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Wednesday,
July 10, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Time ripe
for talks: Pak
Pak debars
Sharif, kin Pak
investigators ‘not cooperating’ with FBI |
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Peres
opens talks with Palestinians Europe’s
mysterious terrorist group Indonesia
fire toll 45 Bush
vows to topple Saddam
Bush to act tough on financial frauds China
mine blast kills 39 Wah
ustad wah! says London audience
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Time ripe for talks: Pak
Islamabad, July 9 “Pakistan has taken all measures possible to de-escalate the situation,” Foreign Office spokesman Aziz Ahmad Khan told reporters here. “Pakistan has expressed willingness for a dialogue and firmly believes that time is ripe to address all issues between Pakistan and India, particularly the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir in a serious, meaningful and purposeful manner,” he said. “What is required is to sit down and find resolution of all issues and that is possible through dialogue,” Mr Khan said. He said continued deployment of forces could lead to any tragic incident and called for their withdrawal to peacetime locations. The spokesman said the international community was of the firm opinion that Kashmir issue should be resolved through negotiations. On the assassination of Afghan Vice-President Haji Abdul Qadeer, the spokesman said “he was a patriotic Afghan and a friend of Pakistan”. Reverting to the issue of Indo-Pak tension, Mr Khan said, “the situation would improve only if New Delhi withdraws its forces deployed in a “threatening posture”. Opposing the forthcoming Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir, he said Pakistan backed the Hurriyat Conference’s decision to stay away from the process as the amalgamation was the “true representative” of the Kashmiri people. He said no infiltration was taking place across the Line of Control. “Pakistan’s claim that there is no infiltration is correct,” the spokesman said, inviting international observers to verify the claim. Referring to the peace process in Afghanistan, he said “peace has been restored over large areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan will continue to support that process”.
PTI |
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Pakistan to free 44 Islamic militants
Islamabad, July 9 The men were arrested when they returned to Pakistan after the collapse of Taliban rule and have been held at a prison in Lahore. Maulana Tahir Ashrafai, a religious affairs adviser to the Punjab provincial government, said yesterday. Ashrafai told The Associated Press that none of the men, who will be released today were members of an organised extremist group. “Most of them had gone to Afghanistan before and after the beginning of the US airstrikes on Afghanistan but were arrested while crossing back to Pakistan,” he said. “They have already suffered enough and we hope that in the future too all of them will live a normal life,” he added.
AP |
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Pak debars Sharif, kin
Islamabad, July 9 “None of the family members of Mr Sharif can even return to Pakistan leave alone contesting the poll,” government spokesman Rashid Qureshi said in an interview to local daily Dawn published today. He said the deposed premier could not come back before the end of a 10-year period as had been stipulated in the agreement under which the Sharifs were exiled to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia two years ago. Replying to a question, he said Mr Sharif his father, brother Shahbaz Sharif and wife Kulsoom Sharif had not only been barred from returning but they had also been excluded from contesting the elections. “All those who had gone into exile under that agreement were ineligible to run for any public office,” he said. However, Mr Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League party has questioned the regime’s claim on the agreement
PTI |
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Pak investigators ‘not cooperating’ with FBI Washington, July 9 This was evident from the reaction of US officials to the latest arrests of three Harkat-ul-Mujahideen extremists, who have been charged with involvement in the June 14 bombing near the US Consulate and the plot to kill President Pervez Musharraf in Karachi. The Washington Post today quoted US officials as saying that they had not received any briefing on the arrests and that “the US Security Officer at the Consulate (in Karachi) Randall Bennett, attended the news conference so that he could join reporters in asking questions.” “In the immediate aftermath of the bombing,” said the newspaper, “FBI forensic specialists were deployed to assist the probe, but that co-operation appears to have run its course.” “I can say without hesitation that we did not share any information with US officials,” it quoted Mr Salahuddin
Satti, Director-General of Pakistan Army Rangers. PTI |
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Peres opens talks with Palestinians
Jerusalem, July 9 The meeting took place at a Jerusalem hotel last night after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon gave green signal to Mr Peres, reportedly on condition that the two leaders would not touch the peace issue during their parleys. The talks between Mr Peres and Mr Fayed was devoted to the two ministers becoming acquainted, economic issues and an analysis of the diplomatic situation, English daily Hafaretz quoted a spokesman for Mr Peres. The dialogue will be followed by Mr Peres’ scheduled meeting with the Palestinian Authority’s new Interior Minister Abdel Razik Yehiyeh tomorrow. Mr Fayad, during the meet asked Mr Peres to release the tax money collected from Palestinian workers which has been frozen in Israel’s treasury, he said. During 21 months’ of violence which killed at least 1,436 Palestinians and 548 Israelis there have been very rare high-level meetings between the two sides. According to political analysts, Mr Sharon approved talks under the compulsion of domestic politics aimed at silencing doves with in Peres’ Labour Party.
PTI |
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Europe’s mysterious terrorist group Athens, July 9 But on Saturday night as Greek counter-terrorist experts, with the help of detectives from Scotland Yard, combed Xeros’s ground-floor apartment in the heart of Athens — and in another breakthrough swooped on a second weapons-filled flat containing November 17’s trademark flag — the history of one of the world’s most elusive terrorist organisations was unfolding before their eyes. The mild-mannered 40-year-old may have totally defied the profile psychologists had come up with for members of November 17. But astonishing new evidence, including the discovery of dozens of boxes documenting the entire history of the group’s 27-year existence in the hideaway Xeros had rented, proved “beyond a shadow of doubt” that he was a senior November 17 operative. “He belonged to the group’s second generation and he clearly had a lot of responsibilities,” one insider told The Observer. “We don’t think he’s one of the leaders, the guy who picked the targets or wrote the group’s proclamations because it was his fingerprints that we found on the get-away car used in the murder of Costis Perratikos (an Anglo-Greek shipowner in 1997). But he’s the window we’ve been looking for, for years.” Yiannis Tsiotsis, the public prosecutor heading the investigation, hopes the iconographer, who was seriously injured when a bomb he was preparing to plant exploded in his hands, will reveal other November 17 cadres when he begins interrogating him in hospital. This weekend dozens of Xeros’ friends and relatives were being questioned by the police. Alicia Romero, his Spanish girlfriend for the past ten years and a well-known make-up artist who had recently prepared the Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis for a television show, was among them. Xeros, who is the son of a retired Greek Orthodox priest, spent a considerable amount of time posing as Grigoris Ploutsis, an impoverished house-painter. It was as Ploutsis that he rented and transformed the ground floor flat into an extraordinary arsenal and archive, with documents allegedly linking November 17 to the Turkish terror group Yev Sol. Amalia Papathanasiou, the schoolteacher who for the past eight years rented out the apartment (‘my dowry’) to the man she knew as ‘Mr Ploutsis,’ described him as a “very, very good person”. “He was just so likeable,” said the middle-aged mother, speaking exclusively to The Observer. “Every first of the month he popped round like clockwork to pay his rent. We liked him enormously.” Although its strike-rate was low — November 17 has claimed credit for the murder of 22 American, Greek, Turkish and European diplomats, army officers and industrialists since gunning down Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in Athens in 1975 — it is the only group, apart from Al-Qaida, never to have been successfully infiltrated. In 27 years of operations, none of its members have ever been captured, nor have there been any credible leads. “To think that every month I sat right here in my hallway, on these chairs, and chatted with a November 17 terrorist, is not only shocking, it’s quite absurd,” Mrs Papathanasiou said. “He was extremely decent, low-key and somewhat shy. Sometimes he would say he was going away, to visit his family in northern Greece but he was always very proper. When he did that, he would give us two months’ rent in advance. I felt sorry for him because he was obviously not very rich. He said his father was a farmer.’ So sorry, in fact, that Mrs Papathanasiou and her lawyer husband, Odysseus, not only decided to not raise the $ 150 monthly rent but took to inviting their tenant round to Sunday lunch. “He was thoughtful and talked a lot about computers. Actually, quite recently he said he had found a job in a computer firm. He said his father was very proud of him. If he was acting as if he were “good” then it was a role he played very well.” A priest in a remote village in northern Greece, where Xeros had painted several church icons in his early twenties, said he was ‘incredulous that such an innocent, God-loving individual could do such things.’ Not more than a dozen people may be behind November 17 which operates as a series of independent cells. But if Xeros is typical of its active membership he would embody the group’s transformation from a left-wing movement to one advocating Orthodox nationalism.
By arrangement with The Observer. |
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Indonesia fire toll 45
Jakarta, July 9 The head of the fire brigade at Palembang in South Sumatra said his men had now left the charred remains of the Hepi karaoke lounge. Palembang city detective chief Wahyu Triwidodo said the police had completed its search. The blaze broke out on Sunday and was put out early yesterday.
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Bush vows to topple Saddam
Washington, July 9 “It is the stated policy of this government to have a regime change in Iraq. And since it has not changed, therefore we will use all methods at our disposal to do so”, Bush yesterday said at a press conference. Bush dismissed as “hypothetical” the question of whether the regime change in Baghdad would be achieved before the end of his first term in office in January, 2005. Highlighting his personal involvement in the planning of Saddam’s ouster, he said “I am involved in military planning, diplomatic planning, financial planning, all aspects of, reviewing all these tools at my disposal.” Stating that there is no urgency to act, Bush said “In my remarks to the American people, I remind them I am a patient person”.
PTI |
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Bush to act tough on financial frauds
Washington, July 9 Addressing business leaders in their stronghold — New York’s Wall Street, he unveiled a package of reforms to restore faith in American capitalism, being undermined when nearly every week brings new discoveries of fraud and
scandal. “We will use the full weight of the law to expose and root out corruption. My administration will do everything in our power to end the days of cooking the books, shading the truth and breaking our laws,” Mr Bush said in his
speech. He said the new legislation would double the maximum prison terms for those convicted of financial fraud from five to 10
years. Mr Bush announced he was creating a new corporate fraud task force headed by the Deputy Attorney General, which would target major accounting fraud and other criminal activity in corporate
finances. “The business pages of American newspapers should not read like a scandal sheet,” he said. “I am calling for a new ethic of personal responsibilities in the business community — an ethic that will increase investor confidence, make employees proud of their companies and regain the trust of the American people.”
PTI |
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China mine blast kills 39
Beijing, July 9 The official Xinhua news agency today reported that four miners were missing after the blast, which tore through the small Dingsheng coalmine in Heilongjiang province early yesterday. The bodies of the 39 dead had been recovered. The accident took to almost 100 the number of miners killed in China in just the last two weeks and occurred on the day a top national safety official vowed to crack down on owners of unsafe and illegal mines. Previous efforts to close down illegal pits in a country whose mining industry claimed more than 7,000 lives last year have proved less than successful. Many such mines had been ordered closed but reopened under the protection of the local governments, which rely on them for tax revenues.
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Wah ustad wah! says London audience
London, July 9 And to the delight of the packed audience, Nishat Khan played the famous “rag malhar”, “Rag of Masters for Masters”, as he himself described. At the three-hour concert, Nishat demonstrated his virtuoso side as a performer and torch-bearer of an ancient musical tradition. He was accompanied by Aninda Chaterji on tabla.
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