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Monday,
February 11, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Iran
cracks down on Afghan warlord NEWS ANALYSIS
She
understood irrelevance of royalty
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Two
gunmen shot in Beersheba
Man shoots 11,
self in S. Africa ISYF
disbanded in Canada 15 die
in South Korea road mishap 30 feared
dead
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Iran cracks down on Afghan warlord
Tehran, February 10 Newspapers today said the move was because the strongly anti-American Hekmatyar had acted against Iranian national security. Iran has rejected US charges it is trying to destabilise the interim government and the fragile peace in neighbouring Afghanistan since US bombing toppled the country’s former Taliban rulers. “Iran decided to close down Hekmatyar’s offices because he did not consider the country’s security policy,’’ senior security official Hossein Zare-Sefat told the Iran newspaper today. Hekmatyar told newsmen in an interview last Tuesday he opposed the Afghan interim government of Hamid Karzai, saying it was installed by foreign troops occupying Afghanistan. “I have a lot of organised forces. They have weapons and we are in contact with them,’’ said Hekmatyar. “While foreign troops are present, the interim government does not have any value or meaning.’’ Calls have mounted for Hekmatyar, a leading Afghan warlord who fought Soviet occupation in the 1980s, to be expelled from Iran, where he has lived in exile since the Taliban took Kabul in 1996. “Iran is no place for any one or group that resorts to mischief,’’ Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi-Lari had said on Wednesday. “Although Hekmatyar has received constant warnings from Iranian officials, why has he not been expelled from Iran?’’ the reformist daily Norouz asked in an editorial today. QUETTA: The powerful Governor of southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar province said he believed Iran was interfering in western Afghanistan, supplying guns and money to tribal factions and provincial rulers. Kandahar Governor Gul Agha said: “We have enough proof about the interference of Iran in Herat and other provinces,” he said, referring to Herat province in the West, ruled by powerful rival warlord Ismail Khan. “Iran is providing weapons and money to the people of Herat, Farah, Nimroz and Helmand provinces,” he told reporters late last night. The first three of the provinces he mentioned border Iran. ISLAMABAD: As Afghanistan’s interim government struggles to resolve bloody factional rows in one province, tribal leaders in another have threatened to fight against their new Kabul-appointed Governor, an Afghan news service said on Sunday. The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press quoted a powerful commander in eastern Khost province as asking Kabul to name another Governor after first consulting with the local Shura (council) of elders or face a similar situation to nearby Paktia province, where 50 people died in fighting last week. “The present Governor is unacceptable to us because he was sent without consulting the Khost shura,” AIP quoted local commander Sardar Khan Khapaski as saying.
Reuters, AFP |
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NEWS ANALYSIS People who thought the October elections would restore democracy in Pakistan as it existed on the day Gen Pervez Musharraf staged his military coup in October 1999, may now be keeping their fingers crossed after his announcement that he would continue to be the President of the country for five years after the polls. The General wants to hold the elections when the leaders of two main political parties — the Muslim League (Nawaz) and the Pakistan people's Party — are forced to live in exile. Mr Nawaz Sharrif was sent into exile in December 2000 under an alleged agreement with the military Government and Ms Benazir Bhutto shuttles between Dubai and London. She has been told she would be imprisoned if she returns home. She faces charges of corruption back home. Thus the post-election setup is not clear at all in people's mind. Gen Musharraf claims the elections will be fair and establish real democracy — an echo of earlier military rulers' unkept promises. Less than a year ago the people have witnessed the military's efficiency in rigging the local bodies elections in favour of their own candidates. The October elections will be conducted by retired Chief Justice Irshad Hasan Khan, who had upheld Gen Musharraf's military coup under what he called the law of necessity. Reports from Pakistan say that he is trying to create a political base for himself by getting the existing six factions of the Muslim League reunited with the help of the Pir of Pagaro. The controversial National Accountability Bureau (NAB) is ensuring that uncomforming politicians fall in line. Even if the October elections produce results of his choice, Gen Musharraf will be facing a dilemma: should be become the President as envisaged by the 1973 Constitution or change the basic structure of this document to provide for a Presidential form of government. According to the 1973 Constitution, the President is a figurehead who acts upon the advice of Parliament through the Prime Minister. he is elected by Members of Parliament and the four provincial assemblies. Apparently Gen Musharraf will not like to be a figurehead President. He says he has got an agenda to provide continuity to all economic, social and constitutional measures he has taken since October 1999. In other words, he will have to have executive powers. And these he cannot have unless he changes the basic structure of the Constitution — something the Supreme Court has not allowed him to do. The Pakistani Generals have always been opposed to the Westminster-type democracy in Pakistan. The country followed it from 1947 to October 1958 when then President Iskandar Mirza abrogated the 1956 Constitution and imposed Martial Law on the country. Gen Ayub Khan, who was appointed the Chief Martial Law Administrator, forced Mirza into exile and appointed himself the President. He gave the country a new Constitution replacing parliamentary democracy with Presidential system of government. When Gen Ziaul Haq staged his coup, he did not abrogate the Constitution, but suspended it. He revived it in 1985 but continued to act as an executive President arguing that the Presidential system was closer to Islamic system of governance. between May 1988, when he dismissed Prime Minister Mohammad Khan Junejo, and August 1988, when he (Zia) died in an air crash, he ruled without a Prime Minister in brazen violation of the Constitution. The Supreme Court described this period of his rule as illegal. Zia was never able to usher in a Presidential form of Government because the Supreme Court had told him in 1977 not to change the basic structure of the Constitution. Gen Musharraf has not yet said how he will get himself regularised as the President after the October elections. He will certainly not accept a position in which he will act on the advice of politicians, whom he called thieves and looters of the country's wealth. It is possible unless this dilemma is resolved he may not hold elections — and threat from India can easily be mentioned as the reason for postponing the elections. |
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Karzai frees 350 Taliban men
Kabul, February 10 The fighters were officially freed during a brief nighttime ceremony at the presidential palace, during which Karzai said the men were not hardcore Taliban, but low-level members caught up in the country’s civil war. “They’re Afghans, and they should go back to their homes and continue their lives,” Karzai told reporters. Palace officials said the prisoners were not considered dangerous, and were not highlevel Taliban who should be handed over to the USA. The prisoners, many of them lacking winter coats and proper shoes, squatted on a snow-covered patch of grass at the palace, and cheered when Karzai told them they could go home. Karzai told reporters the prisoners would each be given 5,00,000 Afghanis ($ 14) and free transport back home. Many of the fighters are from southern Afghanistan, the territorial base of the Taliban. The interim government, various regional warlords and military commanders still hold around 5,000 fighters from the Taliban and Al-Qaida terrorist network, and their fate has not yet been decided. Guantanamo Bay (Cuba): Another 34 Al-Qaida and Taliban fighters captured in the US campaign in Afghanistan have landed here, bringing the total of detainees held in Cuba to 220. A group of 28 arrived on Thursday, the first transfer of prisoners after a two-week hiatus. The process has been closely monitored by Spain, Yemen, Britain and France, all of which reportedly have nationals among the fighters captured in the US-led campaign to rid Afghanistan of terrorists.
DPA, AFP |
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She understood irrelevance of royalty
London, February 10 Long before the last, unnecessary public appearances of a woman approaching death, the story of Princess Margaret had been recast as a Victorian melodrama, full of cautionary moralising. The beauty squandered, the cigarettes and whisky consumed, the empty social whirl; these were signposts to nemesis. Way before her life ended, its pointlessness had been mourned exhaustively. Nor did she shore up an anomalous position with a show of goodness, genuine or spurious. What are the royals for, especially the minor ones? Margaret, a woman ahead of her time, supplied the response before the question was even asked. That answer was: not much. Her life was one of reckless hedonism. She drank, she got divorced, she smoked too much. She also had, particularly by royal standards, two pleasant, normal children. Her boyfriends and her former husband, Lord Snowdon, were briefly exotic, and enduringly loyal. She wanted for nothing material. She had a far better time than her critics ever would have wished. She also understood that, when pomp and circumstance become redundant, ribbon-snipping and signing footballs will not fill the gap. The 21st century royal family had to be soap opera, and she was its first star. But not having the courage to marry the man she loved ruined her life, said courtiers who were eager to turn her dissidence to tragedy. Instead, she was a survivor cushioned by unearned cash and by the friends, and sycophants, who treated her, on her edict, as the daughter of a king and the sister of a queen. But she must also have seen the hollowness of royalty. Her thin appetite for duty seemed linked less to idleness than to failure to see the purpose. Gore Vidal thinks she was too clever for her vacuous role, and probably he was right. Where other, lightly-educated women of her age and breed might be hard-pushed to spell corgi, she could do the Times crossword in minutes. The spectre of a bicycling monarchy never threatened Margaret, carousing on Mustique isle (Carribbeans) or singing at the piano way after her guests longed to be in bed. Hopefully she had a good time. Only the sour would deny her that and, besides, a life of parties is no more distasteful than the bogus virtue others expected of her. But she was bright enough to see that, for the monarchy at large and for her in particular, a life of duty offered diminishing returns. She was smart enough also to know that a million hands squeezed or plaques unveiled would not have altered her last chapter. Margaret, once feted to the skies, died quietly with her children at her bedside. The ponderous coverage of such an ordinary death left many baffled. That in death she would not have expected fulsome mourning. That she was prescient enough to grasp a truth that still eludes too many of her clan. Princess Margaret was possibly the first woman this century to understand the irrelevance of being royal. Meanwhile, Britain’s Sunday press marked the death of Princess Margaret, a woman who radiated glamour in her heyday and ended her 71 years a lonely, broken royal. “We did not grieve because Margaret, in terms of what she represented, had died a long time ago,” the Observer said on its front page. For a press that has sold millions of copies on the back of the royal family, there were mixed feelings about Margaret’s death yesterday after the latest of several strokes. The love-hate relationship endured to the end for Queen Elizabeth’s younger sister, herself a woman of intense conflict.
The Observer, London  |
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Two gunmen shot in Beersheba
Jerusalem, February 10 “As far as we know, two terrorists have been killed after they shot outside the base. We know of five people who have been injured, four badly, one of whom is critical,” she said. Israel radio said two gunmen drove up to the base in a car and opened fire from outside the command centre. Nablus (West Bank): Israeli troops arrested three Palestinian brothers in a raid on a refugee camp on the edge of the West Bank city of Nablus today which triggered a gun-battle, Israeli sources and witnesses said. Soldiers backed by a dozen armoured vehicles entered the Askar camp at dawn, following a drive-by shooting which killed an Israeli woman yesterday. They arrested Mohammed, Jamil and Khamis Bayram, but missed their eldest brother, Rami, a policeman who was also being sought, an AFP correspondent said. Israeli public radio said seven Palestinians were wounded in exchanges of fire during the operation. An army statement said troops “carried out an operation in the northeastern sector of Nablus and conducted searches to prevent a planned attack on Israeli civilians.” The statement added: “There were exchanges of fire in which two armed Palestinians were apparently wounded.” Earlier, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said three tanks and other armoured vehicles penetrated some 500 meters into the Palestinian town from the northeastern edge. The incursion was met by Palestinian gunmen who opened fire on the troops, prompting a firefight in which three Palestinian security officers and three civilians were wounded before the army pulled out, the sources said.
Reuters, AFP |
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Man shoots 11,
self in S. Africa Johannesburg, February 10 Seven persons were also in a critical condition in hospital after the shooting rampage in a township in the city of East London, SAPA said. Police spokesman Stephen Marais said the suspect had first shot dead his girlfriend after a row on Saturday night. He then went to the home of his girlfriend’s relatives where three persons were killed. The man then indiscriminately shot seven members of the public after driving away from the house in his car, SAPA reported.
Reuters |
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ISYF disbanded in Canada
Vancouver, February 10 “We’ve had it with all the negative stuff being put on us,” said the ISYF spokesman, Mr Amrit Singh Rai, to newspapers yesterday, including ‘The Vancouver Sun’. He said the branding of his organisation as a ‘terrorist’ one had tarnished its image and made it impossible to function. The ISYF is an international chapter of the India-based All-India Sikh Students Federation (AISSF). Canadian immigration officials have said the AISSF was known for murdering its enemies, assassinations and motor cycle hit squads. But the Canada-based ISYF claimed their ‘good works’ like conducting sports events, blood donation drives and distributing food to the homeless could not be pursued due to media criticism. However, the ISYF website contains hardline Sikh propaganda than any purported charities. The demand for a separate homeland for the Sikhs was also upfront on the agenda, but the group balks at the ‘terrorist’ tag it has earned in the process.
UNI |
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15 die in South Korea road mishap
Seoul, February 10 The lorry had skidded before crossing the central reservation and colliding with the bus travelling in the opposite direction. The crash happened near the town of Chonan, around 85 km south of Seoul. An estimated 30 million of South Korea’s population of 47 million people are expected to travel to their birthplaces over the next few days to celebrate the New Year on Tuesday with their families in accordance with the lunar calendar.
DPA |
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30 feared dead Lagos, February 10 The Sunday Vanguard newspaper said the fire on Friday started after the truck that had been stopped by the police in Ajilete/Egbado district of Ogun state spilled its load of petrol. Fourteen passengers on a commuter bus and 16 persons in vehicles behind the truck died in the inferno, the newspaper said. More than 12 others were hurt.
Reuters |
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