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Wednesday,
December 18, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Pak denies helping N. Korea USA to go ahead with NMD system Registration must for Pak, Saudi immigrants Kuwait deports illegal aliens Fire at petrochemical plant in Israel Malaysia wins islands |
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Mira Nair ventures into US TV Koreas sneer at Bond film
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Pak denies helping N. Korea
Islamabad, December 17 Ms Rocca said at the end of two days of talks here that General Musharraf had made the assurances by telephone to US Secretary of State Colin Powell. “He has discussed this with President Musharraf, (and) President Musharraf has offered 400 per cent assurance that nothing is happening,” Ms Rocca told reporters. Pakistan has denied reports in The New York Times that it provided North Korea with designs for gas centrifuges and machinery it needs for its enriched uranium nuclear arms project. The newspaper reported last month that a Pakistani aircraft arrived in Pyongyang as recently as July to pick up North Korean missile parts - the alleged payoff of the deal. Mr Powell said on November 25 that he had made it clear to General Musharraf that “any sort of contact between Pakistan and North Korea we believe would be improper, inappropriate and would have consequences.” Ms Rocca, meanwhile, has denied reports that she planned to meet the leaders of Pakistan’s pro-Taliban and anti-American, Islamist alliance Muthahida Majlis Amal during her current visit to Islamabad. Ms Rocca also dismissed reports that she planned to visit Peshawar to meet Mr Akram Durrani, Chief Minister of the MMA government in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP), which borders Afghanistan. Ms Rocca’s firm stand to not meet MMA leaders makes it clear that the USA has decided to adopt an equally hardline stance against the Islamist alliance, who soon after the October 10 general election demanded the withdrawal of US forces from the four airbases in Pakistan and flayed the Musharraf regime for having close ties with the USA. AFP, PTI
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USA to go ahead with NMD system
Washington, December 17 The decision comes a year after the USA withdrew from 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and fulfils a presidential campaign promise made by Bush. The plan is to have 10 ground-based interceptor missiles in place at Fort Greeley, Alaska, by 2004 and an additional 10 interceptors by 2005 or 2006, The Washington Times said, quoting senior administration officials. Preparatory construction at the first missile defence site at Fort Greeley began in June and other elements of the missile defence site will be built beginning 2003, it said. The system will provide USA with limited defence against long-range missile threats, primarily those posed by ‘rogue states’ like North Korea, Iran and Iraq. Bush has expanded the programme significantly from the one under President Bill Clinton by also allowing research and testing on sea-based and space-based systems. The revelations come amidst heightened tensions about North Korea, which has recently announced considering lifting the moratorium on missile flight tests. Pyongyang has also announced it has been secretly developing uranium-based nuclear weapons and will start nuclear reactors shut down under 1994 agreement. American missile defence plan had come under a scathing attack by Russia and China during the meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Jiang Zemin earlier this month. PTI
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China opposes US move on E. Asia Beijing, December 17 “The Chinese side is not in favour of developing such a missile system within the region,” Liu said when asked on the planned US-Japan theatre missile defence system.
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Registration must for Pak, Saudi immigrants
Washington, December 17 Under new rules made available to the media yesterday, all Pakistani and Saudi males in the USA aged 16 and above who are not US citizens of permanent residence will have to enlist themselves, as per the latest registration notice. The US government will fingerprint and photograph them, and those who fail to register are subject to deportation. Those who have entered the USA on or before September 30, 2002, will have to register. If they plan to stay in the USA into late February, they will have until February 21 to register and provide documentation to the Immigration and Naturalisation Service about their visit. Girls and women, diplomats and those who are seeking political asylum in the USA or have been granted asylum are exempted from the order, the Washington Post reported. The addition of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia brings to 20 the number of countries covered under the registration programme. Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, the UAE and Yemen are also under the US government’s terrorism scanner. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are considered US allies in the war on terror, but US officials have questioned their commitment, the daily said. Saudi Arabia recently faced allegations of doing a poor job in disrupting terrorist funding as also of inadvertently paying one of the September 11, 2001, hijackers. Most of the 9/11 terrorist hijackers were Saudis. PTI
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Kuwait deports illegal aliens
Kuwait City, December 17 The ministry carried out the sweeps through the use of roving and stationary checkpoints to rid the country of illegal residents which the officials said posed a security threat. Kuwait’s Interior Ministry stepped up security measures throughout the emirate after recent terrorist incidents and threats and after a speech made earlier this month by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein where he criticised Kuwaiti leaders. One US soldier was killed and three were injured in two separate shooting attacks since early October in the Gulf state. According to the planning ministry data, Kuwaitis comprise only 37.4 per cent of the Gulf state’s total population of 2.36 million people. Foreign workers and their families account for 1.47 million people and Asian males comprise 23.6 per cent of the people, a grouping of 558,000 people. DPA
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Fire at petrochemical plant in Israel
Jerusalem, December 17 Firefighters and rescue workers are working to prevent the fire from spreading which might prove extremely dangerous as per reports received so far. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the fire and the extent of damage was yet to be ascertained, the officials said. Witnesses reported that an explosion was heard just before the fire broke out leading to suspicions of a sabotage, as in an earlier attempt in May by Palestinians to set ablaze a fuel tanker in the Glilot fuel depot just north of Tel Aviv. Petrochemical plants and other such vital installations have been targets of terror attacks in the past and security had been beefed up at such places following the failed attempt at the Glilot fuel depot. UNI
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Malaysia
wins islands The Hague, December 17 The two neighbours had been wrangling for three decades over the isles of Sipadan and Ligitan, famed for exotic diving. The islands lie in tropical waters off the North-East coast of Borneo near a mainland border between Malaysia and Indonesia.
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Mira Nair ventures into US TV
New York, December 17 Nair, who is planning to develop her comedy ‘Monsoon Wedding’ into a Broadway musical, has signed to develop an untitled project revolving around an upper-middle-class Punjabi family that runs a chain of motels in New Jersey, according to the Hollywood reporter. She will be the executive producer of the project. One of the central themes of the show will be the clash of cultures between the parents, who relocated from India about 20 years back, and their Americanised children — an 11-year-old son and a college-going daughter, it said. “It is a very affectionate story about a family. It is about people who come from the oldest culture in the world and now find themselves living in the newest culture in the world,” Nair said. “There are wonderful, funny and poignant stories to tell of having one’s soul belong to one place while the body is in another. And of course, the kids are completely imbued with American culture,” she added. Nair is also preparing to begin shooting early next year in London on the Reese Witherspoon starrer ‘Vanity Fair’ and is also directing HBO’s adaptation of Tony Kushner’s ‘Homebody/ Kabul’. PTI
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Koreas sneer at Bond film
Wellington, December 17 “I’d like to knock their heads together,’’ Tamahori said, quoted in today’s Waikato Times, Hamilton. North Korea has urged the USA to stop showing the film, which depicts Bond being tortured by North Korean agents after he takes a hovercraft through the heavily fortified frontier dividing North and South Korea. Tamahori, a New Zealander back home for the local premiere, said he was not interested in hearing the complaints of the leaders of a ‘’warlike and bellicose’’ nation with Stalin-era politics. He said he knew a lot about North Korea’s poor human rights record and thought their reaction to the film was ‘’hilarious’’. SEOUL: North and South Korea, bitter foes for a half-century on the Cold War’s last frontier, have found a common enemy in James Bond and the latest 007 adventure, ‘’Die Another Day’’. The MGM film starring Pierce Brosnan and Halle Berry, which opens in Seoul theatres only at the end of the year, has already been given venomous reviews after Internet chat rooms spread the word about scenes deemed offensive in South Korea. But the critics were kinder at a preview of the film for media and invited guests on Monday in Seoul. “It was okay for a 007 movie,’’ said Choi Hyung-min, a young man who was in the audience. What made him most uncomfortable was a scene in which a North Korean son kills his father, a horrible taboo in a Confucian society. North Korea, cast as the villain in a movie about how the reclusive, communist state has created a state-of-the-art doomsday weapon, weighed in with its own critique at the weekend. South Koreans especially object to a scene where Bond makes love to the American agent named Jinx, played by Berry, in a Buddhist temple. “If they had done that in a cathedral, maybe Westerners would have been upset,’’ said Choi. South Koreans have also sneered at a shot showing a farmer in ricefield with his cow, which some say makes the country appear backward, though it’s not clear in the context of the movie whether the scene takes place in North or South Korea. DPA, Reuters
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B’desh anti-crime drive toll 37 Dhaka, December 17 Earlier, 33 persons had died out of the 7,000 who have been detained since Prime Minister Khaleda Zia ordered troops on to the streets on October 17 to tackle rampant crime, according to police and press reports.
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10 Maoists killed Kathmandu, December 17 A Defence Ministry statement said four guns, rocket bombs, weapon parts, ammunition, explosives, medicines as well as some documents were recovered during the operation.
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