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Saturday,
February 22, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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NAM TALKS EXTENDED Arab states shoot down Iraqi proposal Troops ready to attack Iraq:
USA ‘Day of freedom’ nearing for Iraqis: Bush Vajpayee’s remarks find favour with
Pak Pak mourns air force
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Clinton cancels India
trip 60 dead in nightclub
fire EXTRADITION TREATY
Mother Teresa to be beatified on October 19 Suu Kyi gets 1-week jail
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NAM TALKS EXTENDED Kuala Lumpur, February 21 While India and Pakistan differed on the draft of terrorism, other countries were struggling to arrive at a consensus on the Iraqi resolution. There were also differences on the North Korean issue. Pakistan was opposing Indian amendments in the terrorism draft with New Delhi demanding denouncement of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. The stalemate on Iraq continued as the member countries failed to reach on any consensus, sources said. While Kuwait, Chile, Peru and some Arab and Asian nations wanted modifications in the draft statement on Iraq, other countries were eager to send a strong message to the USA for its plan to attack Iraq. Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar told newspersons that there was no consensus on Iraq at today's meeting. The issue will be discussed tomorrow. The working group, which was set up to draw the movement strategy on the Iraq crisis, is expected to complete its work by tomorrow. He also admitted that some of the issues like terrorism and disarmament needed to be ironed out. There are many critical issues before the political committee and it would take time to resolve them, he said. However, the social and economic committee had finalised its work. There have also been differences on the North Korean issue with Pyongyang blaming the USA on its nuclear weapons programme. North Korea submitted a draft proposal, stating that the removal of the constant threats of the US against Pyongyang constitutes a pre-condition for ensuring peace and security in the Korean peninsula.
UNI |
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Arab states shoot down Iraqi proposal Kuala Lumpur, February 21 “That paragraph has been deleted because it is an internal issue for certain states,” said a United Arab
Emirates delegate. The Arab bloc met here to prepare their stand on the Iraq crisis before forwarding it to the full meeting of NAM senior officials preparing a final document for adoption at a summit here next week. “But we all agreed that war is not a solution,” the UAE delegate said. “The UN inspectors need more time, so let them continue their job. The UAE and most Arab countries don’t believe that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.”
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Troops ready to attack Iraq: USA Washington, February 21 “I would characterise it as ample,’’ Mr Rumsfeld, interviewed on Public Television’s “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer’’ yesterday said of the force of tens of thousands of US and UK troops massed in the area. “We are at a point where, if the President (Mr George W. Bush) makes that decision (to attack), the Department of Defence is prepared and has the capabilities and the strategy to do that,’’ he said. Asked if the forces were ready to go to war now, Mr Rumsfeld replied: “Yes.’’ “There will be a large coalition. There will be a lot of countries’’ involved in any such effort, Mr Rumsfeld said, repeating assertions that an international coalition would quickly emerge if Mr Bush decided to move. Defence officials say the USA and the UK have gathered more than 150,000 troops in the region along with dozens of warships and hundreds of aircraft. But Mr Rumsfeld refused to discuss the exact number of troops, saying “I don’t do numbers.’’ The force will soon include six aircraft carriers — five US and one British — and could reach more than 200,000 troops by the end of February, according to US officials. Mr Rumsfeld stressed that US military leaders were planning for a wide range of contingencies in any war in Iraq, ranging from immediate and widespread surrender of Iraqi troops to possible use of chemical and biological weapons by Iraq and door-to-door urban combat in “fortress Baghdad’’. Mr Rumsfeld spoke amid speculation that the massed forces could launch a war within weeks, even as the USA and the UK are preparing to press for a new UN resolution warning Iraq that time has run out to make full disclosure of its arms
programme. Reuters |
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‘Day of freedom’ nearing for Iraqis: Bush Washington, February 21 Addressing a group of businessmen at Kennesaw in Georgia yesterday, Mr Bush said the USA had to defend its own security and had a broader cause to liberate the people of Iraq from a “violent dictator.” “For the oppressed people of Iraq, people whose lives we care about, the day of freedom is drawing near,” Mr Bush said. The Iraqi people today are not treated with dignity, but they have a right to live in dignity, he added.
PTI |
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Vajpayee’s remarks find favour with Pak Islamabad, February 21 “It is a good statement. It will help in lowering tension. We welcome Prime Minister Vajpayee’s statement and we are prepared to engage in a comprehensive dialogue with India on Kashmir and on other outstanding issues”, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri told the media in Karachi yesterday before leaving for Kuala Lumpur to attend the NAM summit. Mr Vajpayee on February 19 told the Lok Sabha that “there should not be any war, anywhere in the world, be it between the USA and Iraq or between India and Pakistan.” While reiterating Pakistan’s desire for resolving “all its disputes with India peacefully,” Mr Kasuri however said “there cannot be peace without Kashmir.” Mr Kasuri also accused India of imposing an arms race on Pakistan and said Islamabad wanted to remove the existing imbalance in conventional military strength with India. He said the imbalance needed to be removed as it encouraged New Delhi to adopt a “threatening posture” against Pakistan.
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Pak mourns air force dead Islamabad, February 21 An Air force Fokker F-27 turbo-prop carrying Air Chief Marshal Mushaf Ali Mir, his wife and several senior officers crashed on a hill, about 27 km from the northwestern town of Kohat yesterday, killing all 17 aboard. The prayer ceremony, attended by President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, was being held at the air force base in capital Islamabad. The victims of the air crash will be buried later in their hometowns. While a board of inquiry has been set up to determine the exact reason for the crash, news reports today quoted officials as saying that pilot error in low visibility was the most likely cause. Air force spokesman Air Commodore Sarfraz Ahmed Khan called the crash an accident yesterday, but said the weather had been fit for flying. However, residents of Taulanj, the village near where the plane came down, said the skies had been foggy at the time. The News quoted an unnamed senior official as saying that the Fokker had hit the hillside after the pilot flew low to escape thick cloud. “It was an accident because of human error and apparently there was no element of sabotage or act of terrorism,” it quoted the official as saying. President Musharraf called the deaths a great national loss and a day of mourning was called for today. The crash came after Pakistan experienced four successive days of heavy rain, the heaviest downpour in decades. Air Marshal Syed Qaiser Hussain has been appointed acting air force chief.
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Clinton cancels India trip New York, February 21 “serious security concerns” caused by the situation in Iraq and terrorist threat to American citizens, sources said here. “At the request of the US Secret Service, a visit to India by former President Bill Clinton has been cancelled due to serious security concerns,” Clinton’s aide David Slade wrote to officials in India. The trip was cancelled because of a general threat to Americans in India, not a specific threat to Clinton, an unidentified source told the Daily News.
PTI |
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60 dead in nightclub fire West Warwick (Rhode Island), February 21 More were possibly trapped inside. The blaze broke out yesterday during a pyrotechnics display during a concert. The club went up in flames and little was left of the one-storyed building hours later. “The place went up within a matter of two minutes,” a witness said.
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EXTRADITION TREATY Kathmandu, February 21 The five-day Joint Secretary-level talks, which concluded here yesterday, agreed to hold the next round of talks in New Delhi soon to finalise the amendments to the extradition treaty. The extradition treaty was signed for the first time half a century ago. "Whatever was in the drafts was discussed and we have decided to meet in New Delhi soon," said Mr B.A. Roy, Joint Secretary of the Indian External Affairs Ministry and the leader of the Indian delegation. He declined to give details of the agenda discussed during the meeting. "The agenda is confidential and shall not be disclosed until we reach a certain level of agreement." Nepal and India had exchanged their respective drafts of the update of the extradition treaty more than a year ago. "Negotiations are on and we will meet in New Delhi to redraft a mutually-acceptable standard format," said Dr Madan Dev Bhattarai, leader of the Nepalese delegation.
UNI |
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Mother Teresa to be beatified on October 19 Vatican City, February 21 The announcement was made by Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples during a press conference called to present the Church's World Mission Day, 2003. “This year”, Cardinal Sepe said, “the World Mission Day, which falls on Sunday, October 19, 2003, would coincide with celebrations marking the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's pontificate, and with the beatification of Mother Teresa.”
DPA |
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Suu Kyi gets 1-week jail Yangon, February 21 Aung Shwe, chairman of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), said the pro-democracy leader had refused to accept the sentence handed down by a township court in the area where she lives. “This judgment and the trial are politically motivated,’’ he told a news conference at NLD headquarters. Suu Kyi’s lawyer, Nyan Win, said his client was still at the court and would appeal the decision in the afternoon. Suu Kyi and her cousin, Soe Aung, filed lawsuits against each other last year shortly after the pro-democracy leader’s release from 19-month house arrest. Soe Aung accused Suu Kyi of “wrongful restraint’’, while Suu Kyi accused him of ‘’outraging the modesty of women’’ after a scuffle outside her residence on May 10, two days after Suu Kyi’s release.
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Indian youth has dictionary in mind! London, February 21 Lucknow-based Mahaveer Jain remembers all the 80,000 individual entries in Oxford Advnced Learner’s Dictionary along with their sequence and page numbers, according to Asianet news service. The Engineering graduate’s feat has earned him a place in the Limca Book of Records, Indian version of the Guinness Book of World Records, it said. “It’s an incredible achievement. Our editors are constantly revising and re-editing Oxford Advanced Learner’s dictionary to keep it up to date. Amazing as it seems, Mr Jain probably knows the dictionary even better than an Oxford editor,” Asianet quoted Moira Runcie, Editorial Director of Dictionaries at the Oxford University Press, as saying.
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Kuala Lumpur, February 21
Pakistan held a prayer ceremony today for its air force chief and 16 others killed in an air crash and news reports said pilot error in foggy weather was the most likely cause of the accident.
West Warwick (Rhode Island), February 21
