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Sunday,
May 4, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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First trade, then J&K: Pak
Multinational stability force for Iraq Desperate search for missing in Iraq US concern over joint naval exercises |
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USA issues rules for terror suspects’ trial WHO worried at SARS infecting medical staff
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First trade, then J&K: Pak
London, May 3 “India has always said that it wanted to talk about trade issues and we have insisted that Kashmir should be discussed first ... now we accept India’s argument and would like India to take the first step,” Pakistan Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri said in an interview with the BBC Hindi service yesterday. He proposed that gas pipelines to India from Turkmenistan and Iran be laid through Pakistan and said Islamabad was ready to give international guarantees to ensure that the gas flow did not suffer even in the event of war or hostilities. “India says we will profit from business and now we are also saying this. This is a new thing,” Mr Kasuri said. On India’s charge that Pakistan was promoting cross-border terrorism, the minister said, “There are many issues which we can discuss face to face.” Mr Kasuri said before the Prime Ministers or Foreign Ministers of the two countries could meet, official-level discussions were necessary. UNITED NATIONS: Faced with strong opposition, Pakistan has dropped its plan to include the Kashmir issue in the agenda of the council meeting. Diplomats said during closed-door discussions on work progress of the council, its members strongly opposed raising the Kashmir issue. Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN Mr Munir Akram, said on Friday though Kashmir was the “most dangerous conflict in the world”, he had not “taken advantage” of his position to include it in the agenda of the council meeting as “we want to act with utmost impartiality.”
PTI |
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Threat to US consulate: Pak police on alert
Karachi, May 3 “There is a constant threat to the US consulate. It is substantial and we are on alert, taking all possible measures,” Deputy Inspector-General of Police Tariq Jamil said on Saturday. “The indication and report we have is of a suicide car bomb, but we will also take the warning of a possible aerial attack as serious and discuss it with the aviation authorities,” he added. The USA had warned airports and pilots to be alert for a potential aerial terrorist attack on the US consulate in the city. Meanwhile, fire from a security guard’s weapon at the US Consul General’s Karachi residence created alarm and sensation Saturday morning. A sudden fire from a private security company’s guard Mohammed Miskeen, posted at the US Consul General’s residence at the Fatima Jinnah road, created alarm and sensation and large contingents of the police and the Rangers, including security officials of the US Consulate, immediately reached the spot and took the security guard in their custody. However, police officials after investigating the matter called it an accident.
ANI |
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Multinational stability force for Iraq
Washington, May 3 The Bush administration official said 10 nations had so far offered soldiers with expertise from medicine to mine-clearing for a three-division force separate from the 135,000 combat troops still in Iraq six weeks after a US-led invasion. The 10 volunteer states do not include France, Germany or Russia, which were not invited to a planning meeting of 16 nations in London on Wednesday, said the official, who asked not to be identified, in an interview with reporters. “That is one view,” he said when asked if Paris, Berlin and Moscow — outspoken opponents of an invasion that overthrew Iraqi President Saddam Hussein — were being punished and shut out of the post-war process. “Maybe they didn’t want to take part,” he added. The exact size of the new force has not been determined, but the USA, the UK, Poland, Ukraine, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and Albania have offered troops for the policing effort. The three future sectors of Iraq have not yet been drawn up. Meanwhile, the Philippines, Qatar, Australia and South Korea have offered to support the effort but their contribution is not yet clear, according to the US official, who said Washington hoped that more countries would join the force. “We want to get this started as soon as possible, but the timetable is not clear yet,” he said, adding that two further “force generation conferences” for the security effort had been planned for May 7 and May 22 under the auspices of the UK and Poland, respectively. Washington and London are pressing for a major international effort to stabilise Iraq and promote rapid rebuilding, which would also help them more quickly replace tens of thousands of combat troops in the country. Under the plan, one full US division of up to 20,000 troops would patrol one of the sectors, while the other two would each have a division of multinational troops under the UK and Poland.
Reuters |
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Desperate search for missing in Iraq
Baghdad, May 3 Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have gone missing, leaving behind desperate families. Some just disappeared in the confusion of war or were taken prisoners by U.S. soldiers. Others were picked up by the secret service during the Saddam’s regime or were simply arrested on the street, absent for years without a trace. Qazir Yasir from Al Kut, came to Baghdad yesterday to search for his father and his cousin Jabir. During the 1991 Shiite revolution he was arrested along with them in the southern city of Nasiriyah. “Because I said the right things during inquisition, I could go after three months,” he explained. His father, quite elderly, and his cousin were alive as late as last July, according to reports he has gathered from a former prisoner of the Radvaniyah jail. “Hopefully the wardens did not kill them before the U.S. invasion,” he says quietly. There are many like Qazir Yasir position. They gather in front of the Red Cross central offices in Baghdad waiting to be admitted, each with their own tragic story to tell. Talib Naif, a Shiite, bears telltale marks of torture on both knees and on his left arm. He is searching for his father arrested a year ago and his son who was detained by U.S. soldiers after being caught on the streets at night after curfew. Searching for the hundreds of thousands missing is an almost impossible task for the Red Cross. There are the communists who were arrested in 1980s; those who went missing during the 1991 Shiite revolution - many of whom were immediately executed and buried in mass graves; the estimated 2,000 Iraqi soldiers and civilians who disappeared during the recent U.S. attacks and those who have been arrested for various offences by the Americans over the past three weeks, including high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.
DPA |
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US concern over joint naval exercises
Washington, May 3 The joint exercises off the island of Socotra in the western Arabian Sea are as symbolic as they are substantive, aimed at highlighting the two countries’ alliance and capabilities in an area “Washington is clearly delineating as its sphere of influence,” Strategic Forecasting said in a report. “However, at both symbolic and substantive levels, the exercises are unlikely to raise much of an eyebrow in Washington,” it added. Socotra, a Yemeni island off the Horn of Africa, was not chosen at random for the exercises, the analysts contended. Located about 1,300 miles from the Indian coast, the island is strategically located, overlooking sea traffic between the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea and is home to a US signals intelligence facility. From the waters off Socotra, Russian and Indian vessels can attempt to monitor US vessels that are homeward bound from the war in Iraq, as well as ongoing US anti-Al Qaida operations in and around Yemen and the Horn of Africa, the analysts argued.
UNI |
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USA issues rules for terror suspects’ trial
Washington, May 3 The Defence Department General Counsel William Haynes unveiled instructions yesterday for trials of non-US citizens before military commissions authorised in an order issued by President George W. Bush two months and two days after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the USA. This marks “a big step” toward holding such trials, according to an official who said it did not necessarily mean trials would be held “next week or next month.” Those convicted by the tribunals could face the death penalty. The rules were intended to be used in trials of suspected members of Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaida network, blamed by the USA for the 2001 attacks and others taken into US custody during the “war on terrorism,” Pentagon officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told mediapersons. The USA is holding 660 prisoners, mostly from Afghanistan, under heavy guard at Guantanamo Bay. They have been termed “unlawful combatants,” not prisoners of war,and have been held without charge or access to legal counsel, drawing international criticism. Other terrorism suspects are being held elsewhere. The officials refused to say which or how many prisoners might be brought to trial and would not identify charges being considered. Reuters |
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WHO worried at SARS infecting medical staff
Beijing, May 3 The WHO experts made these recommendations after making a field visit to a large hospital, not officially designated as a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) hospital. The visit “demonstrated the urgent need to review strategies for infection-control procedures,” the WHO said in a press note. It noted that procedures for infection control in emergency rooms may have to be modified, since healthcare workers continued to be infected. PTI |
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