W O R L D

Party members ask Blair to step down
London, May 8
Members of Mr Tony Blair’s Labour Party called today for him to stand down sooner rather than later, even after he won a record third term as British Prime Minister, but his allies dismissed them as isolated mavericks.

India, Pak set to take up key issues
Islamabad, May 8
The India-Pakistan dialogue to speed up the normalisation process as well as talks to resolve a host of contentious issues will gather pace from this week with officials of the two countries bracing up to hold a flurry of meetings on a variety of issues.

Solution to Kashmir issue ‘cannot wait indefinitely’
Rawalpindi, May 8
President General Pervez Musharraf has emphasised that the quest for Kashmir settlement could not go on indefinitely and there is a growing realisation in India and the international community that the long-standing Jammu and Kashmir dispute must be resolved permanently for lasting peace and progress in South Asia.

NAM conference for women empowerment
Putrajaya (Malaysia), May 8
Emphasising the importance of promoting advancement of women in a globalised world, India and other developing countries of the Non-aligned Movement today agreed to arm women in member states with more political and economic power.

Harry C. Saunders, the first US soldier who entered the Austrian Nazi concentration camp at Mauthausen during its liberation on August 5, 1945, waves in his wheelchair during a commemoration ceremony on Sunday. The capitulation of Hitler’s Nazi Germany ended World War II in Europe 60 years ago, three days after the liberation of the Mauthausen camp by US troops. — Reuters

Secret of ageing
London, May 8
Scientists have managed to stave off the ageing process in mice, a discovery that might pave the way to longer, healthier living in humans too. Experiments at the US-based Washington University School of Medicine showed that protecting the body of mice against highly reactive chemicals called free radicals — long suspected as a cause of ageing — gave them longer lives, reports the Scottish daily Scotsman.

Honour for Sikh student for fighting hatred Richmond, May 8 As he watched smoke billow from the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Amandeep Singh Sidhu’s anger over the attack on his country slowly changed to trepidation over the backlash he knew he and other Sikhs would face from other irate Americans.

Iraq appoints new ministers
Baghdad, May 8
Iraq’s Parliament approved ministers for six contested government posts today, ending months of stalemate that hampered efforts to tackle an escalating insurgency.

Party members ask Blair to step down

London, May 8
Members of Mr Tony Blair’s Labour Party called today for him to stand down sooner rather than later, even after he won a record third term as British Prime Minister, but his allies dismissed them as isolated mavericks.

Mr Blair could have been forgiven for thinking he had lost Thursday’s election as members of Parliament from his centre-left party used media interviews to urge a swift handover to heir apparent and Finance Minister Gordon Brown.

Mr Blair, the first Labour leader to win three successive elections and once seen as his party’s greatest asset, has insisted he plans to serve a full term of four or five years.

But with public trust in the Prime Minister battered by his unpopular decision to go to war in Iraq and other issues, some Labour members say he was a liability in the election campaign.

“Large numbers of people on the doorstep said that they wouldn’t vote for Labour because of the war and very many of them went on to say they wouldn’t vote Labour so long as Tony Blair remains leader of the Labour Party,” said Mr Frank Dobson, a former Health Minister.

“That’s a major consideration for any political party,” he told Sky television.

Labour won 356 parliamentary seats on Thursday, a decrease of 47 over the last election but enough for an absolute majority of 67 with one seat outstanding. The main Opposition, the Conservatives have 197 seats, a gain of 33.

Some Labour members said Mr Blair should quit before the party’s annual conference in autumn. Others said he could wait until Britain finished presiding over the Group of Eight leading nations and the European Union at the end of the year.

A third group has suggested he should wait until after a referendum on the new EU constitution, a tough battle expected next year.

“The sooner we could have a reasonably smooth handover, the better,” Mr Ian Davidson, a Labour member of Parliament for a constituency in Glasgow, told The Sunday Times.

The public calls so soon after the election are likely to be seen as a sign power is already ebbing away from Mr Blair. But his supporters said many of those complaining were longtime critics who did not represent the mainstream.

“The problem is people have got used to us delivering landslides,” Mr Alastair Campbell, Labour’s election strategist and a former spokesman for Mr Blair, told BBC television.

Mr David Blunkett, a former Interior Minister who quit after his office fast-tracked a visa application for his lover’s nanny, issued a blunt call to Labour members of Parliament to stop sniping and support Mr Blair’s government. — Reuters

India, Pak set to take up key issues
K.J.M. Varma

Islamabad, May 8
The India-Pakistan dialogue to speed up the normalisation process as well as talks to resolve a host of contentious issues will gather pace from this week with officials of the two countries bracing up to hold a flurry of meetings on a variety of issues.

A high-level Indian transport delegation is due in Pakistan tomorrow to begin talks on May 10 to run a new bus service between Amritsar and Lahore through the Wagah border. The two countries have already committed to running the bus service covering 56 km between the two cities on both sides of the border as it figured prominently in the Joint Statement issued after last month’s visit to India by President Pervez Musharraf.

The Joint Statement also spoke of running bus services between Wagah and Nankana Sahib, the birth place of Guru Nanak, specially during the festival season. If it materialises, the service will be in addition to Delhi-Lahore bus as well as Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service, besides Lahore-Attari train service.

On the same day, an Indian Coast Guard delegation headed by Director General Vice-Admiral Arun Kumar Singh will hold talks with their Pakistan counterparts in Islamabad to discuss an MoU with the Pakistan’s Maritime Security Agency (PMSA).

The parleys will focus on establishment of communication links between the two organisations and to liberalise procedures for the release of fishermen from both countries.

He would discuss a host of issues with PMSA officials, including establishment of communication links, repatriation of Indian and Pakistani fishermen, educating them about maritime boundaries and coordination for search and rescue at sea, an official statement said.

Hundreds of fishermen of both countries get caught every year by the ICG and the PMSA off Gujarat and Karachi coasts. The two sides will discuss exchange of information on other important maritime aspects such as search and rescue at sea, natural disasters, calamities, pollution incidents, smuggling and illicit drug trafficking. The two nations are also expected to give concrete shape to their plans to open branches of their national banks in each other’s countries this week during the visit of Reserve Bank Governor Y.V. Reddy. — PTI

Solution to Kashmir issue ‘cannot wait indefinitely’
By arrangement with The Dawn

Rawalpindi, May 8
President General Pervez Musharraf has emphasised that the quest for Kashmir settlement could not go on indefinitely and there is a growing realisation in India and the international community that the long-standing Jammu and Kashmir dispute must be resolved permanently for lasting peace and progress in South Asia.

He was addressing senior civil servants of the 82nd National Management Course at the Pakistan Administrative Staff College, who called on him here on Saturday. President Musharraf said the past accords between Pakistan and India failed to establish durable peace as they did not address the underlying cause of tension.

He pointed out that in the changed international environment the world had also realised that coercive diplomacy could not lead to durable settlement of lingering disputes, including Kashmir. He said: “The international community views Kashmir as a flashpoint in the post-2002 stand-off between Pakistan and India and feels that a peaceful resolution to the problem is imperative.”

NAM conference for women empowerment

Putrajaya (Malaysia), May 8
Emphasising the importance of promoting advancement of women in a globalised world, India and other developing countries of the Non-aligned Movement (NAM) today agreed to arm women in member states with more political and economic power.

Senior officials from 75 countries, including India’s R. Nair, Secretary, Women and Child Welfare department, today discussed various issues to enable women to escape poverty and improve their standard of living in an era of globalisation.

They are meeting here to discuss the contents of a draft declaration to finalise the agenda for the two-day ministerial meeting on the theme “Empowering women in facing the challenges of globalisation”, which starts tomorrow.

A draft of the Putrajaya Declaration and the Programme of Action on the Advancement of Women in NAM proposes wide-ranging measures such as encouraging women to take part in legislature, business ventures and education and implementing laws against domestic violence as well as affirmative action policies to eliminate gender discrimination.

“While globalisation has brought greater opportunities, many are still deprived of its benefits,” a paper on “Women and economic development”, which is being discussed by senior officials at Malaysia’s administrative capital of Putrajaya, about 40 km from Kuala Lumpur, said.

“Poverty has been one of the critical issues faced by the developing countries, including NAM countries, and it remains stubbornly ‘feminised’,” it said. — PTI

Secret of ageing

London, May 8
Scientists have managed to stave off the ageing process in mice, a discovery that might pave the way to longer, healthier living in humans too.

Experiments at the US-based Washington University School of Medicine showed that protecting the body of mice against highly reactive chemicals called free radicals — long suspected as a cause of ageing — gave them longer lives, reports the Scottish daily Scotsman. Mice given higher levels of an enzyme that breaks down free radicals had about a 20 per cent increase in their average and maximum lifespan, about four and a half months.

They also had healthier hearts than other mice.

The experiments suggest that people could live longer and be free from many age-related diseases if they were protected from free radicals.

“This study is very supportive of the free radical theory of ageing. It shows the significance of free radicals and of reactive oxygen species in particular in the ageing process,” said lead researcher Peter Rabinovitch.

“People used to only focus on specific age-related diseases because it was believed that the ageing process itself could not be affected. What we’re realising now is that by intervening in the underlying ageing process, we may be able to produce very significant increases in ‘health-span’, or healthy life-span.” Rabinovitch and his colleagues studied the enzyme catalase, which helps breakdown hydrogen peroxide — a waste product of the body’s metabolic process — into water and oxygen. Hydrogen peroxide can be a precursor of free radicals. — IANS

Honour for Sikh student for fighting hatred

Richmond, May 8
As he watched smoke billow from the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Amandeep Singh Sidhu’s anger over the attack on his country slowly changed to trepidation over the backlash he knew he and other Sikhs would face from other irate Americans.

His fear proved well-founded one afternoon when a motorist, apparently provoked by the sight of Sidhu’s turban, tried to run him off the road.

Sidhu resolved that rather than hide his faith and heritage, he would fight post-9/11 prejudice against Sikhs and other minorities — an endeavor that helped him win the Virginia State Bar’s Oliver W. Hill Law Student Pro Bono Award.

Sidhu (27) will receive the award on Thursday at the University of Richmond law school, where he received his degree yesterday.

“Amandeep is the strongest law student leader I have encountered in over 20 years as a legal educator,” said law school Dean Rodney A. Smolla, who nominated Sidhu for the award. — AP

Iraq appoints new ministers

Baghdad, May 8
Iraq’s Parliament approved ministers for six contested government posts today, ending months of stalemate that hampered efforts to tackle an escalating insurgency.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said he may appoint one more official to his government — a fourth Deputy Prime Minister, chosen from among women in Parliament.

Mr Jaafari said the Cabinet would now press ahead with efforts to defeat the insurgency. “We will take all necessary steps to fight this monstrous phenomenon,” he said.

Mr Saadoun al-Dulaimi, a Sunni Arab former military officer with tribal ties to Iraq’s rebellious western Anbar province, was given the key defence portfolio. The government hopes that putting a Sunni Arab in the post will help undermine the insurgency that is being mainly fought by Sunni guerrillas. A respected Shi’ite official, Mr Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, was named Oil Minister an important post in the oil-rich nation. — Reuters