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Tuesday,
September 3, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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All-round
condemnation of Benazir ban
Over 200
dead or missing in typhoon |
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Rift over
energy clouds summit
Al-Qaida
commanders settle in Lebanon 6 Pak
rapists sent to ‘death cell’
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All-round condemnation of Benazir ban Islamabad, September 2 Election officials rejected nominations of Ms Bhutto to stand in three constituencies on Friday and yesterday, citing her July conviction for failing to answer corruption charges. The rulings are subject to an appeals process lasting until September 12, but appeared to virtually extinguish an already dim prospect of Ms Bhutto contesting the October 10 elections being organised by General Pervez Musharraf’s military government. Pakistan’s main alliance of minority groups denounced the rejection of the nominations, saying the government had introduced laws specifically to bar Ms Bhutto from the elections. Shahbaz Bhatti, chairman of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, called the decisions “a sheer violation of the law of the land’’. “In order to continue the presidential dictatorship and give cover to unconstitutional acts, the military rulers are stopping the way of Benazir Bhutto, under whose leadership people have decided to build a better Pakistan,’’ he said in a statement. Farhatullah Babar, spokesman for Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, said it would appeal against the decisions and stressed that the party was sticking to its plans to contest the election. Ms Bhutto told Reuters on Friday she would consider returning to Pakistan, despite the threat of arrest, if one of her nominations was accepted. Mr Babar said General Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, had succeeded in alienating a broad spectrum of the population and was treading a dangerous path. Those he had upset included Islamic groups which had been traditional allies of the military but have been incensed by his decision to back the US-led war against terror in neighbouring Afghanistan, prompted by the September 11 attacks on the USA. “Musharraf has alienated all the major significant political players,’’ Mr Babar said. “The bureaucracy has been alienated, the political parties, the religious parties and the jihadi organisations, which until September 11 were supported by the security establishment. “All other forces that were previously with him are against him. They are all on the other side. This is a very dangerous situation because it pits the army against the people.’’
Reuters |
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Benazir
delays return Islamabad Mr Riaz said her return to Pakistan would now depend on the outcome of appeals against the rulings, a process that must be completed by September 12 and a hearing on a petition she had filed against the poll bar.
Reuters |
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Over 200 dead or missing in typhoon Kangnung, S Korea, September 2 Troops joined the search for survivors after South Korea’s worst typhoon in more than 40 years triggered landslides and flooded coastal areas, devastating thousands of homes and cutting off power and water supplies. Television pictures showed roads and railways submerged, shops destroyed, houses leaning at 45 degrees and surrounded by flood water. A bus hung precariously over a river bank. A news film showed distraught housewives squatting in the mud outside their homes, surrounded by broken furniture and household implements. Rescuers lost their footing in mudslides as they searched for survivors near overturned cars. The death toll stood at 88 at 3 p.m. local time while at least 70 were missing, the National Disaster
Prevention Headquarters (NDPH) said in a statement. “Far more than 100 persons have been killed or have gone missing, but we think the number will increase as searches for the missing or the buried are still going on,’’ said Kim Jin-young, a director at the NDPH. The massive search and clean-up effort was centred on the east coast which Rusa lashed with gusts of upto 200 kmph on Saturday, dropping a record 871 mm of rain on the city of Kangnung. Witnesses said coastal roads and rail lines had been washed away, houses flooded and cars and trucks completely buried as roads buckled beneath deadly landslides.
Reuters |
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Rift over energy clouds summit Johannesburg, September 2 An overnight failure by negotiators to end a rift between Americans and Europeans over ‘’green’’ energy had already made for an awkward start to the gathering in Johannesburg. It held up a grand U.N. action plan that South African President Thabo Mbeki says must end the “global apartheid’’ between rich and poor. “Today in Johannesburg, humanity has a date with destiny,’’ declared French President Jacques Chirac, recalling how South Africans led by Nelson Mandela overcame apartheid divisions. “Our house is burning down and we are blind to it,’’ Chirac told the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). But as Mandela looked on, the fine rhetoric of common human goals risked being drowned out by the reality of conflict. With the world divided over threats by U.S. President George W. Bush to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz added to confusion over Baghdad’s response by telling newsmen U.N. arms inspectors could still return. Bush was the only leader of the Group of Seven wealthy industrial countries not in Johannesburg to sign off on a pact to slash poverty while sparing the environment from the harm inflicted by two centuries of Western industrialisation. The low-level U.S. delegation in the hall was led by Undersecretary of Energy Robert Card. Blair, Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder urged final ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, recalling floods that hit central Europe last month. Bush has rejected the pact, saying it would hurt the U.S. economy. The issue of cutting back on the burning of carbon-dioxide producing oil, coal and gas blamed for global warming continued to divide the European Union and United States after more than a week of talks among officials in Johannesburg. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan wants a deal to protect the whole process of global cooperation and said the growing hunger in southern Africa showed where failure would lead. “Not far from this conference room... 13 million people are threatened with famine,’’ he said. “If any reminder were needed of what happens when we fail to plan for and protect the long-term future of our planet, it can be heard in the cries for help from those 13 million souls.’’
Reuters |
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Al-Qaida commanders settle in Lebanon Jerusalem, September 2 A source in Jerusalem who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed the report, saying the information had come from Israeli and western intelligence agencies. A senior Israeli military correspondent, Zeev Schiff, wrote in the daily Haaretz that Damascus had allowed between 150 and 200 Al-Qaida operatives to settle in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh, near the Lebanese coastal town of Sidon. The group included senior commanders who arrived from Afghanistan through Damascus and Iran, the newspaper reported, attributing its information to “various intelligence services.” Mr Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, refused to confirm the report.
AP |
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6 Pak rapists sent to ‘death cell’ Multan, September 2 Eight other members of the village council were acquitted of charges of ordering the rape of Mukhtiar Mai to atone for her younger brother’s alleged affair with a sister of one of the rapists. The authorities at the Dera Ghazi Khan jail said they transferred the six condemned men to death row and released the eight acquitted men yesterday.
AFP |
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Powell on ‘way out’
of Bush team Washington, September 2 Time, quoting sources close to Powell, said he has become frustrated over policy disagreements with administration officials such as Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as well as Vice President Dick Cheney. A Powell aide is cited in the magazine as saying the secretary of State will stay through the end of the current Bush term, even if the USA invades Iraq, a move Powell has sought to delay or derail. The aide also said that if Bush is re-elected in 2004, only an important diplomatic victory, for example, in the Middle East, could convince Powell to stay. He reportedly has no intention of seeking the presidency.
IANS |
100 PAKISTANIS MAY BE FREED IMRAN'S NOMINATION REJECTED Election authorities turned down the cricketer-turned- politician’s application to run as a candidate in Bahawalpur in Punjab province, the spokesman for the Mr Khan’s Tehreek-i-Insaf party (PTI) said. PTI, or Movement for Justice, spokesman Saifullah Nyazee said Mr Khan’s nomination was rejected on Sunday because a copy of his degree from Oxford University was not certified.
AFP |
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