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Sunday,
August 10, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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USA shares concerns on terror, Window on
Pakistan
$ 55m offered to settle child abuse cases Shoe bomber joke costs pilot dear |
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| 2 women killed in fight over cookies Peshawar, August 9 A fight between two families over a box of cookies left two women dead and seven injured in a remote area of north-western Pakistan, the police said today. 
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USA shares concerns on terror, says Mansingh Washington, August 9 The arrests in Virginia state “vindicates our belief that there cannot be any distinction between ‘your terrorists’ and ‘our terrorists’,” Mansingh said at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, where a permanent exhibit on Mahatma Gandhi was unveiled. “The swamp, as President George W Bush described it, is one and the same and we have to combine our resources in order to drain it,” he said. Eleven people, some of them with Pakistani origin and
suspected links with Lashkar-e-Toiba, are being tried in a Virginia court for allegedly waging a war against India in violation of the US Neutrality Act. Mansingh said India and the USA, inheritors of the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, have now to confront a threat which is “far more virulent and destructive than what our forefathers ever faced” — the menace of terrorism. “Democratic and multi-cultural societies such as ours are particularly vulnerable to the threat of terrorism since the values we share are precisely those which the terrorists seek to destroy.” The fact that the terrorist attacks on 9/11, 2001, were conceived and planned in India’s neighbourhood did not come as a surprise to New Delhi. India had been a victim of terrorism for more than two decades, he added. “We continue even today to suffer at the hands of misguided terrorist groups which spread hatred and violence in the name of religion... They are spreading across the world like a virus and surface in the most unexpected places,” Mansingh said. Cooperation on counter-terrorism, however, is just one element of a rapidly expanding strategic relationship between India and the USA, he said, adding the Indo-US relations are increasingly based on a convergence of interests. “We have a common interest in stabilising the Asia-Pacific region, countering terrorism and religious extremism, in maintaining the freedom and security of sea lanes in the region, ensuring access to energy resources and reserves in Asia, in preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems, and advancing global economic prosperity and stability.” Mansingh said President Bush and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had also committed themselves to imparting new stimulus to three relatively new areas of cooperation, the so-called “Trinity issues”, namely high technology commerce, civilian space cooperation and civilian nuclear cooperation. The Indo-US strategic and defence relations had reached new heights, he added. —
PTI |
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Menon presents credentials Islamabad, August 9 Menon was presented a guard of honour by a contingent of the Pakistan Army on arrival at President’s House in Islamabad. The two countries agreed to restore full diplomatic ties after Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said in April that he would make a final bid for peace. Menon (53, arrived in Pakistan on July 15. “My task is to create an environment for peaceful and friendly relations with Pakistan,” he told reporters as he crossed the Wagah border into Pakistan last month. On their way to normalise relations, both India and Pakistan also resumed the New Delhi-Lahore bus service last month. Pakistan High Commissioner Aziz Ahmed Khan, a career diplomat who last served as Pakistan’s Foreign office spokesman, has already assumed his office in New Delhi. —
PTI |
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Window on Pakistan Pakistan’s founders had fondly believed that Islam and its value system would eclipse all other identities — ethnic, linguistic and cultural. Religion would be a unifying force and weave the country into one strong nation with no diversity to challenge it. But this has not happened. In fact, one part, Bangladesh, oppressed for long by the other part’s political class, got separated in 1971. Well, that could have been history. But it is not to be. Pakistan today is hounded by repeated bouts of ethnic violence, unrest and gross violation of human rights both by the state and feudal chiefs. A state which openly defies world public opinion and exports terrorism to both India and Afghanistan, is itself badly struck by ethnic terrorism. Facts speak of a gory tale. This year alone, 121 precious lives have been lost in ethnic violence. In 63 major incidents of Shia-Sunni clashes or attack on minority Christians, another 257 were maimed. According to Pakistan’s Home Ministry documents, between 1989 and 2002,ethnic violence claimed the lives of 1,379 persons in 1796 violent incidents in which another 3275 persons were wounded. This is the fate of a country whose rulers take pride in exporting terrorism and putting the neighbour’s house on fire. Indeed, chickens do come home to roost. In fact, while the military-led government continues to support the United States efforts against terrorism, sectarian violence and attacks against foreign nationals have increased. Starting with the kidnapping and execution of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl by militant groups, a suicide car bombing killed 15 people, including 11 French navy engineers, in Karachi. In June, a suicide bomber attacked the U.S. Consulate in Karachi. Eleven guards and policemen died, and 40 others were injured. Finally, on July 13 another 13 tourists, mostly Germans and Austrians, were injured when an explosive went off while they visited an archaeological site in the northwestern Pakistani town of Mansehra. These were the handiwork of the same militants whom Pakistan sends as freedom fighters to Kashmir. Religious minorities, Christians and Hindus alike witnessed heightened threats last year. On March 17, two unidentified men threw six grenades at the Protestant International Church in a diplomatic enclave in Islamabad, killing five people and injuring 40 others. On August 5, six Pakistani guards were killed during an attack on the Murree Christian School, 60 km from Islamabad. This senseless violence reached Christian humanitarian aid workers on September 25 when two gunmen entered the Institute for Peace and Justice (IPJ) in Karachi, and killed seven people. While blasphemy laws introduced in 1985 by Zia-ul-Haq continued to haunt the dissidents, it is the women who suffer the most in a feudal social setup, reminding the world of some archaic society that Pakistan is in many ways. In the first six months last year, more than 150 women were sexually assaulted in southern Punjab. Male family members who believed that the women had transgressed cultural norms on female behaviour murdered 211 women in the name of “honour”. Here Punjab has the dubious distinction of leading the country. According to human rights organisations, “violence was exacerbated by laws, such as the Hudood Ordinance and the Qisas and Diyat Ordinances, which allowed perpetrators of crimes against women to avoid accountability; prevented victims of sexual assault from seeking redress by exposing them to prosecution for adultery or fornication; gave the testimony of women half the evidentiary weight of that of men; and allowed crimes of “honour” to be pardoned by relatives of the victim.” But when the agenda for Gen Pervez Musharraf, the self-style President of Pakistan is sheer survival, the homegrown violence stalking the country perhaps, does not figure. |
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$ 55m offered to settle child abuse cases New York, August 9 The victims have 30 days to accept the offer and a five-member steering committee of attorneys representing the plaintiff would meet next week to review the offer, lawyers said. But it was yet unclear whether the offer would be accepted by alleged victims, many of whom have said they were not after money but want the church to acknowledge the wrongdoings. Details were still being worked out and archdiocese declined to discuss the offer. Lawyer Mitchell Garabedian said he was going to review the offer with his 120 clients but was uncertain whether it would be accepted. “We don’t make any comment about the substance of negotiations,” said the Rev. Chris Coyne, a spokesman for the archdiocese. “There was a mediation meeting yesterday. It went well, but we’ve agreed not to talk about it.” Garabedian told CNN that a “significant aspect” of the offer was that the church would pay for counselling after the cases were settled. This is not the first settlement offer. Under the Cardinal Bernard Law, the diocese offered $ 30 million to a smaller number of plaintiffs, and then backed out of the agreement when the archdiocese’s finance council rejected the terms. The church then made a $ 10 million settlement offer in September, 2002, which 86 of Garabedian’s clients accepted. —
PTI |
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Shoe bomber joke costs pilot dear Paris, August 9 The co-pilot of the Paris-bound Air France flight yesterday jokingly referred to a bomb in his shoes as he passed through security, a witness said. The airport police detained him and he could come before a Judge as early as tomorrow. The French airline said the pilot had been arrested following “misinterpreted remarks” just before he got on the plane, but could not confirm whether there would be legal action against him. The incident forced the cancellation of the flight, due to leave later in the evening with 350 passengers aboard. —
AP |
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2 women killed in fight over cookies Peshawar, August 9 The violence occurred yesterday in Bafa Maira village, 260 km north of Peshawar, following a teenaged boy, Syed Afreen, allegedly snatched a girl’s box of cookies as she was walking home. —
AP |
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