Baghdad, April 30
US investigators have exhumed the remains of 113 people — all but five of them women, children or teen-agers — from a mass grave in southern Iraq that may hold at least 1,500 victims of Saddam Hussein’s campaign against the Kurdish minority in the 1980s, US and Iraqi officials said this week.

The recovered bodies are expected to be among the evidence used against the deposed Iraqi president by prosecutors at a special tribunal, investigators said.

The non-acidic soil at the grave site preserved layers and layers of distinctive Kurdish clothing worn by many of the victims, suggesting they may have piled on their best clothes expecting to be relocated, investigators said.

Authorities showed reporters some of the remains, including the skull of an older woman with pink dentures, and the skeleton of a teenage girl clutching a bag of possessions.

``These were not combatants,’’ said Gregg Nivala, a member of a US team investigating crimes committed by Saddam’s government and assisting the tribunal. ``These were women and children.’’

The authorities took a group of journalists to the site, near the southern city of Samawa, about 230 miles southeast of Baghdad, on Tuesday on condition that they not identify the exact location of the grave, for fear of tampering, and refrained from reporting on the visit until Friday. Washington Post reporters were not among the group.

The grave actually is a series of 18 trenches, which investigators say they believe Iraqi forces dug with front loaders and maintained for systematic executions over time.

Investigators said women and children were forced to stand at the edge of the pits, then shot with AK-47 assault rifles. Casings were found near the site, they said.

``They sprayed people with bullets so they fell back’’ into the graves, Iraq’s human rights minister, Bakhtiyar Amin, told reporters.

From 1987-1988, Saddam initiated a wave of violence, called the Anfal campaign, to punish the Kurds for siding with Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam’s forces forcibly relocated hundreds of thousands of Kurds from their lands in northern Iraq. Amin said as many as a half-million people died or were killed outright, and thousands of villages were destroyed.

Saddam’s forces carried out similar campaigns against the Shiite majority. More than 300 mass graves have been found across Iraq since US-led forces overthrew Saddam in March 2003, according to US and Iraqi officials. The grave near Samawa would be one of the largest.

— By arrangement with the LA Times-Washington Post

Islamabad, April 30
Indo-Pak ties, bilateral relations, nuclear non-proliferation and UN Security Council reforms figured in talks Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi had with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf today.

Mr Koizumi, who arrived in Islamabad from New Delhi on a two-day visit, held two-hour-long one-to-one meeting with Mr Musharraf during which a host of issues, including Pakistan’s commitment to the Indo-Pak peace process, figured.

He also held talks with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.

Nuclear proliferation, which is of concern to Japan specially in the aftermath of the disclosures by disgraced nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan and the proposed UN reforms and Tokyo’s bid for permanent membership at the UNSC, also came up for discussion.

Mr Musharraf briefed Mr Koizumi on his talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his recent visit to New Delhi and apprised the visiting leader about Pakistan’s efforts to establish lasting peace in South Asia through resolution of all issues with India, including the Kashmir problem, state-run PTV said.

The Japanese Prime Minister lauded Pakistan’s desire for peaceful settlement of Kashmir issue with India and said long-term stability would bring progress and prosperity in South Asia.

The Pakistani leader said Islamabad was against nuclear proliferation and informed the Japanese Prime Minister about the steps taken in that regard.

Mr Musharraf said Pakistan was a responsible member of the international community and had a strict command and control system in place and its nuclear weapons were in safe hands.

Ahead of Mr Koizumi’s visit, the Japanese Ambassador to Pakistan Nobuaka Tanaka had said Mr Koizumi would raise the issue of proliferation and seek answers to several questions, specially the admission by A.Q. Khan of supplying nuclear technology to North Korea.

During his visit, the first by a Japanese Prime Minister in five years, Mr Koizumi is expected to announce resumption of yen-dominated loans suspended by Tokyo in 1998 after Pakistan conducted nuclear tests.

The two leaders also exchanged views on UN reforms, with Mr Musharraf spelling out Islamabad’s principled stance of making the world body more democratic, representative and effective, the network said. — PTI

Islamabad, April 30
India will be granted most favoured nation (MFN) status only after it removes all tariff and non-tariff barriers on Pakistani exports, the Commerce Minister has said.

"India will have to remove all such restrictions if it intends to get MFN status from Pakistan," The News Saturday quoted Humayun Akhtar Khan as saying.

"As far as Pakistan is concerned, we have not put unnecessary tariff and non-tariff curbs on Indian exports," he told the newspaper.

India-Pakistan trade talks under the composite dialogue process might be held here in early June, he added.

Khan contended that India might have granted MFN status to Pakistan but exports from here are subject to a number of tariff and non-tariff barriers.

Due to this, Pakistani exports to India were not picking up and the balance of trade between the two countries had not improved.

Even as the MFN issue awaited resolution, it was announced here earlier this week that a large delegation of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) would visit Pakistan from May 23 to 29 to explore the possibilities of establishing joint ventures and increasing trade between the countries.

FICCI President Onkar Kanwar will lead the delegation, which will consist of leading businessmen and industrialists. The delegation will meet business leaders in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore.

The visit is being viewed as an immediate follow up to President Pervez Musharraf's discussions during his visit to India from April16 to18. The joint statement issued after the visit had specifically mentioned the need for promoting India-Pakistan socio-economic relations, among other things.

"The visit of the Indian delegation will open new avenues for promotion of bilateral trade and accelerate the process of building up economic relations between the two countries," said Abdul Waheed Jan, chief of the Islamabad Stock Exchange. He had visited India last month to explore the possibilities of trading in stock markets.

The Indian delegation will include representatives from a broad spectrum of industries. These include tyres, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and paints, hospitality, tourism, amusement park equipment, processed food products and packaged drinks, herbal extracts and cosmetics, areca-nut and betel-nut, coated/uncoated paper and writing paper, textiles, fibre, cotton and yarn, engineering equipment, electrical equipments and food equipment, cable wire and steel processing plants. — IANS