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5 coalition troops killed in Iraq
Hunt for Iraqi arms to continue, says Duelfer 30 detained after Uzbek terror attacks Police foil Al-Qaida plot in Britain Musharraf was aware of Khan’s activities, says US official |
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Kanishka trial told of plot to kill Indira Lankan PM holds talks with truce monitors
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5 coalition troops killed in Iraq Falluja, Iraq, March 31 In what appeared to be a separate incident, the US military said five of its coalition soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb west of Baghdad this morning. Reuters Television footage from
Falluja showed two civilian cars ablaze. Residents shouted “Long Live
Falluja” and “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest”) as they danced around the vehicles waving their arms in the air and making the victory sign. Pictures showed at least one person kicking a burnt corpse as it lay on the ground and stamping on its head. A dead man, who appeared to be a foreigner with fair hair and in civilian clothes, lay on the road beside one of the cars, his feet on fire and blood stains on his white shirt. Other pictures showed chanting Iraqis dragging a badly burnt corpse through the streets. It was not clear whether the bodies were the same ones or different. Witnesses said the two four-wheel drive vehicles were stopped and attacked as they were travelling in opposite directions through the centre of Falluja. Some locals said up to six people in the cars had been killed, others that there were three or four dead. Anti-American feeling is rife in the town, 50 km (32 miles) west of the capital. Insurgents regularly attack US military convoys, planting bombs or firing rocket propelled grenades and small arms. The military spokesman could not confirm what nationality the five dead soldiers were. The vast majority of troops operating in the al-Anbar province west of Baghdad, which includes Falluja, are US Marines. More than 400 US soldiers have been killed in action in the year since US-led forces invaded Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein. One of the favoured methods used by insurgents to attack US and other forces are improvised explosive devices — explosive charges hidden inside soft drink cans, bags or dead animal carcasses and wired to a simple detonator.
— Reuters |
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Hunt for Iraqi arms to continue, says Duelfer Washington, March 31 “Ultimately what we want is a comprehensive picture, not just simply answering questions — were there weapons, were there not weapons?’’ Charles Duelfer told reporters yesterday after a closed-door briefing to the Senate Armed Services Committee. “The hunt will go on until we’re able to draw a firm and confident picture of what the programmes were and where the regime was headed with respect to them. But we’re looking at it from soup to nuts —from the weapons end to the planning end and to the intentions end,’’ he said.
— Reuters |
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30 detained after Uzbek terror attacks Tashkent, March 31 The violence, including the country’s first suicide bombings, has been Uzbekistan’s most serious unrest since it let hundreds of U.S. troops use a base near the Afghan border after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Prosecutor-General Rashid Kadyrov said the suspects had been detained on terrorism charges over the past two days, according to Russia’s ITAR-Tass news agency. He said they were accused of involvement in terrorist acts in the capital, Tashkent, as well as the Bukhara region. Prosecutors couldn’t be immediately reached for comment. Nineteen persons were killed and 26 wounded on Sunday and Monday in violence that included the first suicide bombings in this Central Asian nation.
— AP |
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Police foil Al-Qaida plot in Britain London, March 31 British intelligence agents and anti-terrorist officers were questioning eight persons after the discovery of ingredients for a half-tonne fertilizer bomb in West London, the police said. The supplier of the chemicals has been traced but detectives are concerned at the lack of effective control on the sale of a chemical that is used to make military explosive, they said. The same mixture has been used regularly by Al-Qaida groups since their 1998 lorry bomb attacks on two US embassies in East Africa and in the bombings of a residential compound in Saudi Arabia, where western workers lived. The bomb would have been five times the size of the devices used in the Al-Qaida attack on Bali, which claimed more than 200 lives. Seven of the men arrested are 22 and under, including a 17-year-old student caught at an address in Slough. The other man is 32 years old, the police said. The police believes that an Al-Qaida inspired operation was possibly behind the intended attack. They also believe that terrorists intended to kill hundreds of civilians with an attack on a “soft target” such as a shopping centre. At least 700 officers yesterday raided 24 homes and business centres across London and the South East. A leading British Muslim organisation said today it was writing to mosques around the country asking clerics and community leaders to look out for possible terrorist activity. The Muslim Council of Britain said it was sending a letter to 1,000 mosques urging the “utmost vigilance” in the war against terror.
— PTI |
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Musharraf was aware of Khan’s activities, says US official Washington, March 31 But Bolton yesterday reaffirmed Washington’s view that Musharraf and other top Pakistani officials were not “complicit in or approved of (Khan’s) proliferation activities’’ and therefore are not subject to US sanctions. Bolton, testifying before a congressional committee, came under fire from Opposition Democrats. They accused the Bush administration of failing to hold Pakistan’s leaders accountable for Khan’s blackmarket activities and not using economic muscle to keep countries and companies from doing business with Iran and North Korea. With Iran and North Korea’s nuclear activities a growing concern for Washington, non-proliferation issues could loom large in the 2004 election. Since Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear programme, confessed in February to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya, US officials have insisted only Khan was responsible, not Musharraf and his government. Bolton reiterated that position saying US officials investigated Khan’s activities and “we have no evidence that President Musharraf and top officials of the government of Pakistan are complicit.’’ But under questioning by the US House of Representatives International Relations Committee, Bolton said Musharraf was aware of Khan’s activities when he fired him as head of the Khan Research Laboratory in the year 2001.
— Reuters |
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Kanishka trial told of plot to kill Indira Vancouver (British Columbia), March 31 The man, whose name is shielded by court order, is a witness against Ripudaman Singh Malik, one of two Sikh militants charged with murder in connection with the 1985 attacks on Air India airliners that killed 331 people. The defense is attacking the man’s claim that he turned down Malik’s request that he carry a “time bomb” in a suitcase to Vancouver airport. Under questioning by Malik’s attorney, the man yesterday said he gave 300
Canadian dollars to help kill Gandhi at a 1984 meeting in Vancouver of Sikhs who wanted revenge for India’s attack that year on the religion’s Golden Temple in Amritsar.
— Reuters |
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Lankan PM holds talks with truce monitors Colombo, March 31 Mr Wickremesinghe discussed the deteriorating security situation in the district of Batticaloa where a Tamil election candidate and his son-in-law were gunned down yesterday, officials said.
— PTI |
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Foreign hotels wooing Indians with Hindi TV channels Washington, March 31 Hotels across Asia and Australia are adding Hindi television channels and films to their offerings in the expectation that the number of Indian tourists heading abroad will jump to six million this year, 30 per cent up from 2003, the Wall Street Journal reports. “In the not too distant future, India will be as strong as China,” says Patrick Imbardelli, Managing Director of the Asia-Pacific region for Intercontinental Hotels Group. Hong Kong Tourism Board is creating a “movie map” of the territory that showcases sites of Bollywood films. The Hilton Hotel in Singapore, at which Indian guests increased by 25 per cent in 2003 from 2002, has added a 24-hour Hindi cable TV channel to its in-room programming to cater to that growing clientele. As part of its efforts to woo more Indians, the Singapore Tourism Board linked up with Visa International to offer a package that includes a free application for multiple-entry tourist visas for the whole family to gold and platinum Visa cardholders in India. China dispatched 20 million tourists to the world last year, dwarfing India on the global travel charts. But Indians shop more and stay longer at their overseas destinations, the paper said. Indian visitors to Singapore stayed an average of 5.5 days in 2002, while visitors from China stayed 2.5 days, according to the Singapore Tourism Board. Indians also spent 17 per cent more a day than the average foreign tourist, and 35 per cent more than visitors from China, the paper said. “So tourism agencies are thinking up new ways to lure big-spending Indians”, it added. Singapore is the top destination for Indians with the number of visitors to the country roughly doubling between 1995 and 2002, to a total of 375,658, before declining last year due to the SARS scare. Malaysia’s Tourism Promotion Board has launched an aggressive tourist recruitment campaign with advertisements on Indian television channels and in newspapers. “India is one of the big ones, there’s no question of that,” says John Koldowski, Director of the Pacific Asia Travel Association in Bangkok. “We have seen latent potential building for years, but we haven’t seen it convert to actual outbound traffic at the same rate as China — partly because the means, the airline capacity, has not been there. That looks like it is going to change.” To cement its position, the Singapore Tourism Board set up an office in Chennai last year, its second office in India. Singapore is negotiating a free trade pact with India, a deal that would boost both business and tourism travel — and allow Singapore to add more flights to India. “Our existing air services agreement is maxed out,” says Chan Tat, Honorary Assistant Chief Executive of the Tourism Board. “It is long overdue for that agreement to be reviewed, and that will all be looked under the Free Trade Agreement.”
— PTI |
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Jackson named “Most Foolish American of 2004” Los Angeles, March 31 It marked the second time in a row that the “King of Pop,” who is currently facing child molestation charges, has snatched the April Fools Day dishonour as the “Most Foolish American” in an annual US opinion poll. In the telephone survey of 1,016 Americans carried out by New York-based public relations consultant Jeff Barge, 77 per cent of respondents voted Michael Jackson to the top of the fools’ list, followed by 70 per cent who voted for his sister.
— AFP |
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