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France declares emergency
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Saddam was secular
Another Saddam case lawyer assassinated
Pak seeks N-deal on par with India
Indians among sacked workers
Suspected terrorist shot at in Sydney
Nikki Rana crowned Miss India UK
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France declares emergency
Paris, November 8 The state-of-emergency decree allowing curfews where needed will become effective at midnight tonight and has an initial 12-day limit. The police, massively reinforced as the violence has fanned out from its initial flash point in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, is expected to enforce the curfews. The army has not been called in. Local officials “will be able to impose curfews on the areas where this decision applies,” Mr Chirac said at a Cabinet meeting. “It is necessary to accelerate the return to calm.” The recourse to a 1955 state-of-emergency law that dates back to France’s war in Algeria was a measure both of the gravity of mayhem that has spread to hundreds of French towns and cities and of the determination of Chirac’s sorely tested government to quash it. “I have decided ... to give the forces of order supplementary measures of action to ensure the protection of our citizens and their property,” Mr Chirac said. The police reported that overnight unrest yesterday-today, while still widespread and destructive, was not as violent as previous nights. Nationwide, vandals burned 1,173 cars, compared to 1,408 vehicles Sunday-yesterday, police said. A total of 330 people were arrested, down from 395 the night before. Youths rioted across France overnight, torching more than 1,000 vehicles, despite government plans to impose curfews to quell almost two weeks of unrest. The protests, blamed on racism and unemployment, receded in the Paris region after shots were fired at police the previous night but continued unabated in other parts of France in the early hours today, the Interior Ministry said. Other countries watched nervously and some issued travel warnings. Five cars were torched overnight in Brussels, in addition fo five set ablaze on Sunday, in what officials say might have been copycat attacks. The renewed violence followed a warning by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin that he would take a firm line against lawbreakers, including reinforcements for police and curfews, not seen in France since the Algerian war of 1954-1962. Mr Villepin’s cabinet met on Tuesday and approved the steps. A town east of Paris imposed its own curfew on minors on Monday evening and another to the west of the capital organised citizens’ patrols to help the police. Mr Villepin said 1,500 police and gendarmes would be brought in to back up the 8,000 officers already deployed in areas hit by unrest. He also promised to accelerate urban renewal programmes and outlined other plans to help young people in poor suburbs. Mayors of riot-hit towns welcomed the tougher line, but some asked what another measure announced by Mr Villepin — extended powers for them — would actually mean in practice. “Every time they announce more powers for mayors, they cut the funds,” complained Mr Jean-Christophe Lagarde, Mayor of the north-eastern Paris suburb of Drancy.
— AP, Retuers |
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Saddam was secular
NEWLY declassified information reveals that contrary to the case for war presented by the Bush administration, the Defence Intelligence Agency believed Saddam Hussein’s regime was “wary of Islamic revolutionary movements” and unlikely to support such groups.
In February 2002 the agency noted in a document: “Saddam’s regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control.” The DIA’s findings are in stark contrast to the claims made by the Bush administration that the Iraqi President had close ties with Al Qaida and that the Ba’athist regime had provided the militant group with chemical and biological weapons training. President George W. Bush said on September 25, 2002, “You can’t distinguish between Al Qaida and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.” Sen Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior-most Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who made available parts of the declassified documents, said the DIA finding “is stunningly different from repeated administration claims of a close relationship between Saddam and Al Qaida.” This information was revealed for the first time this week. “Just imagine the impact if that DIA conclusion had been disclosed at the time. It surely could have made a difference in the congressional vote authorising the war,” Mr Levin said. The Bush administration omitted in its public statements the DIA’s pre-war conclusion about the likelihood of links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida. Calling the Bush administration’s use of intelligence prior to the start of the war in Iraq misleading, Mr Levin said: “This newly declassified information provides additional, dramatic evidence that the administration’s pre-war statements were deceptive.” Mr Bush, in a speech in Cincinnati on October 7, 2002, said: “We’ve learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaida members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.” In February 2003, he reasserted that claim. “Iraq,” he said, “has provided Al Qaida with chemical and biological weapons training.” Those assertions were based on the claims of a detainee, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a long-time jihadist and senior military trainer for Al Qaida in Afghanistan. However, the declassified DIA document shows the agency did not believe al-Libi’s claims. In February 2002, the agency concluded: “This is the first report from Ibn al-Shaykh in which he claims Iraq assisted Al-Qaida’s CBRN [Chemical, Biological, Radiological or Nuclear] efforts. However, he lacks specific details on the Iraqis involved, the CBRN materials associated with the assistance, and the location where training occurred. It is possible he does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers. Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest.” The CIA also had reservations about the source. The CIA’s unclassified statement at the time was that the reporting was “credible,” a statement the administration used repeatedly. However, what was selectively omitted was the CIA’s view at the time that the source was not in a position to know whether any training had taken place. Al-Libi recanted his claims in January 2004. “The administration’s use of this intelligence was disingenuous and misleading,” Mr Levin said. |
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Another Saddam case lawyer assassinated
Baghdad, November 8 Adel al-Zubeidi, who was representing former Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan, was killed and another lawyer was wounded in an ambush in the Adil neighbourhood, according to lawyer Khamis al-Obeidi. Al-Zubeidi was the second defence attorney to be killed in less than a month. On October 20 Saadoun al-Janabi, was abducted from his office by 10 masked gunmen, a day
after he attended the first session of the trial, acting as the lawyer for co-defendant Awad al-Bandar. Al-Janabi’s body, with two bullet shots to the head, was found hours later on a sidewalk near Fardous Mosque in the eastern neighbourhood of Ur in Baghdad, near the site of his office.
— AP |
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Pak seeks N-deal on par with India
Islamabad, November 8 “We still need to be told in black and white whether or not we will get a deal similar to the one sealed with India,” a source said. Under the US-India deal, New Delhi was required to segregate the nuclear facilities serving the weapons and civilian nuclear power generation programme. India, it is learnt, has informed the United States that its indigenous nuclear power plants are related to the weapons programme while only the Tarapur nuclear power plant and other plants set up with foreign assistance are linked with the civilian programme. |
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Nikki Rana crowned Miss India UK
London, November 8 She will represent Britain in the Miss India Worldwide Finals in Mumbai in January 2006. The 20-year-old is a student at De Montfort University, Leicester, and has Princess Diana as her role model. Nikki beat off stiff competition from 23 beauties from across Britain, and now hopes to enter the Hindi film industry in Mumbai. She was crowned by Amrita Hunjan, Miss India UK of 2004. Her prize is an all-expenses paid trip to Mumbai in January. Judges at the 2005 event held in Leicester over the weekend include pop singer Raghav. Miss India UK director Sam Samra told IANS: "Nikki used all her stage presence to show what she had got. She was the only contestant who scored more than 30 out of 40 with all the judges." The top five finalists were Nikki Rana, Jayna Tida, Karishma Sethi, Snehali Naik and Gayatri Pattar.
— IANS |
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Dubai, November 8 Twenty garment factories have closed down in the past four years, leaving only eight operational, the Gulf Daily News today quoted a Labour Ministry official as saying. The latest to close down — Update Apparel Factory in Salmabad — employed 183 expatriate workers with the rest being Bahrain nationals, Labour Relations Director Shaikh Ali bin Abdulrahman Al Khalifa said. — PTI
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Suspected terrorist shot at in Sydney
Sydney, November 8 New South Wales state police said the man was walking near a mosque in the Sydney suburb of Green Valley mid-morning when officers who had him under surveillance ordered him to stop. A police spokesman said the man fired a number of shots at the police, who returned fire and shot him in the neck.
— PTI |
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