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Tuesday,
February 5, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Rival factions reach deal
to demilitarise Mazar
‘Security
fraud’ led to Enron’s collapse USA making wild charges: Iran Riyadh ‘willing’
to help USA oust Saddam Turkey quake toll 45
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EU observers allowed Brussels, February 4 Zimbabwe has allowed in European Union election observers, meaning the 15-nation bloc will not impose threatened sanctions on President Robert Mugabe for now, the European Commission said today.
Hun Sen’s CPP gets majority
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Rival factions reach deal
to demilitarise Mazar Kabul, February 4 Mohammad Sardar Saeedi, of the Hezb-i-Wahdat Party, said Uzbek warlord, Gen Abdul Rashid Dostum, and his rival ethnic Tajik commander, Ustad Atta Mohammad, had decided to hand control of the city to a security commission led by the Wahdat. The commission will deploy 200 fighters from each group as police to maintain security and law and order in the aftermath of three days of the fighting on the outskirts of the city between forces under Dostum and Atta, Saeedi said. “There is no problem any more. A ceasefire has been enforced,” Saeedi told newsmen by satellite phone from Mazar. Dostum’s group is called the Junbish-i-Mellie, while Atta heads the Jamiat-i-Islami force. More than 40 people were killed in the recent fighting — the worst since the city was captured from the Taliban in November. As part of the deal struck on Sunday, all heavy machineguns, tanks and armoured personnel carriers will be withdrawn from the city under the supervision of a UN observer, who will be involved in regular mediation between all sides, Saeedi said. “The formation of the commission is welcomed by the people who were really concerned about the recent fighting,” he said. He said the truce had revived optimism and hopes in Mazar for the peace process which the interim government led by Hamid Karzai is keen to implement in Afghanistan. The administration has also been tested in the eastern town of Gardez, where a Karzai-appointed Governor was forced from office by a rival Pashtun tribal faction, which installed its own leader. A team of government mediators which is in Gardez trying to settle the matter, said the two sides were expected to sit down for peace talks later. Karzai also plans to travel to the western city of Herat for discussions with its Governor, Ismael Khan, over concerns that neighbouring Iran is allegedly helping him to destabilise the interim administration.
Reuters |
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‘Security fraud’ led to Enron’s collapse Washington, February 4 Billy Tauzin, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the report shows top Enron executives invested in or created partnerships that facilitated accounting abuses so they could rake in millions of dollars in profits while the company took a loss. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” programme, U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan said the report was devastating and shows a “culture of corruption.” Former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay pulled out of this week’s scheduled congressional testimony on Sunday, with his lawyer saying hearings have taken on a “prosecutorial” tone. “I have instructed Lay to withdraw his prior acceptance of your invitation,” Lay’s attorney Earl Silbert said in letters to the Senate and House panels that were to hear the chairman from today. “He cannot be expected to participate in a proceeding in which conclusions have been reached before Lay has been given an opportunity to be heard,” Silbert added. He cited remarks on Sunday talk shows by various members of Congress suggesting there was rampant criminality at Enron. “These inflammatory statements show that judgments have been reached and the tenor of the hearing will be prosecutorial. “Lay firmly rejected any allegations that he engaged in wrongful or criminal conduct,” wrote Silbert. In the meantime, the scandal surrounding the collapse of US energy giant Enron took a dramatic turn when a US Senate panel suddenly cancelled its hearing on the matter because the company’s former boss had refused to show up. Sen Dorgan told NBC: “This is a devastating report... it suggests massive problems. This is almost a culture of corruption here.” The report also said accounting firm Arthur Andersen advised Enron on how to set-up the ill-fated partnerships. Anderson billed Enron almost $6 million beyond regular audit fees for advice on two partnerships. Andersen announced yesterday it was hiring former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker to head an oversight board to make fundamental changes in the firm’s audit practices. Meanwhile, a special committee investigating the sudden collapse of the energy giant has charged that top Enron executives took millions of dollars “they should never have received.” The investigation revealed that former Enron chief financial officer Andrew Fastow pocketed at least $30 million and another executive, Michael Kopper, made at least $10 million. Four other executives are said to have taken sums varying from several hundred thousand dollars to $1 million. The committee’s 217-page report, concluding the internal investigation, was filed with the New York bankruptcy court. The committee, headed by Enron director William Powers, who is also Dean of the University of Texas School of Law, said the investigators had only limited access to Andersen’s Enron audit work papers. But Andersen’s spokesman dismissed the allegation. Over 4,000 workers have lost their jobs, and thousands more have lost retirement savings in Enron stock, which has become all but worthless. Enron employees were prevented from selling their fast depreciating stock holdings, while top executives got rid of them before the shares tumbled. Enron is currently under investigation by nine Congressional committees, the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Labour Department. LONDON: The first British casualty of the Enron affair is John Wakeham. His talent for deal-making was the grease which lubricated a political career of promiscuous loyalties and an extremely lucrative business life which accumulated so many directorships that even he must struggle to remember them all. Then along came a scandal so engulfing that even he could not slide out of it. An operator whose skill lay in secretly blurring away conflicts of interest has finally been snagged by his own all-too-public conflicts of interest. John Wakeham never pretended to be anything but what he was. Whereas most politicians hope to be thought of as charismatic or visionary or principled, he gladly accepted, indeed relished, his reputation as “Lord of the Fix”. Seamlessly did he transfer his services from one Prime Minister to the next. When Margaret Thatcher was in her pomp, he fixed her majorities as Chief Whip. A favoured Wakeham device for dealing with difficult backbenchers was to interview them while painfully exercising his legs, horribly injured by the IRA’s Brighton bomb. This wily trick melted away many a potential rebel. As Energy Secretary, he privatised the electricity industry, the first foreign beneficiary of which was Enron to whom he gave personal approval to build Europe’s largest gas-fired power station. When Enron sought a British lord to adorn its board, whom should it appoint? Why, my Lord Wakeham, at $ 110,000 a year plus consultancy fees. It seems that the smooth-operator qualities that are so admired by the chief executives of scandalous corporations, royal spin-doctors, newspaper editors and other politicians are precisely what is wrong with the Wakeham style of politicking in the eyes of most voters.
IANS, The Observer |
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USA making wild charges: Iran Tehran, February 4 Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi also dismissed President George W. Bush’s charge last week that Iran was developing weapons of mass destruction. “I only hope the Americans will not make such a huge, irreparable mistake,” Mr Asefi told reporters after being asked about the possibility of a US attack on the Islamic republic. “It would be better if American leaders expressed themselves on the basis of real facts and not their imagination, and if they furnished some proof,” he said. “The recent US accusations against Iran are inspired and dictated by the Zionist regime, which shows yet again that the Americans are not sincere when they say they want rapprochement with Iran.” US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday there “isn’t any doubt” that Tehran helped Al-Qaeda and Taliban members escape into Iran from neighbouring Afghanistan. “We deny all reports about the presence of Al-Qaeda members in Iran,” Mr Asefi said. “As far as we are concerned, our borders are closed and we are blocking all illegal entry.” Mr Asefi’s remarks come amid a war of words between the two foes, who have not had diplomatic relations since 1980, several months after Islamic radicals seized the US Embassy in Tehran. The verbal sparring was set off by Mr Bush’s claim, in his State of the Union address last Tuesday, that Iran, Iraq and North Korea constitute an “axis of evil” in the world.
AFP |
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83 pc Americans back Bush New York, February 4 Eightysix per cent of those surveyed supported the war against terrorism while a marginally lower 82 per cent said they approved of the policies to prevent and minimise terrorism at home. Over 77 per cent backed his overall performance.
PTI |
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Riyadh ‘willing’ to help USA oust Saddam Washington, February 4 “We believe the way to go is from inside Iraq,” Prince Turki al-Faisal, who served as the kingdom’s intelligence chief for 24 years until leaving the post in August, said on NBC Television’s “Meet the Press yesterday.” “And the USA can help in that, and we will work closely with you on that,” he said. But the prince warned Washington against another Gulf war-style attack on Baghdad. “If you send an invasion force to Iraq ... you’re going to create not just resentment and fear and anger against the USA, but you may succeed in rallying the Iraqi people behind Mr Saddam Hussein, because they see you as a foreign invader,” he said. “But if it is an Iraqi who is doing the toppling of Mr Saddam Hussein and then, after he does that, you help him, in the way that we have proposed to your country, then that would be the way to do it,” the Saudi prince said.
Reuters |
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Turkey quake toll 45 Bolvadin (Turkey), February 4 The quake, which measured 6.0 on the open-ended Richter scale and was followed by several strong aftershocks, was the deadliest in the country since two devastating earthquakes in 1999 that killed 20,000 persons. More than 150 buildings collapsed after the quake hit at 1241 IST, with its epicentre near Bolvadin, located 300 km southwest of the capital Ankara. At least 11 persons were trapped under debris in the nearby town of Sultandagi, where most of the victims perished. Search and rescue teams sifted through the rubble in the hope of finding survivors, but failed to pull out anybody alive. “A huge disaster was prevented because it was Sunday and people were not at work,” said Construction Minister Abdulkadir Akcan. The quake raced an industrial complex of about 100 workshops, knocked down several mosque minarets and caused significant damage to many buildings as well as to telephone and power networks.
AFP |
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EU observers allowed Brussels, February 4 EU Foreign Ministers agreed last week to impose “smart sanctions” on Mugabe and 19 top associates if Harare prevented deployment of EU observers by February 3. The observers will check on opposition fears that Mugabe plans to rig the vote. “There has been no attempt to prevent us deploying some of the individuals who will take part in the core team,” EC spokeswoman Emma Udwin told a news conference. “So there is no need to take a decision on sanctions.” She said some of a six-strong advance team had arrived in Zimbabwe for the presidential election in which Mugabe faces his biggest challenge since he led the southern African nation to independence 22 years ago. A further 20-30 observers would be deployed in coming weeks and 150 would be in place close to polling day, on March 9.
Reuters |
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Car blast leaves 4 dead Gaza, February 4 They did not say what caused the blast near Rafah, close to the border with Egypt, although witnesses said they believed the car may have been struck by a missile. NEW YORK: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres has said the recent renewal of Israeli-Palestinian talks offered “a ray of hope” for a ceasefire, which would be followed immediately by Israel’s recognition of a Palestinian state. He welcomed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s offer to negotiate freedom for the Palestinians and security for Isreal, and his determination “to put an end” to terrorist organisations operating in Palestinian-controlled areas. JERUSALEM:
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said he did not believe that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat would be replaced by the radical Hamas organisation and defended his meeting with senior Palestinian Authority officials last week.
Agencies |
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Hun Sen’s CPP gets majority Phnom Penh, February 4 Early results showed that the government ruling party, which won 70 of the 76 communes that make up Phnom Penh, won by wide margins in many areas of the country. “The CPP (Cambodian People’s Party) got a lot of communes,” said Koul Panha, Director of the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia, an election monitoring group. Despite complaints from a wide range of observers, the elections were expected to be judged legitimate due to their improvement in many areas over the 1993 and 1998 elections.
DPA |
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