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Saturday,
May 24, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Pak to
take counter-steps if India buys radar 13
passengers taken hostage in Pakistan
USA slaps
sanctions on Chinese, Iranian firms Iraq’s
armed forces dissolved
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Remains of
only 132 victims were found Pact held
up as Koreans squabble
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Pak to take counter-steps if India buys radar Islamabad, May 23 As the USA confirmed that it had endorsed the sale of Israeli Phalcon radars to India, Pakistan Foreign Secretary Riaz A. Khokar, in his address to the UN Conference on Disarmament in Vienna yesterday, said the transfer of such weapons system would upset conventional military balance in South Asia. Pakistan would view this with utmost seriousness and be obliged to take counter-measures, the official media here today quoted Mr Khokar as saying. “Nuclear realities in our region impose certain obligations and responsibilities on the two countries. It is, therefore, important for both India and Pakistan to engage in serious discussions for nuclear and strategic stability in our region,” the Foreign Secretary said. Suggesting a new architecture of security in South Asia, he proposed a six-point agenda for a structured dialogue on security issues in the region that included “foreswearance” of use or the threat of use of force in settling disputes and respecting sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states of the region. The other points Mr Khokar suggested included a permanent mechanism for bilateral dialogue and consultations for dispute settlement, initiation of result-oriented talks for devising mutually acceptable confidence-building measures in the nuclear field, stabilisation of conventional forces at levels consonant with the legitimate security needs of all states of the region and renewed commitment to jointly combat poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease. Observing that the fresh Indo-Pak peace initiatives brought an air of anticipation in the region, he hoped that a resumed dialogue between the two would not only address the Kashmir issue but also enable the two countries to discuss strategic restraint and security building measures. On nuclear issues, Mr Khokar said Pakistan supported confidence-building measures outlined in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed at Lahore in February, 1999. Stating that Pakistan was ready to discuss several measures to reach an agreement with India, he said both countries were observing a moratorium on nuclear testing and “this could be formalized”. An agreement on the non-deployment of nuclear weapons based on agreed definitions would also be a major factor for stability, he said, adding that a formal agreement to notify each other of ballistic missile tests would constitute an important confidence-building measure. Stating that preserving the conventional balance in South Asia was a major responsibility of states that were large exporters of conventional weapons, the Pakistan Foreign Secretary said, “Already there are forecasts of conventional weapons transfers in our neighbourhood which could seriously erode the conventional balance and generate instability and insecurity”.
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13 passengers taken hostage in Pakistan Multan, Pakistan, May 23 The nine attackers freed the driver and cleaner of the bus after seizing it last night near Fazilpur, Chaudhry Liaquat, the town’s Deputy Police Superintendent, said. He said the bus had been on its way to the southern city of Karachi when the bandits, who were wearing women’s veils, boarded it. ‘’They took off the veils after some time and hijacked the bus at gunpoint,’’ he quoted the driver and cleaner as saying. The motive behind the attack and the identity of the men were not immediately clear.
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USA slaps sanctions on Chinese, Iranian firms Washington, May 23 One US official yesterday told Reuters the sanctions imposed on North China Industries were believed to be the most severe penalty ever levelled against a Chinese entity. The Iranian company sanctioned was Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group. “This one is big,” the official said of the US decision. The sanctions were disclosed in documents on file with the Federal Register, an official vehicle for reporting new federal regulations and decisions. They took effect on May 9. “What the Chinese did with Iran is make a specific transfer that made a material contribution to the Iranian ballistic missile programme,” the official said, declining to be more specific. The transfer occurred after Beijing in August 2002 promulgated new export control laws advocated for years by the USA as a means of stemming the flow of technology used in weapons of mass destruction. The sanctions decision came as US relations with China have been improving in many areas and before an expected meeting between President George W. Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao next month.
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Iraq’s armed forces dissolved Baghdad, May 23 “The Coalition Provisional Authority plans to create, in the near future, a new Iraqi corps. This is the first step in forming a national self-defence capability for a free Iraq,” said the statement released by the administration. But the order said officers of the rank of Colonel or above will receive no benefits because they “will be presumed to be in the barred classes, unless they prove otherwise.” Before the latest war, the Iraqi military had a nominal strength of more than 300,000 men. Most of them melted away during the coalition offensive, and only a few thousand were captured as prisoners of war. Former non-commissioned officers and officers from the three services staged a demonstration on Sunday in Baghdad, demanding pay dues and other benefits owed to them since the collapse of Saddam’s regime on April 9. They also said that nonpolitical technical personnel should be considered for jobs in the new armed forces. NEW YORK:
Iraqi oil supply contracts signed by oil trading firms before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s government will not be honoured under a new United Nations resolution to lift sanctions on the war torn country, diplomats said on Thursday.
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Remains of only 132 victims were found Vancouver, May 23 Describing the grisly scene which confronted the Irish navy ship Aisling, which was the first to reach the spot in the Atlantic Ocean, Captain James Robinson told the court that “we were surrounded by wreckage and just bodies everywhere.” The naval officer, who helped coordinate the operation, was the first witness to describe the recovery effort at the British Columbia Supreme Court trial of two men — Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri — accused of blowing up the jetliner. “The situation on the bridge of my ship, as you can imagine was somewhat tense. The area was full of smoke from the scorching aircraft,” he testified, adding the job of recovering bodies was made more difficult with two-metre swells in the ocean and the smell in the air. Other vessels and British aircraft joined the search as the sea became
choppy and the weather cold, he said, adding that in all, remains of 132 of the 329 people that perished were recovered in the effort which spread over several days. The court also heard from a crew member, Daniel Brown who broke down on the stand when he explained that difficulties the crew had to encounter pulling the bodies out of the ocean and into a lifeboat. “Some I even had in my hands, but we couldn’t get them into the boat,” Brown said. Robinson told the court that his boat became a morgue. The bodies were wrapped in sheets and stowed in compartments that were allocated for that purpose.
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Pact held up as Koreans squabble Seoul, May 23 While delegates squabbled on in Pyongyang, North Korea took a rare swipe at South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, accusing him of making a “pro-US and flunkeyist” trip to the USA. A South Korean pool report from Pyongyang said the two sides had met for almost two hours today and were trying to finesse disputes. After overnight talks, South Korean spokesman Cho Myoung-gyon said a basic economic agreement was close at hand, but a “battle of the tongues” raged about fallout from Mr Roh’s May 14 summit with US President George W. Bush in Washington.
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