 |
Monday,
February 24, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
|
Depoliticise economic ties: PM
MALAYSIA DIARY Cultural centre in Malaysia soon
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Dead or alive, Osama is everywhere in Pak
|
|
Depoliticise
economic ties: PM Kuala Lumpur, February 23 He gave the example of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) of how strengthening regional cooperation could bring about striking
results. "Economic cooperation has to be depoliticised and made immune to bilateral issues,” Mr Vajpayee said while addressing the NAM Business Forum on South-South Cooperation. Mr Vajpayee said while the developing countries scrambled for the increasingly saturated markets of the developed countries, they ignored the growth possibilities from South-South trade and investment linkages. “Today, Malaysian firms are building highways in India and Indian companies are building railway projects in Malaysia. Such linkages can be multiplied literally a hundred-fold in the areas of energy security, food security, infrastructure development, enrichment of human and institutional resources, tourism, entertainment and media,” Mr Vajpayee said. The Prime Minister lamented that today the NAM countries did not even exchange information and data of great mutual interest. “It is a shame that valuable developmental experiences from Bangladesh’s micro-credit institutions or Tanzania’s malaria-controlling bednets should remain confined to a few regions,” he said. Mr Vajpayee also virtually shot down a proposal for setting up a permanent secretariat for NAM when he said, “We can virtually perform many functions of a NAM Secretariat, located in cyberspace and accessible to all.” He pointed out that exchanges through the Internet were “cheap, effective and comprehensive”. The Prime Minister urged the NAM leaders to spearhead another initiative for the reform of the international financial structure “whose time has come”. He pointed out that unstable capital flows could severely disrupt developing economies and stressed that such flows should be regulated by an international levy. “Conservative estimates of capital flows in recent years indicate that even a token tax of a quarter per cent could generate annual revenues of the order of $ 300 billion,” he stated. The Prime Minister urged the NAM leaders to make development the main new “business” of NAM. He said a striking conclusion from the journey of NAM was that “ours is a story of huge missed opportunities” and hoped that NAM’s new agenda would be adopted for mutual benefits. Mr Vajpayee was among the four NAM leaders who were given the privilege of addressing the first-ever NAM business meet — the other three being leaders of South Africa, Indonesia and Thailand. Meanwhile, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad, who will be taking over tomorrow as NAM Chairman, said in his keynote address at the business forum today that war against Iraq would result in political and economic instability in the region. “The attack against Iraq will simply anger more Muslims who see this as being anti-Muslim rather than anti terror,” he
said. RS |
|
MALAYSIA DIARY Kuala Lumpur, February 23 ««« The Malaysian Government has put its commercial crime busters on high alert. A well-trained team of the Federal Commercial Crime Division of the police headed by Gan Tian Kee has been mobilised to prevent the “credit card cloning” which is being apprehended in view of the over 10,000 foreign delegates who have gathered here for the 13th NAM summit. The Malaysian police has information that the syndicate uses highly sophisticated equipment such as high tech skimming devices and encoders placed in the credit card terminals either with the help of staff members or its members posing as service technicians. The syndicate use skimmer device on electronic cards and charge cards to capture information stored in the magnetic strip and use them to make counterfeit cards, says Federal Director Datuk Malzan Shaari. It takes just two seconds for such a device to capture the information and each skimmer is able to store the data of 100 cards. ««« The Confederation of Indian Industry
((CII) has sent a 25 member senior level business delegation here to participate at the NAM Business Forum meeting to be held today and tomorrow. Past President, CII, and Chairman CII ASEAN Committee, Mr Jamshyd N. Godrej is leading the CII team, which includes Mr Tarun Das, Director-General, CII, and Mr Dilip Chenoy, Deputy Director-General, CII, and the industry delegation from India comprising key industry leaders. The CII will formally announce the opening of its 10th overseas office. The CII now has four of its 10 overseas (Afghanistan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa) offices in NAM countries. |
|
Cultural centre in Malaysia soon Kuala Lumpur, February 23 The centre will cater to the growing demands of 1.8 million people of Indian origin in Malaysia who have been clamouring for such a centre for years. Hindi will also be taught at the Centre, Mr Vajpayee said while rendering an impromptu speech at a reception given in his honour by the High Commission of India here.
TNS |
|
|
Dead or alive, Osama is everywhere in Pak
Islamabad, February 23 From the bazaars of Quetta on the arid south-west plains to the suburban markets of Islamabad, his sunken eyes gaze out from the covers of VCDs and books; his gaunt face and wispy beard are emblazoned on T-shirts and posters. Osama dolls, replete with flowing white robes, sit astride toy tanks. Afghan and Western intelligence officials point to Pakistan’s porous western border regions as the Al-Qaida network chief’s likely hiding place if he survived an onslaught of US bombs in the November 2001 campaign in the Tora Bora mountains where some say he had fled. On a visit to Russia early February, President Pervez Musharraf told reporters enigmatically “there are indications that (Bin Laden) is alive.” But despite a $ 25-million price on his head, the only confirmed sightings since he fled the southern Afghan city of Kandahar ahead of advancing of the US troops are of mass marketed Bin Laden images. Shopkeepers in the north-west city of Peshawar, 40 km from the Afghan border, report a roaring trade in Osama-branded VCDs and books since the USA declared its intentions to attack Iraq unless it disarms. “Mostly tribal and religious-oriented people are customers of products carrying the face of Osama bin Laden,” said a Peshawar VCD vendor. The VCDs carry footage of past lectures by the 45-year-old self-styled Islamic warrior exhorting the virtues of jehad against Western “infidels” and “crusaders.” The sermons are overlaid with vision of young men charging with rifles and blowing up mock buildings in Al-Qaida training camps. In Quetta, toy shops lure boys, many sporting the black turbans worn by the Taliban, with displays of models of armoured personnel carriers carrying white-clad Osama dolls. Markets in the southern port city of Karachi ply hand-held video games packaged in boxes stamped with images of Bin Laden and his arch-foe, US President George W. Bush. On the screens of the games, players watch as many repeats as their batteries will allow of the apocalyptic vision of planes ploughing into New York’s World Trade Center.
AFP |
 |
| Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir | Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs | Nation | Editorial | | Business | Sport | World | Mailbag | In Spotlight | Chandigarh Tribune | Ludhiana Tribune 50 years of Independence | Tercentenary Celebrations | | 123 Years of Trust | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
Videos
