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Monday,
April 29, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Oppn flays
SC order on referendum
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Israel may
lift Arafat HQ siege Gun law
lapses to blame for bloodbath Ranil
wooing Buddhist clergy 14
Christians die in Indonesia attack
Gen
Lebed dies in copter crash Scribe’s
murder: US body writes to UP Governor 10,000 held in
S. Arabia for overstay Nepal to
extend emergency Syrian dissident
goes on trial
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Oppn flays SC order on referendum Islamabad, April 28 “The top court has buried the constitution,” Jamaat-e-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad said. Ahmed, who filed the writ petition against the referendum being held to determine whether Musharraf can continue in office for another five years, said the ruling surprised the nation. “There is no place in the country from where the people could seek justice. The court decision has vanished the hope for justice. Now it is up to the people to stand up and fight for their rights,” he said. Ahmad strongly condemned Musharraf’s policies, saying: “The General (who came to power in a military coup) had involved army in politics and its repercussions would be fatal for the army and it could lead the country to anarchy.” Alliance for Restoration of Democracy chief Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan asked the military government to abandon its “referendum drama and transfer power to a caretaker government.” “Musharraf had ruined democracy, democratic institutions and aspirations of the people and endangered security and stability of the country,” he told IANS. He hoped political unity would ultimately lead to the ouster of the military regime. He accused Musharraf of dividing the nation by calling the anti-referendum elements as hypocrites. Raja Zafarul Haq, who heads deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N, said though the court has legalised the referendum, the people have decided to boycott it. “Only government employees would cast their vote.” Pakistan People’s Party leader Raza Rabbani said the Supreme Court decision was a great setback to the political process. “It is regrettable that every time, the apex court threw its support behind the military dictator and thus justice relegated into background.” He said the verdict would surely “affect the repute and impartiality of the apex court.” The verdict would provide a cover to “the dictatorial and unconstitutional regime.” Hafiz Hussain Ahmed of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam said Pakistan’s Commonwealth membership had been suspended. If the referendum went ahead, Pakistan would head towards global isolation for ignoring democratic values. Terming the referendum a political blunder, PML-N leader Mushahid Hussain said it would increase political instability. Lahore: The Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD) termed the referendum a drama staged by President Musharraf, even as the Supreme Court gave its nod to the move. A rally, held at the local Minar-e-Pakistan, was attended by some 25,000 persons, reports SADA. The rally was attended by a huge number of political activists of PML-N, PPP and other groups. Addressing the anti-government rally held on Saturday, ARD chief Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan said there was no justification for General Musharraf to stay in power. “He had done much and it was due time he goes back to barracks”, he added. Referring to the military build-up on Pakistan and India’s borders following the December 13 terror attack in New Delhi, he said: “The Indian Army is on the border. There is need of the Pakistan Army there.” The highlight of the rally was a hard-hitting recorded address by PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto, who is living in self-exile in London and Dubai. She demanded that General Musharraf immediately stop holding the referendum, which she termed a fraud with the nation. PPP vice-chairman Makhdoom Amin Fahim damned the government for violating the constitution, reports Online. “We reject General Musharraf, we reject his policies and we reject his referendum baby. We will boycott it. Just to show how popular he is, we will stage public rallies,” he said. “The people won’t allow him in office. They will not respond to referendum and show him his popularity.” PML-N Chairman Raja Zafar-ul Haq said: “Politicians not generals can provide leadership to the country. When they don’t allow a political process how can the democracy flourish. They have stopped the political process.”
IANS |
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Pervez may cut Parliament term Karachi, April 28 Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in October 1999, wants to continue as president for another five years, but has promised to obey a Supreme Court ruling demanding he hold parliamentary elections by October. But he said he might cut Parliament's current five-year term. "Whether it should be four years, three years or should be kept like today, this we could announce before the elections," he told a news conference ahead of a referendum rally in Karachi. He said any proposal to cut Parliament's term would be made public "at least one month prior to the decision so that there is a thorough discussion on it".
Reuters |
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‘Musharraf playing double game’
Washington, April 28 “Independent analysts and some Pakistani officials say General Musharraf’s military government is playing a double game in the crackdown on terrorism,” The Washington Post reported. Experts were quoted as saying that while providing key assistance in the US-led campaign to track down foreign-born terrorists in Pakistan, the Musharraf government had been far less aggressive against its own militants. “Even when the Indian and Pakistani armies do not cross the Line of Control, Islamic separatists from the Pakistani side carry out attacks on the Indian side in the name of the Muslim population there.” Arif Jamal, a Islamabad-based journalist and author who follows radical Islamic community closely, said the Pakistan government insists that the separatist movement in Kashmir is “indigenous” rather than state-supported “but links between the guerrillas and Pakistan’s army are well established.” A Pakistani official said “there may not be any other country in the world which has at least 50,000 non-military personnel ready to give their lives for the state.”
PTI |
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Israel may lift Arafat HQ siege
Jerusalem, April 28 Under the plan, US or British guards would take charge of the four militants convicted on Thursday by an ad hoc Palestinian military court of the killing of Israeli Cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi last October. Israel had demanded their extradition and that of an official accused of smuggling arms for the Palestinian Authority as a condition for removing its tanks from Arafat's compound in the West Bank city of
Ramallah. Meanwhile, an Israeli opened fire in the centre of west Jerusalem, wounding a Palestinian, Israeli military radio reported, quoting police. The man responsible for the shooting, who was arrested, was apparently drunk, the radio said. GENEVA:
A UN fact-finding mission to West Asia, expected to probe allegations of a massacre at the Jenin refugee camp, decided not to leave for Israel on Sunday as planned, team member Cornelio Sommaruga said. “We are not going today,’’ Mr Sommaruga, a former head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said. According to political sources in Jerusalem, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres informed the UN team over the telephone after the Israeli Cabinet decided that conditions were “not yet right’’ for receiving the mission. BETHLEHEM: A lengthy round of negotiations on Sunday failed to produce an agreement to end the 27-day-old Israeli siege of the Church of the Nativity, the chief Palestinian negotiator said. “So far we have reached no solution,” Salah al-Taamari said. But he added, “We agreed on some kinds of principles to clarify our disagreements.” Palestinian and Israeli negotiators met for four-and-a-half hours in their fifth round of discussions on the siege of the church, where some 200 Palestinian gunmen are holed up, including 30 militants wanted by Israel. DUBAI: Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister said in an interview published on Sunday that his country wanted an international peacekeeping force to be sent to West Asia under any deal to end Israeli-Palestinian violence. Prince Saud al-Faisal, who has been in the USA where Crown Prince Abdallah held talks with U.S. President George W. Bush, told the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper that the oil-rich Arab state no longer believed observers — as proposed under a US-brokered plan — would be sufficient.
Reuters, AFP |
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Gun law lapses to blame for bloodbath Erfurt, April 28 Frau Steinhauser, who lived with her 19-year-old son Robert on the new top floor, worked for a local skin clinic. Her husband, from whom she is estranged, heads a department of the giant electronics concern Siemens. Yesterday, the venetian blinds of Robert’s bedroom were pulled down. There was a police van outside and red and white `incident scene’ tape strung across the front garden. This was because, on Friday, Robert went back to his school and slaughtered a quarter of the teaching staff, two of his former schoolmates, a police officer and then himself. It emerged past night that his orgy of lethal violence might have claimed dozens more victims had it not been for the breathtaking courage of one of the very teachers he so hated. Yet, as details of Robert Steinhauser’s life emerged, it became clear he was not a run-of-the-mill young man and that he had been able to do what he did only because of incomprehensible lapses in the framing, or application, of Germany’s gun laws. There were no more than hints at the terrible inner workings of his mind. He had been expelled from his school for dishonest behaviour and had threatened one of his teachers. Yet the law allowed him to keep up to four lethal weapons. He was entitled to own the weapons he carried in Germany’s biggest multiple killing since the massacre at the Munich Olympics. The police said he frequently played truant and forged sick notes to cover his absences. It was this that led to his expulsion from the Gutenberg gymnasium (equivalent to a grammar school) in February. He had amassed large quantities of ammunition. The police found some of it at his home and they discovered 500 rounds in a bag in a lavatory at the school. On Friday before 11 am, Steinhauser, dressed Ninja-style, burst into a classroom and fired wildly, killing a teacher and two students. Then he narrowed his aim: it was the teachers, not their pupils, he was after. Police officers rushed to the school. For one of them, a 42-year-old patrolman, it was to be his last case: he was shot dead. It was the last killing before Steinhauser put an end to his own life. The police said the killing only came to an end when, a history teacher tackled Steinhauser, ripping his mask from his face to reveal his identity. “Robert, this is pointless, but go ahead and shoot me if you want,” a police spokesman quoted the teacher as saying. Steinhauser replied: “That’s it for today.” The teacher then pushed him into Room 111, where the police later found the young killer’s body.
The Observer, London |
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Ranil wooing Buddhist clergy Colombo, April 28 Mr Wickremesinghe yesterday visited two top monks in the hill town of Kandy to reassure them that the Oslo peace process would not divide the country into two separate states, local media reports said. He told the chief priests of two key sects that he rejected the concept of a homeland exclusively for the minority Tamil community in the country’s North and East, a sprawling region which the LTTE wants to carve out as an independent homeland. LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran had said earlier this month that he would give up his armed struggle if the government recognised the areas as a “traditional Tamil homeland” and granted self-determination. Opposition to the Norway’s peace bid gathered force last week with country’s main Opposition People’s Alliance joining a radical Leftist party, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and the Buddhist clergy. They demonstrated against a controversial de-proscription on the LTTE and the setting up of an interim administration to govern the North and East that would be controlled by the Tamil Tigers. Although ethnic Tamils are the only community who live in the northern Jaffna peninsula, the eastern provinces are multi-racial and are home to Sinhalese and Muslims as well. The LTTE wants Colombo to lift its ban on the group clamped in 1998 if it wants the Tigers to attend peace talks due in Thailand. Mr Wickremesinghe has hinted the government could suspend but not remove the ban. He told the chief monks that they would be informed of the progress of the Norway’s bid to bring the government and the LTTE together for peace talks. The Prime Minister had also assured the monks that the LTTE would not be allowed to open its political offices outside the North and East.
IANS |
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14 Christians die in Indonesia attack Jakarta, April 28 Witnesses said the assailants attacked Soya village, on Ambon’s outskirts, early morning, setting 30 homes and a Protestant church ablaze. Six were stabbed to death, including a six-month-old baby. Six others were killed in the fires.
AP |
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Gen Lebed dies
in copter crash Moscow, April 28 He was the Governor of the giant Siberian region of
Krasnoyarsk. He died of injuries suffered when the Mi-8 helicopter carrying him and 13 others crashed near Abakan town in the early hours after it hit an electric power line due to poor visibility, Interfax reported. The 52-year-old ex-paratrooper emerged as a hero during the anti-Gorbachev hard-line coup in August 1991 when he refused to arrest President Boris Yeltsin. His co-passenger, the head of the Yermakovskoye district administration, suffered serious injuries in the crash. In 1999 Lebed was made Governor of the
mineral-rich Krasnoyarsk region. President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Kasyanov have mourned the death and ordered a probe into the crash.
PTI |
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Scribe’s murder: US body writes to UP Governor
Washington, April 28 Pandey, a crime reporter for the Hindi-language daily Jansatta Express, was shot dead at point-blank range at around 10.30 p.m. on April 14 at his home in the residential neighbourhood of Gomtinagar in Lucknow. At least six shots were fired at his head and chest, and it appears he died instantly, says the CPJ letter to Governor Vishnu Kant Shastri. Jansatta Express Editor Ghanshyam Pankaj told the CPJ that Pandey might have been targeted because he was reporting regularly on the activities of criminal gangs. Long journalists have complained that the police was slow to respond to the news of Pandey’s murder.
IANS |
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10,000 held in
S. Arabia for overstay Riyadh, April 28 Another 1,274 expatriates were picked up around the northwestern holy city of Medina. Many of the illegals had failed to leave the desert kingdom after their pilgrimage visas expired. Saudi authorities regularly announce the arrests of mainly Arab and Asian Muslim nationals who arrive in the kingdom for pilgrimage to Mecca, the birthplace of Islam, but then choose to remain there in breach of visa regulations.
AFP |
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Nepal to extend emergency Kathmandu, April 28 The Himalayan kingdom imposed a state of emergency five months ago that gave the army sweeping powers to crush the Maoists. In February, Nepal’s Parliament extended the emergency by three months. It automatically ends on May 25 unless extended by the Parliament. Under Nepal’s Constitution drafted in 1990, the emergency can only be extended by a two-thirds majority vote in the 205-member lower House of Representatives. Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s Nepali Congress party lacks the required votes. Mr Gupta said the government was holding consultations with Opposition groups for getting the emergency rule extended.
Reuters |
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Syrian dissident
goes on trial Damascus, April 28 Turk is also accused of causing division and lying. The 71-year-old, whose lawyers say that he is in poor health, told the security court that there was no evidence to support the charges. Turk spent nearly 18 years in solitary confinement before he was released in 1998. Reuters |
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In videos: Pakistan's Supreme Court has rejected an opposition
plea to halt the April 30 referendum aiming to extend Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf's rule for another five years. (
Israel's Cabinet today approved a proposal by US President George W. Bush that could lead to the lifting of the Israeli siege on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israeli political sources said.
