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Sunday,
March 30, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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‘Shock
and awe’ in store for USA
Pentagon
was warned of paramilitary forces Hans Blix
to resign in June |
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Pandits’ massacre a fallout of war: Sibal Moscow, March 29 Holding Islamabad responsible for the killing of 24 Kashmiri Pandits, India today said the massacre was the direct fallout of Iraq as Pakistan, which was domestically under pressure for backing the USA, was trying to divert the attention of extremist elements in the country. China
to join anti-virus fight
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‘Shock and awe’ in store for USA
Southern Iraq, March 29 The chasers came from all directions. To demonstrate the hurt Iraqi ego as it seemed, they came in pick-up vans. Some came with hand-carts and some came running, converging where the trucks came to be parked. The truck-owners — Kuwait Red Crescent Society -just had to open the latches of the vehicles laden with food packets (each vehicle had 500 large boxes). The locals did the rest. Scores of Iraqi civilians, already gathered at vantage positions around the trucks, took command of the vehicles in a flash. The parked vehicles were as good as commandeered. Food riots had just begun. Bare-footed girls and boys jostled with their burly elders to grab a box which their own people were throwing into the crowd below from the trucks. Each box was carried, like a trophy, to the pick-up vans parked close by. Each food rioter would dump the box into his vehicle and sprint back towards the trucks for another sortie. About 15 minutes later, the aid recipients become more aggressive in food grabbing. Now, each one wants to jump onto the truck itself. Those who are already on the truck waste no time in getting down with their grab. They jump into the crowd below, boxes in their arms, as if diving into the Shat-al-Arab. None is deterred when an Iraqi breaks his leg in the melee. The trucks get nearly empty in 10 more minutes, but angry Iraqi men suddenly turn aggressive towards journalists. One of them makes a vulgar gesture to a woman journalist from Spain, while, another breaks into a political speech accusing the media of giving a biased coverage of the war. “We don’t want any food. We just want regular supply of water and electricity for our farmer brothers,” he says agitatedly. A young Iraqi walks into a media vehicle, picks up a bag of cold-drink cans, grabs a journalist’s video cassette and vanishes. The video cassette is returned to its owner later, but only after some money had exchanged hands. The Kuwaiti and British officials on the spot appear struck by “shock and awe”, while, the Iraqis start pelting stones at the “foreigners”. Finally, the British troops fire more than a dozen warning shots in the air and the Iraqis disperse, reluctantly. Today’s humanitarian aid operation for 50,000 persons of Safwa and adjoining areas shows that the coalition forces may have captured Iraqi territory, and may be controlling over 100 Iraqi oil wells, but, they have failed to win the Iraqi hearts. As the American-led coalition forces capture Iraqi villages, towns and cities, the onus would be on them to feed the Iraqis there and avert a potential humanitarian disaster. About 60 per cent of the 24 million Iraqis covered under United Nation the oil-for-food programme may need to be fed in near future. The unfolding humanitarian crisis has “shock and awe” in store for the Americans in Iraq.  |
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Pentagon was warned of paramilitary forces New York, March 29 The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) issued a report last month that said the paramilitary units loyal to Mr Saddam Hussein could threaten rear areas during an allied advance, the officials were quoted as saying by the New York Times. The CIA report also raised concerns about possibility that the paramilitary forces could mount attacks on Iraqi civilians and use other irregular means to try to tie down invading forces. Analysts at Defence Intelligence Agency, the paper said, also voiced concerns about paramilitary forces in the months leading up to war with Iraq, and warned the military leadership about the threat from guerrilla-style attacks. Officials were quoted as saying that the issue was also raised by analysts at the National Ground Intelligence Centre, another branch of military intelligence. Still, intelligence officials cautioned the warnings by analysts about paramilitary forces shouldn’t be overstated, since other potential threats received much more attention. “You can’t overspin this and say this was considered the biggest threat by the analysts,” an official said. “A lot more attention was paid to Republican Guards and to possible use of weapons of mass destruction. Those were considered biggest problems.” The Times said the fact that analysts raised the issue in intelligence reports but did not make it a dominant theme might help explain why commanders in the field, who might not have read the fine print of every report, were surprised when paramilitary forces first appeared.
PTI |
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Hans Blix to resign in June
United Nations, March 29 “He was not a volunteer and frankly speaking he hoped to be out of here one year ago,” Blix’s spokesman Ewen Buchanan said yesterday after announcing the news. “It was a particular phase in this exercise and if there is to be a new phase then somebody else should take it on.” Blix, a 74-year-old Swede, was named to the post in January 2000, and originally scheduled to serve just two years. His reputation for standing up to pressure was sorely tested as the Iraq crisis unfolded and US officials became exasperated with his measured reports on Iraqi cooperation with his inspection teams. The tension increased after Blix reported in February that his inspectors had been unable to confirm US allegations regarding Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction.
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Turkish plane hijacker arrested Athens, March 29 “All passengers are safe outside the airplane. That was our concern,” Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou said at Athens airport. Greek Deputy Transport Minister Manolis Stratakis said 20-year-old Turkish citizen Ozgur Gencarslan had been arrested. “He was arrested. It appears he had some psychological problems. Another plane is on the way to collect the passengers. They said he was holding a razor and was strapped with explosives. But we haven’t confirmed that yet,” Stratakis said. It was unclear if Gencarslan would be tried in Greece or returned to Turkey. Turkish Transportation Minister Binali Yildirim said the hijacker would be sent home. The Turkish authorities said the plane had 205 persons aboard —196 passengers and nine crew members — and had taken off from Istanbul for Ankara when it was hijacked 25 minutes after takeoff. The Greek anti-terrorist police earlier surrounded the Airbus A310 plane on the runway in Athens, and a top police official had been at the airport to negotiate with the hijacker. According to the Turkish police, Gencarslan hijacked the plane to reunite with his father, who lives in Germany, private NTV television said. He was reportedly depressed because his stepfather had barred him from seeing his mother and sister living in eastern Turkey, it added. The Turkish authorities earlier said the hijacker wanted to fly to Berlin and complained that his mother and sister were being kept “hostage.” “He has some family problems we’ve used a fatherly and understanding approach to convince him,” Yildirim said. The authorities in Turkey said the hijacker had claimed to have explosives. But they noted that he was seen carrying five candlesticks as he boarded the plane and could have been pretending they were dynamite as occurred in a previous hijacking in Istanbul in February.
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Pandits’ massacre a fallout of war: Sibal Moscow, March 29 “Nadimarg is directly related to Iraq, Pakistan is domestically under pressure for its backing of the USA and to save the regime it is distracting attention signalling that Kashmir cause is not being ditched. It can be the beginning of stepped up terror campaign to keep extremists distracted,” Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal here said. Mr Sibal, who yesterday held talks with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and other top officials, said Moscow shared India’s concern over continuing cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. “Iraq and its consequences on situation in Afghanistan and world security topped the talks in Moscow,” Mr Sibal told Indian mediapersons here after the meeting of the Indo-Russian Joint Working Group on Afghanistan (JWGA) co-chaired from the Russian side by First Deputy Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Trubnikov. Mr Sibal said Mr Ivanov had expressed his personal condolences to India over the Nadimarg massacre and deploring terrorism in all its forms and manifestations vowed Russia’s support to New Delhi in combating ‘forces staking on terrorism’. Mr Sibal arrived here on Thursday on a three-day visit to co-chair the regular sixth session of the JWGA set up in October, 2000, to combat the threats of terrorism and illegal drug-trafficking emanating from that country.
PTI |
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China to join anti-virus fight Beijing, March 29 “They have promised to provide daily reports on a provincial basis,” John Mackenzie, head of a World Health Organisation team investigating an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) which has killed 34 persons and infected 806 in China, told reporters here yesterday. The WHO has issued a new travel advisory recommending the screening of air passengers departing from the four affected countries, namely, Canada, China, Singapore and Vietnam, on flights to another country, Mackenzie, an Australian virologist, said at the conclusion of six-day talks with China’s Ministry of Health. China, criticised for making little information on SARS public, has now confirmed for the first time that case studies from an outbreak of atypical pneumonia in the southern province of Guangdong, where the mystery disease which has caused worldwide alarm is believed to have originated, was SARS. The disease, which first appeared in November, 2002, in China, was only publicly reported in February this year when the government said five persons had died from a total of 305 cases of atypical pneumonia in the Guangdong province. The disease has since spread to 13 countries on three continents. The Ministry of Health has made clear its commitment to cooperate with the international community, including providing daily provincial-level case reports and expanding the national surveillance systems. Chinese institutes would be selected soon to participate in 3 global electronic networks set up by the WHO.
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