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Wednesday,
February 27, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Pakistan refuses talks on India’s terms USA plans to sell India radar systems USA to seek Omar Sheikh’s extradition
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Pearl case: cops get threats Chandrika threatens to cancel truce pact Unborn baby saves mother
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Pakistan refuses talks on India’s terms Islamabad, February 26 Maj-Gen Rashid Quereshi, spokesman and press secretary to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, said, last night: “Pakistan will never hold talks on the terms dictated by India.’’ President K.R. Narayanan, in his customary Address to a joint sitting of Parliament yesterday, had made it clear that a dialogue with Islamabad was possible only if Pakistan took “effective steps” to end training, equipping and financing of terrorists and stopped their infiltration into Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of the country. Rejecting President Narayanan’s remarks, Maj Gen Quereshi said such conditions did not reflect India’s sincerity, “rather they carry New Delhi’s vested interest...” Mr Narayanan, in his speech, had spoken in an ‘’aggressive and hostile language” and Pakistan “rejects these allegations with all the force at its command”, he added. He said Pakistan wanted to make it clear that it would ‘’never deviate from its principled stand in its fight against terrorism and curbing of extremism.’’ “No tactics of India will ever succeed in intimidating Pakistan...” The Pakistan President’s press secretary said the BJP had campaigned in the recent elections in four states in India by carrying out “baseless propaganda” against Pakistan, but had still suffered a humiliating defeat in these elections, which included the largest Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. This, he said, amply proved that the people of India had rejected the hostile posture of the BJP’s leadership. He said if the Indian Government had any interest in the peace and stability of South Asia, then the Indian President, without any hesitation, would have advised his government to withdraw its troops from the borders and immediately resume talks with Pakistan on the Kashmir dispute. The Indian President should also have suggested to his government to halt “repression in Kashmir and stop levelling baseless allegations’’, he added.
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USA plans to sell India radar systems Washington, February 26 The Defence Security Cooperation Agency, an arm of the Defence Department that oversees foreign weapons sales, said it had approved the sale of eight AN/TPQ-37 Firefinder radar sets, 26 radios, generators, trailers, communications equipment, Global Position Systems and training. Congress has 30 days to block the sale, although that would require both the House of Representatives and the Senate to raise two-thirds majorities, which is seen as unlikely. India was one of the first nations to back the USA in its fight against terrorism following the September 11 attacks that killed over 3,000 people in New York and Washington. The Bush administration has already rewarded India for its help by earmarking $75 million in military aid in its 2003 budget, up from $7 million in 2002. Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes visited the Pentagon recently and met with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, telling reporters he was confident that the USA would soon begin helping fill India’s military needs. Lead contractors for the deal are Raytheon Co.’s Hughes Aircraft unit and ITT Industries Inc. Pakistan also received a greater share of military aid from the USA in the proposed 2003 Budget. Indian defence experts are predicting the New Delhi government will boost defence spending by least 15 per cent when it unveils its Budget for the year to March 2003 this week.
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USA to seek Omar Sheikh’s extradition Washington, February 26 They spoke as President George W. Bush, praising Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for his cooperation, said Washington wanted to pursue extradition of the prime suspect in the kidnap, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, under a 71-year-old treaty signed before the state of Pakistan was created. “We’re always interested in dealing with people who have harmed American citizens,” Bush told reporters. US officials said yesterday that Washington considered the treaty, signed with Britain in London in 1931, applied to India in 1942 and then to Pakistan after partition in 1947, and is therefore still in effect. “It’s an issue we will address with the government of Pakistan and we continue to address with the government of Pakistan,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. A senior White House official said the treaty had been used as recently as 2001 when, at Pakistan’s request, the United States extradited Mansur-ul-Haq, a former Pakistani naval chief wanted on corruption charges. US law-enforcement officials stressed that no final decision had been made on whether to bring charges in this country. In Islamabad, stepping up pressure on Pakistan, US Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin met President Pervez Musharraf and raised the issue of extradition of Sheikh Omar, prime suspect in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. As the US Attorney’s office in Washington prepared the groundwork to bring criminal charges against the British-born Omar, Ms Chamberlin met General Musharraf here and “raised the issue” of his extradition, a US Embassy spokesman said. She is reported to have emphasised the need to expedite the investigation into the case.
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Pearl case: cops get threats Islamabad, February 26 The first threatening call was received by the police the day before Pearl’s kidnappers handed over a video cassette in which the journalist was shown beheaded, Pakistan daily ‘The News’ said today. The call was made from Pearl’s mobile phone, it said. Subsequent threatening calls were made to police officials after the video tape was received by the police on February 22. The callers indicated that Pearl was killed on February 20 and not before as claimed by the prime suspect in the case, Sheikh Ahmed Omar Saeed, who surrendered before police on February 5, the report said. However, Pakistani and US investigators who are jointly probing the murder, said Pearl was probably killed on Janaury 30. “There is almost a consensus among the Pakistani and US investigators that Danny was dead when his captors severed his head from the body,” the newspaper quoted a police official in Karachi as saying. “There is not a single shot in the video showing Pearl being killed,” another police official said. He said when Pearl was forced to say on camera that his father and mother were Jews, it might be around January 27, four days after his kidnapping. The video also showed Pearl talking about his grandfather and ancestral place in Israel. “Pearl showed no hesitation is explaining his forefathers’ Jewish background despite knowing that it may cost him his life,” a police official said. “There is no confusion in investigators’ mind that Pearl was killed some time after he was forced to make the statement about his Jewish background,” said an investigator. Some police officials are privately speculating that Pearl might have been gunned down while attempting to escape from the captivity and the decision to slaughter his body could have been an afterthought on the part of his killers, the paper said. The assumption that Pearl was gunned down has also grown from a persistent claim by Sheikh about his killing. Some investigators now believe Sheikh on the ground that the video contained disjointed shots of a haggard Pearl making statements about his religious beliefs, the report said. “When the knife sliced his neck, Daniel was no more a living person,” a source said adding “This leaves us with a critical question, how and under what circumstances Daniel was actually killed.” Also, despite the mounting evidence of Pearl’s murder that had emerged soon after Sheikh’s decision to turn himself over to the authorities, top officials in Islamabad kept President Pervez Musharraf, who was in the USA, in the dark about the depressing developments in the case, the paper said. The officials briefed General Musharraf on February 13 that they were sure Pearl was alive and that they were about to arrest all the perpetrators of his kidnapping. This made General Musharraf to declare at a White House press briefing that he was “reasonably sure that Daniel was still alive” and “we are as close as possible to get him released.”
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Chandrika threatens to cancel truce pact Colombo, February 26 Ms Kumaratunga, who has sweeping powers to sack the government and suspend parliament, has already been highly critical of her arch rival Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, saying that he kept her in the dark about the Norwegian-brokered truce. “I can stop Ranil Wickremesinghe’s agreement with one letter to the army commander,’’ Ms Kumaratunga was quoted by the Daily Mirror newspaper as saying about the agreement that was signed with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on Friday. “There are several suspicious clauses in the agreement with the LTTE. I have appointed a committee to study the agreement and the report would be out in a day or two. Then I will take necessary action,’’ she added. The President has already issued a statement that criticised Mr Wickremesinghe for not informing her that the agreement would be signed. The government has called for a parliamentary debate on the truce to start on Monday.
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Unborn baby saves mother Jerusalem, February 26 Tamara Fisch-Lifshitz (33) was travelling in a car near her home in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank yesterday when shots rang out. A bullet that pierced her stomach narrowly missed the unborn baby and did not hit vital organs, which doctors said had been shifted by her pregnancy. “If she hadn’t been pregnant the injuries would have been a lot more serious,’’ Dr Alon Pikarsky said. Fisch-Lifshitz, now in stable condition, said on Army Radio from her hospital bed: “If I had not been pregnant I would not be alive now.’’ Fisch-Lifshitz’s father and a neighbour were killed in the shooting. But her five-year-old daughter, who sat in the back of the car wearing a bullet-proof vest, escaped unscathed. “She asked me to take off the bullet-proof vest because it was heavy and my father said it would be all right because we are almost home. Then I heard noises... It turned out to be bullets,’’ Fisch-Lifshitz told Army Radio. “I lifted the handbrake and called the emergency number. I looked at my daughter and didn’t see anything wrong although she was covered with a lot blood that had splashed on her’’. Israeli ambulance crews rushed Fisch-Lifshitz to Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital where doctors delivered the baby in a Caesarean section.
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