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Car bombs kill 30 in Iraq
Bhutto, Sharif vow to revive Constitution
Pak army recruits women
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Dalai Lama creating conflict among Tibetans: China
Volcano erupts in Indonesia
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Car bombs kill 30 in Iraq
Baghdad, May 14 The southern city of Basra was quiet as British forces examined the wreck of a helicopter, apparently shot down on Saturday with the loss of up to five British military personnel. Five Iraqis died in hours of violence after the crash as soldiers clashed with youths chanting Shi’ite militia slogans. At least 21 persons were killed and 52 wounded when a suicide bomber blew up a car on a crowded street in the Shi’ite holy city of Kerbala, south of Baghdad, police and doctors said. Iraqi and US leaders have branded such attacks Sunni al Qaeda ploys to spark a sectarian war with Shi’ite Muslims. About the same time, two cars exploded in the capital. A suicide car bomber hit an Iraqi army patrol in the restive Sunni district of Aadhamiya, killing eight persons and wounding 15. Soldiers and civilians were among the casualties. Iraqi and US forces had conducted a sweep for Sunni guerrillas in the area on Saturday, the U.S. military said. Also in north Baghdad, a second car bomb exploded at a busy intersection near the offices of a government-funded newspaper, killing one civilian and wounding five, police sources said. In east Baghdad’s Rusafa district, a home-made bomb exploded in the basement of a mosque, killing one presumed bombmaker and wounding two, the U.S. military said. Firefighters tackling the resulting blaze found six more bombs. In Kerbala, the police chief told a news conference only two people had died in the bombing. However, police and medical officials who declined to be identified stood by their casualty figures. Interior Ministry sources said 42 bodies had been found in the past 24 hours in the capital alone, including eight dumped near Kindi hospital in central Baghdad. The figure is in line with levels of violence seen since sectarian bloodshed rose sharply after the bombing of a Shi’ite shrine on February 22. More than 100,000 people have registered with the government as refugees since then and the number is rising, officials said. Many others have fled homes without informing the authorities. Sunni leaders blame pro-government Shi’ite militias and the Shi’ite-dominated police for some of the sectarian killing. Militia leaders speak of a need to respond to three years of violence by insurgents from the once-dominant Sunni minority. Sectarian bloodshed has prompted warnings Iraq is sliding towards civil war, and added urgency to efforts by political leaders to form a unity government that can reverse the trend. The White House seems keen to start withdrawing some of the 133,000 U.S. troops before congressional elections in November. — Reuters
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Bhutto, Sharif vow to revive Constitution
London, May 14 Under the charter, Bhutto, leader of Pakistan People's Party and Sharif, leader of the Muslim League (N), vowed to revive the 1973 Constitution, respect each other's political mandate and prevent the military from overthrowing future civilian governments. The charter is set to take effect from July 2. The two leaders had met here first on April 14 at the residence of Sharif and today they held the meeting at the residence of Rehman Mallick, a prominent leader of the PPP. According to the charter's provisions, the PML-N and PPP have vowed to revive the 1973 Constitution and retain some non-controversial clauses of the Legal Framework Order inserted in the constitution by President Pervez Musharraf. The charter said that the military should be brought under civilian command. It called for making the judiciary "stronger and independent" and said the practice of political appointments in higher and lower judiciary would be curbed. The charter suggested that the Prime Minister should appoint all three services chiefs and Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Chairman, adding that Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Military Intelligence and other intelligence agencies should work under the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, and refrain from political The charter wanted the National Security Council to be abolished and the Election Commission restructured to include members from the civil society and human rights organisations. It said all political prisoners should be freed and exiled political leaders should be allowed to return. All "revengeful" cases pending with the National Accountability Bureau against politicians should be withdrawn and the local governments system should be made autonomous. It said army and judiciary should submit their returns annually and a new formula evolved for the distribution of taxes among the provinces. The charter said the Prime Minister should appoint the opposition leader as the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman after necessary consultations. It said politicians who desert their parties should be called back conditionally but those who backed the military's policies and wanted it to reign supreme should not be taken back. Though President Musharraf has threatened to arrest both Bhutto and Sharif if they returned to Pakistan, the two leaders have vowed to return home as soon as elections were announced. —PTI
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Lahore, May 13 Women are being recruited in the Education Corps, computer branch, Inter Services Public Relations, Signals and the legal branch, said Col Tausif, the Army Selection and Recruitment Centre in-charge. He said the response from women candidates has been very encouraging. More than 300 women registered themselves for the test, which was being held at all army selection centres in the country. All the female candidates who appeared for the selection test held Masters degrees, and would be inducted as captains and majors after six months’ training, said Col Tausif. —ANI
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Dalai Lama creating conflict among Tibetans: China
China has accused the Dalai Lama of sabotage and provoking religious conflict after a group of Tibetan monks stormed a monastery near Lhasa and attacked statues of a deity denounced by the exiled leader. Seventeen lamas burst into a chapel in Gandan monastery in March and tore down two clay statues of protective deities, claiming they were “evil spirits”. They began fighting with the worshippers, China’s official news agency Xinhua reported.
The publication of a story about religious dissent in Tibet is a rare event in Chinese media. But the Beijing government wants to use the incident as a way of criticising the Dalai Lama, the most senior figure in Tibetan Buddhism, whom many Tibetans regard as a God-King. The Dalai Lama fled Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, nine years after Communist troops entered the remote, Himalayan country. Police were mobilised to prevent crowds of Buddhists from going to the monastery. Tibet has more than 1,700 places of worship and 46,000 Buddhist monks. At issue is a complex matter of doctrine between the Dalai Lama and the much smaller Dorje Shugden stream of his Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism. The row has been going on for four centuries. In the 1970s, the Dalai Lama warned his followers not to worship Shugden, saying it was detrimental to spiritual health and to the cause of the Tibetan people. In 1996, he called on followers to reject the deity, calling it a divisive offshoot of Buddhism. Supporters of Shugden say his ban violates religious freedom. The Mayor of Lhasa said it was the Dalai Lama and his supporters, not the Chinese authorities, who were restricting religious freedom because of his hard line on the
deity.— The Independent
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Mount Merapi (Indonesia), May 14 Officials in one district alone relocated more than 5,000 people from villages near the boiling crater to dozens of temporary shelters after Mount Merapi sent two massive heat clouds swirling 2 kilometres down its northwestern slopes. In Sleman district as of midday officials had transported 5,093 people from seven villages to shelters, said Ani, of the district evacuation agency. In Magelang district “there is no panic but the evacuation is still in progress. We are intensifying efforts because there are a lot of residents that need to evacuated,” said Edy Susanto, head of the district evacuation team. Susanto said officials and volunteers had taken “more than 50 per cent” of residents from 11 villages deemed to be at immediate risk of the heat clouds and moved them to safer ground. All the villages, Susanto said, were “located very near Merapi and we fear that the head clouds” could reach the area. “There are a lot of people who need to be evacuated, including babies, pregnant women and elderly. It’s not easy to perform an evacuation but this is something that we continue doing,” he said. No immediate figure was available for the number of residents still to be moved in Magelang or Sleman. But Vice President Yusuf Kalla said on Thursday around 34,000 people living below Merapi’s crater should be evacuated. —AFP
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