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Tuesday,
March 25, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Anti-war
protests continue
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Iraqi POWs
on US hospital ship Amnesty
asks Iraq to respect POWs Saddam’s
TV speech ‘not live’ |
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London, March 24 The US-led invasion of Iraq is “going well,” but it might be weeks before the guns fall silent, a junior British Defence Minister said today as the war entered its fifth day.
Glamour
battled war for Oscars
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Anti-war protests continue Bangkok, March 24 Protests were held in Australia, Thailand, Indonesia and Bangladesh today. These were smaller and less intense than previous demonstrations. Nonetheless, activists across Asia said a new wave of rallies was being planned. “Hatred against America is increasing,” said Mr Shahid Hamsi, spokesman for the United Action Forum, a hardline Islamic group in Pakistan, where about 1 lakh persons marched through Lahore yesterday. In Bangkok, 1,000 farmers protested against the war today and Thailand’s Prime Minister, Mr Thaksin Shinawatra, said: “Global opposition will make the Americans end the war soon. This war will not be prolonged.” In Auckland, a Roman Catholic priest and another man said they had used their blood to make a metre-long cross on the carpet of the US Consul’s office after they made an appointment to see the diplomat purportedly to read him an anti-war statement. Father Peter Murnane and a Catholic activist Nicholas Rake accused the United States of “spilling a great quantity of blood on the soil of Iraq.” In Canberra, Prime Minister John Howard was repeatedly heckled and abused from the public gallery inside Parliament, while the police outside pushed back hundreds of demonstrators protesting Australia’s combat role in Iraq. The protesters demanded that 2,000 Australian troops fighting in Iraq be brought home. “You’re a liar Howard. Coward Howard,” screamed one woman inside before she was dragged out. Bangladesh has told foreign diplomats to seek police escorts whenever they leave their compounds, after a string of anti-war protests. About 1,000 students protested in Bangladesh today and riot police stopped dozens of women from marching on the US Embassy. “Bangladesh stands against any war,” Foreign Minister, Mr M. Morshed Khan, said today. Several hundred anti-war protesters rallied in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second most populous city. Smaller demonstrations took place in capital Jakarta and Makassar on Sulawesi island. Australia, Britain and the United States say they have intelligence information on a plot to stage a terror attack against Westerners in Surabaya. In Pakistan, about 200 blind students staged an anti-war demonstration, while lawyers boycotted courts.
AP |
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Iraqi POWs on US hospital ship Bahrain, March 24 It said it was respecting their ‘’privacy’’ in line with the 1949 Geneva Convention. ‘’We are treating all injured from either side and giving them the best care we can,’’ said Navy Lieutenant Garrett Kasper, a spokesman for the Bahrain-based naval component of the US Central Command. “We want to respect their privacy,’’ he said, “to avoid possible reprisals against their families by Iraqi forces,” he said. Also being treated on the 1,000-bed Comfort, that had 12 operating rooms, were Iraqi civilians injured in the war and casualties from the US-led forces. Earlier in the day, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said all parties in the war were obliged under the Geneva Convention not to allow pictures of prisoners to be aired on television. Lieutenant Kasper said the US military was doing its best to make sure cameraman travelling with the US-led forces respected ground rules barring transmission of pictures of the POWs’. “The media are not bound by the Geneva Convention. It obligates states to treat the POWs humanely, which includes shielding them from intimidation, insults and public curiosity. Meanwhile, the Russian President, Mr Vladimir Putin, today called upon the Iraqi leadership to treat prisoners of war with dignity as required under international laws. “Russia is aware how the Iraqi POWs are being kept (by the US-led coalition) and we hope that the Iraqi side would also obey the international laws on the POWs,” Putin was quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti news agency.
Reuters, PTI |
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Amnesty asks Iraq to respect POWs London, March 24 “Amnesty International calls on the Iraqi authorities to treat US prisoners of war in full conformity with the Third Geneva Convention following the broadcast today on Iraqi television of captured US soldiers,” the London-based rights group said in a statement yesterday. “They should not be subjected to any form of torture or ill-treatment and should be given immediate access to the International Committee of the Red Cross.” Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arab satellite channel, and Iraqi state television yesterday broadcast images of several bodies, apparently US soldiers killed in Iraq, along with five prisoners, including two wounded, one of them a woman. Amnesty “calls on all media to ensure in its use of images that the dignity of all prisoners of war, whether Iraqi or US or other, is respected,” the organisation said. It noted that under Article 14 of the Convention, prisoners of war “are entitled in all circumstances to respect for their persons and their honour,” while Article 13 says they “must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity”.
AFP |
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Saddam’s TV speech ‘not live’ London, March 24 “Obviously analysis continues, but I can say straight away that those pictures were not live,” Mr Hoon told a press briefing. In his second so-called “victory” speech to be seen since the war began on Thursday, Saddam — dressed in a military uniform — promised a long and bitter war against the US and British forces, with Iraq crushing the invasion.
AFP |
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‘War may last for weeks’ London, March 24 Speaking on BBC Radio, Lewis Moonie added that a hunt was under way in southern Iraq for the first two British soldiers to be reported missing, somewhere in southern Iraq. Prime Minister Tony Blair was to make his first statement later today to the House of Commons since the war began, preceded by a press briefing by Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon. “The spearhead is going well,” Moonie, who is Under Secretary of State for Defence and Minister for Veterans, told the Today programme, just as Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was speaking live on Baghdad television.
AFP |
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Laden may be in Pak: Pervez Hong Kong, March 24 General Musharraf had previously dismissed reports that the Al-Qaida leader might be hiding in Pakistan’s rugged tribal belt, but he acknowledged in an interview with The Asian Wall Street Journal that it was a “possibility.” The Pakistani leader had insisted previously that Bin Laden could not travel unnoticed in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas because of a heavy security detail which surrounds him. But the intense US-led manhunt in Afghanistan may have forced him to move about with a smaller group of bodyguards, General Musharraf told the newspaper. “If he is relegated to that position, where his group is forced or divided into small packets, now a small packet with him coming on our side and now hiding in one area, a house or a room, is a possibility,” he said. “So therefore, as the environment keeps changing, one has to keep evaluating what are the
possibilities. That possibility is there,” he said. Pakistani intelligence agents have made a number of high-profile arrests of Al-Qaida leaders in recent weeks, including that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the thirdmost senior official in the Al-Qaida hierarchy, in the northern city of Rawalpindi on March 1. Sheikh Mohammed is believed to be
Al-Qaeda’s operational commander and the architect of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the USA.
AFP |
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Glamour battled war for Oscars Hollywood, March 24 The world’s ultimate show-business affair, celebrating its diamond anniversary, refused to be overshadowed by events in Iraq after days of suspense over whether it would be delayed or even cancelled because of the war. Attenders at Hollywood’s premier event included nominees Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones and husband Michael Douglas, Salma Hayek and Kathy Bates and double nominee Julianne Moore. Also in the star-studded crowd was lifetime Oscar recipient Peter O’Toole, “Chicago” director Rob Marshall, Jack Nicholson, Sean Connery, last year’s best actor laureates Halle Berry and Denzel Washington. Stars toned down their jewellery and designer dresses to mark the soberness of the times, with black-and-white appearing as a recurring fashion theme. But glamour was still very much apparent on the dramatically scaled back red carpet outside Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre. Kidman, whose date was her parents, and Streep, both arrived in long black gowns, but Zellweger and Kathy Bates both opted for more flashy red gowns. And diva Jennifer Lopez arrived with beau Ben Affleck wearing an off-the-shoulder sea-green gown by Valentino that once belonged to Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis.
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First judge to wear turban in UK court London, March 24 Mr Rabinder Singh, who co-founded the Matrix Human Rights Law Chambers with Cherie Blair, wife of Prime Minister Tony Blair, four years ago, was appointed a deputy (part-time) High Court judge in December. Rabinder Singh 39-year old Cambridge-educated the youngest person to be called to the High Court Bench, heard his first cases - a number of applications for permission to challenge immigration decisions - at the Royal Courts of Justice in London today. Mota Singh, a turban-bearing Sikh, earlier served for some years as a circuit judge.
PTI |
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Pak condemns J&K massacre Islamabad, March 24 |
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