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Monday,
September 15, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Israel may eliminate Arafat
Pak voices
concern on Israeli aid to India I was
unwilling to go to Wagah, says Pervez Typhoon
Maemi leaves 110 dead |
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Report
on Iraq WMDs shelved 14
killed in Nepal violence Wedding
raises queries on Reyat testimony
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Israel may eliminate Arafat
Jerusalem, September 14 Eliminating Yasser Arafat is “definitely one of the options... We are trying to eliminate all heads of terror, and Arafat is one of the heads of terror,” Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said. Expelling Arafat or ensuring that he was completely cut off in his Ramallah compound were also options for the government, he told Israeli radio. Meanwhile, senior Palestinian official and Arafat loyalist Saeb Erekat said Olmert’s remarks reflected nothing but “the thinking and action of the mafia — not a government.” Erekat said the practical implication of the security cabinet’s decision was the killing of Arafat, which would lead to anarchy in the Palestinian authority. “Deportation will lead to killing Arafat, and if Arafat is killed then the Palestinian authority is also killed,” he told the Army radio. “My home town Jericho will be taken by Palestinian militias, in Nablus and Rafah and Khan Younis as well. Probably the first thing they will do is come to my house and shoot me, and kill all Palestinian moderates,” he added. The Israeli security cabinet on Friday decided to “remove” Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat accusing him “an absolute obstacle to peace process”.
WASHINGTON: Firmly opposing any move by Israel to eliminate Yasar Arafat, the USA today said such an action would not in any way help in the progress of the West Asia peace roadmap. The United States does not support either the elimination or exile of Arafat. The Israeli Government knows our position. The consequences will not be good ones. I think you can anticipate a rage throughout the Arab world, the Muslim world and many other parts of the world,” Secretary of State Colin Powell told “Fox News” in an interview.
— PTI |
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Pak voices concern on Israeli aid to India Colombo, September 14 Pakistan voiced concern about Israeli help to India, especially after the visit to India last week by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon raised prospects of closer defence ties between the two countries. “We will do whatever is required to make sure that the minimum credible balance is maintained. We have done that for 56 years,’’ Pakistan Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri said. He called on the USA to prevent Israel from trying to introduce newer weapons systems into South Asia because we will match those and would create a credible
deterrence. Mr Kasuri was in Colombo to deliver an invitation to a South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in Islamabad in January. Ties between India and Pakistan had improved slightly in recent months. Mr Sharon’s visit was expected to advance defence deals, including the sale of an Israeli airborne early warning radar system worth more than $ 1 billion that would put large parts of Pakistan under Indian surveillance. India also wants to buy the $ 2.5-billion Arrow anti-ballistic missile system from Israel, but has yet to win US approval. Mr Kasuri will visit India next month to invite Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to the January meeting, but does not know if he will meet his Indian counterpart, Mr Yashwant Sinha. “The ball is in India’s court, wherever I have gone I have meetings. It makes eminent sense to talk,’’ he said. Mr Kasuri repeated Islamabad’s concerns that conditions were not right to send Pakistani troops to Iraq, as requested by the USA. Pakistan wanted a stronger UN mandate and for other Muslim countries to send troops. The 12th SAARC summit was postponed from January last after India declined to go because of tensions with Pakistan. There are hopes that January’s meeting will take place after the two recently restored full diplomatic links and resumed a cross-border bus service.
— Reuters |
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I was unwilling to go to Wagah, says Pervez Islamabad, September 13 However, he said in an interview published in The News daily today that “I had no problem in saluting him, as he was older than me and I saluted him at Governor’s House.” “I was ready to shake hands with Mr Vajpayee, as I met him 30 to 40 minutes at the Governor’s House ... and what if I saluted Mr Vajpayee,” he said. General Musharraf did not elaborate on the reservations he had in going to Wagah where Mr Vajpayee was received by the then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
— PTI |
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Typhoon
Maemi leaves 110 dead
Seoul, September 14 Typhoon Maemi, or “cicada” in Korean, tore into southern parts of the peninsula on Friday night, packing record winds of up to 216 kph (134 mph) and crunching everything in its path before heading out to sea yesterday. Thousands of soldiers and rescue workers were searching for the missing, helping repair roads and transmission towers, and distribute relief supplies, an official at the National Disaster Prevention Council said.
— Reuters  |
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Army ousts President of Guinea-Bissau Bissau, September 14 Army Chief of staff Gen Verissimo Correia Seabra declared himself Interim President after the apparently bloodless dawn putsch, the latest in a series of uprisings to hit President Kumba Yalla’s administration. “I am going to assume the presidency of the republic until there are elections,” Correia told Portuguese state television. Guinea-Bissau, about the size of Taiwan, is one of the world’s poorest nations with a population of some 1.3 million, scraping by on an average $ 170 a year each. It has been gripped by an economic crisis since a 1998-1999 army revolt.
— Reuters |
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Powell in Iraq; US soldier killed
Baghdad, September 14 Mr Powell arrived in the war-torn country via Kuwait from Geneva where emergency UN talks failed to resolve core issues over Iraq’s future. Two days after a “friendly fire” incident cost the lives of nine Iraqi security personnel and a Jordanian guard, US forces suffered another deadly assault in Fallujah when their convoy was attacked with an “improvised explosive device”, a US military spokeswoman said. Witnesses at the scene said a helicopter attempted to land to evacuate the wounded to a nearby hospital after the blast, but was turned back after it was targeted by a rocket. The blast followed the funeral yesterday of the nine Iraqi security men killed in a clash involving US forces, who apologised for the shootout, but which a Sunni Muslim bastion swore to avenge. A group of masked men, describing themselves as anti-US resistance forces spoke briefly to reporters, reciting verses from the Koran before issuing a chilling warning. “We will conduct an operation tonight to avenge the martyrs,” one said. Mr Powell, the highest-ranking Washington official to visit Iraq since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime in April and the first US Secretary of State here in half a century, was greeted by senior American military
officers. — AFP |
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Report on Iraq WMDs shelved
London, September 14 Efforts by the Iraq Survey Group, an Anglo-American team of 1,400 scientists, military and intelligence experts, to scour Iraq for the past four months to uncover evidence of chemical or biological weapons have so far ended in failure, ‘The Sunday Times’ claimed in its report. It had been expected that a progress report would be published tomorrow, but MPs on the British Parliament’s security and intelligence committee have been told that even this has been delayed and no new date set. British defence intelligence sources have confirmed that the final report, which is to be submitted by Mr David Kay, the survey group’s leader, to Mr George Tenet, head of the CIA, had been delayed and may not necessarily even be published, the paper said. In July, Mr Kay had suggested on the US Television that he had seen enough evidence to convince himself that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had had a programme to produce weapons of mass destruction. But last week British officials said they believed Mr Kay had been “kite-flying” and that no hard evidence had been uncovered.
— PTI |
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14 killed in Nepal violence Kathmandu, September 14 “Five rebels were killed at Kalinjor in the southern Sarlahi district and another one at Helauchha in eastern Bhojpur district following an exchange of fire between the rebels and the security personnel on Saturday,” the source said. Two other guerrillas were killed in Haraicha village in eastern Dhanakuta district’s Maleha village in the southeastern Saptari area yesterday, the source added. The rebels had gunned down three civilians and a police constable, at the Sijuwa police post in Saptari in the past 48 hours.
— AFP |
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Wedding raises queries on Reyat testimony
Vancouver, September 14 One of Reyat’s daughters was married this summer to the son of a former leader of the Babbar Khalsa, who once faced terrorism charges with two Air-India suspects. The arranged marriage of Charanjit Kaur Reyat and Tejpal Singh Kaloe took place at a Hamilton Sikh temple over the summer break in the Air-India trial, which resumed this week after a three-month hiatus, a media report said. Tejpal is the son of Tejinder Singh Kaloe, the long-time head of the Ontario Babbar Khalsa who was arrested in 1986 along with accused Air-India bomber Ajaib Singh Bagri and suspected Air-India mastermind Talwinder Singh Parmar. The trio and several other members of the Babbar Khalsa were charged with various terrorism offences in Hamilton related to a conspiracy to attack targets in India, Canadian daily Vancouver Sun reported. The charges against Bagri were dropped soon afterwards for lack of evidence, while the others were freed months later after defence lawyers raised concerns about how warrants were obtained to authorise wiretaps on the phones of the accused. Kaloe was represented in the 1986 case by Toronto lawyer Michael Code, now part of the Bagri defence team. Inderjit Reyat was called a Crown witness this week in the conspiracy and murder trial of Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik. The wedding has raised questions about the testimony Reyat gave to the court earlier this week. The former auto-mechanic from Duncan had said he knew nothing about the beliefs of the Babbar Khalsa even though its founder had asked him to make a bomb.
— PTI |
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South Korea’s most powerful
typhoon on record left at least 110 dead or missing, knocking down
buildings, smashing ships and triggering floods that forced 25,000 from
their homes.
Bissau,
September 14
Madonna felt left out of school