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Friday,
May 3, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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ARD may
boycott Oct poll
Israel
ends Arafat’s siege ‘Khalistan’
lobbyist ‘tricks’ US lawmakers Turkey to
deport 116 Indians |
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Rocket
attack on US troops
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ARD may boycott Oct poll
Islamabad, May 2 The ARD, a loose alliance of political parties opposed to the military regime, has convened the meeting next week after President Pervez Musharraf won the April 30 referendum for continuing as President for five more years. “The alliance may decide to boycott the October elections under the present regime,” a senior ARD leader told IANS. He said it was shocking that the Election Commission had announced that voter turnout was 51 per cent. Opposition parties have been claiming the voter turnout was around 5 per cent. “This is enough to doubt the transparency of the referendum and the future elections by the present regime,” he said, on condition of anonymity. Terming the results of Tuesday’s referendum as “fake and exaggerated”, the opposition parties have demanded resignation of President Pervez Musharraf and Chief Election Commissioner Irshad Hassan Khan charging them with holding a “sham” vote. Shortly after Khan announced the results late last night, the mainstream political and religious parties started asking for Musharraf’s resignation and reconstitution of the Election Commission with independent officials. President of Jamaat-e-Islami Qazi Hussain Ahmad said the President should adhere to the “real verdict” of the people and step down. Rejecting the results, Ahmad demanded immediate resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner to ensure transparency in the general elections to be held in October. Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, ARD chief, demanded setting up of a caretaker government as well as an independent election commission to hold the general election. The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), one of the major components of the ARD, had boycotted the 1985 poll held under Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul Haq’s martial law. “There is likelihood that the PPP and PML (Pakistan Muslim League) would agree to a boycott of the October elections... but it would be premature to say any final thing at this moment,” he said. Observers have expressed shock over the heavy turnout figures given by the Election Commission, especially as independent reports and a majority of newspapers had said polling stations in most areas remained deserted Tuesday. With over 43.9 million votes cast, more than 42.8 million ballots supported extending President Pervez Musharraf’s term and about one million were against, according to the Election Commission, with the remaining votes being invalid. Hussain Naqi, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), which carried out poll monitoring, said voluntary participation was no more than 5 per cent of eligible voters in Lahore, and 3 and 5 per cent in Karachi. Observers say the vote does nothing to legitimise continued military rule and is likely to strengthen Musharraf’s opponents. Pakistan’s most powerful Islamic party had called for Musharraf’s removal even before the referendum. Now other political parties are following suit. “Several Pakistani journalists and officials of non-governmental groups said they had voted as many as eight times at different locations, just to test the system,” says Naqi. Naqi said a group of European nuns and at least two western tourists in Lahore said they had voted just for the fun of it. Voters’ thumbs were marked with what officials said was indelible ink but others found could be washed away easily. Washington: The Bush administration appears noncommittal on the April 30 referendum that gave Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf another five years in office. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher on Wednesday said it was for the Pakistani people to judge what the referendum, in which Musharraf got 98 per cent of the votes cast, meant to the country’s political future. He said the USA primary interest was seeing a legitimate return to democratic rule through free and fair elections and believed the most crucial element in that would be the provincial and national elections planned for October. “President Musharraf has promised to bring Pakistan back to democratic rule. He has confirmed repeatedly the elections on a national and a provincial level to be held in October. We’ve always focused on that as an important milestone in terms of achieving a return to democracy. And that remains what we’re focused on at this point,” Boucher said. “He has promised to do it, he has moved in that direction, he has reiterated the promises, and he’s also made some fairly significant statements about the general course that he intends to lead Pakistan in.” Boucher said the USA looked forward to a period of “healthy political debate” in advance of the October vote in which all the parties could express their views freely and bring their case to the public without hindrance. Prominent Democratic Congressman Frank Pallone, in a statement on the floor of the US House of Representatives, said: “An extension of his military regime will mean more encouragement to terrorism in Kashmir and ultimately, I unfortunately think, the greater likelihood of war with India.”
IANS, PTI |
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Israel ends Arafat’s siege
Ramallah, West Bank, May 2 But in a sign that tensions remain high, fierce fighting broke out overnight between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen in a standoff at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and Israeli troops briefly raided the West Bank town of Tulkarm. In New York, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he would call off a UN mission to investigate Israel’s assault on the Jenin refugee camp and Palestinian allegations of a massacre there, after failing to secure Israeli cooperation. The army confirmed it had pulled the last of its troops and tanks away from Arafat’s compound early today but were expected to keep Ramallah, the Palestinians’ main commercial and political hub, surrounded by a ring of armour. Arafat condemned Israel’s stranglehold on Bethlehem, where Israeli flares lit up the Church of the Nativity during the night. A fire broke out at the church, where gunmen are surrounded by troops, but was quickly put out. “It is not important what happened to me here. What is important is what is happening in the Church of the Nativity. This is a crime,” Arafat, trembling with fury, told reporters in his offices in the badly damaged compound. The Ramallah pullout was quickly followed by the incursion into Tulkarm, where witnesses said troops searched houses and mosques. The army said it arrested five persons suspected of attacks on Israelis before pulling out after about six hours. Under the deal to end the siege, Palestinian, U S and British officials escorted six men into armoured vehicles which took them out of Arafat’s compound to detention in Jericho, which will be supervised by a U S and British team. Annan said he cancelled the UN mission to probe Israel’s assault on Jenin camp after Israel frustrated the United Nations with a series of conditions it was unable to meet. Meanwhile, a report from Jerusalem said Israeli troops seized 15 Palestinians in a series of overnight raids in the West Bank, as per a military spokesman today. They included six members of the radical Islamic Jihad movement near Nablus and five Palestinians “suspected of terrorist activity in Tulkarm. BETHLEHEM: Israeli soldiers shot and killed an armed Palestinian and wounded at least two others in Church of the Nativity today. “Our forces spotted several gunmen in the church courtyard and opened fire. One died on the spot, and the rest, some of them wounded, fled into the church,” an army spokeswoman said. She said the army had handed the body over to the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance services, and agreed to a request by the Palestinians holed up in the church for a month to treat three men reportedly wounded in the incident. “However, only two men emerged. One was taken to hospital and the other was treated at the scene,” she said. Witnesses inside the church identified the dead man as a member of the Palestinian security services, saying that he had bled to death as Israeli gunfire prevented anyone approaching him.
Reuters, AFP |
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‘Khalistan’ lobbyist ‘tricks’ US lawmakers The Khalistan issue may be dead as dodo, but Dr G.S. Aulakh, self-styled president of the so-called Council of Khalistan, has, over the years, successfully misled a few US Congressmen into believing his cause and taking an anti-India stance. Now, he has got into trouble on Capitol Hill, facing accusations from House foreign policy aides that he has “tricked” them into signing letters in support of his cause. According to a report in The Hill, a publication on US Congress, Ms Courtney Anderson, senior legislative assistant to Republican Congressman John Shimkus, claims that Dr Aulakh misled her office by implying to a junior staffer that Mr Shimkus had agreed to sign a letter to President Bush calling for the release of political prisoners in India. Ms Anderson says Dr.Aulakh had already printed Mr.Shimkus’ name in the letter, leaving the junior staffer to assume that the office had agreed to sign it. Predictably, Dr Aulakh, who is an American citizen, has vehemently denied that he misled anyone, and calling the accusations “ridiculous”, blames the complaints against him on the Indian embassy and its lobbyist, who, he says, pressure Congressmen not to sign his letters. “They are doing their jobs and we are doing ours,” he was quoted by The Hill as saying. But, The Hill quotes one aide with ties to the 131-member Congressional India Caucus as saying that Aulakh has been getting away with tricking staffers into signing letters for several years. Mr Shimkus has written to the Committee on House Administration about the incident involving Dr Aulakh, urging action to warn members and their staff to be cautious when a letter is circulated by a representative of an outside organisation and not a Congressional staff member. |
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Turkey to deport 116 Indians London, May 2 “They will be repatriated once we are able to establish their identities,” Indian Consul-General in Istanbul
R.P. Singh said on telephone. The Turkish police detained the youths, mostly from the Doaba region of Punjab, after they were found to have entered the country illegally. “We have informed all regional passport offices about these youths,” Mr
R.P. Singh said. According to present indications, the passport office in Jalandhar issued the passports of 101 of the detainees and that in Chandigarh the rest. “But they (detainees) have nothing with them, and not all of them could give their passport numbers,” he said. The Tribune newspaper had reported on Thursday that an endless quest for a bright future and greener pastures in the West, coupled with the monstrous lust of travel agents for easy money had landed the youths in trouble.
IANS |
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Rocket attack on US troops Bagram, Afghanistan, May 2 The spokesman, Maj Bryan Hilferty, said the rocket or mortar fire occurred in the eastern city of Khost. US officials have confirmed that two Apache attack helicopters were recently sent there to provide air support to the Royal Marines.
Reuters |
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Lindbergh
scion replicates feat Le Bourget, Paris, May 2 In a single-engine plane dubbed New Spirit of St. Louis, Erik Lindbergh (37) careered along the tarmac at Le Bourget airport, near Paris, just as his grandfather did in 1927, after a 17-hour flight from New York. It took Charles Lindbergh 33 hours, 29 minutes to make it across the Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis on the first solo non-stop trip in history. Erik Lindbergh’s trip marked the 75th anniversary of the original flight, when the intrepid pilot was 25, and was also timed to coincide with what would have been his 100th birthday.
Reuters |
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Israeli
forces completed their withdrawal from Yasser Arafat’s West Bank
compound today under a US-brokered deal, ending a one-month siege of the
Palestinian leader.
Video
