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Tuesday,
April 22, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Saddam’s son-in-law surrenders Hezbollah warns of
retaliation Pentagon memo for ouster of N. Korea
leaders WHO team in Shanghai China developing ‘super tank’ |
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Saddam’s son-in-law surrenders Baghdad, April 21 Abd al-Khalq Adb al-Gafar, Saddam’s minister for higher education and scientific research and number 43 on the US list of 55 most wanted Iraqis, was taken into custody on Saturday, a US military central command statement said. The long-exiled Iraqi National Congress said Jamal Mustafa Sultan al-Tikriti, number 40 on the list, returned from Syria to surrender to them and would be handed over to US forces within hours. “He is the first close member of the family to be detained,” said the group’s spokesman, Zaab Sethna, over telephone, adding that Jamal had served as Saddam’s private secretary until the end. He said Jamal had fled to Syria but had been persuaded to come back to Baghdad — along with a senior Iraqi intelligence official, Khaled Abdallah — and give himself up. Two of Saddam’s half brothers had been detained but Sethna said they were estranged from Saddam, making Jamal the biggest catch. Saddam had killed his other two sons-in-law, Sethna added. The revelation that Jamal had been hiding in Syria came just hours after President George W. Bush said there were “positive signs” that Syria was heeding to US calls to deny sanctuary to fleeing members of Saddam’s administration. In a sign that a semblance of normalcy was returning to Baghdad, power supplies were restored in eastern parts of the city two weeks after these were cut off when US forces pounded the Iraqi capital ahead of their final push to oust Saddam. As the first convoy of food aid reached Baghdad, Iraqi Christians observed a sombre Easter Sunday, praying for an end to postwar chaos and uncertainty. While Christians prayed, thousands of Shi’ite Muslims, Iraq’s majority population, beat their chests as they streamed towards Kerbala, in a pilgrimage banned by Saddam for nearly a quarter of a century. A World Food Programme convoy of 50 trucks arrived on Sunday at a Baghdad warehouse guarded by US troops. It was the first aid to reach the capital since the war.
Reuters |
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Hezbollah warns of retaliation Washington, April 21 “American policies in the region encourage this kind of retaliation, whether we agree with it or not,” Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah told CBS television’s “60 Minutes” programme. “I believe the continuation of American policy will make enemies of all Arabs and Muslims — 1,400,000,000 Muslims around the world. Lots of groups will surface, not necessarily Al-Qaida. And they’ll be impossible to bring to justice,” he said. He accused the USA of waging war on Iraq, to win its oil reserves and to impose Israeli domination over the region. “The USA isn’t seeking democracy in Iraq, it’s after the oil. The USA wants to impose its political will on Iraq and ... Israel’s domination in the region,” Mr Nasrallah said. “These objectives are not moral objectives...we say they are satanic objectives.”
AFP |
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Pentagon memo for ouster of N. Korea leaders New York, April 21 Mr Rumsfeld’s team urged diplomatic pressure for changing the government, not a military solution, Administration officials were quoted as saying in a media report. But the classified Pentagon memo, drafted by officials deeply opposed to opening talks that could eventually end up benefiting North Korea economically, shows how the handling of the crisis has become a subject of internal struggle over how to pursue President Bush’s determination to stop the spread of nuclear arms and other unconventional weapons. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s approach, officials familiar with his thinking were quoted as saying, is to offer North Korea assurances that the USA is not trying to undermine its government, but to make clear that until the nuclear programmes are dismantled, the country will get no aid and investment. Mr Powell, the New York Times says, received final approval for his approach at a meeting with President Bush last week, a session Mr Rumsfeld did not attend. “There’s a sense in the Pentagon that Powell got this arranged while everyone was distracted with Iraq,” said an intelligence official. “And now there is a race over who will control the next steps.”
PTI |
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WHO team in Shanghai Shanghai, April 21 The team, which will conduct a four-day investigation, is expected to confer with the local health authorities, inspect hospitals, colleges and local disease control centres at the municipal and district levels and examine measures taken to prevent and control SARS cases. Shanghai has officially confirmed two SARS cases as of April 18, although the Jiefang Daily today reported that as of April 20 there were an additional nine suspected cases. Meanwhile, China has introduced a testing method which can detect the presence of the SARS Respiratory Syndrome virus within an hour, the state media said today. The method, based on the sequencing of the virus’ genome, was developed by the Beijing Genome Institute and the Institute of Microbial Epidemics, affiliated to the Medical Research Institute of the People’s Liberation Army, the Xinhua news agency reported. The new method uses a specially modified protein of the virus to detect the presence of a type of antibody which the body produces as a response to infection. Experts said the presence of the antibody was an “absolutely certain indicator” of the existence of SARS. The method was safe, inexpensive and required a relatively small sample for testing to produce accurate results within an hour, the agency reported. Top researchers from 13 laboratories who met at the WHO headquarters in Geneva last week said SARS was caused by the coronavirus, a virus family which causes common cold. AFP |
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China developing ‘super tank’ Beijing, April 20 The new Chinese main battle tank would incorporate most of the advanced systems used in modern western armour and would be equipped with a 152mm main gun fed by an automatic loader, said ‘Jane’s Defence Weekly’ in its coming issue. Most tanks use 120mm or 125mm main guns. The main gun would be coupled to an advanced day/thermal sighting system that will allow moving targets to be engaged with a high first-round hit probability while the vehicle is stationary or mobile, it said. The London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies estimates that the 2.5-million-strong Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the world’s largest standing army, has 8,300 main battle tanks, more than any other nation.
PTI |
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Baghdad, April 21
A six-person team from the
WHO arrived in Shanghai today to investigate the extent of the SARS outbreak here.
