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Hostage drama ends in Philippines
Will US launch another military
operation in Gulf?
Independence of judiciary must: Iftikhar
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Pak opposes work on Uri project
Senior ISI officer killed
Sunita stuck in space temporarily 70 Iraqis shot in revenge attacks US denies escalating tension with Iran Britain tightens immigration system
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Hostage drama ends in Philippines
Manila, March 28 Scores of onlookers lit candles outside the bus, parked in front of Manila City Hall, just before 7 p.m. (16.30 GMT), the time the hostage-takers had said they would surrender. A minute after the deadline, the door of the bus opened and children, many carrying school bags and toys, were lifted and handed over to waiting policemen, live television showed. Onlookers cheered and many said they sympathised with the hostage-takers, one of whom said he wanted to highlight corruption in the Philippines and the lack of educational opportunities for poor children. A man identified as Jun Ducat, accompanied by at least one other man and believed to be armed with grenades, an Uzi submachine gun and a revolver, had been holding the children, all aged between four and six. The children and the teachers were from a day-care centre that Ducat is believed to have founded three years ago. They had just set out for a day trip to a nearby town when the bus was seized. The bus was parked outside Manila City Hall from 9.30 a.m. and surrounded by elite police teams and thousands of onlookers. Life in the capital came to a near standstill as television networks carried live pictures from the scene through the day. Ducat said he would surrender if he was promised that 145 children at the day-care centre in the capital’s poor suburb of Tondo were provided with education, television reports said. He also demanded to be allowed to speak on television and he was handed a mobile telephone patched on to local networks. ‘Rotten political system’ “I am so sorry I took these children in a violent action to call the attention of the Filipino people to open their minds to the political reality,” Ducat said. “There’s so much corruption in the country. We’re number one in Asia in corruption,” he said in a speech which lasted at least 15 minutes. — Reuters
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Will US launch another military
operation in Gulf?
Gulshan Luthra In a week of ominous developments, the most serious being the Iranian seizure of 15 British Navy personnel near the Shatt al Arab waterway that divides Iran and Iraq, a statement by UAE President that his country would not allow its territories for operations against Iran assumes significance. US U-2 spy planes and F-16 and other fighter jets have been based in the UAE ever since the 1990 Gulf crisis over Iraq's occupation of Kuwait. Due to its strategic locations and ports within the Gulf as well as in the Arabian Sea, the use of UAE land, air and waters would have been of immense value to any strike force. Actually, the US has used bases in all the six Arab Gulf states for operations in Iraq and, to some extent, also to support its and coalition troops in Afghanistan. Although, all the six states -- Oman, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait -- have expressed unwillingness in the past for a military engagement with their immediate Shia neighbour Iran, this is the first time that one of them, the UAE, has flatly denied its territories to the US for military and intelligence operations against Iran. The UAE itself has a dispute with Iran, stemming from the occupation of three of its islands by the Shah of Iran on the eve of its independence from Britain on December 2, 1971. All other Gulf countries, tied by the 1981 regional security and economic pact of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), have extended UAE support. But Teheran insists that the islands are part of the Iranian territory. Two of these islands are at the narrow Strait of Hormuz, the mouth of the strategic Gulf waterway, from which nearly half the world oil supplies pass through for international consumption. That the US is in a buildup mode is also evident from the entry of its aircraft carrier, USS John C Stennis, in the Gulf on Tuesday. But will there be a war? Will Iran budge from its insistence on allegedly building nuclear capability and will it release the British personnel? Former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, who was in New Delhi last week, categorically restated his government's stand that Iran will never build nuclear weapons although no one could deny it the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The heart of the problem lies in the fact that the Iranian programme is largely based on proliferated nuclear technology from Pakistan, and the US and other countries are not willing to give Teheran the allowance that it will not misuse this technology. But will there be a war? Both in 1990-91 and March 2003, this writer was present in Abu Dhabi. Both times there were clear indications that war was imminent. There were hush-hush talks of an asylum for the late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein a month or so before the second US offensive on Iraq. One day before the operations were actually launched on a Wednesday-Thursday night, there were tell tale signals that the negotiations had failed and an attack was imminent. Back to the question of war, President George W. Bush is having a tough time with the Democratic majority Congress. But as the Supreme Commander of the US armed forces, he would continue a gradual build up and place his assets in the region. The US forces can comfortably operate from ships, including commercial platforms, as well as Diego Garcia, at least for distant standoff bombing from aircraft and naval vessels. The immediate stated target nonetheless should not be more than securing the Gulf waterway. And that's exactly where the problem lies. The Iranian coast spans nearly all the 989-km length of the waterway, facing all the Arab Gulf states from Oman to Kuwait, and touching Iraq. At its narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway is only 56 km wide and, at many points, shallow.
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Independence of judiciary must: Iftikhar
Suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry Wednesday said independence of the judiciary and its separation from the executive was guaranteed by the constitution without which it could not provide justice and protect the rights of the people. Justice Iftikhar made his first public appearance since his removal on March 9 at a convention of the High Court Bar Association in Rawalpindi. The Chief Justice made no reference to the presidential action against him but paid tribute to lawyers and other people for showing solidarity with him in order to uphold the independence and dignity of the judiciary. He thanked judges who submitted their resignations in protest. "It is only up to Allah to honour or humiliate anybody," he observed. He said he was not a politician and had acted as a professional judge all along, devoted to preserving the independence of the judiciary. The constitution provides for a balance among the judiciary, the executive and the legislature, which must not be disturbed. Nearly 2,000 lawyers from the city and adjoining districts, besides judges who have tendered their resignations, attended the convention. Justice Iftikhar travelled from his residence in Islamabad to Rawalpindi via the airport road to avoid any public response. Political leaders who had offered to greet him midway were requested to stay away. However, lawyers gave him spontaneous welcome, shouting anti-Musharraf slogans and vowing to sustain their current agitation till full restoration of the independence of the judiciary. He is due to appear before the Supreme Judicial Council on April 3 to answer allegations levelled in the presidential reference against him. Justice Iftikhar said he was being defended by eminent lawyers of the country and urged lawyers to remain disciplined and peaceful to prove that they were the most organised and conscientious segment of society.
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Pak opposes work on Uri project
Pakistan will place its objections over the Uri-2 power project in Kashmir at a meeting to be held in New Delhi in May, Indus water commissioner Syed Jamaat Ali Shah has said. Official APP news agency quoted Shah as saying in an interview that India had started work on the project without addressing Pakistan's reservations. He said the start of work on the project was a violation of the Indus Water Treaty. Water commissioners of the two countries would meet in New Delhi in May and Islamabad's reservation over the design of the project would be taken up on the occasion, Shah added. He said under the Indus Water Treaty, Pakistan was given a certain amount of time to respond to designs of projects, but India had started construction before the deadline for Pakistan's response. He said India had resorted to similar tactics in the Baglihar dam project. "Such tactics will serve no purpose, rather they will further complicate the situation," he said.
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Senior ISI officer killed
Islamabad, March 28 Maj Hamza of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and his assistant Subedar Saeed along with two tribesmen were killed when their car was attacked in the Rashakai area by suspected pro-Taliban militants.
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Sunita stuck in space temporarily
Cape Canaveral, March 28 She flew up to the international space station last December planning to come home in early July after a seven-month stay. When she comes back now will be a bit later than she planned. The problem is that a hailstorm that damaged the fuel tank of space shuttle Atlantis has disrupted NASA's flight schedule for the year. Her ticket home, space shuttle Endeavour, may get off the ground several weeks later than its originally scheduled June 28 launch.—
AP
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US denies escalating tension with Iran Washington, March 28 The Bush administration appeared to be adopting a cautious tone on the standoff over the British sailors so as not to disrupt British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s negotiations with Tehran. “There is no escalation of tensions on our part,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. She added that President George W. Bush spoke with Blair earlier today about Iran, among other things, in a secure video conference that had been scheduled before the capture of the British sailors. For the first time since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, a second US aircraft carrier has begun exercises in the Gulf. — Reuters
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70 Iraqis shot in revenge attacks Mosul, March 28 Iraqi army Brigadier-General Khorshid Dosti said 70 persons were shot dead in an unprecedented reprisal assault on the town of Tal Afar yesterday, while another 40 remained missing and 30 more were wounded. “We received 45 bodies of handcuffed and blindfolded men from al-Wahada neighbourhood overnight. They were killed yesterday just after the bomb,” a hospital doctor had told AFP. The massacre of men, believed to all have been Sunni Arabs, was in revenge for bomb attacks that killed 85 persons and wounded 183 in Shiite districts of the mixed town yesterday. — AFP
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Britain tightens immigration system London, March 28 Announcing the measures, Byrne said through the introduction of a US-style visa waiver programme, the government would create a strengthened border control to screen people it wanted to enter the UK and to deny entry to those it did not, even before they got here. "Securing the UK border," published today, also sets out how the UK would overhaul visitor visas — including consulting on tougher sanctions for sponsors of family visas, consulting on requiring English for spouses as well as installing technology at UK ports to record biometrics of non-EEA (N on-European Economic Authority) citizens without visas. A sponsored family visitor route that will mean people in the UK will be required to vouch for their family member at the beginning of the application process. This means they will become their "sponsors" agreeing to maintain, accommodate and fund any of their non-emergency medical care. If the visitor breaks their visa rules, for instance by overstaying or illegally working, their sponsor in the UK could be held responsible, and could be subject to sanctions. — PTI
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