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Friday,
February 28, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Blair
overcomes biggest revolt Saddam’s
fall will lead to peace: Bush Dig
trenches, says Saddam Russia,
Germany for peaceful solution N. Korea
has ‘reactivated’ N-reactor
9 beaten
to death in Bangladesh Plane
wreckage found |
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Human
rights group flays Gujarat Govt
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Blair overcomes biggest revolt
London, February 27 However, Mr Blair managed to sail through in the House of Commons last night with the motion warning Mr Saddam Hussein that he faced his last chance to disarm being passed by 434-124 votes amid dramatic scenes after seven hours of debate. At least 122 MPs from his Labour Party joined 13 Conservatives, 52 Liberal Democrats and some others to vote for another amendment declaring that the case for “military action against Saddam Hussein is as (yet) unproven.” However, the lawmakers rejected it by 393-199 votes. Dozens of Labour MPs, who spoke in favour of the motion during the debate, warned Mr Blair that they would be unable to support him if he sought to go to war without UN authority. In those circumstances, Mr Blair would probably need Tory MPs’ support to secure Parliament’s backing for military action. Before the beginning of the debate, Mr Blair told MPs that he was working “flat out” to secure the passage of a UN resolution which concluded that Saddam had failed to take his “final opportunity”. The Labour rebels included the father of the house, Tam Dalyell, and former ministers Glenda Jackson, Peter Kilfoyle and Mark Fisher. Labour chairman John Reid played down the opponents’ amendment, saying “well no one was asking them to vote tonight to go to war and what’s more three quarters of the people in the Parliamentary Labour Party, in the country actually take a different view.”
PTI |
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Saddam’s fall will lead to peace: Bush Washington, February 27 “Bringing stability and unity to a free Iraq will not be easy. Yet that is no excuse to leave the Iraqi regime’s torture chambers and poison labs in operation,” Mr Bush told a leading Conservative thinktank American Enterprise Institute, yesterday. “If war is forced upon us by Iraq’s refusal to disarm, we will meet an enemy who hides his military forces behind civilians, has terrible weapons and is capable of any crime.”
PTI |
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Dig trenches, says Saddam Baghdad, February 27 Saddam told the heads of Iraq’s 18 provinces at a meeting yesterday “to urge the citizens to dig combat trenches in their gardens.” “Tell each citizen to take refuge in the trenches with his family during the raids, for even if a shell explodes over their house, they are safe in the trenches, above all if they are wearing protective headgear,” Saddam went on to say. At the meeting, the local chiefs assured Saddam that their provinces had “completed preparations for combat and the mobilisation to take on the invaders.”
AFP |
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Russia, Germany for peaceful solution
Moscow, February 27 At his Kremlin talks with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin stood firm on Moscow’s push to find a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis, rejecting a new UN Security Council resolution forwarded by the USA and the UK that would open the way for war against Saddam Hussein. “The position of Russia is known. We consider a resolution that would grant the right to automatically start a war to be unacceptable,” Mr Putin told reporters after his meeting with Mr Schroeder. “Russia is ready to search for acceptable means to resolve the conflict, but we are not ready to fight.” Schroeder also said he still believed the stand off could be resolved peacefully. Mr Putin’s comments were his first public remarks on Iraq since Russia backed a French-German memorandum forwarded to the Security Council on Monday that called for inspectors to be given at least four more months. However, Mr
Putin, who is doing a tight-rope walk on the Iraq issue, also had some positive words about US President George W Bush. “I have not heard even from the American President that he wants to conduct a war. (Bush) also wants to achieve the disarmament of Iraq by peaceful means,” he said.
PTI |
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N. Korea has ‘reactivated’ N-reactor Washington, February 27 There were no signs that North Korea had restarted its nuclear fuel-processing facility, which would be of even greater concern to Washington, the official said here today. “North Korea started its nuclear reactor at
Yongbyon,” the official said, adding the start-up took place within the last 24 hours at the reactor which has not operated since 1994. “This is certainly less provocative than starting up the reprocessing facility, but it is significant nonetheless,” the official said. “It would take nearly a year to produce enough plutonium for a nuclear weapon from this reactor and actually the reactor contributes very little electrical power to North Korea,” the official added. “Part of this demonstrates their desire to continue their nuclear weapons programme and it’s another effort to apply pressure on the USA.”
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9 beaten to death in Bangladesh
Dhaka, February 27 A mob of many hundreds chased and then beat up five alleged dacoits to death at Chandanaish in Chittagong district, a media report said. Another group of 10 while trying to flee after committing robbery at Lalankhil village near Patiathana were also chased and attacked by a crowd. Several daocities were committed on Tuesday night in four different areas in Patiathana district, vernacular daily Jugantor said. In a similar incident in the adjoining Noakhali district “Bondoushas” or forest dacoits were attacked by landless farmers in a Char, a small island. The dacoits were surrounded by hundreds of villages and were given a thrashing. Four died and another 14 were injured in the clash. Only a few days ago in the capital Dhaka itself five alleged dacoits had their eyes gouged out by an agitated mob.
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Plane wreckage found
Karachi, February 27 Navy spokesman Commander Roshan told Reuters that navy divers spotted the wreckage on the sea-bed 30 metres down and about 80 km west of Karachi. Afghan Minister for Petroleum and Mines Juma Mohammad Mohammadi and four senior aides were among the eight people killed in the crash of the twin-engined Cessna on Monday. A Chinese businessman also died. So far bodies of three Afghans and two Pakistani pilots have been found, but not that of the minister, another aide and the Chinese businessman, Sun Changsheng, chief executive of Chinese engineering firm, MCC Resource Development. “Navy experts are working to pull out the wreckege,” the spokesman said.
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Human rights group flays Gujarat Govt New York, February 27 Demanding that the central authorities step in to correct the situation, the Human Rights Watch said the government that was “complicit” in violence could not be “trusted to deliver justice.” The Central Bureau of Investigation should intervene as there was a “large-scale massacre,” it said in a report released last night. The Watch said one year after the communal violence which claimed over 2000 lives, there had been no conviction of those responsible and little in the way of promised relief. “Although the Indian government initially boasted of thousands of arrests following the attacks, most of those arrested have since been released on bail, acquitted or simply let go,” it claimed. Quoting local activists, it alleged that those who remain in jail were largely Dalits, Muslims or tribals. The report alleged that witnesses who initially came forward to file complaints and identify attackers had since been “harassed, threatened or bribed into turning hostile... or simply not showing up when a case goes to trial. “ “Instead of pursuing murder and rape charges, the authorities have regularly downgraded charges to rioting,” it alleged. “....Impunity sows the seeds of further violence and undermines the rule of law for all citizens,” said the author of the report Samita Narula.
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