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 Arnold pleads case for PresidencyWHAT do Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sonia Gandhi have in common, besides the fact that they married into dynastic political families and they both became citizens of their adopted countries in 1983?
Pak to sign NPT only as nuclear weapon state
5 dead as Israel seals off Rafah
Prison fire kills 90 inmates
Iraq Governing Council chief killed
3 Pakistanis jailed for kidnapping Indians
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Foreign origin issue in US too
WHAT do Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sonia Gandhi have in common, besides the fact that they married into dynastic political families and they both became citizens of their adopted countries in 1983?
The involvement of both Mrs Gandhi and Mr Schwarzenegger in politics has opened a debate about allowing foreign-born citizens to ascend to the highest office in their land. Earlier this year, Mr Schwarzenegger, making his Sunday talk show debut as Governor of California, said he and other foreign-born citizens should be eligible to run for the White House. The US Constitution says only natural-born citizens of the USA are eligible for the Presidency. “There are so many people in this country that are now from overseas, that are immigrants, that are doing such a terrific job with their work, bringing businesses here, that there's no reason why not," said Mr Schwarzenegger making a case for foreign-born Presidents. Last year, a constitutional amendment was proposed by Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican Utah, to make this dream possible. The amendment would allow anyone who has been a US citizen for 20 years, and has resided in the country for 14 years, to be elected President. Another proposal by a bi-partisan group in the House of Representatives seeks to permit anyone who has been a naturalised citizen for 35 years to be eligible to become President. Article 2, Section 1 of the US Constitution, drafted in 1787, says that only natural-born Americans at least 35 years old who have lived in the country for 14 years can serve as President. In America, naturalised citizens can and do serve at the federal, state and local levels. Prominent foreign-born officials include Congressman Tom Lantos, California Democrat, former Secretaries of State Germany-born Henry Kissinger, Prague-born Madeleine Albright and Warsaw-born Carter administration National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. America's founding fathers set a bar for amending the Constitution to allow foreign-born citizens to become President. National security was a chief concern for the nascent nation: if foreign-born Americans could become President, foreign powers might use them to undermine the new republic. Fresh memories of Austria, Prussia and Russia conspiring to elect a puppet king in Poland and then promptly carving up the nation amongst themselves worried delegates to America's Constitutional Convention in 1787. One warned “the fate of Poland may be that of united America.” As a consequence of these concerns, the founding fathers agreed that a constitutional amendment must require the approval of two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the 50 state legislatures. Since then, members of Congress have suggested thousands of amendments, but Congress has actually proposed only 33, and of those just 27 have been ratified. Unlike America, other western nations are less wary about being led by foreign-born citizens. Former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing was born in Koblenz, Germany, and former French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur was born in Turkey. Canada's former Prime Minister John Turner was born in Richmond, England. In Ireland, Eamon de Valera, the three-time Prime Minister who retired as President before he died, was born in New York City. And Jean-Luc Dehaene, recently Prime Minister of Belgium, was born in Montpelier, France. Writing in USA Today, Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of history and education at New York University, says Sen Hatch is correct on principle. “Anyone who is a US citizen should be able to become its chief executive. Naturalised citizens possess every other right and duty: they vote, pay taxes, serve on juries, fight in the armed forces. They are eligible for other elected and appointed political offices: Labour Secretary Elaine Chao emigrated from Taiwan, while Michigan Gov Jennifer Granholm was born in Canada. So why not President?" Debating the appropriateness of a constitutional amendment on the right of foreign-born adoptees to be President, John Yinger, professor of economics and public administration at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, writes: “An amendment to allow foreign-born adoptees to run for President would extend the principle of equal rights that is so central to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the 14th amendment and would eliminate the possibility that foreign-born adoptees can be considered, or consider themselves to be, second-class citizens.” Mr Zimmerman concludes: “I don't care for Schwarzenegger, but he should have the same right to seek our Presidency as anyone else, just as I have the right to vote him down.” |
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Pak to sign NPT only as nuclear weapon state
Islamabad, May 17 Just as India had moved from its original stance of objecting to the discriminatory nature of the treaty to simply telling the NPT community that New Delhi could not join it as a non-nuclear weapon state, Pakistan has suggested a regime based on present day realities which included recognition of the nuclear status of Islamabad, media reports said. Calling the NPT irrelevant in its present form, Pakistan has sought modifications in the US stance as per the requirements of a new day and a new age, the Dawn quoted sources as saying. However, the demand of the Foreign Ministers of Pakistan and India that both the countries be recognised as nuclear weapon states have been rejected by the USA. According to the US official, India and Pakistan remain ineligible under the US law and policy for any significant assistance to their nuclear programmes. — UNI |
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5 dead as Israel seals off Rafah
Gaza, May 17 Shaken by ambushes that killed 13 soldiers in Gaza last week, the worst blow to Israeli forces since 2002, the army was preparing not only to flatten homes it believed were gun nests but possibly digging a moat to help block arms smugglers. UN relief officials said more than 1,000 Rafah refugees were already in the street after the army bulldozed about 80 homes in initial demolitions last week, temporarily halted by a Supreme Court injunction before it was lifted yesterday. The ruling panicked hundreds of Palestinians to flee homes near the ‘’Philadelphi’’ buffer strip along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt. Early on Monday, Israeli tanks and troop carriers moved in to cut off access routes to Rafah, witnesses said. Israeli helicopters fired missiles at an office of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement and another faction in Gaza City in the north of the territory. Medics said the Fatah building and offices of the Democratic Front were empty and there were no casualties in the missile strikes. At least 29 Palestinians, militants and civilians, were killed in fighting sparked by Israeli army raids in Gaza last week. US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in Jordan that Washington opposed ‘’wholesale bulldozing of houses’’ in Rafah. But Powell sought to persuade Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie to ‘’seize the opportunity’’ and accept Sharon’s plan to evacuate Jewish settlers from Gaza.
— Reuters |
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Prison fire kills 90 inmates
Tegucigalpa, Honduras, May 17 Armando Calidonio said the fire was caused by a short circuit, and consumed the jail as the inmates slept. It was the second major jail fire in Honduras in a little over a year. The prison was located in the city of San Pedro Sula, 180 km north of the capital, Tegucigalpa. “Everything burned,” prisoner Jose Mauricio Lopez told a local radio station from his hospital bed. “Everything happened fast while we were sleeping. It was a fire, and we woke up when our clothes and our bed was in flames.”
— AP |
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Iraq Governing Council chief killed
Baghdad, May 17 Abdul Zahra Othman Mohammad, a Shi’ite council member also known as Izzedin Salim, had been waiting at a checkpoint to enter the sprawling ‘’Green Zone’’ compound in Baghdad when the bomb went off, Deputy Foreign Minister Hamed al-Bayati told Reuters. ‘’Izzedin Salim was martyred,’’ he said. Bayati said Salim’s car had been the last in a Governing Council convoy which included other council members. ‘’The other members escaped unharmed. They managed to get through the checkpoint before the explosion. Salim was still waiting to enter. It is too early to say whether the attack specifically targeted the Governing Council convoy,’’ he said. Salim, who had been the current holder of the rotating Governing Council presidency, was the second of the 25-member Council to be killed. In September gunmen assassinated Aqila al-Hashemi, one of the three women in the council. US officers said the explosion had been caused by a car bomb. The checkpoint had been crowded with civilian cars and minibuses. More than a dozen vehicles were destroyed by the blast, which melted the asphalt of the road and covered it in pools of blood. Brigadier-Gen Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the US army in Iraq, told reporters at the scene that the blast was a suicide attack and the bomber’s car was among a queue of vehicles waiting at a checkpoint to get searched at an entrance to the ‘’Green Zone’’. SHUNEH (JORDAN): Iraqi’s interim foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari said here on Monday that the death of Izzedin Salim in a car-bomb attack “will strengthen our resolve” to regain sovereignty.
— Agencies |
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3 Pakistanis jailed for kidnapping Indians
Moscow, May 17 Moscow’s Kuzminiki district court sentenced Maqsood Ahmad Bhat and his brother Halid Nadeem Bhat, both Russian passport-holders to 10 and 9 years, respectively, and their Pakistani accomplice Zaman Qamar Abdul Qayum to 8 years in hard-labour camps. In December 2002, the three had abducted the nine Indian illegal immigrants here and had kept them hostage in a rented house in the neighbouring city of Tula and were extorting money from their kin in India for their release, the prosecution said.
— PTI |
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