old millionaire did claim one record. His control centre said it was the longest solo balloon trip anyone has made in terms of elapsed time and distance. Fossett had been relying on help from Argentine air force controllers in Resistencia, 770 km north of Buenos Aires, as he soared to about 30,000 feet to fly over one storm, his support team said earlier.
Reuters |
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Shuttle astronauts complete spacewalk Washington, August 17 With the aid of the shuttle’s robotic arm, astronauts Daniel Barry and Patrick Forrester installed the early ammonia servicer, which contains spare ammonia for use in the station’s cooling system, and an experiment to test how certain materials respond to outer space. The Materials International Space Station Experiment, or MISSE, contains some 1,500 samples of materials in two suitcase-like containers which will be exposed to space for a year to test how they react. During a second spacewalk scheduled for tomorrow astronauts hope to install cables for a planned extension of the station’s Destiny laboratory. Discovery docked on Sunday with the orbiting station on an eight-day mission to bring a new crew and ferry in scientific equipment and supplies. The three current residents of the station — Commander Yury Usachev, Jim Voss and Susan Helms — have been in orbit since March, and will return with Discovery. The Expedition Three team — US Commander Frank Culbertson and Russians Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Tyurin — will remain on the station until December. They are the third group to inhabit the station since a Russian Soyuz spacecraft brought the first crew in November.
AFP |
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DNA helps solve crime Annapolis, Md., August 17 The development of new technology, particularly a growing nationwide DNA data bank run by the FBI known as CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) has prompted many police forces to create special “cold case” task forces. This week, around 90 investigators from mid-Atlantic states gathered at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis for a four-day workshop to hear some of the latest investigative techniques from experts in the field.
Reuters |
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£ 1 treatment for heart disease London, August 17 The treatment involves a dose of aspirin, long used to help thin the blood and reduce the chances of thrombosis in at-risk patients, alongside a drug called clopidogrel, already licensed as an alternative to cut the risk of blood clots, the Guardian said.
Reuters |
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banned Falungong, who were accused of instigating a gory self-immolation incident at the Tiananmen Square here early this year
Washington, August 17
