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Wednesday,
January 30, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Public
anger swells as toll crosses 600
USA trying
to ease Indo-Pak tension: Powell |
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Taliban captives not
PoWs: Bush
Indian
crew rescued Jamaat
chief re-arrested
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Public anger swells as toll crosses 600 Lagos, January 29 As the toll rose, so did public anger, with callers to radio talk shows accusing the government of having ignored calls to move the armoury away from a crowded residential area. Meanwhile, thousands of children are still missing 36 hours after fleeing the explosion of a weapons store in Lagos, a spokesman for the Nigerian Red Cross said today. “Many thousands of people, most of them children, have been displaced. There are thousands still missing,” Red Cross spokesman Patrick Bawa told AFP. The Red Cross has set up two camps to register displaced people and is providing food, water, clothing and comfort, he said. Hundreds of thousands of people fled the densely populated Ikeja area of Lagos late Sunday when a weapons store exploded after a fire. “So far we have registered 800 displaced people. Our mission is to link up missing families. Three hundred unaccompanied children have so far been registered,” President Obasanjo said. A Nigerian newspaper on Tuesday put the toll of the mass drowning in Lagos that followed a weapons depot blast in the city at more than 2,000 dead. The figure, which could not be confirmed, was far higher than the figure of more than 600 announced by President Olusegun Obasanjo. The authorities said they would decide later whether to hold a mass burial for the victims after they had had more time to identify them. President Olusegun Obasanjo — who has demanded an explanation from the army — ordered that today be observed as a national day of mourning after the worst tragedy to hit Nigeria’s biggest city for a decade. Flags flew at half mast at government offices across the country. Rescuers on Monday retrieved hundreds of bodies of people who drowned in two canals as they fled for their lives when the armoury in Ikeja district blew up. The muddy banks of the canals are not always easy to spot and are often hidden by scrub and bushes. Many people are thought to have been trampled to death after falling in. “As of last night, a total of 600 bodies were retrieved from the canals,” Lagos State Commissioner for Information Dele Alake told newsmen. More than a dozen other deaths were reported by witnesses elsewhere in the city of over 10 million people. Alake said navy divers would join the search for more bodies in the canals and marshland around them. The narrow and generally shallow canals are used mainly to drain industrial sludge and some rescuers suggested many of the victims could have been suffocated by toxic waste. The death toll would have been even higher if the accident had happened on a working day in the chaotic capital. Three schools inside the military district, with a total of more than 3,000 students, were completely destroyed. Obasanjo visited the barracks yesterday and pledged urgent relief help for thousands of displaced soldiers and their families. He also said the military would set up an inquiry to determine who was to blame for the disaster and to prevent a
repetition at other barracks. The blasts and the unfolding tragedy have added to the problems of Obasanjo’s government which is struggling with Nigeria’s worst cycle of political and religious violence in over three decades. The army moved quickly on Sunday to dispel rumours sweeping the country that a military coup was in the making. Nigeria has seen numerous coups since the first one in 1960, six years after its independence from Britain. The West African country has been ruled by soldiers for most of the time since then and its new democracy has been wobbling since the army stepped down in 1999. Reuters, AFP |
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USA trying to ease Indo-Pak tension: Powell Washington, January 29 “It is continuing to bubble, if not quite boil at the moment...,” US Secretary of State Colin Powell told a questioner during the weekend on public television on being asked whether the Indo-Pakistan crisis is continuing to boil or going down the other side and whether the worst is over. “...But,” Mr Powell said, “I will not be comfortable until we have found a solution and we can start going down the escalation ladder, rather than just staying where we are on the escalation ladder. And I certainly don’t want to see us go up any higher on that ladder.” Based on the Secretary of State’s comments on the recent Agni test, the interviewer asked: “So you don’t see this as a big deal, this firing of this missile?” Mr Powell remarked: “Well, it is a big deal in the sense that with this level of tension it might have been better not to have such an event, but I don’t think all raises it to a higher level of tension and crisis.” Asked whether he talked to either or both sides the day the missile was fired, Mr Powell said: “No, I have not had a chance to. I am not sure I will. It is really late in the region”. When the interviewer said that India fired a “nuclear missile as part of a Republic Day celebration, a nuclear-capable missile as part of a celebration,” Mr Powell said that was a very important distinction. It was just a missile and it was a test that had been scheduled for some time. “We would have preferred that they had not fired it during this time of tension,” said Mr Powell, “but I don’t think it escalates things that much more.” He said both sides had indicated that they were willing to work for a diplomatic solution to this crisis, and “the USA is actively involved with both sides to find the elements of that solution.” “Nevertheless,” he said, “it is a tense, dangerous situation with two armies in close proximity to the one another, and a spark could set something off.” “Both of these nations are well armed and nuclear armed, and so we are doing everything we can diplomatically to keep tensions from rising any higher, which is why we would just as soon had not seen a missile test.” Mr Powell said right after September 11, he began a series of conversations with Pakistan President Parvez Musharraf, and “he and I got in the habit of talking with each other rather frequently as we went through the post-September 11 crisis period.” “And then I had gotten to know Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh of India, and so when the December 13 terrorist attack on Indian Parliament came along, things escalated rather quickly, I used those contacts that I had made, and the friendships frankly that I developed with President Musharraf and his Foreign Minister, Foreign Minister Sattar, and with Foreign Minister Singh on the Indian side, and just kept in regular touch with them.
PTI |
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USA to give $ 50 m more, build army Washington, January 29 While announcing a $ 50 million aid to help rebuild Afghanistan, US President George W. Bush yesterday said: “The USA will continue to be a friend to the Afghan people.” Afghanistan must as quickly as possible develop her own military “and we will help train it and General Tommy Franks (Commander-in-Chief, Central Command) is fully committed to this idea,” Mr Bush said after talks with visiting head of Afghan Interim government Hamid Karzai. While peacekeepers would be there for a while, “we are going to help Afghanistan develop her military. This is the most important part of his visit.” Mr Karzai thanked the USA for helping it oust the Taliban from Afghanistan and assured Mr Bush that he would not allow terrorism to return to the country. “Afghanistan knows the suffering of the people of America as they went through the horror of twin towers incident. The Afghans have suffered exactly the same way,” he said. “Afghanistan is a good partner. It will stay a good partner,” Mr Karzai said. The President of the interim government in Afghanistan had sought US forces as part of the international peacekeeping force, which was ruled out by Mr Bush. “We are committed to help the international peacekeepers in the form of logistical support and bail out,” Mr Bush said. The USA would also support programmes to train new police officers and provide an initial $ 50 million line of credit for Afghanistan to finance private sector projects. This amount was in addition to $ 297 million that the USA pledged in Tokyo towards the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Mr Karzai also supported continuing raids on suspected Taliban and Al-Qaida hideouts and said the operation against them should go “to the absolute end”. “We must break them out of their caves and their hideouts, we promise to do that,” he said.
PTI |
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Taliban captives not PoWs: Bush Washington, January 29 Whether the Taliban and Al-Qaida captives should be treated as PoWs under Geneva Conventions; Mr Bush, after his meeting with visiting President of Interim Government in Afghanistan, told reporters that “These are killers and terrorists and they are being treated humanely”. “We are not going to call them PoWs. The reason is that Al-Qaida is not a known military. They know no countries... if a country is weakened, they occupy it like a parasite,” Mr Bush said yesterday. He, however, added that he would be examining the legal issues concerning the detainees. According to Mr Bush, there were 179 detainees in Guantanamo Bay and “There is a lot in Pakistan and a lot in Afghanistan”. GUANTANAMO BAY (CUBA): The 158 prisoners captured in Afghanistan and being held at Camp “X-Ray” here, are uneasy about their future and want to “go home,” a Muslim imam has said. “Their biggest fear is not knowing what’s going to happen to them. They want to go home,” Abuhena Mohammad Saiful-Islam, an imam with the US Navy who visits the prisoners daily, said on Monday.
PTI, AFP |
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Indian crew rescued Dubai, January 29 The crew were now being looked after by the Omani Coast Guard at Port Sultan Qaboos in Muscat, Omanese daily ‘Observer’ said. The ill-fated vessel, described as a large wooden dhow, was sailing to Yemen when it sent out a distress message on Sunday. A British supply ship, which had been alerted about the stricken craft, despatched two helicopters to its aid. The crew members were airlifted and later handed over to Omani authorities. All 14 seamen are said to be in good condition.
PTI |
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Jamaat chief
re-arrested Islamabad, January 29 Ahmed, who led a series of pro-Taliban and anti-government rallies last year, was arrested yesterday in Lahore hours after his release in Peshawar. The Punjab Government in a statement said Ahmed was re-arrested in connection with the attack on a local police station in 1999 which was set on fire and the weapons looted. He has been accused of instigating
the attack. PTI |
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(
While the world
scrutinises the treatment of the so-called worst of the worst 158 Taliban and al
Qaida prisoners at a
US naval base in Cuba, it ignores the plight of thousands of more ordinary combatants facing death in a filthy Afghan prison, a
US rights group said
on Monday. "Many, many, many prisoners have already died," Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights, which sent a team to the prison at Shebarghan in northern Afghanistan on
January 20, quoted the prison commander, Gen. Jarobak, as saying. Photographs of emaciated men in the dilapidated concrete structure exposed to the Afghan winter contrasted sharply with the images of the reportedly well-fed men in clean orange jumpsuits, held in open but sanitary mesh cells at the sun-soaked
US Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This undated image shows inmates peering through window bars in the prison.
— Reuters
