W O R L D

Pak rape victim wants death for accused Meerwala (Pakistan), June 24
A Pakistani woman gang-raped in 2002 on the orders of a village council said she can never forgive her attackers and she hopes they are sentenced to death. Pakistan gang-rape victim Muktaran Mai attends an interview at Meerwala village, near Multan, on Friday. — Reuters photo

Withdrawal from Iraq will be a mistake: Rumsfeld
SECRETARY of Defence Donald H. Rumsfeld on Thursday insisted the U.S. was not losing the war in Iraq and said it would be a mistake to set a timetable for American troops to leave that country.

Author Arundhati Roy makes her opening speech on Friday as the spokesperson for the jury during the Istanbul session of The World Tribunal on Iraq. The worldwide initiative consists of commissions of inquiry and sessions on issues related to the war on Iraq. — Reuters

80-year-old gets 60 yrs for murder committed in 1964
Washington, June 24
Forty-one years after three young men — two white and one black — were brutally murdered by a gang of White supremacists, a Mississippi judge sentenced a former Ku Klux Klan member to 60 years in prison for the murders.

Lanka-LTTE to share $ 3b aid
Colombo, June 24
In a major breakthrough in the ongoing efforts to resume the stalled peace process, the Sri Lankan government today entered into the much-awaited post-tsunami aid deal with the Tamil Tigers to equitably share over $ 3 billion of foreign aid for post-tsunami rehabilitation and rebuilding work in five administrative districts of the North-East.

Parents fail to claim freed Pak camel jockeys
Lahore, June 24
They have finally returned home from a brutal life in the United Arab Emirates, but 22 Pakistani children who worked as camel jockeys have still not been claimed by their parents.

Tariq Aziz not to testify against Saddam
Washington, June 24
Iraq’s jailed former Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz will not testify in court against Saddam Hussein and wants a trial outside the strife-torn country, his lawyer has said.“Mr Aziz told me that he will not take the witness stand against Saddam,” Attorney Badi Aref Izzat said.

EU for Iran-India gas pipeline
Brussels, June 24
The European Union, which will soon kick-off an energy dialogue with India, has said it is not opposed to a $4.16 billion pipeline project to pump gas from Iran to India through Pakistan.

Pak rape victim wants death for accused

Meerwala (Pakistan), June 24
A Pakistani woman gang-raped in 2002 on the orders of a village council said she can never forgive her attackers and she hopes they are sentenced to death.

The case of Mukhtaran Mai provoked a national outcry and has focused international attention on the treatment of women in rural Pakistan.

The Pakistani Supreme Court will on Monday begin hearing Mai’s appeal against the acquittal of five of six men convicted of attacking her and sentenced to death.

“Right now I just have one (wish) that, God willing, there is a good decision in the case ... like the first decision,” Mai told Reuters in an interview yesterday in her village in Punjab province.

“They should get the same punishment ... the death penalty.”

Mai was gang-raped on the orders of a traditional village council after her brother — who was 12 at the time — was judged to have offended the honour of a powerful clan by befriending a woman from their tribe.

Feudal and tribal laws still hold sway in many rural parts of a predominantly Muslim Pakistan.

Asked if she could ever imagine reconciliation with the men who attacked her, Mai said that would be impossible.

“I cannot do that; I cannot do that at any cost,” she said.

“Can’t you understand this yourself? After all that happened how can there be reconciliation?”

“When a person has suffered such excesses, how can she even hear talk of reconciliation? At least I can’t,” she said.

Six men were originally convicted of the attack and sentenced to death, but five were acquitted after appealing to the Punjab provincial court, which cited a lack of evidence. A sixth had his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

“It made me think ‘they are the plaintiffs and I am the accused’,” Mai said.

The provincial government later intervened and ordered the six detained for three months pending the outcome of Mai’s appeal against the acquittal. Another six men who served on the village council were detained at the same time.

All 12 were ordered released by a higher court this month although they remain in detention. — Reuters

Withdrawal from Iraq will be a mistake: Rumsfeld
Ashish Kumar Sen writes from Washington

SECRETARY of Defence Donald H. Rumsfeld on Thursday insisted the U.S. was not losing the war in Iraq and said it would be a mistake to set a timetable for American troops to leave that country.

In often-contentious exchanges on Capitol Hill, Mr Rumsfeld said: “Anyone who says we have lost or are losing is flat wrong.”

Tensions peaked when Massachusetts Democratic Senator Edward M. Kennedy told the Defence Secretary the war in Iraq had become a “seeming intractable quagmire.” Citing “gross errors and mistakes” in the U.S. military campaign Mr Kennedy asked Mr Rumsfeld to resign. “In baseball, it’s three strikes, you’re out,” Mr Kennedy said. “What is it for the Secretary of Defence? Isn’t it time for you to resign?”

Mr Rumsfeld noted that he had offered to resign twice in the past but President George W. Bush had not accepted.

A series of bombings in Iraq late on Wednesday and early on Thursday killed at least 30 persons in Baghdad, while a recent opinion poll showed that 51 per cent of Americans now think the invasion two years ago was a mistake. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, also indicated that American support for the war was waning. “I’m here to tell you, sir, in the most patriotic state that I can imagine, people are beginning to question,” Mr Graham said. “And I don’t think it’s a blip on the radar screen. I think we have a chronic problem on our hands.”

Mr Rumsfeld was accompanied at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings by General Richard B. Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; General John Abizaid, Commander of U.S. Central Command; and General George Casey, Commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq.

Opposing a suggestion by a growing number of members of the Congress that U.S. troops should pull out of Iraq, Mr Rumsfeld warned that if the coalition were to leave before the Iraqi security forces are able to assume responsibility “we would one day again have to confront another Iraqi regime — perhaps even more dangerous than the last — in a region plunged into darkness, rather than bathed in the light of freedom.”

In his remarks to the committee, Gen. Abizaid appeared to contradict statements by Vice-President Dick Cheney in recent days that the insurgents were in their “last throes.”

Gen. Abizaid told the Senate Committee that more foreign fighters were coming into Iraq than six months ago. “I believe there are more foreign fighters coming into Iraq than there were six months ago,” he said, adding, suicide bombers from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco were entering Iraq via Syria, joining others from Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

“I would say there is a clear node inside Syria which facilitates it. Whether or not the Syrian government is facilitating it or ignoring it is probably a debatable question, but the key node is Damascus,” Gen. Abizaid said.

Noting that some in Congress have suggested that deadlines be set for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, Mr Rumsfeld said “that would be a terrible mistake.”

“It would throw a lifeline to terrorists who in recent months have suffered significant losses in casualties, been denied havens, and suffered weakened popular support,” he said.

80-year-old gets 60 yrs for murder committed in 1964
Ashish Kumar Sen

Washington, June 24
Forty-one years after three young men — two white and one black — were brutally murdered by a gang of White supremacists, a Mississippi judge sentenced a former Ku Klux Klan member to 60 years in prison for the murders.

Neshoba County Circuit Court Judge Marcus Gordon on Thursday sentenced Edgar Ray Killen two days after his conviction in Philadelphia, Mississippi, on three counts of manslaughter. Killen, (80), was accused of organising the Klansmen who ambushed James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in August, 1964.

The three young men were slain while campaigning for the
registration of black voters. They were arrested for a dubious traffic violation, and attacked by a gang of Klansmen and police after being released in the middle of the night.

They were abducted as they drove out of the Mississippi town and shot dead.

Their bodies, riddled with bullets and badly beaten, were buried at a dam and only found 44 days later after an extensive search. Their deaths were the basis for the 1988 film Mississippi Burning, starring Gene Hackman.

Judge Gordon told Killen: “The three gentlemen who were killed, each life has value, and each life is aqually as valuable as the other life and I have takenthat into consideration....”

Before announcing his decision, Judge Gordon said: “You have to remember that I have a job to do, and I have to pass upon a sentence to a person who is 80 years old, a person who has suffered a serious injury.”

He said he took no pleasure in delivering what amounted to a life term but added: “The law does not recognise a distinction of age.

Should a person 20 years old receive a more severe sentence than a person 80 years old? If so, why?”

Killen was tried in 1967 on federal charges of violating the victims’ civil rights. But the all-white jury was deadlocked.

Dennis Courtland Hayes, interim president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the U.S.’s oldest civil rights organisation, said: “Hopefully this decision will bring closure to the families of the victims and the survivors.

This decision serves as a reminder that the crime of murder isn’t taken lightly in this country and no matter how long it takes, justice will be served.”

Lanka-LTTE to share $ 3b aid

Colombo, June 24
In a major breakthrough in the ongoing efforts to resume the stalled peace process, the Sri Lankan government today entered into the much-awaited post-tsunami aid deal with the Tamil Tigers to equitably share over $ 3 billion of foreign aid for post-tsunami rehabilitation and rebuilding work in five administrative districts of the North-East.

“A MoU for the establishment of the Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structure. (P-TOMS) for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the tsunami-affected areas of the Amparai, Mullaitivu, Kilinochchi, Batticaloa and Jaffna districts was signed in Colombo and Kilinochchi today,” said a government statement this evening.

According to the statement, Mr M.S. Jayasinghe, Secretary, Ministry of Relief, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction, signed the MoU on behalf of the government, while Mr Shanmugalingam Ranjan, Deputy Head, Planning and Development Secretariat of the LTTE, inked the pact on behalf of the rebels. — UNI

Parents fail to claim freed Pak camel jockeys

Lahore, June 24
They have finally returned home from a brutal life in the United Arab Emirates, but 22 Pakistani children who worked as camel jockeys have still not been claimed by their parents.

The youngsters aged between six and 17 who flew into the eastern city of Lahore Tuesday were the first to be repatriated under an agreement between the UNICEF and the governments of Pakistan and the Gulf sheikhdom.

However, there were no family members there to welcome the children after their absences of two to seven years, and a Pakistani court had no choice but to order yesterday that they be kept in a protection centre.

“None of the parents or guardians approached us to get their kids back,” the centre’s manager Shazia Ijaz said as the children sat in the city’s Child Protection Court and stared the judge. — AFP

Tariq Aziz not to testify against Saddam

Washington, June 24
Iraq’s jailed former Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz will not testify in court against Saddam Hussein and wants a trial outside the strife-torn country, his lawyer has said.“Mr Aziz told me that he will not take the witness stand against Saddam,” Attorney Badi Aref Izzat said.

He said he witnessed the first official interrogation of Mr Aziz at a US base near the Baghdad airport on Tuesday.

“This (is) the first time I attended the so-called official interrogation for my client Tariq Aziz since his surrender, although I am not sure if the room I was taken to at the US base in Baghdad was a real court or even those who were attending it were really members of any court,” Mr Izzat told the CNN. The lawyer said, “Any interrogation or future trial, if there is any evidence against Mr Aziz, should be conducted on an independent soil, such as Holland or Sweden.” — PTI

EU for Iran-India gas pipeline

Brussels, June 24
The European Union, which will soon kick-off an energy dialogue with India, has said it is not opposed to a $4.16 billion pipeline project to pump gas from Iran to India through Pakistan.

“Our position on the Iran-Pak-India gas pipeline project is different from that of the U.S.A”, which was against the project in the face of Iran’s hidden nuclear programme, a senior EU official said.

Energy dialogue is one of the key areas of India-EU cooperation after the bilateral relationship was upgraded to “strategic partnership” level last year. — PTI