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Tuesday,
May 7, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Chirac picks campaign aide as
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Deal ‘reached’ on Bethlehem church standoff Jerusalem, May 6 Israeli and the Palestinian negotiators today reportedly agreed on a deal to end the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Palestinian sources said as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon arrived in Washington for talks.
Principal, 2 others shot in Karachi
Hundreds held in Iran drug swoops 21 Maoists die in gunbattles ISI ‘backing’
Chechen ultras
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Chirac picks campaign aide as interim PM Paris, May 6 Raffarin, a 53-year-old senator and former junior minister who played a key role in Chirac’s campaign, will replace Lionel Jospin, the Socialist Prime Minister who resigned earlier today following the defeat of his own bid to become President. His first task will be to draw up the list of ministers of the new government, and then play point man for the right’s battle to win parliamentary elections scheduled in five weeks’ time. Raffarin handled the small business portfolio in the 1995-1997 government of Alain Juppe, a former Prime Minister and Chirac’s closest political confidant. Juppe and Chirac’s Rally for the Republic (RPR) party were swept from government in 1997, when Chirac called miscalculated early legislative elections that resulted in a win for Jospin’s left-wing coalition. The new Prime Minister hails from the provinces along France’s Atlantic coast. He attracted Chirac’s eye for his energetic role in the free-market Liberal Democracy Party allied to the RPR. Yesterday’s election was landslide defeat of far-right leader Le Pen rather than the victory of conservative incumbent Jacques Chirac in the second-round runoff contest that caused most joy. “It’s total joy. It’s the best result that could have been hoped for,” Claude Guilmet, a retired doctor who lived through the Nazi occupation of France, said in the capital’s Marais district that was once a predominantly Jewish quarter. “What’s clear is that for the French and regarding the rest of the world, this is a relief,’’ added Guilmet, 82. “There was a moral trauma in France that made us a bit shameful and a bit scared - especially when one recalls that in Germany, Hitler came to power through democratic means.’’ “The 82 per cent (for Chirac) shows the French are not stupid, that they reject fascism. There is still a vestige of the French Revolution left,’’ Caroline Potiers, a 21-year-old student, said at the Place de la Republique square where about 8,000 people braved the rain to dance to celebratory music. As many as 1,764 registered French voters voted for incumbent Jacques Chirac in the final round of the French Presidential election held at the French Consulate, in Pondicherry yesterday. Out of the 1,888 polled votes, 14 were found invalid. Conservative Chirac registered 94.13 per cent of votes as against the 5.87 per cent by Jean-Marie Le Pen, who polled only 110 votes. The votes were counted last night and the results forwarded to France. Meanwhile, world leaders breathed a collective sigh of relief after the victory of Mr Chirac. “It’s a victory for democracy and a defeat for extremism and the repellent policies Le Pen represents,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair said. “I congratulate President Chirac on what looks set to be an impressive and deserved victory,” he said, just days after the UK was shaken by the success of the far-right anti-immigrant British National Party (BNP) in gaining an albeit small foothold in local government after municipal elections last week. Le Pen’s success in the first round vote two weeks ago had set off a political earthquake in France and shudders throughout Europe over his fiercely anti-immigrant, anti-EU platform. “The extremist, isolationist policies of Jean-Marie Le Pen have been rejected and crushed,” said European Commission president Romano Prodi. “Today the French people have once again demonstrated that their nation belongs to the heart of Europe,” he said in a message congratulating the conservative Chirac. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder concurred. “The French people have rejected extremism without ambiguity,” he wrote in a message of congratulations to Chirac. “A policy of demagogy, contemptuous of our common values and the abandonment of Europe, is not the model to follow,” he said, referring to Le Pen’s pledge to pull France out of the European Union if he won power. “Xenophobia and populism have lost,” said Antonio Tajani, who represents Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia in the Strasbourg-based European Parliament.
Reuters, AFP, UNI |
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Over 300 bodies fished out Dhaka, May 6 Rescue workers, hampered by stormy weather, were searching for more bodies from the ferry which sank on Friday, while authorities were trying to identify those already recovered. “The number of deaths from the ferry disaster has already reached 300 and may go up further. Searchers are still looking for bodies, ” Hossain told newsmen. Nearly 100 people were rescued when the ferry sank and other passengers managed to reach the shore by themselves, officials said. Many bodies have been swept away in the strong currents of the Meghna river, where the three-decked M.V. Salahuddin-2 sank. Up to 300 persons are believed to have drowned when the three-deck M.V. Salahuddin-2 sank 170 km south of Dhaka on Friday in a storm. Witnesses and officials said fresh rainstorms sweeping much of the country today were hampering efforts to return bodies to relatives or bury them. “The ferry was refloated late yesterday night and towed to the shore,” Manzur Elahi, an official in the district of Chandpur, where the ferry sank, told Reuters over the telephone. Later, the police said 271 bodies had been recovered. The authorities have launched an investigation to determine why the ferry sank, but some survivors said it was badly overloaded. The number of passengers may never be known as most ferries do not keep passenger lists, officials said. A television reporter at the scene near Shatnal, a rural area, said a large number of bodies lay scattered on the river’s shore. Home Minister Altaf Hossain Chowdhury today cancelled a visit to the site of the disaster after bad weather prevented his helicopter from taking off, his office said. Rescue officials said yesterday’s storms forced them to suspend two attempts to refloat the ferry. However, tugboats towed the ferry to the shore later that night. Mainul Hasan, a journalist in coastal Barisal district, said that the families of the dead or missing were waiting anxiously for news. “They spent a sleepless night after the local authorities asked them to wait for the bodies but none has arrived yet,” he said. Officials said the storms and accompanying rain damaged hundreds of houses as well as rice fields with crops ready for harvest. “The stormy weather is likely to continue for two to three more days,” said Samarendra Karmakar, Deputy Director of Bangladesh Meteorology Department.
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Deal ‘reached’ on Bethlehem church standoff Jerusalem, May 6 While details of the deal were not available, the sources were quoted as saying that they had reached a draft agreement with Israelis to end the 34-day-old standoff. Of the more than 100 persons still inside the church, six to eight senior Palestinian militants would be deported to Italy, about 30 others would be escorted to the Gaza Strip and rest would be freed, they said. Israeli defence sources, however, denied that any deal had been reached yet but Palestinian officials were reported as saying that the accord had been worked out by the Vatican and the European Union. The most contentious issue in the negotiations is the number of Palestinians currently inside the church who would be sent into temporary exile or taken elsewhere. More than 200 Palestinians, including about 30 gunmen, took refuge in the church on April 2 during Israeli military operations in West Bank towns to destroy what Tel Aviv called “terrorist infrastructure’’. Israeli forces surrounded the church, which marks the traditional birthplace of Jesus, demanding that the gunmen surrender or be exiled. Palestinian sources were quoted as saying that talks aimed at ending the standoff at the church were deadlocked over Israel’s demand to put on trial the Palestinian militants holed up inside the church. Reports said the Israelis and the Palestinians had agreed to deport some of the gunmen holed up in the church for a period of time, although the exact number to be deported had not been finalised.
PTI |
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Principal, 2 others shot in Karachi
Karachi, May 6 The principal was identified as Zafar Mehdi, head of a government-run technical college. The police did not provide names for the other two men. It said four gunmen on two motorcycles sped off after the shooting. “All the three people were rushed to hospital in serious condition where they later died,” the police official Mohammed Aslam told AP. No group claimed responsibility for the shooting, which occurred a day after a member of an outlawed extremist Sunni group was assassinated in Karachi in an apparently religiously motivated killing thought to be carried out by Shia extremists. Meanwhile, the death of three Rwandan nationals in Islamabad’s diplomatic zone has worried the police, already under fire for security lapses in areas reserved for foreign missions. “We are sure they died after consuming something poisonous, possibly poisonous liquor,” area police officer Inspector Sheikh Zubair said. “The deaths could be planned murders or they might have taken poisonous liquor or something else mistakenly,” said the police officer. There were no signs of torture or wounds on any of the bodies. The three foreigners, including Ally Saleh Hashmat, an 18-year-old refugee from Rwanda, were found dead on Sunday in an apartment in the diplomatic enclave. After the church attack, the government removed top police officials, including the Inspector-General of Islamabad police, and directed law enforcement agencies to tighten security around the enclave, the most sensitive part of the capital.
AP, IANS |
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Hundreds held in Iran drug swoops Tehran, May 6 With youth unemployment high and few diversions available, some two million Iranians are either addicts or regular users of drugs, mostly smuggled from the neighbouring Afghanistan and sold cheaply in Iran’s streets and parks. Police spokesman Qader Karimi said some 80 kg of hashish, 40 kg of opium and 12 kg of heroin were captured in the drug busts. “In the operations, six bandits, 48 drug distributors, 215 drug dealers, 52 smugglers and 177 addicts were arrested and handed down to judiciary officials,” Mr Karimi told the agency. The police last month seized four tonnes of opium, with a street value of $ 4.5 million, destined for Turkey and Europe in the southeastern province of Kerman. Iran accounts for some 80 per cent of opium and 90 per cent of morphine seizures worldwide, international drug agencies say. The police captured 112 tonnes of drugs and arrested 3,06,000 persons on drug-related charges in the last Iranian year which ended in March. The head of Tehran’s drug squad called on European countries to do more to help the Islamic Republic’s fight against trafficking, newspapers said today. Iran is a major transit route from Afghanistan and Pakistan, the so-called “Golden Crescent”, to markets in Europe and the oil-rich Gulf states.
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21 Maoists die in gunbattles
Kathmandu, May 6 Nepali troops last week stepped up an offensive against the rebels, who have said they are ready to hold peace talks, and killed nearly 400 guerrillas in the western part of the Himalayan kingdom. A defence ministry spokesman said 12 guerrillas were shot dead in two separate battles in Rolpa district in western Nepal while another three died in clashes with soldiers in neighbouring Myagdi in the past 24 hours. The rest were killed in separate gunbattles across the trouble-torn nation. Meanwhile, in the first action of its kind, security forces raided a mosque and shot dead two suspected Islamic militants, who are said to have worked in an ammunition factory in India, and arrested three Imams on charges of making explosives. The two, Asif Ali and Chiraguddin, were shot dead in Madarbaba mosque located in a village in Nawalparasi district, bordering western Champaran district in Bihar yesterday, a local newspaper reported today. They were shot dead when they tried to escape after security personnel raided the mosque following a tip off that explosives were hidden inside, the ‘Kantipur’ daily said. A report quoting officials said the duo had worked at an ammunition factory in India. Four pipe-bombs and bomb making devices were recovered from the mosque, the daily said, adding three Imams have been arrested for their suspected involvement in making explosives inside. Meanwhile, Nepalese Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba left yesterday to meet US President George W. Bush in Washington tomorrow. He will travel to London to meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair on May 11. Mr Deuba’s trip comes as security forces claim to have killed more than 350 guerrillas in gunbattles and air attacks in western Nepal since Thursday. Mr Deuba intends to call on the USA and the UK to help his country to crush the Maoist rebels amid the deadliest fighting in the guerrillas’ six-year insurgency to replace the nation’s constitutional monarchy.
Reuters, PTI, AP |
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ISI ‘backing’
Chechen ultras Moscow, May 6 "We have established facts of links and support of Chechen extremists by the intelligence services of Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Jordan," the chief of the Counter-Intelligence Department of FSB, Col-Gen Oleg Syromolotov said. Russia has become a "prime object" of foreign spying agencies, which have adopted an "aggressive and more intricate" approach in their activities, Itar-Tass said. In the past two years, 260 officers of foreign intelligence services were unmasked and 40 of them caught redhanded. About 100 foreign agents, including six Russian nationals, were "neutralised" by the counter-intelligence arm of the FSB, he said.
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