 |
|
Accord on destroying Gaza
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Musharraf calls for courage to resolve conflict with
India
Miandad confirms match-making
Bullied soldier kills 8 comrades
Suicide bomber walks into restaurant, kills 20
Iran’s Ebadi to boycott poll
|
|
Accord on destroying Gaza settlers’ homes
Jerusalem, June 19 Rice, on a visit to Israel and the West Bank, said today that Israel and the Palestinian Authority also agreed to cooperate to ensure the withdrawal. However, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reaffirmed that there could be no progress along a US-backed peace “road map” leading to the creation of a Palestinian state unless the Palestinian Authority dismantled militant groups. “Israel and the Palestinian Authority agree that the settler homes in Gaza be removed,” Rice told a news conference after meeting Sharon. “Therefore the parties will work towards a plan for destruction and cleanup.” Palestinian officials have said they prefer the red-roofed homes, built on occupied land in 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza, be demolished so that high-rise housing can be constructed in the crowded coastal strip, home to 1.3 million Palestinians. “It was their choice. If they wanted them, they could have had them,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. Israeli media reports said rubble from the settlements, whose evacuation is due to begin in mid-August, could be used to build a seaport for Gaza. Rice said US economic envoy James Wolfensohn would assist Israel and the Palestinian Authority in formulating a demolition and cleanup plan. “The Palestinian Authority is reviewing a master plan so that the future land use and housing in former settlement areas are economically suitable for the Palestinian people in the Gaza (Strip). The international community will help,” Rice said. During the two-day visit, which included talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday, Rice called on both sides to agree on specifics about how to carry out the withdrawal, saying time was running out. Israel fears that Palestinian militants could fill a security vacuum in Gaza after the pullout unless Palestinian security forces take over from the withdrawing Israeli troops. At the news conference, Rice said Israel and the Palestinian Authority recognised the withdrawal “must proceed peacefully and without violence” directed towards settlers and soldiers. Abbas, citing his fears of civil war, has rejected Israel’s calls to confront militant groups that have spearheaded a Palestinian uprising that began in 2000. The Palestinian leader has said he prefers to co-opt the gunmen into the Palestinian security services and the groups to which they belong into the political mainstream. Sharon is due to hold a summit with Abbas on Tuesday, their first meeting since declaring a truce in Egypt on February 8. Abbas is expected to press Sharon to open Gaza’s borders, which Israel controls under interim peace deals. Palestinians particularly want to reopen Gaza’s airport, closed after they began an uprising in 2000, and a safe passage for the movement of people and goods between the territory and the West Bank. “Israel will, consistent with its security needs, evaluate the way it manages the crossings,” Rice said at the news conference.
— Reuters |
|
Israeli troops kill Palestinian
militant
Gaza, June 19 The Palestinian attack along the frontier with Egypt coincided with a visit to Israel and the West Bank by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and was the latest violence to fray a shaky ceasefire. Palestinians identified the dead man as a 19-year-old fighter from the Abu Rish Brigades, a splinter group that is linked to Fatah, the Palestinian ruling movement. They said he was shot in an exchange of fire with Israeli troops, while three other attackers escaped unharmed. Israeli security sources said three Israelis were wounded. They were among a group of soldiers and civilians carrying out engineering work along the border. Islamic Jihad, which claimed joint responsibility for the attack, said it was in response to Israeli actions. “Calm is in danger because of the continuation of the Israeli aggression,” senior Islamic Jihad leader Nafez Azzam said.
— Reuters |
|
Musharraf calls for courage to resolve
Auckland, June 19 Addressing the Pakistani community on Saturday, he said Pakistan and India were engaged in a dialogue process to find a final solution to the decades-old dispute. “I see light at the end of the tunnel because I think there is desire on both sides to address the issue. We are moving in this direction; both sides will have to show sincerity, flexibility and courage for final settlement of the dispute.” Referring to his meetings with Dr Manmohan Singh, the President said he felt that the Indian Prime Minister had the desire and courage to address the issue. He said that not only the leadership on both sides had the desire to address the issues but also the people of the two countries wanted peace. “The people of the two countries have overtaken the leadership in their desire for peace,” he said, adding that peace could help economic and trade cooperation in South Asia to the benefit of all the nations. The leadership in the two countries had a critical responsibility to grasp the opportunity of peace building ‘‘otherwise, future generations will not forgive us,” he said, and recalled that several agreements between Pakistan and India had failed in the past as they did not address the underlying cause of tension. The President reiterated his call for proactive efforts by all against extremism and reiterated Islamabad’s firm commitment to eliminating extremism and terrorism from the country. “We will crush and eliminate terrorism with force; we will not allow any terrorist to pursue his agenda on Pakistani soil,” he said. Pakistan, he said, had to address both extremism and terrorism as ‘‘we require a peaceful and congenial environment to continue our march on the path of economic growth and to reduce poverty through wider distribution of economic gains.’’ He said the government was strategically tackling extremism by promoting moderation, tolerance and harmony, which were true values of Islam. “The vast majority (of the people) is moderate and wants peace and harmony but there are people who want to impose their will on others; let us tolerate each other, let us live and let live; instead of imposing their will on others, everyone should pay attention to responsibilities to society and the nation,” he said amid applause from the expatriate Pakistanis, who had travelled from several parts of New Zealand to listen to him. |
||
|
Miandad confirms match-making
Islamabad, June 19 “Yes the marriage will take place...but there are no immediate plans for it,” Miandad, who later coached the Pakistani team, told IANS from his Lahore residence. The news was first broken on Friday. Upset over the media hype on his son Junaid’s engagement with Ibrahim’s daughter Hooria, Miandad said: “Much rubbish is being said about it (the engagement)...I want to (make it) clear that nothing secret has been done.” When asked if he and Ibrahim arranged the marriage, Miandad said: “My mother and Ibrahim’s wife are relatives.” According to family sources, Miandad’s wife, Tahira Sehgal, is a close friend of Ibrahim’s wife. The sources said Junaid and Hoor met at Oxford, where both of them are studying. Junaid, 22, is in London since 2000 while Hoor went there two years ago. Hoor is Ibrahim’s second of the five children. When asked if the marriage will take place secretly, he replied: “No all family friends and relatives would be invited.” “We (Muslims) believe that marriages are made in heaven and we don’t challenge destiny,” he added. According to media reports, Ibrahim has been living in Karachi and Dubai since the 1993 Mumbai terror blasts that he is accused of masterminding and in which nearly 300 people were killed. Both Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates have denied his presence in their countries. Ibrahim is on an Indian blacklist for his alleged anti-national activities. When asked if he was anticipating any backlash, Miandad retorted: “I don’t care about it...people have their own biases. But now we have decided it and (it) will happen.” —
IANS |
|
Bullied soldier kills 8 comrades
Seoul, June 19 The private, identified by his surname ‘’Kim’’, fired 40 shots from his rifle after throwing the grenade at his guard post in Yonchon at the DMZ, about 60 km north of the capital Seoul, a ministry spokesman said. Kim was arrested later. It was the highest number of deaths suffered by the South Korean army since 2000, Yonhap news agency said. The DMZ is one of the most sensitive military regions in the world;, a tense border dividing more than one million North Korean troops from some 650,000 South Korean troops backed by US forces. “Private Kim, who had suffered verbal violence and molesting from his senior, threw the grenade when he entered his barracks after overnight duty,” Mr Chang Suk-kyu, the chief spokesman for the ministry, told a briefing. “When he saw their faces he got angry,” said Chang, referring to the other soldiers in the barracks. South Korean television stations showed distraught and angry parents and relatives scuffling with soldiers in battledress as they tried to reach the base. Kim, 21, joined the army in December 2004 and was deployed to a unit on the stark frontier with North Korea in January, according to the army. It is one of the toughest assignments in the military, patrolling the border fence that runs from coast to coast across the divided Korean peninsula.
— Reuters |
|
Suicide bomber walks into restaurant, kills 20
Baghdad, June 19 A further 20 were injured after the bomber walked into the restaurant during lunchtime on a street protected by numerous police checkpoints and a few hundred metres from one of the main public entrances to the fortified Green Zone. Iraqi Parliament was in session inside the vast compound, which once housed the presidential palace of Saddam Hussein. A Reuters employee at the scene counted five bodies laid out on the ground. A Reuters journalist at a Baghdad hospital saw eight corpses brought in. — Reuters |
|
Iran’s Ebadi to boycott poll
Teheran, June 19 “As long as they (the clerical establishment) decide for people and tell people whom to vote for by qualifying and disqualifying candidates, I will not vote,” Ebadi said. More than 1,000 people who registered to stand in Iran’s June 17 presidential election were barred from running by the hardline Guardian Council supervisory body — a panel of 12 unelected clerics and jurists. As in the past, all women candidates were disqualified — something which Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, has repeatedly criticised as unfair and unconstitutional. None of the seven candidates who did stand on Friday secured 50 per cent of the votes, forcing a run-off on June 24 between moderate cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the ultra-conservative mayor of Teheran Mohmoud Ahmadinejad. “I didn’t vote on Friday and I’m not going to vote next Friday,” said Ebadi, whose work as a human rights lawyer brings her into frequent conflict with Iran’s religious authorities. But she did not call on other Iranians to join her boycott and declined to forecast the result of the run-off.
— Reuters |
|
Suu Kyi’s birthday celebrated
Yangon, June 19 A symbol of nonviolent resistance to oppression, Suu Kyi was feted around the globe by human rights groups, pop stars and world leaders, who renewed long-standing calls for her release. While the Nobel Peace Prize laureate — who has spent almost 10 of the last 16 years in confinement — remained locked inside her dilapidated lakeside residence in Myanmar’s capital, Yangon, several hundred members of her party and a handful of foreign diplomats gathered at its headquarters several kilometres away. They cheered and clapped as 10 doves and 61 balloons — signifying the start of Suu Kyi’s 61st year — were released into the air, as more than 30 plainclothes policemen videotaped the events from across the street. Separately, over 10 members of her National League for Democracy party wore T-shirts bearing Suu Kyi’s photo and the slogan ‘Set her free’ at the capital’s famed golden Shwedagon pagoda, where they also released 61 doves. They were detained by the authorities and freed only after they removed the shirts. In other countries, supporters held rallies and other activities to offer birthday wishes and demand political change by Myanmar’s ruling junta.
— AP |
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Mailbag | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
