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Monday,
September 22, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Saddam in secret talks with USA 3 US soldiers die in
Iraq Sept 11 plot began in ’96, reveals mastermind Pak seeks fresh US military
aid
Musharraf’s UN address to focus on terrorism |
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Maoists kill member of advisory
body India’s poor lack access to services, says World Bank £ 600,000 offered for Diana’s letters
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Saddam in secret talks with USA London, September 21 According to the Sunday Mirror report, Saddam is demanding safe passage to the former Soviet republic of Belarus in exchange for information on weapons of mass destruction and his bank accounts. US President George Bush was being kept up to date on talks by his national security adviser Condoleeza Rice who was coordinating negotiations led by US general Ricardo Sanchez, the report said. Sanchez was the commander of US forces in Iraq. “A representative of Saddam in western-style civilian clothes came to coalition people at Tikrit on September 12. He led them to a house where the security official was waiting,” a senior Iraqi had been quoted as saying. “The discussions are now going on under the direct authority of General Sanchez,” the source said, according to the newspaper. The source, maintained that Saddam had decided to seek a deal “because he is desperate, trapped and finding fewer and fewer people willing to give him shelter,” the tabloid said. —
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3 US soldiers die in Iraq Baghdad, September 21 The latest deaths followed an assassination attempt against a prominent member of Iraq’s Governing Council. Two military police officers died in a mortar attack yesterday on a US base near the Abu Ghraib prison on the western outskirts of Baghdad. Thirteen MPs were injured in the attack. No prisoner was injured. Shortly before the Abu Ghraib shelling, a soldier from the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment was killed when his Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb near Ramadi, about 100 km west of the capital, the military said. The deaths brought to 165 the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq since May 1 when US President George W Bush declared that major fighting was over. During the heavy fighting before then 138 soldiers died. The latest deaths brought to 302 the number of US soldiers who have died in Iraq. The latest American deaths followed an assassination attempt yesterday against Aquila al-Hashimi, one of three women on the 25-member Governing Council and strong candidate to become Iraq’s representative at the United Nations. Al-Hashimi, a Shiite Muslim and career diplomat, was seriously wounded by six gunmen in a pickup truck who chased her in her car yesterday. The assailants escaped. Al-Hashimi underwent a second operation and was in stable condition at a military hospital on the grounds of one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces where the Coalition Provisional Authority has its headquarters, an official with the US-led civilian administration said today. —
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Sept 11 plot began in ’96, reveals mastermind
Washington, September 21 He also divulged that in its final stages, the hijacking plan called for as many as 22 terrorists and four planes in a first wave, followed by a second wave of suicide hijackings .
— AP
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Pak seeks fresh US military aid Islamabad, September 21 “Pakistan believes that a conventional balance was the key to maintaining peace between India and Pakistan and the nuclear threshold would come down, if this balance was disturbed”, Pakistan Defence Secretary retired Lt Gen. Hamid Nawaz Khan said on his arrival from Washington after attending the four-day Pak-US Defence Co-ordination Group meet. Khan who headed the Pakistan delegation was quoted as saying by local daily ‘Dawn’ that he believes the USA also realise that if the conventional capability goes down, it also brings down the nuclear threshold. “The US understands that a conventional balance is key to maintaining peace in South Asia,” he added. Khan said during his talks with US officials, including US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, he has urged the Bush administration to consider selling more F-16 jet fighters to Pakistan. Asked as to why Pakistan was so anxious to acquire the F-16s, Khan said “recent Israeli sales to India have disturbed the conventional balance”. “We told the Americans that you must restore the balance. We should also get similar equipment for balance. We believe that the US should have stopped Israel from selling the Phalcon early warning system to India. “But now that the sale is taking place, it is important that the convention balance is maintained. It is absolutely essential for our defence.” he said. The US response was not known immediately, but a joint statement issued after the talks that ended on Thursday did not mention the aircraft nor any specific equipment for Pakistan. Four months ago US President George W Bush had rejected a similar request of Gen Pervez Musharraf at their Camp David summit. Pakistan wants USA to permit buying two squadrons of F-16 from Belgium. He said if not selling new F-16s, US should at least release 28 F-16s bought by Pakistan in 1980s but not released due to imposition of sanctions. “The F-16s will be the main item from our side for the second stage. We told them that we had paid for those planes. Blocking their sale has spoiled our relations”, he said. —
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Musharraf’s UN address to focus on terrorism Islamabad, September 21 In brief comments to the media here before he left on a week-long tour to New York and Canada early today, General Musharraf said his speech on September 24 would also highlight the “way forward” to resolve the crisis faced by the whole world due to extremism and militancy. “Basically the issue of terrorism and the issue of blame that is being cast on Islam as a religion believing in extremism and also the way forward to resolve the crisis faced by the whole world in the form of extremism and militancy will be focus this time,” he said. For the past three years, General Musharraf has focussed mainly on Kashmir and Indo-Pak relations in his UN addresses. Officials said this year, too, he would touch upon the slow pace of normalisation of ties bewteen India and Pakistan and reiterate Pakistan’s allegations that India was delaying the resumption of talks on Kashmir. General Musharraf is being accompanied by his wife, Begum Sehba Musharraf, Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri and Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, besides other officials. Apart from addressing the UN General Assembly, General Musharraf is scheduled to meet US President George W Bush on September 24. Asked about his initiative to host a luncheon meeting for the leaders of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, General Musharraf said he would urge everyone to realise the necessity of finding a way forward for the Muslim world and developing consensus on the formation of an OIC commission to put forward proposals for restructuring of the organisation. “We have a lot of ideas. I would like to develop consensus on these issues before the OIC meeting,” he said. A large number of heads of state and government and foreign ministers have confirmed their participation in the luncheon, Pakistan officials said. To a question about his two-day visit to Canada from September 25, General Musharraf said he was surprised that no head of the Pakistan Government had visited Canada so far despite good relations between the two countries. —
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Maoists kill member of advisory body Kathmandu, September 21 A group of rebels killed Ganga Prasad Subedi, a member of the Rajparishad, an advisory body of the King, at his house at Harbura village development committee in Surkhet district yesterday, according to Radio Nepal. The rebels also bombed the Mahendra park at Taksar village development committee in Bhojpur district destroying the statue of late King Mahendra, father of King Gyanendra. Continuing their attack on security forces, the rebels also shot two policemen at Chandrauta village in Kapilvastu district yesterday. In a separate incident, villagers of Sarlahi district foiled an attempt by the Maoists to abduct a local youth yesterday, The Rising Nepal daily. Armed with guns and spears, hundreds of villagers cordoned off the rebels in a sugarcane field and the two sides exchanged fire. A Maoist involved in the incident was later killed after the security forces were mobilised to hunt the rebels, the report said adding that another rebel was killed at Rautahat district as his boat capsized while he was trying to escape the security forces. Four Maoist militants were killed in an operation launched by security forces in the jungles between the Rumba and Kurumba VDCs of Panchthar district in far east Nepal, the Rising Nepal said. The locals also handed over three Maoists involved in extortion to security forces at Gaidakot in Nawalparasi district. —
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India’s poor lack access to services, says World Bank Dubai, September 21 “In random visits to 200 primary schools in India, investigators found no teaching activity in half of them at the time of visits,” the World Development Report says. Studies from India echo discourtesy, social distance, abruptness of care, discrimination against women and ethnic minorities, service characteristics mismatched to individual tastes as characteristic of provider behaviour. “But all can improve with the purchasing power of clients,” says the report entitled “Making Services Work for Poor”. In this regard, it cites a study relating to health services involving six districts in Andhra Pradesh to establish that the private sector is preferred to the public sector with staff paid by salaries. A presentation was made by World Bank Chief Economist Nicholas Stern and Chief Economist Human Development Network S.Devarajan. The release of the report coincided with the ongoing Annual World Bank-International Monetary Fund meetings here. Dr Stern warned that broad improvements in human welfare will not occur unless the poor received wider access to affordable, better quality services. Without such improvements in services, freedom from illness and illiteracy — two of the most important ways poor people can escape poverty — will remain elusive to many. The report says, too often key services fail poor people which imperils a set of development targets, known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which call for halving the global incidence of poverty and broad improvements in human development by 2015. Meanwhile, the report lauded the performance of the Panchayati Raj institutions and the pulse polio immunisation programmes in India, saying they have contributed to development in the country’s rural areas. “As someone who has been associated with the region for a long time, I can say the performance of the Panchayati Raj institutions have been impressive,” Dr Stern said. However, Mr Devarajan noted that the public spending by and large in developing countries, including India, had been helping the rich and not reaching the poor. The World Development Report 2004 called on South Asian countries, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal to take stock and improve the delivery of basic services like health, education and sanitation by allowing poor communities’ participation in monitoring and delivering such services. —
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£ 600,000 offered for Diana’s letters London, September 21 Ian Wills, a 41-year-old consultant to the pharmaceutical industry, signed an agreement in principle with Hewitt earlier this year and offered securities and his home in Kingswood, Surrey, as guarantees, The Sunday Times claimed. Despite it being the only offer 45-year-old Hewitt has received since he put the letters up for sale eight months ago, the former army officer remains reluctant to go through with the deal. He believes that he can yet secure a figure closer to the £ 10 million he originally wanted and is hopeful that a bidding war for the letters, written between 1989 and 1991, may still occur, the report said. According to the newspaper, Wills said yesterday: “I just wanted to bring an end to the affair of the letters. I wanted to do it because I could and it just seemed the right thing to do. I also liked Hewitt and I knew the money would help him. “I employed a publicist who told me that I could recoup a certain amount of the money by selling the story of the purchase to a newspaper, ” he said. —
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