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Sunday,
October 20, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Pak did supply N-arms material MMA’s offer for Rehman as PM
Cleric held for bombings
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USA agrees to modify resolution on Iraq Sniper case: FBI agents step in
Film that captures ’84 trauma
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Pak did supply N-arms material to N. Korea Washington, October 19
The paper quoted the official, as saying that Pakistan did so “in return” for North Korea’s missiles and missile technology. US officials said that other countries, including Russia, were also involved though they did not say what they could get in return from North Korea. What these countries provided, according to US officials, was material that included precursor chemicals and metal suitable for building centrifuges. The Post said the USA received evidence of uranium enrichment efforts in North Korea as early as two years ago but only recently decided to confront the North Korean Government about it, according to “sources in the USA and Asia.” The secrecy of the Bush Administration in revealing to lawmakers about what it knew about the North Korean missile programme and those who were helping Pyongyang has “strained” President George W. Bush’s relations in Congress, the paper said. The Post said the evidence at first was “faint and circumstantial” and it was only by August of this year the administration officials felt the case was compelling and was grounds for cutting off talks with North Korea. However, the paper said, the USA told South Korea and Japan about the nuclear programmes much earlier than previously disclosed. When Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi went to Pyongyang on September 17, he knew of the uranium enrichment suspicions in detail but failed to press the issue firmly in Pyongyang, it said. It said according to several senators’ aides, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld did not mention North Korea’s covert nuclear programme in a classified briefing held in a secure chamber less than three hours before two senior administration officials revealed the news in a press conference. Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle said he learned about the weapons programme from newspaper articles the next morning. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden said he was told about it two hours ahead of the press. At least two Republican senators said they had earlier received briefings from Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly. Democrats on Capitol Hill were critical of the 12-day gap between the admission by North Korea and the administration’s disclosure. PTI |
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MMA’s offer for Rehman as PM Islamabad, October 19 The alliance has named Maulana Fazlur Rehman as the candidate for prime ministership and Liaqat Baloch as the candidate for the Speaker’s post of the National Assembly or lower house of Parliament. “We are ready to give the top nine ministries and the speakership to any other party if they agree to support Rehman for the prime minister’s office,” MMA’s senior leader and newly elected parliamentarian Hafiz Hussain Ahmed said. Winning 45 seats, the MMA — an alliance of six Islamic parties — has attained an important position in a house of 272. At present no party or group has the requisite support to form a government. Ahmed said the MMA was determined that Rehman should become Prime Minister and the party would rather sit in the opposition than support a prime ministerial candidate from any other party. “The nomination of Rehman was the decision of (MMA’s) general council and is irreversible,” he said. He said the alliance had offered a package of nine ministries and the post of the Speaker to parties that could form an alliance, including the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-e-Azam (PML-QA) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) on the condition that the Prime Minister’s post is given to the MMA. The PML-QA has secured 77 seats in the National Assembly while the PPPP has won 63. According to the law, at least 136 members are required to form the government. The MMA is already set to form the government in the North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan, after having won the majority. “We’ll discuss all these amendments to the constitution in Parliament and would take a decision on whether they are required or not,” Ahmed said.
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Cleric held for bombings Solo (Indonesia), October 19 Abu Bakar Bashir, 64, hospitalised since yesterday with breathing problems rushed to the hospital less than a day before he was to face police questioning, is now under guard at the main hospital in his hometown of Solo, said the national police spokesman, Gen Saleh Saaf. Bashir’s group, Jemaah Islamiyah, is suspected of involvement in the deadly Bali nightclub bombing, but he has not been named a suspect in those attacks, which left at least 183 persons dead, most of them foreign tourists. He has denied any role in either case. Bashir was named a suspect in the church attacks, which left 19 persons dead, after a team of Indonesian investigators returned from questioning Omar Al-Faruq, an alleged Al-Qaida operative in Southeast Asia who was arrested in Indonesia and turned over to the USA in June. Al-Faruq fingered Bashir as ordering the church bombings, and implicated him in the activities of Jemaah Islamiyah, the authorities said.
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Top Abu Sayyaf man arrested Manila, October 19 Mark Bolkerin Gumbahale, 21, also known as Abu Pula and Dr Abu, also allegedly colluded with Indonesians linked to Jemaah Islamiyah — a South-East Asian-based Muslim militant group suspected of ties to the Al-Qaida — in carrying out a wave of bombings in Manila on December 30, 2000. He was arrested while playing a video game inside an Internet cafe on Thursday in the Manila suburb of Taguig, said police Chief Superintendent Jaime Caringal.
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USA agrees to modify resolution on Iraq
United Nations, October 19 The new resolution, as drafted now, will delay any military action against Baghdad at least till after the weapons inspectors go in and start inspections in Iraq. The new proposal will call on weapon inspectors to report “any failure by Iraq to comply with disarmament”. Should a failure be reported, the Security Council will convene immediately “to consider the situation and the need for full compliance with all relevant council resolutions in order to restore international peace and security.” The Security Council has been deeply divided over US insistence on unilateral military action against Iraq if it did not comply with UN Security Council resolution on dismantling its weapons of mass destruction. The advance team of inspectors will be in Iraq within two weeks of the council resolution but it will take time to have inspectors working in full strength. If inspectors report obstruction, the Council, under the draft, will meet immediately and decide on the next course of action. And if it decides to authorise military action, it will have to adopt a second resolution. But even if it fails to adopt the second resolution, US diplomats say, President George W Bush could take military action as he has the authorisation of Congress. Also, the draft being considered will provide enough legal cover for the military action, they contend. The American draft says that Iraq is already in “material breach” of the existing council resolution. The word “material breach” and “serious consequences” could be used by the USA to mean that it has the authorisation to strike Iraq. Meanwhile, France and the USA have reported progress on the new Iraq resolution but diplomats still needed to iron out differences over wording with Paris insisting there must be no trigger for an attack on Iraq.
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Sniper case: FBI agents step in Rockyille, October 19 Washington-area residents have been on edge for 16 days as the elusive sniper picked off victims, apparently at random, killing nine and wounding two while the police offered little encouragement after arresting a man who admitted giving a bogus eye witness account of the latest killing. The shooter has been eerily inactive since late Monday, taking the longest respite so far in his shooting spree began October 2. Meanwhile, the federal authorities expanded the investigation as far as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to question men captured during US operations in Afghanistan on the off chance that the Al-Qaida network had a role. AFP |
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Israel arrests 8 ultras Nablus (W. Bank), October 19 The pre-dawn swoops centred on the city of Nablus and the men who were detained belonged to President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction and the militant Islamic group Hamas, the army and Palestinian witnesses said. Witnesses said troops searched six houses whose occupants had already fled. Four soldiers were injured as they blew up the door of a wanted man’s house in the city’s Balata refugee camp. The sweep came a day after Israel announced it would ease its hold on two restive West Bank cities, as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon returned from Washington talks and a US envoy set off to West Asia with a peace plan in pocket. Washington, Israel’s closest ally, is keen to see Israel ease its curfews and closures as it tries to rally Arab support for a possible war against Iraq. Reuters |
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Film that captures ’84 trauma Singapore, October 19 My Mother India’s writer-director Safina Uberoi and her mother had then spent time helping in refugee camps. She was involved in interviewing people about what they had seen and suffered. “... (It was traumatic) for a young middle-class girl, hearing about savagery, listening to a child telling you about seeing his father with a burning tyre around his neck, and it’s is his eyes when he speaks to you about it,’’ news reports quoted Uberoi as saying while she explained the subject matter of her new film. After the events of 1984, Uberoi and her siblings came to live in Australia while her parents stayed in India. “I don’t think I understood how much 1984 had changed all our destinies and our choices, and that was the discovery for me. No one died.”
UNI |
OVER 100 BODIES FOUND IN CONGO HINDU TEMPLE ROBBED IN SOUTH AFRICA 3 DIE IN BANGLA COPTER CRASH CURBS
AGAINST ANGOLA REBELS GO ITALY CRIPPLED BY STRIKE EX-STUDENT SETS FREE 2 HOSTAGES |
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POWER TRANSFER BY MID-NOV KARACHI, BALI BLASTS COMPARED SHAUKAT, QAZI MAY STAY IN GOVT |
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The senior official re-confirmed Pakistan’s involvement after President Pervez Musharraf, at a joint press conference with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Muhammad here last night, rejected as “baseless” reports that Pakistan supported North Korea’s nuclear programme, The Washington Post said today.
