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India not to compromise on N-facilities
Resolution opposing N-deal moved in
Indian girl allowed to amend petition
Bangladesh not to sign Asian
highway pact
New Yorkers slug it out in biting cold
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India not to compromise on N-facilities
Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran on Wednesday indicated he had come with “certain ideas” on the separation of India’s civil and military facilities, a prerequisite for civilian nuclear cooperation with the United States. Prior to his meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Mr Saran told an audience at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, India would be addressing the separation plan “on the basis that this has to be credible, transparent… And, as far as we are concerned, it should not impact adversely our strategic programme.” He said predictions that India would offer a minimal separation of its civil nuclear facilities displayed a “lack of comprehension of our objectives in entering into this understanding.” “India’s energy security will be advanced by obtaining international cooperation on as wide a scale as feasible, without accepting limitations on our strategic programme,” he added. Noting demands from Washington’s non-proliferation lobby to make improvements to the July 18 agreement reached between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W. Bush, Mr. Saran said these suggestions “are deal breakers and are intended as such.” He asserted that the proposal for a moratorium on fissile material production was not part of the July 18 agreement and would not become so. “However, in the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, India had reiterated its commitment to negotiations for a multilateral and verifiable FMCT [Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty],” he pointed out. Speaking to an audience that included many staunch critics of the civil nuclear deal, Mr Saran said there will be “as many wish lists and as many plans [for amending the deal] as there are experts” and he did not intend to “negotiate this either through the press or through think tanks. There is a joint working group to carry out this exercise.” The secretary was critical of the negative tone of the debate on the agreement saying it “so far does not appear to have done full justice to the real issues involved. Much of the argumentation has revolved around the agreement being a radical departure from the NPT regime. Frankly, this is missing the woods for the trees.” He noted, “Bringing India into the fold is not only a gain for international non-proliferation efforts but indispensable for the emergence of a new global consensus on non-proliferation in response to current challenges. Any objective assessment of efforts to counter WMDs [weapons of mass destruction] proliferation would surely put a high value on Indian participation.” He added, “By strengthening its export control regime and committing to non-transfer of reprocessing and enrichment technologies and to international efforts to limit their spread, India has actually undertaken additional commitments that place it in an ‘NPT plus’ category.” Mr Saran noted that contrary to speculation that the deal had caused much concern in Beijing and Islamabad, neither the Chinese nor the Pakistani Government had raised this issue with New Delhi. In a thinly veiled warning, Mr. Saran warned that continued technology denial “targets the very reform-minded and forward thinking constituency in India that is in forefront of advocating a closer Indo-U.S. partnership.”
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Resolution opposing N-deal moved in US House
Washington, December 21 “The current law prohibits the sale of nuclear technology to any country such as India which refuses to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, refuses to allow full safeguards under the treaty and which develops nuclear weapons and detonates nuclear tests in defiance of the treaty,” Democrat Ed Markey, who has co-sponsored the resolution, along with his Republican colleague Fred Upton, said in a statement. “Supplying nuclear fuel to countries that are not party to the NPT derails the delicate balance that has been established among nuclear nations and limits our capacity to insist that other nations continue to follow this important policy,” Markey said. “We cannot break the nuclear rules established in the NPT and demand that everyone else play by them.” Markey said President Bush’s “rogue nuclear doctrine” would send the message to other nations that there were no serious consequences for violating nuclear treaties. “What (if) other countries will ask for exceptions after India? This is an extremely dangerous precedent to be setting.” — PTI
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Indian girl allowed to amend petition
Islamabad, December 21 A two-member Bench of the Peshawar High Court yesterday accepted the application filed on behalf of Afseena Bano, hailing from
Ahmedabad. Afseena had married her cousin Arshad Mahmood, a Pakistani national, on July 5, 1997, a news report said today. However, she came to Pakistan to live with her spouse on April 28, 2005. The applicant’s counsel Siddique Haider Qureshi requested the court to allow his client to amend the main writ petition. He claimed that Afseena had applied for Pakistani nationality on September 22. He alleged that the interior ministry was deliberately delaying her case and requested that she be allowed to persuade her case in the competent court of law. The court in Pakistan’s North West Frontier province, after hearing arguments, allowed the application and granted permission to the applicant to amend the main writ in order to add the relief of granting citizenship to her. The Interior Ministry extended her visa from time to time. Last time, her visa was extended till August 19. However, on October 18, the High Court was informed that the interior ministry extended Afsheen’s visa till January 8, 2006.
— PTI |
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Pak won’t recognise Israel: Pervez
Islamabad, December 21 “We want peace in Palestine and will continue extending support to our Palestinian brethren,” President Pervez Musharraf said yesterday during talks with outgoing Palestinian Ambassador Ahmed Abdul Razzaq. He asked Israel to end violence in Palestine and remove hurdles on the way to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, Daily Times newspaper said. Mr Razzaq lauded Mr Musharraff's efforts for the Palestinian cause and demanded Israel pullout from occupied territories in the West Bank of Palestine. Mr Musharraf and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had shook hands in September at the start of the UN summit in New York. The handshake followed a landmark meeting between the foreign ministers of Pakistan and Israel, the first formal high-level contact between the Islamic and Jewish states. The Pakistani leader had played down the significance of the greeting then, saying there was no rush to step up ties between the two countries.
— PTI |
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Saddam trial resumes
Baghdad, December 21 Rizgar Mohammed Amin, the Kurdish judge trying Saddam, entered the court shortly before 2 pm and Saddam, who had boycotted the court’s last session after telling judges to “go to hell”, followed 10 minutes later with his seven co-defendants. Mr Amin said he planned to call five witnesses in what was expected to be the final hearing of the year before proceedings were adjourned for about a month. There is a chance, however, of another hearing tomorrow before the adjournment. Prosecutors accuse Saddam and the others of ordering the killings of 148 persons from Dujail, north of Baghdad, following a failed attempt to assassinate the then-President in the town in 1982. The defendants face hanging if convicted. So far, the trial has heard from 10 prosecution witnesses who have told the court of the torture, beatings and hardships they suffered under Saddam in the wake of the Dujail killings. Eight have testified from behind a curtain out of fear for their lives and their names were withheld from the court. But the first witness called today appeared openly, standing just yards from Saddam who took notes and followed proceedings from inside the caged defendants’ dock at the heavily fortified Baghdad courtroom. The witness gave his name as Ali Hassan al-Haidari and said he was 14 at the time of the Dujail massacre. Dressed in a brown suit and white shirt, he spoke calmly and coherently, telling the court his brother was executed under Saddam and his family had been rounded-up after the killings. He said he was taken to the headquarters of Saddam's Baath Party in Dujail where he saw nine corpses lying outside. “I recognised all of them,” he said, before listing names of the alleged victims. He said he was then taken to the headquarters of Saddam's intelligence service in Baghdad where he saw horrific torture. Guards applied electric shocks to detainees, and heated up plastic tubing and allowed the hot plastic to drip on to the bodies of their victims, he said. His testimony was among the strongest heard so far in the stop-start and often chaotic trial, which opened on October 19 but has been adjourned three times. Haidari also made a direct accusation against Saddam's co-defendant, half-brother and feared former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti. He said Barzan had been present in the building where the torture had taken place and, on one occasion, had kicked Haidari hard as he lay suffering from a fever.
— Reuters |
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Bangladesh not to sign Asian
highway pact
Dhaka, December 21 “The government has already made its position clear. The government has said Bangladesh will not sign the Asian Highway agreement unless the current route is changed,” Communications Minister Nazmul Huda told the Prothom Alo daily. Bangladesh wants to change the route to Chittagong-Teknaf-Myanmar while the ESCAP, which has worked for the project, wants it to go through India. The last date for signing the agreement is December 31,2005. — PTI |
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New Yorkers slug it out in biting cold
New York, December 21 A court found the workers union in contempt for defying its order against striking as walk-outs by public employees is illegal under law and fined it $ 1 million for each day of the stoppage yesterday. The strike, which is the first to affect the US’ largest mass transit system in the past 25 years, has hit hard seven million commuters as also businesses in the US city ahead of Christmas. The law also provides imposing fines on workers, which could be as high as two days’ pay for each day of strike, and the Metropolitan Transportation authority said today it was preparing to move the court in this regard.
— PTI |
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