 |
Wednesday,
April 17, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
|
Bench to hear petitions against Musharraf On Osama trail: USA to ‘strike’ in Pakistan Pak obsession with Kashmir shows up at UN
Lanka may lift ban on LTTE |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
2000-year-old letter found
|
|
Bench to hear petitions against Musharraf Islamabad, April 16 The petitions filed by a leader of Pakistan’s fundamentalist Jamat-e-Islami and also by the Rawalpindi Bar Association would be heard tomorrow by special Supreme Court Bench headed by Chief Justice Sheikh Riaz Ahmad, local newspaper Dawn, reported today. However, the court was unlikely to take up another petition seeking a declaration that there was no bar in the Constitution to prevent General Musharraf from holding a referendum to fill the vacuum created after the resignation of elected President Mohammad Rafiq Tarar, it said. The petition by Maulvi Iqbal Haider could not be taken up as it was incomplete and failed to attach a judgement of the Sindh High Court, which it quoted in support of its case, the paper said. The petitions questioning the legality of the referendum gained significance as most of the mainstream political parties as well as Pakistani media termed the referendum to be held on April 30 as “unconstitutional”. The petitioners also sought an immediate stay order on holding the referendum. Already a judge of the Baluchistan High Court, Mr Justice Tariq Mehmood, who was appointed as one of the members of the five-member Election Commission has resigned questioning the legality of the commission holding the referendum.
PTI |
|
|
I’ll abide by SC verdict on referendum: Pervez Islamabad, April 16 General Musharraf admitted that Pakistan faced a destabilising situation due to internal as well as external reasons which affected the flow of much-needed foreign investment. He told reporters here that while he dealt with the internal situation by reinforcing law and order machinery, he also made efforts to ease the tensions at the border with India through diplomatic means. He said efforts were being made to ease the situation without buckling under pressure. He promised to abide by the Supreme Court verdict on the constitutional validity of the referendum to be held on April 30. “I will abide by the verdict of the Supreme Court on the legality of the referendum as it is the competent authority,” he said. The petitions challenging the validity of the referendum will come up for hearing on April 22.
PTI |
|
On Osama trail: USA to ‘strike’ in Pakistan
Washington, April 16 Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca was in Islamabad last month to seek President Pervez Musharraf’s permission to raid Pakistan’s mountainous border with Afghanistan, the Time said quoting sources in Islamabad. General Musharraf, however, has not given his consent so far because the fierce tribes of the region are well armed and sympathetic to Afghanistan’s former Taliban regime, and he fears that US military offensive in the area could weaken his position, the magazine said. “The US authorities now seem convinced that Bin Laden was hiding in the mountains bordering Afghanistan. That conviction may have been bolstered by a cache of documents and computer discs found in Abu Zubaydah’s hide-out in Faisalabad, from where he was captured,” the Time said. “If intelligence from the Abu Zubaydah raid has added to the US evidence that Bin Laden is hiding in the borderlands, General Musharraf’s decision may get tougher yet,” the magazine said.
UNI |
||
|
Pak obsession with Kashmir shows up at UN IT was another opportunity at the United Nations on Monday that Pakistan would not miss to call for “a just, lasting and honourable settlement” of the Kashmir issue, and urge the Security Council to restore its “credibility and legitimacy” and work as true instrument of peace and security as mandated by the charter. In doing so, Pakistan’s Ambassador Shamshad Ahmad, in an obvious reference to India, and ignoring New Delhi’s charge of cross-border terrorism, said those who employed state apparatus to trample upon fundamental and inalienable rights of people were also perpetrators of terrorism. The occasion for raising the Kashmir issue was a day-long review by the Security Council of the work of its Counter-Terrorism Committees set up in pursuance of an anti-terrorism resolution adopted by the Council in the wake of the September 11 attacks against the USA. Mr Ahmad told the Council that Pakistan rejected and condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. It had never condoned such actions and had been cooperating with the international community in combating that “universal evil”. Pakistan was determined to do what was right and just, the Ambassador said. Mr Ahmad said: “These are unusual times demanding exceptional responses. In effectively confronting terrorism, we cannot be oblivious of the need to address the source of this problem at its roots. It is time for courageous decisions, for correcting historical wrongs, and redressing endemic injustices. Our universal obligation to fight terrorism must not deflect us from the need for a just, lasting and honourable settlement of the Kashmir and Palestine issues.” India was not among the some 30 countries that participated in the Security Council debate. The committee Chairman, Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock informed the Council that the panel had received 143 reports on the steps taken by member states in compliance with the series of measures against international terrorism the Council had mandated in its resolution adopted on September 28 last year. Mr Greenstock urged the remaining 50 states to submit their reports “as soon as possible”. Mr Greenstock pledged that the committee would “check the facts of the legislative picture, the administrative action taken, and the way in which these tools are being used to prevent the territory of each state from being abused by terrorists.” He added: “It is in the interests of all states that their neighbours have proper safeguards in place to deal with terrorism, and regional organisations have a key role to play ensuring that action is taken across the region. It will add impetus to our work if countries of similar geographical and cultural identity cooperate proactively to keep terrorism out of their region.” A statement issued by the Security Council’s current President, Ambassador Sergy Lavrov of the Russian Federation, said the committee was invited to identify issues on which concerted international action would “further the implementation of the letter and spirit” of the Council resolution. |
||
|
How to make atomic bomb London, April 16 The Daily Telegraph newspaper said the ministry had also released papers to the Public Record Office describing ways that such a bomb could be smuggled into the country. A Ministry of Defence spokesman said he had no comment to make on the report. Fears over nuclear terrorism have heightened worldwide since the September 11 hijacking attacks in the USA. Retired engineer Brian
Burnell, who worked on the British atomic weapons programme, told the paper the plans were enough to enable a terrorist to make an atomic bomb without difficulty. “These documents should never have been declassified and since the events of September 11 there is a case for removing them from public access,” he was quoted as saying. The main opposition Conservative Party’s defence spokesman Bernard Jenkins told the Telegraph the files were “a monstrous free gift to terrorists”. The paper said the files related to the construction of Blue Danube, the first British atomic bomb, which was built in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The plans gave complete cross-sections, precise measurements and full details of materials used for all components, including the plutonium core and the initiator that sets off the chain reaction causing the blast, the paper said. Mr Burnell said a prospective bombmaker would need only a basic machine shop and the right components — including weapons-grade plutonium — to make the bomb according to the instructions in the files. The plans, available for anyone to see, are contained in files released to the Public Record Office over the past five years, the Telegraph said.
Reuters |
|
Lanka may lift ban on LTTE Colombo, April 16 “We have to consider removing the ban on the LTTE without affecting the international ban,” he told reporters in the beach resort of Bentota, 65 km south of Colombo, yesterday, where he met Norwegian peace facilitators headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Vidar Helgesen. He said the LTTE had raised the issue and serious consideration had to be given to it. The government was also prepared to discuss it in Parliament, he added. The LTTE, banned early in 1998 in Sri Lanka, long after it was outlawed in India and the USA, has made its de-proscription a key pre-condition before it joins preliminary talks with the government. Meanwhile, IMF has resumed disbursements to Sri Lanka under a $ 253-million standby loan programme. The IMF board approved the immediate release of a $ 60-million tranche that was frozen last year when reforms to which it was linked were derailed by political turmoil under the government’s left-leaning predecessor. The ruling UNP’s maiden budget last month coupled tax, finance and labour reforms with belt-tightening to slash state-sector losses and a budget deficit that ballooned to 10.8 per cent of the gross domestic product last year.
Agencies |
|
2000-year-old letter found Beijing, April 16 The letter written on a piece of silk, 18 cm long and 8 cm wide, has been found in the Xuanquanzhi ruins near the famous Dunhuang Mogao Grottos in northwest China’s Gansu province, Xinhua news agency reported today. The writer of the letter sent his greetings and wishes from the frontier of the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) in the remote western region to his friend in an inland area of China. The letter is so far the best preserved personal letter from the Han dynasty, according to archaeologists. The Xuanquanzhi ruins are located at an important pass of the Silk Road. Ruins of beacon towers built during the Han, Jin and Qing dynasties over more than 1,000 years can still be found near the Xuanquanzhi ruins today.
PTI |
 |
| Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir | Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs | Nation | Editorial | | Business | Sport | World | Mailbag | In Spotlight | Chandigarh Tribune | Ludhiana Tribune 50 years of Independence | Tercentenary Celebrations | | 122 Years of Trust | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
