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Sunday,
February 17, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Pak to get
$ 220 m as ‘war costs’ |
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Bush to
send Peace Corps to Afghanistan Ershad
returns to Bangladesh Ban on US
passports for travel to Iraq extended
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5 die in Philippines grenade blast Jolo (Philippines), February 16 The blast in Jolo town, on the Jolo island, came days after the military launched air and ground assaults against the Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf and followers of a detained former Muslim regional governor, killing at least 10 guerrillas. The military operation followed recent rebel attacks that have killed at least 11 soldiers on the Jolo island. Col Roland Detabali, chief of operations of the military’s Southern Command, said five persons, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed in the attack. Mr Jolo army commander, Col Romeo Tolentino, blamed the guerrillas for the attack, saying that several days earlier, they sent letters to different schools in Jolo threatening to abduct teachers and students if the military operation is not stopped. Maj Ernesto Maningo, the local army spokesman, said the grenade was an old model known to be used by the guerrillas. The area of the blast was the site where followers of former Governor Nur Misuari attacked a Jeep-load of soldiers, killing three, last month. Misuari, leader of the separatist Moro National Liberation Front, is being held without bail on charges of rebellion for allegedly orchestrating an attack on the army base in Jolo in November, despite a peace agreement he signed with the government in 1996. ZMBOANGA CITY:
A grenade explosion rocked a movie theatre in the southern Philippines on Saturday afternoon, wounding three persons, according to reports reaching Manila. It was the second grenade explosion in the southern Philippines following an early morning blast in a public market in Jolo island. The grenade exploded at about 1:45 pm (0545 GMT) inside a 500-seat movie theatre inside the city’s largest shopping mall, during the afternoon screening of “The Lord of the Rings”. No one has claimed responsibility for the explosion.
AP, DPA |
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Pak to get $ 220 m as ‘war costs’ Washington, February 16 In a letter to Congress, President Bush said he had ordered $ 220 million in emergency money that had been given to the Defence Department for warfighting and to the State Department to upgrade security to be reallocated to Pakistan. The reallocation, from funds that were part of a $ 40 billion emergency package passed by Congress after the September 11 terrorist attacks, also includes $ 28 million to be transferred immediately to Israel. In both cases, according to an Office of Management and Budget document accompanying Bush’s letter, “the administration now believes that a portion of these funds would be better used to provide assistance to Pakistan and Israel, as allies in the war on terrorism.” Administration officials said the White House is also preparing another special funding request to be submitted to Congress this year for more aid to “frontline states” in the war against terrorism, including Pakistan. Officials said that the overall amount of that package, likely to be part of a general request for additional defence and homeland security needs, had not yet been determined. Nor had it been decided which countries, other than Pakistan, would receive the assistance. Meanwhile, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) led by the British army has been denied storage facility for live ammunition at Karachi airport by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). The ISAF had demanded the facility to keep live ammunition at Karachi while in-transit for Afghanistan, but the request was turned down on the grounds that it was a ‘high risk’, CAA sources told The News. ‘Quaid-i-Azam International Airport is purely a civilian airport and it is surrounded by congested civilian population’, they said. ‘Movement of live ammunition is always risky and we could not take any risk of another Ojhri Camp like situation’, they said. Ojhri Camp was an ammunition depot in Rawalpindi and hundreds were killed when it blew up in 1988 raining rockets and missiles all over Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The CAA has, however, offered refuelling facility for aircraft loaded with live ammunition subject to the condition that consignments would not be unloaded or reloaded at Karachi airport. “We allowed them to unload arms without ammunition at Karachi airport and reload them,” CAA officials said. When in mid-January the ISAF started using Karachi airport, the CAA was informed that about 12 flights would land and take-off daily. However, average frequency of the landings and take offs is not more than two per day.
ANI |
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Bush to send Peace Corps to Afghanistan Washington, February 16 “Today the mission is needed more than ever,”
Bush said after the swearing-in of Gaddi Vasquez as the organisation’s new director yesterday. Bush said a team is heading to Afghanistan in the next three weeks to address how the Peace Corps could assist that country in reconstruction. The State Department has cleared the mission, and is awaiting word from Kabul. The corps left Afghanistan 23 years ago when Soviet forces occupied the country. He renewed his commitment to double the number of volunteers abroad to about 15,000 — a level not seen since 1966 - and to steer more of them to countries that he believed most misunderstand the United States of America.
AP |
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Ershad returns to Bangladesh Dhaka, February 16 General Ershad, who apparently was on self-exile after the last general elections, however, told mediapersons that he was not aware of any “understanding” between the coalition government and his party leaders for his return. “I have returned, because I had to — but I did not have any talks with the government for my return,” he told journalists on his arrival this morning. Asked whether he feared arrest, General Ershad said, “Why? I didn’t do any wrong and, moreover, I am on bail.” It was widely speculated that General Ershad fearing arrest by the new government of the four-party alliance left Dhaka a day after the October 1, 2001 general election in which his Jatiya Party (JP) won only 14 seats (in 300-seat House), less than half their previous tally. General Ershad told mediapersons that he had gone to London for treatment. “It is not true that I was abroad to escape arrest,” said the JP Chairman, who returned to Dhaka after a stopover for few days in India. About his future political plans, he said, “We are in the opposition and have no plans to quit Parliament...it was in our election manifesto that we will not boycott Parliament.” “We will have to move forward by strengthening the Jatiya Party,” he added. About his party’s performance in the general election, he said quitting the BNP-led alliance was a wrong decision and his disqualification from contesting the election were the major blows to the prospect of his party. Regarding graft cases while he had been at the helm of power for nine years until toppled in a mass movement in 1990, the former President said he would face those charges in the court of law. Asked whether he had any plans to retire from politics, the JP Chairman said, “It is difficult to retire from politics and I have no such plans.” About a report published in a London-based Bengali Daily, General Ershad denied having any meeting with former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina when she was in London after losing the last polls to the BNP-led alliance. Asked to comment on the government’s decision to sell gas, he said, “We have nothing to sell, but if it’s found that there is surplus gas after meeting our own demand, then the government can take a decision.”
UNI |
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Ban on US passports for travel to Iraq extended Washington, February 16 “There is a restriction on the use of a us passport for travel to, in or through Iraq and Secretary Powell on Wednesday, the 13th of February, renewed that restriction,” Deputy Spokesman Philip Reeker said yesterday. He did not say specifically why Powell had extended the ban, but said decisions on the imposition or renewal of such restrictions are “based on a finding by the secretary that there is imminent danger to the public health and/or physical safety of us travellers”. The restriction, initially imposed in February 1991, requires
Americans planning to use their US passports to visit Iraq to get permission from the State Department.
AFP |
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