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Rajapakse sworn in
Sri Lanka PM 9 Islamic militants
held in Pak Crush Taliban, or we step in, US tells Pak 4 US soldiers killed in Iraq
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LA Times wins five Pulitzer prizes
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Rajapakse sworn in
Sri Lanka PM Colombo, April 6 Soon after he was sworn in, 58-year-old Rajapakse went in for a meeting with India’s High Commissioner Nirupam Sen. Details of the meeting were not immediately available. Identifying the peace with the rebels as his main priority, Rajapakse told reporters, “India must come in as soon as possible and get involved in the peace process.” “I have always maintained that we need their help. How that help will be delivered we will have to see,” he said. “We must keep the peace process moving,” he said. He made it clear that he did not want to stop the Norwegian involvement to resolve the nearly two-decade old ethnic conflict. A lawyer by profession, Rajapakse was a former Minister of Labour and Fisheries. He was sworn in after heated debates among constituent parties of the Freedom Alliance as to who should get the top post in Parliament. Kumaratunga’s main leftist ally, the JVP or People’s Liberation Front, was backing former Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar to be the premier and had opposed Rajapakse who had earlier clashed openly with the JVP. “At one point there were serious splits that threatened to come out into the open,” an aide of Rajapakse said. “Now the compromise is that he gets the prime minister job plus one ministry,” he added. The key JVP members boycotted the hurriedly summoned swearing-in ceremony, but a JVP legislator showed up after the ceremony was almost over, witnesses said. Sri Lanka’s post of Prime Minister is largely ceremonial. It is an additional portfolio that gives the Prime Minister a subject to handle. In this case, Rajapakse has been promised the relatively minor Highways Ministry.
— PTI |
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9 Islamic militants
held in Pak Karachi, April 6 The arrested men belonged to the shadowy Harkat-ul Mujahideen Al-Alami and included the group’s leader Syed Sohail Akhtar, alias Mustafa, said police chief Syed Kamal Shah. They were detained in the restive port city of Karachi in overnight raids, he said. Mr Shah said the suspects were involved in a June 14, 2002, suicide bombing at the U.S. consulate in Karachi that killed 12 Pakistanis. The group also carried out a similar attack outside the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi in May 2002 that killed 11 French technicians. They were also involved in several other attacks, he added.
— Reuters |
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Crush Taliban, or we step in, US tells Pak Washington, April 5 Extremists are still able to “base, train and operate from that country’s (Pakistan’s) territory,” US Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad said yesterday, warning, “We cannot allow this problem to fester indefinitely.” “Unless
Pakistan roots out Taliban sanctuaries, it will be difficult to fully eliminate security problems in the south and east of Afghanistan,” he told the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a major think tank here. “We have told the Pakistani leadership that either they solve this problem or we will have to do it ourselves. We prefer that Pakistan takes the responsibility, and the Pakistan Government agrees,” he said. Pakistan reacted to the statements angrily, saying they were uncalled for and unwanted. “The remarks are uncalled for and unwanted,” Foreign Office acting spokesman Abbas Jilani said. Jilani said Ambassador Khalilzad was not aware of the stand of Washington about Pakistan’s role against terror. Khalilzad said the US-led coalition was prepared to help President Pervez Musharraf, adding, “One way or the other, this problem will have to be dealt with.” Jilani said that statements like the one by the US envoy could lead to political problems for Pakistan. Pakistan Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed also rejected the US envoy’s warning, saying Pakistani forces were fully capable of confronting terrorists.
— PTI |
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4 US soldiers killed in Iraq Baghdad, April 6 The statement, datelined “Camp Fallujah”, did not specify the exact place where the soldiers were killed. 15 Iraqis killed in Nassiriya: Italian troops clashed with Shi’ite militiamen in this southern Iraq town today in gunfights that killed around 15 Iraqis and wounded 12 Italians, Italian military and coalition sources said. Paola della Casa, a spokeswoman for the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority in the area, said the death toll, which included militiamen and civilians, was approximate, with low-level clashes continuing in some areas of the town. The clashes began shortly after members of a militia loyal to radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr fired on the Italian forces.
— Reuters, AFP |
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Kay told CIA Iraq had no WMDs: report Los Angeles, April 6 Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was the main reason cited by President George W. Bush when he launched a war against President Saddam Hussein four months earlier. Kay told Vanity Fair that in July, less than a month after he arrived in Iraq at the behest of the CIA, he was sending e-mail to the intelligence agency’s director George Tenet that “it looks as though they did not produce weapons.” He also said he was ready to quit his job in December but was urged to stay on because it would look bad if he left early. He quit about a month later. The former weapons hunter’s comments appear in a 22,000-word report, “The Path To War,” written and reported over the last four months in what the magazine said was the longest piece of reporting it has ever published. The issue goes on sale this week. Kay said that after he concluded that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he received a phone call in Baghdad from CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin, who told him: “We have to be very careful how we handle this.” The magazine said that as a result it was months before Congress and the public learned the truth. Last October after briefing Congress, Kay told reporters “we have not found at this point actual weapons. It does not mean we’ve concluded there are no actual weapons. It means at this point in time, and it’s a huge country with a lot to do, that we have not yet found weapons.” Kay, at that point, said his team would have a better handle on the status of Iraq’s banned weapons in six to nine months. But Vanity Fair said Kay was ready to quit by December and that Tenet pleaded with him not to do so. Kay said Tenet told him “If you resign now, it will appear like we don’t know what we’re doing and the wheels are coming off,” Kay resigned on January 23. A CIA spokesman had no immediate comment on the Vanity Fair article.
— Reuters |
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LA Times wins five Pulitzer prizes New York, April 6 The Wall Street Journal won in two categories, the New York Times in the public service category and Washington Post in international reporting. Each prize is worth $ 10,000 except for public service which is recognised by a gold medal. In the awards announced by Columbia University yesterday, the LA Times staff won two Pulitzer including for its “compelling and comprehensive” coverage of the massive wildfires that imperiled a populated region of southern California last fall. |
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