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Friday,
June 7, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Lanka set to lift ban on Tigers
US panel to hold
hearing on Gujarat |
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Sattar wants to be relieved Pak to get sops if it stops infiltration: USA Nepal SC moved on House dissolution
Body in freezer for 4 years
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Palestinian offices blown up Ramallah (West Bank), June 6
The Israeli forces also pulled out from nearby streets, leaving the town of Ramallah completely, eyewitnesses said. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon delayed his departure for the USA after the bombing attack. Mr Sharon was due to leave today for talks in New York before meeting US President George W Bush in Washington on Monday. Mr Sharon put off his departure until Saturday night, a statement from his office said. Israeli tanks surrounded the huge compound in the centre of Ramallah during the small hours of this morning. Light bulldozers and several armoured personnel carriers punched through the walls and drove into the centre of the sprawling complex, a Palestinian security official at the scene said. Journalists entering the shattered compound saw the rubble of three large buildings blown up by the Israelis, including one separated from Mr Arafat’s own suite of offices by a common wall. The body of a Palestinian security guard, killed by a blast from an Israeli tank shell, his comrades said, lay nearby, his head swathed in bloodstained bandages. Meanwhile, Mr Arafat emerged defiant from his West Bank compound today after the battering Israeli raid, saying that “no one can defeat the Palestinian people”. “I ask the world to come and see this racism and this fascism and this massive attack on the Palestinian leadership compound,” Mr Arafat told reporters after stepping out of his headquarters flashing V-for-victory signs. WASHINGTON: The USA is closely watching developments after Israeli tanks stormed the Ramallah headquarters of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and has been in touch with both sides, US officials have said. US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, also said the Bush administration did not give Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a green light to launch the incursion. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card told reporters that US President George W. Bush was notified of the Israeli action just before he spoke at a White House picnic for lawmakers.
AP, Reuters |
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Lanka set to lift ban on Tigers
Colombo, June 6 Mr Wickremesinghe is due to leave on Saturday on a five-day visit to India where he will hold talks with his counterpart Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee and other officials. Formal discussions between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government are due to take place some time later this month or early July at a naval facility in Thailand. The sources said Mr Wickremesinghe on brief Indian leaders about the progress of the Norwegian-sponsored peace process in Sri Lanka and the possibility of lifting the 1998 ban on the LTTE. Sri Lanka has sought and won assurances from the USA, the UK, Australia and Canada that removing the ban on the LTTE at home would not automatically lead them to remove their own designations of the Tigers as a “terrorist” outfit. The government has asked the LTTE to take up the question of establishing an interim administration for the island’s embattled northern and eastern regions during the preliminary talks in Thailand. Mr Wickremesinghe told donors and lending agencies that the focus of proposed peace talks with LTTE in Thailand would be the setting up of an interim administration for the country’s northeast and the Tigers’ role in it. “The principal objective of the proposed talks will be to set up the northeast administration, which will also accelerate development there,” state-run Daily News quoted the prime minister as telling the international donor community at a dinner at his official residence last night. Mr Wickremesinghe’s assertion that an administrative set-up for the Tamil-majority region will be accorded priority in the talks, comes amidst accusations by the Tigers that he had abandoned his promise to discuss an interim administration at the talks.
AFP, PTI |
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Dozens killed in Myanmar fighting Bangkok, June 6 The Myanmar army and its allies in the United Wa State Army have been attacking positions held by a rival ethnic group, the Shan State Army (SSA), opposite Thailand’s Chiang Mai province, in a battle for territory and for control of the drugs trade. Thai officials said more than a dozen shells fired by one or both sides had landed inside Thailand since Tuesday and many SSA troops had retreated across the border for medical treatment. They said dozens of Myanmar and Wa fighters died in the assaults on SSA positions. Myanmar had sought without success Thai permission to cross the border to hit the SSA from behind. “We are on full alert for any incursion into Thailand and we are reinforcing positions along the border that may be at risk,” Thai defence ministry spokesman Surapan Poomkaew said. An SSA source said his forces had killed about 150 Myanmar and UWSA soldiers and wounded many others in heavy fighting along the border since May 20. He declined to give an estimate for the SSA’s own casualties. Myanmar officials were unavailable for comment. Tensions have flared between Thailand and Myanmar, with Myanmar accusing Thailand of backing the SSA and another ethnic army, the Karen National Union (KNU), a charge Bangkok denies.
Reuters |
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US panel to hold hearing on Gujarat Washington, June 6 “The Government of Gujarat and some members of the police force are involved in the recent violence in that state. The riots in the state, located on the border with Pakistan, threaten to exacerbate the already inflamed tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad,” said commission chairman Michael K. Young. “According to India’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the events leading up to the Godhra tragedy and the violence that followed were marked by a serious failure of intelligence and inaction by the (Gujarat) state government,” an official press note quoted Mr Young as saying. “The commission is very concerned that the US Government has not spoken out forcefully against the attacks which killed nearly 1,000 persons and left another 10,000 homeless in Gujarat”, he said. Stating that the violence was yet to be contained, the commission called upon the US Government to press the Government of India to provide security to those people who remained under threat of attack, including Muslims and Hindus who might be subject to retaliation, and to see that those responsible for violent acts targeting members of religious groups were held accountable.
PTI |
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Sattar wants to be relieved Islamabad, June 6 The Dawn, quoting sources, said Mr Sattar, who underwent a three-hour-long complicated surgery, which required endoscopy at Lahore’s Shiekh Zayed Hospital in the last week of May, has requested the President to relieve him of his Cabinet duties at the earliest. The prospect of losing a highly capable member of his team at this very crucial time has deeply disturbed General Musharraf, who has been relying heavily on Mr Sattar in matters of foreign affairs. However, the President is said to have taken no decision so far. Considered as a hard-liner in the Pakistani establishment, Mr Sattar had been facing a difficult time after he underwent the surgery. The surgery, though having cured Mr Sattar’s chronic nasal complication following successful removal of the nasal polyps, is said to have left the Foreign Minister too weak due to the three-hour long anaesthesia and the strong medication he is being administered for recovery and recuperation. The President has started looking at a short list of names to choose the right person from, in case he is left with no option but to finally accept Mr Sattar’s request.
UNI |
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Pak to get sops if it stops infiltration: USA Washington, June 6 The US Government is considering prospects of new economic assistance and continuing debt relief to Pakistan if it could work with President Pervez Musharraf on “ending support for violence’’, The Los Angels Times, quoting a senior state department official, reported yesterday. The official said this was an opportunity for Pakistan to make itself “a respected member of the international community’’. The paper detected a “glimmer of hope’’ and recalled State Department spokesman Richard Boucher’s remark on Tuesday that the USA did have “some indications that Pakistani actions (on cross-border incursions) go beyond words’’.
UNI |
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Nepal SC moved on House dissolution Kathmandu, June 6 Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba asked King Gyanendra to disband Parliament last month after his ruling Nepali Congress refused to back his plan to extend emergency rule to tackle an increasingly bloody Maoist revolt. “The term of Parliament could be extended for a period of one year if necessary during a state of emergency,” Mr Shankar Prasad Pandey, a Nepali Congress member said. “But it is not proper to dissolve the House and hold early elections when there is a state of emergency in the country,” he said. Supreme Court official Durga Dawadi said three separate writ petitions had been filed challenging, Mr Deuba’s move. Party officials said 56 Nepali Congress members were backing the legal challenge. The other backers are members of smaller parties. Nepal imposed the emergency rule, which gives sweeping powers to the military, after the Maoists walked out of peace talks with the government and resumed their six-year revolt to overthrow the constitutional monarchy.
Reuters |
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13 Maoists shot Kathmandu, June 6 “The security forces have shot dead 13 terrorists in separate incidents between Monday and Tuesday night and recovered a huge cache of arms and foodstuff from their hideouts,” the ministry said in a statement. Six of the rebels were gunned down in the Kurmule area of Dadeldhura district and three at Kolti in Bajura, both in the west of the kingdom.
AFP |
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Endeavour roars into orbit Cape Canaveral, June 6 The launch had been postponed first by thunderstorms, then by a leaky valve. The weather finally cooperated late yesterday afternoon, and the shuttle climbed through low, puffy clouds on its way to space. It was sure to be welcome news to the three space station men, in orbit for six long months. They were passing 386 km above the Indian Ocean near Australia, and out of communication, when Endeavour and its crew of seven took off. The shuttle is due to arrive on Friday. “Sorry we had to keep you here for an additional six days, but everything’s coming together now,” launch director Mike Leinbach told the astronauts just before lift off. “Good luck and have a great flight.” “We’ll do a good job for you,” promised shuttle commander Kenneth Cockrell. As a precaution against terrorists, fighter jets patrolled the no-fly zone around the launch pad until after lift off. In addition, NASA shrouded the activities of the US, Russian and French astronauts and cosmonauts until they were climbing aboard their spaceship. Endeavour is
carrying one American and two Russians who will become the fifth crew
to live aboard the space station. AP |
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Body in freezer for 4 years Tokyo, June 6 Akemi Iinuma’s husband
Hidenori, a 50-year-old local government official, had been reported missing since November 1997, said the police officer in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost main island. “Workers at a local real estate company first saw his legs sticking out of a freezer and found his body,” the officer said. Akemi Iinuma sold her house to the property firm last month and told its staff to dispose of all her remaining belongings including the freezer. “The freezer’s electricity was turned off and his body was extremely decomposed,” the police officer added.
AFP |
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