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Friday,
August 22, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Annan rules out UN forces for Iraq Hamas leader killed in Israeli strike
Karachi main Al-Qaida base Al-Qaida leader denies plan to
bomb summit |
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Jamali to continue Assembly sessions Businessman to head Liberian Government
Test immigrants for HIV, UK urged Singapore lifts taboos on gays
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Annan rules out UN forces for Iraq United Nations, August 21 Mr Annan, who returned to UN Headquarters yesterday, cutting short his summer vacation in Scandinavia in the wake of the truck bomb attack, said he was surprised to hear reports that UN had turned down an offer of security from US-led coalition forces. “I don’t know if the UN did turn down an offer of protection. If it did, it was not correct ... that kind of decision should not be left to the protected. It is those with responsibility for security and law and order, who have intelligence, which determines what action is taken,” he told the Security Council. Mr Annan warned that without improved security, the UN would not be able to do its job in Iraq. He also brushed aside the idea of sending UN peacekeeping force to Iraq in the present situation. “We don’t see UN Blue Helmets (peacekeepers) going into Iraq at this stage. It (security) is not the job of Blue Helmets.” Mr Annan accepted that both the USA and the UN had made mistakes. “I think there have been some wrong assumptions all along. The coalition has made some mistakes, and maybe we have made some mistakes too,” he told reporters. The IMF and World Bank, the key players involved in rebuilding Iraq’s devastated economy, have pulled their staff out of Iraq after the bombing of the UN headquarters where their offices were also located. The bank has “suspended operations in Iraq, given the security situation,” and was moving 14 staff members to Amman, Jordan, World Bank spokesman Damian Milverton said, adding that a bank employee remained unaccounted for. IMF spokesman David Hawley said four staffers who received minor injuries have been taken to Amman while the fifth member is in Baghdad. IMF said no decision had been taken to quit Iraq but it was not sure when its staff would return.
— PTI |
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Hamas leader killed in Israeli strike Gaza City, August 21 Hamas said it no longer felt bound by a three-month unilateral ceasefire it declared on June 29 and threatened retaliation. Two days earlier, Hamas had carried out a suicide bombing in Jerusalem, killing 20 persons, but insisted at the time it was still observing the truce. “We consider ourselves free from the ceasefire,” said a Hamas official, Ibrahim Hanieh. The Hamas official killed in the missile strike has been identified as Ismail Abu Shanab. There was no immediate comment by the Israeli military. In the past, Israel has repeatedly killed wanted Palestinians in targeted missile attacks. Israel had suspended the practice after militants declared the truce. Israeli Foreign Ministry official Gideon Meir said the Hamas political leaders were behind attacks on Israelis and must be held accountable, but would not say explicitly that Israel was behind the missile strike. “There’s no question that there is a direct link between the heads of Hamas and the terrorists on the ground,” he said. Witnesses said Abu Shanab’s gold-coloured station wagon was driving in the Rimal neighbourhood and had slowed down to avoid a large stone in the road when a first missile struck the front of the vehicle. A second missile quickly followed, said Naim Shaban, who owns a metal workshop nearby.
— AP |
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Karachi main Al-Qaida base AFTER the 9/11 WTC incident, Pakistan’s port city of Karachi has become one of the main operational centres of Al-Qaida. This has been revealed in Observer Research Foundation’s forthcoming 114-page book- “Karachi- A Terror Capital in the Making”. Bombing, kidnapping, drug-trafficking, carjacking, contract killing, robberies, burglaries, riots and demonstrations apart from being a key coordinating centre for international terrorism today mark the city’s profile which once was the finance and pomp capital of Pakistan. Many terrorist camps are running in Pakistan’s Assadabad region where a large number of recruits are being trained for the next phase of the Al-Qaida war, says the author Wilson Jones, who after his painstaking research has proclaimed that “many of them are likely to make their way into Karachi where a new Al-Qaida cell is already active and poised to strike again, how, when and where it chooses”. “The takeover of Karachi by the crime syndicates had begun with an agreement Pakistan signed with a land-locked Afghanistan allowing duty-free import of goods through the city port. “The agreement was called the Afghan Transit Agreement. What might have been a legitimate trade route became the starting point of a flourishing smuggling racket that came to be known as the “Quetta-Chaman transport mafia”. Trucks laden with foreign goods would start from Karachi and travel up to Jalalabad or Kandahar from where they would return to Pakistan to off-load in countless smuggled goods’ markets that flourished in various cities .....” The annual turnover was estimated at Rs 100 billion ($ 2.5 billion) which is about one third of Pakistan’s reported black economy of Rs 350 billion, according to the Delhi-based thinktank publication. Mr John adds that it was the same smuggling route which was first used by the drug lords and then by the CIA-ISI combine to push drugs into newer markets in Europe and the United States itself during the Afghan jihad. At the height of the cold war, opium trade became one of the lethal weapons in the armoury of the CIA to defeat the Soviet Union after its armies had marched into Afghanistan in 1979. “The first to taste of blood was the Pakistan Army and the ISI officials who were co-opted by the CIA to run the jihad on behalf of the US in Afghanistan. In the years that followed the beginning of the Afghan jihad, there was an explosion in opium production in Pakistan. The figures reached up to 800 metric tonnes a year, almost 70 per cent of the world’s total opium production”. In 1993, the all-powerful ISI agency brought underworld don Dawood Ibrahim from Mumbai to Karachi, points out Mr John authoritatively establishing that Pakistan’s city, if not today, then tomorrow is bound to enjoy the dubious
distinction of being the international terrorism capital. |
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Al-Qaida leader denies plan to bomb summit Sydney, August 21 The paper, quoting an Asian intelligence officer who has questioned Hambali since his capture in Thailand last week, said the militant was plotting instead to bomb foreign embassies and other targets in Bangkok. Jakarta: Alleged terror group chief Abu Bakar Bashir said on Thursday that the US authorities had engineered the arrest of Hambali to boost the sagging popularity of Mr Bush. Bashir, in a radio interview before his treason trial resumes, said he knew Hambali as a “good man.” The USA and several other countries say Hambali, arrested in Thailand last week, is one of the world’s most wanted terrorists. Bashir, an Indonesian Muslim cleric, said the arrest announcement was linked to US domestic politics.
— AFP |
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Jamali to continue Assembly sessions Islamabad, August 21 The government, bogged down by repeated agitation and boycotts in Parliament with a belligerent opposition questioning the legality of the election of Gen Pervez Musharraf as President and his continuation as the Army Chief, has taken the step to make up for the lost time. A determined government had last night continued with the session, even after the opposition parties, including the six party Islamist alliance Muthahida Majlis Amal (MMA) staged a noisy walkout shouting slogans against General Musharraf and the Legal Framework Order (LFO) promulgated by him to legalise his actions. The Assembly met after two months as the last session was held in June in which the budget for the current fiscal year was adopted. Opposition members with stickers reading “No to dictatorship” stuck to their shirts raised slogans of “No LFO No” for several minutes before boycotting the session. Trouble began when a member from treasury benches praised General Musharraf for announcing construction of a number of dams. Immediately, a senior Pakistan Muslim League-N, (PLM-N), member Tehmina Daultan objected to the speech saying, “Gen Musharraf is not elected by Parliament and we did not consider him as the President”. After a brief protest the opposition walked out of the House. The House continued its proceedings without the opposition and passed several Bills and ordinances. It was later adjourned by the Speaker after completing the agenda and would meet again on August 22. Speaking at a joint news conference after staging a walkout from the session, the leaders of both major opposition parties said they would not compromise on the principle that no individual, but Parliament alone, was empowered to amend the constitution.
— PTI |
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Businessman to head Liberian Government Accra, August 21 Bryant, who is from the Liberia Action Party, was picked from a list of three candidates proposed by 18 political parties and other civil groups attending the Accra talks. He is a leading member of the Episcopal church in Liberia but was considered to be weakest of the three contenders for the top job. The other two candidates were Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a veteran opposition figure and a former United Nations official, and Rudolph Sherman from the True Whig Party which ruled Liberia for over a century, from 1871 to 1980.
— AFP |
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Schwarzenegger breaks silence on policy Los Angeles, August 21 The newly minted politician faced reporters yesterday clamouring for details of his economic revival plan for the troubled state for the first time in two weeks, but declined to spell out the detailed plan his opponents have demanded. But, after a meeting of his high-powered economic war council in Los Angeles, he promised not to raise taxes or make education cuts and promised an independent audit of the state’s books if he triumphs in the October 7 poll. “Additional taxes are the last burden that we need to put on the backs of the residents and businesses of California,” he said, flanked by his economic advisers, billionaire Warren Buffett and ex-US Secretary of State George Schultz. He also promised to cut state spending, tackle the state’s troubled workers’ compensation system, seek regulatory reforms and institute a state spending cap to avoid a budget deficit, but said the details of the changes had yet to be worked out.
— AFP |
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Test immigrants for HIV, UK urged London, August 21 Immigrant support groups rejected the calls and the Opposition Liberal Democrats, the third force in British politics, said testing would be unethical and unworkable. In an editorial on the issue, The Times newspaper—owned by Australian-born media magnate Rupert Murdoch—threw its weight behind testing. “It is not racist to propose such health testing,’’ it said. The paper said it was no surprise that African immigrants with no access to expensive anti-retroviral drugs should try to come to Britain to seek treatment.
— Reuters |
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Singapore lifts taboos on gays Singapore, August 21 “The change is fantastic,” said Mr Steven Hansen, chef and owner of an award-winning restaurant with 15 to 30 per cent of his customers homosexuals. Reactions have ranged from approval to outrage since Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong revealed in early July that the government had been openly employing gays and urged they be accepted as human beings. In a drive to shed its stuffy and restrictive image, the conservative city-state has recently lifted a spate of taboos.
— DPA |
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United Nations, August 21
‘Chemical Ali’ captured
