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Tuesday,
May 21, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Pak
parties ask Pervez to quit Pakistan
for talks to resolve Kashmir Independent
East Timor awakes to new dawn Bush was
told about Sept 11 attack
Suicide-bomber
blows himself PLO
leader’s son dies in car blast Pearl’s
neck was severed? |
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Curfew
in Kandahar goes
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Pak parties ask Pervez to quit
Islamabad, May 20 General Musharraf should resign both as President and Chief of the Army to form a caretaker government which is better suited to handle the crisis, 30 political and religious parties said in a unanimous resolution adopted at a quickly convened meeting in Lahore yesterday. The meeting was held amid moves by General Musharraf to call an all-party conference to discuss steps being taken to deal with rising tensions with India. “The President must resign immediately.... The demand for Musharraf’s resignation even at a time when India has taken an aggressive posture against Pakistan is important because the General doesn’t enjoy the moral or constitutional authority to take decisions at this juncture,” the Chairman of the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy, Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, said. “No individual isolated from the masses can be a best leader while the nation is in a state of war,” he told reporters after the meeting. Nawabzada Khan, however, did not give a categorical answer when asked if ARD constituents would attend the all-party conference to be convened by the government. The resolution also demanded the appointment of “a full-time chief of army staff who can devote his whole-hearted attention to the defence of Pakistan and to meeting the threat to national security and territorial integrity”. The meeting also asked India to “desist from any aggression” and resolve all outstanding issues with Pakistan through negotiations. The parties’ demand came as Federal Information Minister Nisar Memon appealed for national unity. “This is a national situation and everybody should come forward and support the government to respond to the situation”, he said. The meeting was attended by a number of parties, including Pakistan Peoples Party, Pakistan Muslim League and Jamat-e-Islami. General Musharraf stood “discredited” after committing rigging in the referendum, Nawabzada Khan said. General Musharraf has so far been taking all important decisions on his own and has been inviting political leaders subsequently only to inform them, he said. The ARD chief also demanded that the ban on political activities be lifted and former Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif be allowed to return. “All leaders should be allowed to freely take part in political activities to galvanise the nation to face the Indian challenge because wars cannot be fought unless the nation backs its armed forces”, he said.
PTI |
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Pakistan for talks to resolve Kashmir
Islamabad, May 20 Foreign office spokesman Aziz Ahmad Khan asserted that there “is no cross-border movement,” and, regarding involving international observers, said “Pakistan is ready for that, but India is not.’’ “We hope that ultimately India will see reason and come to the negotiating table,” he added. Khan also expressed the hope that the international community would increase its efforts to push for peace in the region in view of the “hostile posture of India.” He urged India for talks yesterday too while talking to BBC Radio and had claimed that “India was mounting the tension but we are still trying to lessen it.” Khan also said today that Pakistan would continue to support the United States-led war against terrorism.
UNI |
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Independent East Timor awakes to new dawn
Mr Gusmao, who himself was sworn in after the independence declaration just after midnight local time, swore in Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri and a 24-member Cabinet. Dignitaries from 92 nations, including former US President Bill Clinton and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, attended the ceremony, held in front of the former Portuguese Governor’s palace which will house the new government. East Timor was declared independent at some 25 minutes past midnight local time in a spectacular carnival of fireworks, song and dance at a ceremony attended by close to 100,000 East Timorese. East Timor’s new flag was raised this evening as parliament speaker Francisco “Lu Olo” Guterres proclaimed the birth of the world’s newest nation. The black, red and gold flag was the symbol of the resistance during a bloody 24-year Indonesian occupation which ended in October 1999 when the United Nations took over the devastated territory to prepare it for independence. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who handed over the world body’s authority, said East Timor’s struggle for freedom had inspired the world. A communiqué on establishing diplomatic relations was signed by Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan and his East Timorese counterpart Ramos-Horta in Dili, official Xinhua news agency in Beijing reported. Meanwhile, East Timor and Australia signed a landmark treaty today to tap lucrative offshore petroleum reserves, an economic lifeline for the world’s newest nation which could be worth billions of dollars.
Agencies |
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Bush was told about Sept 11 attack LONDON AND NEW YORK: George Bush received specific warnings in the weeks before September that an attack inside the USA was being planned by Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaida network, US government sources said recently. In a top-secret intelligence memo headlined “Bin Laden determined to strike in the USA”, the President was told on August 6 that the Saudi-born terrorist hoped to “bring the fight to America” in retaliation for missile strikes on Al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan in 1998. Bush and his aides, who are facing withering criticism for failing to act on a series of warnings, have previously said intelligence experts had not advised them domestic targets were considered at risk. However, they have admitted they were specifically told that hijacks were being planned. The news comes as unease about prosecution of the war in Afghanistan grows. British troops deployed near the eastern Afghan city of Khost failed to locate any of the Al-Qaida fighters who, it is claimed, ambushed an Australian SAS patrol. Senior sources at the British Ministry of Defence said on Saturday that Al-Qaida or Taliban fighters who were being pursued were numbered in `tens’. Escape routes had been cut off by coalition forces, the sources added. “There has been no combat. We have established a forward operating base and are now clearing the area,” said Lt Col Ben Curry, spokesman for the Royal Marines at Bagram air base. MoD sources also said the mystery illness which had struck British troops at Bagram had been identified as the winter vomiting disease which swept Britain earlier this year. One possibility is that food brought in by civilian contractors through Pakistan may be to blame. An American operation in the east of Afghanistan has also been criticised after hundreds of troops deployed after a series of missile attacks on US troops in Khost failed to find the enemy or to prevent new attacks. For the first time in the war on terrorism, which has pushed his popularity levels to almost unheard of heights, Bush and his administration are on the defensive. The White House has revealed that Bush asked for an intelligence analysis of Al-Qaida attacks within the USA because most of the information presented to him over the summer focused on threats to targets overseas. Sources quoted by the Washington Post and ABC TV said at least two names listed in a July 2001 FBI memo about an Arizona flight school had been identified by the CIA as having links to Al-Qaida. But the memo was not acted on or distributed to outside agencies. And, while administration officials have said repeatedly that intelligence analysts never imagined that terrorists would use planes in a suicide attack, a 1999 report for the National Intelligence Council warned that fanatics loyal to bin Laden might try to hijack a jetliner and fly it into the Pentagon. The memo received by Bush on August 6 contained unconfirmed information passed on by British intelligence in 1998 revealing that Al-Qaida operatives had discussed hijacking a plane to negotiate the release of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the Muslim cleric imprisoned in America for his part in a plot to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993.
Observer News Service |
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Suicide-bomber
blows himself Jerusalem, May 20 The Palestinian detonated explosives attached to his body at a crossroads near to the town of Afula. The police said the man was believed to have come from the region near to Jenin in the north of the West Bank.
AFP |
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PLO leader’s son dies in car blast
“It was Jihad, God rest his soul,” an official of Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) said at the site of the blast referring to Mohammad Jihad Ahmed Jibril. Reuters
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Pearl’s neck was severed? Karachi, May 20 “The cervical (column) has been severed by a sharp weapon which caused the death. The rest of the body was cut into pieces after the person had died,” said the doctor, who performed the autopsy.
AFP |
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Curfew in Kandahar goes Bagram Air Base, May 20 US Army spokesman Bryan Hilferty told reporters at the allied headquarters inside Bagram, north of the capital Kabul, that the end of the curfew in the southern town was a sign of “continuing progress”. The night curfew remained in Kandahar even after the Soviet occupation was ended by the Mujahideen, who were later ousted by the hardline Taliban.
Reuters |
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14 die in PoK mishap Muzaffarabad (PoK), May 20 |
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In video: US Vice-President Dick Cheney has said a new attack against
the USA is "almost certain". (
Dili, May 20
Beirut, May 20