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Saturday,
April 6, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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UN Council
for immediate Israeli withdrawal
Al-Qaida
bounties for coalition troops? UNITA,
army sign ceasefire Man gets
death for killing Indian |
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Pant not
to meet any Pak leaders PPP
protest on Bhutto hanging anniversary Nobel
panel regrets Peace prize for Peres New
twist to Martin Luther King murder
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UN Council for immediate Israeli withdrawal
United Nations, April 5 The vote was 15-0, with the United States of America for the third time in a month voting for a West Asia resolution after blocking such measures for more than a year. Even Syria, which had split from Arab nations by abstaining or walking out of the council during the two previous votes, approved Thursday’s resolution, which the United States of America had revised from a draft from Syrian Ambassador Mikhail Wehbe. The resolution demands implementation “without delay” of the council’s resolution 1402, adopted last Saturday. It called for a “meaningful cease-fire” and Israeli troop withdrawal from Palestinian cities, including Ramallah where Palestinian President Yasser Arafat is surrounded by Israeli tanks and troops. At the suggestion of US Ambassador John Negroponte, it welcomes the mission of Powell to the region next week as well as efforts of envoys from Russia, the European Union and the United Nations “to bring about a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the West Asia”. Meanwhile, Syria and Israel have lashed out at each other over clashes on their border with Lebanon, with Secretary-General Kofi Annan blaming Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas for fomenting conflict.
Both Israel and Annan fear a second front may be opened across the so-called “blue line,’’ a border marked by the United Nations after Israel ended its occupation of southern Lebanon in May 2000. Lebanon and Syria, the power broker in Lebanon, object to the frontier, saying it should include the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms area, which Annan said was part of Syria. WASHINGTON: President Bush launched a dramatic change of course on urging Israel to withdraw from Palestinian areas and ordering Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region to revive cease-fire talks. Bush, criticised for not doing enough to halt the spiral of violence, signalled intensified US involvement in a hastily arranged speech of Thursday in which he shifted from largely pressuring Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to stop suicide bombings in Israel to saying that Israel itself must take steps to reduce the atmosphere of violence. “The storms of violence cannot go on,” Bush said in a surprise appearance in the White House Rose Garden with Powell at his side. “Enough is enough. ...When an 18-year-old Palestinian girl is induced to blow herself up and in the process kills a 17-year-old Israeli girl, the future itself is dying — the future of the Palestinian people and the future of the Israeli people,” Bush said. Bush’s speech was welcomed by European leaders, US lawmakers and analysts who had argued that the US President’s seeming detachment and his use of a lower-level envoy, Anthony Zinni, was insufficient to stop the clashes. NABLUS (West Bank): At least nine Palestinians were killed in overnight fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin, Palestinian security officials and witnesses today said. The sources said at least eight persons had been killed and 24 wounded, six of them seriously, in Nablus, the West Bank’s biggest city, in the latest bloodshed in Israel’s eight-day-old offensive launched after a suicide bomber killed 26 Israelis. Israeli military sources confirmed two Palestinian dead in Nablus, saying they were combatants. Three soldiers were killed in Jenin refugee camp yesterday.
Reuters |
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In-camera trial of Sheikh Omar begins
Karachi, April 5 Only close relatives of the accused were permitted to enter the makeshift courtroom in Karachi’s Central Prison, and journalists were kept waiting outside under armed guard. British-born Islamic militant Sheikh Omar, the prime suspect and self-confessed kidnapper, entered the courtroom through a back entrance amid tight security. He appeared along with three other suspects — Sheikh Adil, Salman Saquib and Fahad Naseem — accused of sending e-mails showing pictures of the Wall Street Journal reporter with a gun to his head. Seven other accused are at large. All accused have been charged with murder, kidnapping for ransom and terrorist activities, which carry a maximum penalty of death. The Sindh High Court yesterday dismissed a petition from Omar’s defence team to have the trial held in a normal courtroom, saying that security was the paramount concern. Five Pakistani journalists presented a petition to the jail authorities demanding to be allowed to observe the trial but were told that the Sindh provincial Home Office had issued clear orders that reporters could not attend. A press briefing is expected to be held at the conclusion of the session, but at this stage only a member of the prosecution team was scheduled to address reporters.
AFP |
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Al-Qaida bounties
for coalition troops? Bagram, Afghanistan, April 5 Leaflets have been distributed in the eastern province of Paktia, where the US-led coalition forces are now concentrating their campaign against diehard enemy fighters, the US army spokesman said. They pledge rewards of $ 100,000 for the capture and 50,000 for killing a coalition soldier. The spokesman said the focus of the campaign was on eastern Afghanistan, in the wake of a rocket attack on coalition forces on Wednesday. Five tube-launched rockets were fired at a unit in the Shahi Kot valley, more than two weeks after "Operation Anaconda" ended.
AFP |
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UNITA, army sign ceasefire
Luanda, April 5 The formal ceremony in Luanda came after top military and UNITA officials, negotiating in the eastern town of Lwena, agreed on Saturday to end the war after the battlefield death in February of rebel leader Jonas Savimbi. On Wednesday, President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos pledged in a message to the shattered nation that the war, which had ravaged Angola since independence from Portugal in 1975, was finally over and that free elections would be held. “The war is over and peace has come back for good,” Dos Santos said in his message ahead of the formal signing ceremony.
AFP |
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Man gets death for killing Indian
Dallas, April 5 The same Dallas jury that convicted Mark Stroman (32), of capital murder on Tuesday condemned him to death for the slaying last October of Vasudev Patel (49), a naturalised US citizen from India. Stroman, who maintained his actions were the result of his anger over the September 11 attacks, is also charged in September 15 shooting death of Waqar Hassan, a convenience store owner from Karachi (Pakistan) and the wounding of Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Bangladeshi immigrant shot at the gas station where he worked on September 21. Stroman showed no reaction when the sentence was read. But as he rose to be led out of court, he saluted in the direction of the Bench and said: “Thank you, Judge”. The hijack attacks on New York and the Pentagon prompted violence against Arab-Americans and people who appeared to their attackers to be of Middle Eastern descent, as well as vandalism against mosques.
Reuters |
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Pant not to meet
any Pak leaders Islamabad, April 5 According to indications here, there is no meeting on the cards between Mr Pant and General Musharraf and any of the Kashmiri leaders. Mr Pant will, during the Sunday inauguration of the three-day SAARC conference, come face to face and exchange pleasantries with General Musharraf and his Cabinet Ministers. There were expectations of such a meeting during Minister of Information and Broadcasting Sushma Swaraj’s visit here to attend the SAARC Information Minister’s Conference last month.
UNI |
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PPP protest on Bhutto hanging anniversary
Rawalpindi (Pakistan), April 5 Prayers at the site of Bhutto’s hanging in
Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, and at his grave in the southern province of Sindh turned into protests against President Pervez Musharraf’s plans to hold a referendum to seek five more years in power, witnesses and party sources said. “Referendum is rejected,’’ hundreds of PPP activists chanted yesterday at the site of a jail where Bhutto was hanged by the then military ruler General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq after a controversial conspiracy to murder conviction. The police immediately grabbed former PPP Senator Sardar Mohammad Saleem and whisked him away in a car as he started a solo anti-referendum march to the Parliament House in Islamabad in defiance of a government ban on political demonstrations. PPP officials said thousands of people assembled at Bhutto’s grave at Garhi Khuda Bakhsh near the Sindh town of Larkana and chanted slogans against the military rule.
Reuters |
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Nobel panel regrets Peace prize for Peres
Oslo, April 5 Hanna Kvanmo is one of the five members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that chose to award the prize in 1994 to Mr Peres, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israel’s late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. “What is happening today in Palestine is grotesque and unbelievable. Mr Peres is responsible, as part of the government. He has expressed his agreement with what (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon is doing,” she said. Ms Kvanmo said, however, that “at the time, it was a correct decision” to honour Mr Peres.
AFP |
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New twist to Martin Luther King murder
Washington, April 5 "My father was the main guy," said Florida Reverend Ronald Denton Wilson, 61, adding that Henry Clay Wilson, who died in 1990, led a group of three conspirators in shooting the King to death. "It wasn't a racist thing. He thought Martin Luther King was connected with Communism, and he wanted to get him out of the way," Rev Wilson said of his father.
AFP |
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Mine blast kills 16 Beijing, April 5 |
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