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Afghan leaders
meet UN, US officials US chopper shot
down, trooper killed Pak seizes
weapons near Afghan border
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French Sikhs seek
India’s help to keep turbans Brain scans
harmful for children: study Runaway
prisoners return after New-Year bash Official hammered
to death |
It’s my final peace bid, says Vajpayee
Islamabad January 2 “This is my last attempt”, Mr Vajpayee, who will arrive here tomorrow to participate in the SAARC summit told Pakistan daily ‘Dawn’ in an wide ranging interview. Sounding conciliatory with hints to make some important confidence building measures to supplement the ones made by the two countries in the past few months, Mr Vajpayee was categorical in asserting that only terrorism remained a hurdle for resolving the vexed issues between the two countries. Pointing out that several factors contributed to craving for friendship between the two countries, the Prime Minister said “first and foremost, popular sentiments are overwhelmingly positive. Second, the imperative of globalisation dictates closer cooperation for faster economic development. “Third, in the post-cold war world, it is in our national interest to join hands in tackling the many common problems we face in our countries with the outside world. And finally, for how long do we want the world to look at India-Pakistan relations either as a threat to global peace or as a promising laboratory of new experiments in conflict resolution”, he asked. Mr Vajpayee however rejected Pakistan President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s four point formula, enunciated by him at the 2001 Agra summit which stipulated that the two countries accept Kashmir as a dispute, initiate talks, discard solutions not acceptable to each other and reach a solution closer to the positions of both the countries Rejecting Pakistan’s objections to India building a fencing along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said the step was an “operational requirement” to stop infiltration of militants and not part of any attempts by India to unilaterally settle the issue.
— PTI |
PM cancels interviews with DD, Pak TV New Delhi, January 2 Vajpayee, who is scheduled to leave for Islamabad tomorrow to attend the SAARC summit, has been “advised by doctors to rest his throat,” the sources added.
— PTI |
Afghan leaders meet UN, US officials
Kabul, January 2 The Loya Jirga, or Grand Assembly, descended into chaos yesterday after about 200 of the 502 delegates refused to vote on amendments to the draft charter, and counting of the assembly’s first ballot was suspended. The Assembly will resume tomorrow, by which time interim leader Hamid Karzai and his supporters hope to have won over opponents seeking to dilute his powers ahead of presidential elections in June. The Western-leaning Pashtun, the country’s largest ethnic group, has refused to water down demands for a strong presidency he feels is necessary to keep the war-shattered country together. But compromises may have to be made to break the deadlock on issues such as the powers of parliament and the provinces, the rights of ethnic minorities as well as the role of Islam in society. “Behind the scenes, I think there are negotiations between the leadership of the Loya Jirga and leaders of the opposition,” said a member of the Constitutional Commission. Leading the push for a stronger parliament are members of the Northern Alliance of mainly minority Tajiks who helped the USA topple the Taliban more than two years ago. Despite that, US allegiance is now firmly with Mr Karzai. The centralised presidential system outlined in the draft is being challenged by ethnic groups, including Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, who are also calling for official recognition of their languages and more power for provinces where they live. UN special envoy to Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi and US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad were both involved in talks with delegates today.
— Reuters |
US chopper shot down, trooper killed
Falluja (Iraq), January 2 “We were on a joint patrol with US troops to remove landmines and I saw a helicopter was hit by a missile,” policeman Mohammad Abdul Aziz said. “It was split into two and went down in flames,” he added. A US military spokeswoman said the helicopter, an OH-58 observation chopper, came down around 12:50 pm local time in
Falluja, west of Baghdad, but had no further details. She said the cause of the crash was under investigation. Guerrillas have shot down several US helicopters in recent months.
— Reuters |
| Pak seizes weapons near Afghan border Quetta, January 2 The police chased a truck in the remote south-western region of Zohb, about 60 km from the border with Afghanistan, yesterday when its driver did not stop at a security post, it said. The driver and his colleagues abandoned the truck and escaped, Baluchistan provincial police chief Shoaib Suddle said. More than 100 anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, rocket launchers, mortar bombs, machineguns, detonators and thousands of rounds of bullets were found on the truck, he told reporters in the provincial capital Quetta. “The weapons were being brought for terrorist activities from Afghanistan,” Mr Suddle said. Pakistan has seen a spate of attacks by suspected Islamic militants since it joined the US-led war against terror. But it has also been accused of fomenting violence in Afghanistan by failing to prevent militants from that country’s former Taliban regime regrouping on its soil.
— Reuters |
French Sikhs seek India’s help to keep turbans Paris, January 2 Chain
Singh, spokesman for about 5,000 Sikhs here, told Reuters he was contacting Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh to ask them to urge
Paris to exempt turbans. “This law will not just be against Muslims, it will be against
Sikhs as well,” he said. “We cannot live without our turbans. This is our religion. If we cannot wear them, we may not be able to stay here.” Sikh men use their turbans to cover their hair, which they never cut. They enjoy exemptions in other
European countries, such as one in Britain dropping a requirement to wear a crash helmet when riding a motorcycle.
— Reuters |
Brain scans harmful for children: study
Stockholm, January 2 The study, conducted by Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute and Harvard School of Public Health and quoted in Svenska Dagbladet daily, called for more caution when using computer tomography scans on young children. “Computer tomography is a excellent aid, but it is being used routinely nowadays, and in a manner that is a bit too lax,” Mr Per Hall, Professor at Karolinska and in charge of the study, told Svenska Dagbladet. Computer tomography is a radiation diagnosis procedure which gives clear cross-section images of the human body. Exposure to high doses of x-rays has in the past been linked to a higher risk of cancer, but this is the first study to show an impact on the cognitive capacity of children. In the study, the intellectual development of 3,000 children who had brain scans before they were 18 months old was compared with that of children who had had no x-ray exposure. The study found a link between the amount of radiation they had been exposed to and a decline in their intellectual capacity. Mr Hall estimates that an annual 1.5 million computer tomography scans are carried out on children worldwide, often with radiation levels higher than those which were tested in his study.
— AFP |
Runaway prisoners return after
New-Year bash Manila, January 2 The inmates escaped from prison in Iloilo City, 465 km south of Manila, early on Wednesday. The five, however, turned themselves in yesterday, according to Chief Inspector Ramon Alor, the deputy district jail warden. He said the prisoners stressed that they had no intention of running away from the law, but merely wanted to spend the New Year with their families. “The prisoners admitted that they planned their escape weeks ago, sawing the steel bars of their cells little by little,” he said, adding that some of their privileges would be suspended as punishment for their escape.
— DPA |
| Official hammered to death Beijing, January 2 Xiao Pengjin, 52, who was in charge of construction and the police in Hunan province’s Chenzhou city, was killed on Monday at Chenzhou Hotel in a room that the city government used as a reception office, the Beijing Daily Messenger reported. Hotel staff discovered Xiao’s body that evening.
— AP |
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