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Monday,
March 10, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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USA, France step up diplomacy ahead of vote UK, USA plan assault
on Baghdad airport
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Iraq destroys
more missiles
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WINDOW ON
PAKISTAN Musharraf’s nephew detained, freed
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USA, France step up diplomacy ahead of vote Washington/Paris, March 9 France is sending Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin on a whistle-stop tour of Guinea, Cameroon and Angola to urge them to reject a US-backed draft resolution setting a March 17 deadline for Iraq to disarm. If the resolution fails to win the backing of the Security Council, Washington has said it could lead a “coalition of the willing” without UN approval to disarm Iraq. A resolution in the 15-member council needs a minimum of nine votes for adoption and no veto by any of the five permanent members - the USA, Britain, France, Russia and China. So far, the USA can count on the support of Britain, Spain and Bulgaria. Seven of the 15 current members appear to oppose the measure. Analysts say USA promises of economic aid to the ‘’undecided’’ may succeed where argument has so far failed. Villepin declared France’s opposition to any disarmament deadline on Friday, noting that chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix had said in his latest report that Iraq was offering greater cooperation. Russia and China are also opposed to any new resolution that would implicitly or explicitly authorise military action. US President George W. Bush appeared to be making little headway in gathering support ahead of the vote, which could take place as soon as on Tuesday. Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, whose country currently sits on the council, told Bush on the telephone that the March 17 dateline for Iraqi disarmament was too short and added that the UN weapons inspectors should be given more time. Bush could dispatch his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to Russia to lobby President Vladimir Putin in person. Secretary of State Colin Powell could also be called upon to visit leaders with swing votes. Bush appealed in his weekly radio address on Saturday to undecided Security Council members. “Allowing a dangerous dictator to defy the world and build an arsenal for conquest and mass murder is not peace at all; it is pretence,” Bush said. “The cause of peace will be advanced only when the terrorists lose a wealthy patron and protector, and when the dictator is fully and finally disarmed.” Iraq scrapped more of its banned missiles on Saturday but Bush dismissed the move as a charade that would not save it from war. Bush said that as Iraq was crushing some al-Samoud 2 missiles, it was covertly making more. “These are not the actions of a regime that is disarming. These are the actions of a regime engaged in a wilful charade,” he said in his radio address.
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UK, USA plan assault
on Baghdad airport London, March 9 British paratroopers from 16 Air Assault Brigade will support US soldiers from the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions in any airport assault, The Sunday Telegraph said, without indicating its sources. Britain, Spain and the USA have proposed March 17 as a deadline for Iraq to disarm itself of any banned weapons or face war. The Telegraph said any assault on the airport would begin in the hours after the launch of war. Combat jets armed with satellite-guided bombs would first destroy air defence sites and troops guarding the airfield before paratroopers or heliborne troops jumped down from a height of 250 feet. The weekly said that any war would begin with waves of cruise missiles, followed by bombers and ground attack aircraft striking Iraqi command and control centres.
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Lakhs pray against war on Iraq Surabaya (Indonesia) March 9 Officials with the moderate Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Indonesia’s leading Islamic organisation and organiser of the event, said estimated 7,00,000 to 800,000 people had poured into a military parade ground in Surabaya by mid-day. “People are advised not to enter the compound any more,” said Helmy Noor, a spokesman for the event. A military official estimated the crowd at 7,00,000. Indonesian politicians and religious leaders fear a US attack on Iraq could spark a strong backlash in the strongly Muslim country, where moderates as well as militants have been highly critical of the US policy in West Asia. “Radicalism will get its momentum because they could say America has conducted violence... We won’t be listened to any more,” Hasyim Muzadi, chief of the 40-million strong NU told Reuters ahead of Sunday’s rally. Muhammad Rizieq, chief of Indonesia’s militant Islamic Defenders’ Front, underscored that warning. “If the war starts tomorrow, the next day we will have thousands of new Osama bin Ladens who will be ready to destroy US facilities anywhere on earth,” he told Reuters. “We are campaigning for the public to besiege and take over the US Embassy if war breaks out.” Indonesian officials have said such threats should not be taken as a measure of what would happen but have acknowledged there will be massive protests in the event of war. Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda, who attended the Surabaya prayer session, said he hoped it would set a peaceful example for other anti-war actions as well as help change US President George W. Bush’s policies. “Hopefully he can open his ears and listen and open his heart too,” Wirajuda said. Many of the men, wearing white or traditional Batik shirts, colourful sarongs and Muslim caps, and women with long colourful dresses and veils, walked to the site. Thousands of buses, trucks and vans brought others from elsewhere in East Java province. Organisers discouraged participants from bringing banners and posters. Two official NU banners, both in English read: “NU rejects US aggression to Iraq” and “The US unilateral aggression to Iraq breaks the world order”. A third banner in Indonesian suggested the NU was trying to maintain its moderate voice. “The courteous Islam is not the angry Islam,” it said. A smaller anti-war prayer rally was expected in Jakarta. In neighbouring Malaysia, where Islam is the official religion, the pro-government New Straits Times said in an editorial on Sunday there was “no moral case for war against Iraq” because it was not about weapons of mass destruction, terrorism or liberating an oppressed people. “It is about the imposition of a Pax Americana on the Middle East. All the justifications — democracy, human rights and regional stability — echo the double-talk used by 19th century European imperialists, who conquered and plundered Africa and Asia to bring godliness and civilisation to the heathens.”
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Iraq destroys more missiles Baghdad, March 9 “The destruction is continuing today,” UN inspectors’ spokesman Hiro Ueki said, without giving further details. Iraq has scrapped 40 missiles since the destruction process began a week ago in line with a UN ultimatum. Five combat warheads, a launcher and five engines have also been destroyed. Iraqi officials say the country has produced about 100 Al-Samoud 2 missiles, which UN experts said had to be scrapped because they exceeded the range limit of 150 km allowed by UN resolutions. The scrapping of the missiles has been the most tangible sign of Iraq’s cooperation with the inspectors probing its alleged programme of weapons of destruction. Iraq demanded yesterday the lifting of the embargo slapped on it for invading Kuwait in 1990 in the light of the positive reports given to the Security Council on Friday by chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed El Baradei on Baghdad’s cooperation with the disarmament process.
AFP |
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Poems against war in Iraq IF poems can move President Bush and influence him to abandon his military path to oust the regime of Saddam Hussein, Americans, young and old, are bursting into verses that reflect the public concern about current US policy towards the war against terror and Iraq. Democrat Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur has been coordinating with an organisation called Poets Against the War which has collected poems written by Americans around the country in disapproval of the US Government’s Iraq policy. Ms Kaptur chose to read in the House of Representatives one of the 13,000 poems presented by the organisation. Mr Stanley Kunitz, a 97-year-old poet from New York, wrote:”When they shall paint our sockets gray and light us like a stinking fuse, remember that we once could say, yesterday, we had a world to lose.” Another lawmaker, Ms Lynn Woolsey, shared a poem that was written by one of her constituents, Elizabeth Barret, an 83-year-old woman from California. In the poem called “Peace”, she said: “I will listen to my heart. I know that I need to open my heart to God.The prospect of war makes me cry out for peace. Where are all the mothers and children? Where are all the men whose hearts have been hurt? Do they not know that they were at one time children too? “The world needs peace. We have become very small. We need to love each other more than ever. Who will help the world? The women and children will save the world.” Ms Woolsey told her colleagues: “Mrs Barret eloquently makes the point that we should measure every single decision this House makes by its effect on our nation’s children. She understands that an invasion of Iraq will inspire a new generation of terrorists to threaten our children.” Ms Woolsey also read out a poem called “Lady Paz” written by 15-year-old Carina with the concluding lines: “Oh peace, you must be a tainted lady. A tainted lady to tame us screaming so.” Commenting on the poem, the Congresswoman said:”Carina understands that violence is not the way to peace.” |
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2 Indians in Hall of Fame Silicon Valley, March 9 Kumar Malavalli, co-founder of Brocade Communications Systems, Inc, and Mihir Parikh, founder and former chief executive officer of Asyst Technologies, have become the first Indian Americans business leaders to be bestowed with this honour. With this recognition, the two have joined ranks with the likes of William Hewlett and David Packard, co-founders of Hewlett-Packard; Robert N Noyce, co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor Corp and Intel Corp; and Russell H Varian and Sigurd F Varian, co-inventors of Klystron. Considered one of the founding forces in the fibre channel technology, Malavalli has been a major contributor to the development of fibre channel standards and products over the past 15 years, and has been instrumental in the evolution of the storage area networks that support today’s leading companies. A co-founder of Brocade, Malavalli holds several US patents in fibre channel technology. He became chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) T11 Technical Committee, which established universal standards for fibre channel, and was a director of both the Fibre Channel Industry Association and the Storage Networking Industry Association. The benefits of fibre channel technology became apparent after September 11 when, for the first time, World Trade Center companies were able to rely on the data disaster recovery features of their storage systems. Parikh graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a BS degree in engineering physics in 1969, and with a PhD in engineering science in 1974. He received the outstanding alumnus award from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley for his visionary leadership in the development of advanced semiconductor manufacturing environments. From 1974 to 1984, Parikh held various engineering management positions with Hewlett-Packard and International Business Machines Corp. Parikh has been widely published on topics of electron beam lithography, theoretical and experimental radiation physics, applications of tunneling spectroscopy, and wafer automation and transfer systems.
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WINDOW ON
PAKISTAN TWO significant and related statements on Kashmir (one made in the first week of this month and the other some time ago) indicate what is going on behind the scenes in Islamabad. It seems some highly influential people there realise that Pakistan must shed its Kashmir obsession in its own long-term political and economic interests. It is a different matter that they may not admit it openly that the rhetoric on this highly sensitive matter and its misuse for political purposes will take their country nowhere. Let us have a look at what the two worthies said on the Kashmir question. The Chairman of Pakistan’s Kashmir Committee, Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan, had stated some time ago that Islamabad should seriously think of accepting the status quo as the final solution to the problem —agreeing to the Line of Control as the border between India and Pakistan. This obviously did not go well down the throats of many people, including militant jehadis. The protests from the militant elements is understandable because the burial of the Kashmir issue forever may lead to the irrelevance of the Kashmir-centric militancy and those associated with this dangerous game. Till the other day it was, however, not clear what was the exact thinking of the ruling section, including the military, on this big question. A peep into the mind of this group can be had after going through Pakistan Information Minister Sheikh Rashid’s statement on the subject made on March 3 in Lahore and carried in the newspapers extensively. The minister said: “The problem could be solved between the two countries in the next three years but not in a way Pakistan and India want it to be... We should be mentally prepared for this.” It is obvious that Mr Rashid would not have made this meaningful but controversial remark without getting clearance from his boss, Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali, and the big boss, President Pervez Musharraf. But in the process he provided a clue to the undercurrents. That he also showered praise on the ruling General for his Kashmir policy, the core of which is the promotion of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere in India, is beside the point. The Press described Mr Rashid’s remarks as intriguing. The most telling comment (editorial) was carried in The Frontier Post, known for its left leanings, on March 5: “The minister did not say what he had in his mind, but the comment is worthy of examination. India has been insisting over the last 55 years that Kashmir is its atoot ang (integral part). Pakistan, on the other hand, has been wedded to self-determination for the Kashmiris according to the UN Security Council resolution of 1948 and 1949, promising the same through a plebiscite. This impasse has yet to yield a solution either through military or political means... Recently General Musharraf had said in an interview that he was willing to cooperate with India in the struggle against terrorism provided New Delhi showed willingness to resolve Kashmir. However, he added the caveat that his own grip on power might come under threat if he made too many concessions on the dispute. This is the heart of the problem. Powerful lobbies across the divide make it difficult for the leaderships on either side to rise above the conventional wisdom and move towards convergence through a high degree of statesmanship, without which the impasse cannot be ended. A historic compromise appears as the only viable proposition, which may not entirely satisfy either Pakistan or India.” It seems the Government of Pakistan is testing the waters on its side to rework its Kashmir policy. There is the possibility that this is a result of the invisible pressure being put from Washington. As General Musharraf himself has admitted, the USA may turn its attention towards Pakistan after the Iraq chapter is closed. Since the USA is well-entrenched in the area that includes Afghanistan and Pakistan, it cannot allow any threat to its interests from Pakistan to persist forever. Hence the strong possibility of US intervention in Pakistan to change the climate of militancy prevailing as a result of the establishment’s support to terrorism since 1989. The Musharraf regime, it appears, is working overtime to meet that situation with a new policy formulation. Still one cannot be sure of its real intentions. |
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Musharraf’s nephew detained, freed Islamabad, March 9 Javed, whose US visa expired in 1994, would now have to appear before immigration judge who could order him deported or allow to stay in the USA, it said. The report said that Javed, a resident of Memphis, Tennesse, had informed his family in Pakistan.
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