“We are watching for more substantive actions from their side,” to initiate dialogue on the Kashmir issue, General Musharraf told mediapersons in Abu Dhabi.

“We expect substantive steps from India now,” he said after New Delhi’s decision to allow Pakistan to resume civilian flights over India.

“It’s a very small beginning, let’s see what happens in the future,” he said of the overflights. “Whatever they are doing is easing their own problems.”

General Musharraf, said he was optimistic that the tension with India could be defused.

“I am an optimist, there is a chance,” if “the core dispute (on Kashmir) and all other irritants are addressed in a spirit of sincerity and sovereign equality,” he said.

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has said it will consider reinstating flights to Indian destinations after India restores the visa facility as just the permission for the use of Indian airspace was not enough for this.

However, the PIA would immediately restore all flights for the Far East which were suspended after the imposition of the restriction on the use of Indian airspace.

“If India also restores the visa facility, then we will consider the restoration of flights for the Indian destinations,” The News quoted PIA Director Marketing Farooq Shah as saying on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, General Pervez Musharraf has convened a meeting of all political parties on June 18 to discuss the current situation with India.

The 15-party umbrella group, Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD) and an alliance of religious parties, which had boycotted a meeting convened by him a few weeks ago, have now agreed to attend the second meeting, said a statement issued here by Information Minister Nisar Memon.

The agreement came after Mr Memon said that the discussions at the all-party conference would be confined only to Indian deployment and crisis at the borders. Agencies

The US officials yesterday said they have transferred Abdullah al Muhajir, a suspected American Al-Qaida operative believed to have been planning an attack on the USA with a radiation-spreading “dirty bomb,” to Defense Department custody one month after he was arrested.

Al Muhajir, a 31-year-old US citizen born in New York as Jose Padilla, was never charged after being detained at Chicago O’Hare International Airport by federal officials on May 8 as he arrived from Pakistan.

President George W. Bush on Sunday approved a recommendation by Attorney General John Ashcroft to declare Muhajir an “enemy combatant” and transfer him from the Justice Department custody to the Defense Department, officials said.

He has been taken to the naval brig in Charleston, South Carolina, where he will be questioned by military interrogators. Since he has not been charged with anything, he is not entitled to have any attorney present, officials said.

The announcement sparked criticism from rights groups.

“If the government has sufficient evidence of criminal conduct of a US citizen, then it should charge him in US courts,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement. Reuters

Arun Philip Abraham has been sentenced to death by a firing squad for the murder of Lija Rony on April 26 last year.

His appeal for help has been forwarded to the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi by the Indian Embassy in Muscat without any comment, the Gulf Times today quoted an Embassy official as saying. UNI

After passing required tests Americ Singh Rathour was sworn in as a Traffic Enforcement Agent with the NYPD on June 18 last year, according to the complaint filed with Commission yesterday.

During his training period, he and his supervisers clashed over his wearing a turban and keeping a beard, it said. Subsequently, the services of Rathour, 25, were terminated in August 27, 2001.

Stating that he was harassed by his superiors Rathour said, “They (superiors) repeatedly tried to pressure me to remove my turban and trim my beard and I felt I was being punished because of my unwillingness to compromise on my religion.”

“The NYPD forced Rathour to choose between his religion and his livelihood. This is a choice that no one should be forced to make,” said Harpreet Singh, Director, Sikh Coalition. PTI

Taped conversations of one of the accused have been erased leading to the loss of an important evidence in the worst case of aviation terrorism in Canada which resulted in the deaths of 329 persons on June 23, 1985.

The defence contended that the accused were not likely to get a fair trial because “The loss of evidence infringes on Charter rights if the police or the Crown are unacceptably negligent and their failure offends the community’s sense of fair play, and if the loss is so prejudicial that the accused cannot get a fair trial.”

The trial court agreed with the contention of the lawyers of the accused that the “erasing of the tapes’’ was an important fact in issue impacting the course of the case and allowed the defence to make it an issue. The case, already delayed twice this year, will now finally go to trial only in 2003.

The Air-India flight 182 Kanishka bombing, for which Ajaib Singh Bagri, Inder Singh Reyat and Ripudaman Singh Malik are being held in prison here, has been a case which was slow to begin with and has faced frequent delays ever since the accused were arrested in the year 2000.

The latest delay is due to the fact that the taped talks of Parmar on phone were erased in 1985 itself, according to the Globe and Mail newspapers.

It is also apparent that there is some friction between the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) which has dealt with most of the fact-finding for the case.

The lawyers of the accused, Bagri, Malik and Reyat, submitted that the CSIS were tapping the calls made by Parmar well before the actual bombing took place and the RCMP was not aware of that fact. The CSIS revealed this only after two months of the bombing and admitted that by then only 54 tapes out of a total of 250 remained, the Vancouver Sun, quoting the defence, said. UNI

But there were no showbusiness trappings for his big day in 1969 — he almost forgot to buy a wedding ring, the best man was an hour late and none of the Beatles was invited to the simple ceremony in a London register office. Second time around, the contrasts could not be sharper as the 59-year-old marries model turned charity worker Heather Mills, who was born the year before Paul and Linda’s wedding.

GLASLOUGH (Ireland): Last-minute preparations were under way today as celebrity guests flew into Ireland for the wedding of ex-Beatle Sir Paul McCartney to former model Heather Mills.

Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, guitarist Eric Clapton and former US President Bill Clinton were expected to be among the 300 guests attending the lavish lakeside nuptials at the 17th century Castle Leslie in the Irish border county of Monaghan.

McCartney, 59, and former model Mills, 34, will tie the knot in a ceremony at St. Salvator’s church in the grounds of the castle’s 1,000-acre estate at around 4 p.m. (1500 GMT), McCartney’s spokesman Geoff Baker said.

Guests will then be treated to unlimited champagne and a vegetarian banquet beside the lake, where giant marquees have been erected along with stages for live music and dancing. Baker said it was possible that McCartney could take to the stage himself. “You never know. We’ve got Macca (McCartney), Ringo and guests like Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour — who knows what could happen,” he said.

McCartney’s four children, including leading fashion designer Stella, arrived at the castle yesterday — scotching tabloid rumours they had rejected their father’s new partner after their mother, McCartney’s first wife Linda, died of breast cancer in April 1998. Members of Linda’s family have flown in from the USA.

The ex-Beatle’s brother Mike, who was best man at Paul’s marriage to Linda in 1969, will repeat the honour this time around. Reuters

“Contrary to reports, Mr Combs and Ms Lopez are not together. However, he wishes her well during this difficult time,” said Nathalie Moar, a spokesman for Combs, formerly known as “Puff Daddy” or “Puffy.”

The highly publicised romance between Lopez and Combs came to an end early last year as Combs was on trial in New York on weapons and bribery charges. He was later acquitted. Reuters

Luisa Santiaga Iguaran, whom Mr Marquez once said was his “best editor”, died on Sunday at age 97. After Mr Marquez started making plans to travel to Cartagena De Indias on the Caribbean Coast to attend the ceremony, his family intervened, and convinced him to stay away.

“We feared for his security, in light of developments in the country,” Mr Garcia’s sister, Ms Aida Garcia, said. DPA