The opposition has reacted sharply to President Gen. Musharraf’s statement that elections would be held under him no matter whether anybody boycotts them.

A meeting of top leaders of opposition parties sans the PPP here Saturday resolved that elections under Musharraf would be unacceptable because these would neither be fair nor transparent. It noted that Gen. Musharraf is devising every possible trick to get himself elected through a sham election and they preside over massive rigging for the success of his protégés in the general polls.

The meeting said opposition parties would work out a joint strategy in the upcoming APC in London to thwart Musharraf’s plans to manipulate polls.

Talking to newsmen at media workshop in National Defence University on Friday evening, Musharraf said, “I will fight and I am there. Elections will be held under me. Let those who are threatening to boycott them carry it out.”

In New York, PPP leader and chairman of the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD) Makhdoom Amin Fahim said his party does not expect free and fair polls under Musharraf’s regime.

Talking to a TV channel, Fahim endorsed the contention of the leaders attending the Islamabad meeting that a neutral caretaker government should be formed to oversee elections under an independent election commission. Regarding the APC, he said Peoples Party is a part of the APC and would abide by the decisions that would be made there.

Exile premier Nawaz Sharif talking from London said the country would suffer an irreparable loss if the people failed to stop Musharraf from perpetuating his autocratic rule by rigging the elections. He said general elections wouldn’t resolve the crisis, which needs complete restoration of the 1973 constitution. In an apparent reference to the PPP, he said violation of the Declaration of Democracy by any signing party would be unacceptable.

Culture secretaries of Pakistan and India in their two-day talks here discussed several proposals for enhancing the level of non-governmental bilateral contacts, including exchange of films and a memorandum of understanding between the Indian Council of Cultural Relations and the Pakistan National Council of Arts, to institutionalise exchanges.

The talks between culture secretaries and their delegations on the "promotion of friendly exchanges" were part of the fourth round of the India-Pakistan composite dialogue process and ended on Friday.

Officials here said both sides present several proposals to promote people-to-people contacts and expedite bilateral cooperation in various fields, including education, tourism, sports and arts.

While Pakistan suggested easing procedures for group visas, cooperation in the field of education received special attention in the meeting. India invited the Pakistan Higher Education Commission for a visit to explore possibilities in this sector. It also offered two seats each to Pakistani students at a hotel management education institute and for the post-graduate degree course at the National Institute of Unani Medicine in Bangalore. The Indian side said it would be willing to share its experience in the field of adult education with Pakistan.

India reiterated proposal that both countries should open up their film market to each other by allowing screening of films produced in the two countries. Pakistan has been reluctant because of opposition from the indigenous film industry which is already in deplorable condition. It has made some exceptions to a couple of Indian films which were screened in various cities. Officials said a Pakistani film festival in India is on the cards.

There was agreement that both sides need to increase exchanges between writers of both countries, and between Pakistan's Academy of Letters and India’s Sahitya Akademi. The two sides also showed interest in co-operation between the national museums for preservation and conservation of antiquities and for prevention of their smuggling and illegal trade.

The Government of Nepal has suspended the Governor of Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB), the central bank of Nepal, Bijaya Nath Bhattarai and its executive director Surendra Man Pradhan following an anti-graft body of the country filed a case against them at the Special Court.

The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) on Friday lodged case at the court, accusing Bhattarai and Pradhan of causing a loss of Rs 24.5 million to public property intentionally by not claiming compensation after terminating a consultation agreement unilaterally, which is abuse of power under the Corruption Control Act 2002 and subject to two-years imprisonment or fine.

The anti-graft body has charged that the alleged officials made a payment of $ 68,277 for a job that the consulting firm didn’t perform. According to the CIAA, the central bank claimed that payment was made against services that a team from the consulting firm extended to it while it was in the capital for a month.

The NRB had signed an agreement worth $ 26.59 million with consulting firm IEF INC. Lloyd Hill Oakton, USA, in Association with KPMG, Sri Lanka in February 20065 to strengthen its inspection and supervision capacity.

Meanwhile, as per the request of the CIAA, police arrested Pradhan and presented him at the Special Court with the charge sheet but Bhattarai is at large. “Pradhan will be presented before the court on Sunday for further interrogation,” an official at the CIAA said.

Madrid, June 30
Spanish researchers have said they had unearthed a human tooth more than one million years old, which they estimated to be the oldest human fossil remain ever discovered in western Europe.

Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, co-director of research at the Atapuerca site said the molar, discovered on Wednesday in the Atapuerca Sierra in the northern province of Burgos, could be as much as 1.2 million years old.

“The tooth represents the oldest human fossil remain of western Europe. Now we finally have the anatomical evidence of the hominids that fabricated tools more than one million years ago,” the Atapuerca Foundation said in a statement yesterday.

“Since it is an isolated fossil remain, it is not possible at this point to confirm which Homo species this tooth belongs to,” the foundation added, but said first analyses “allow us to suppose it is an ancestor of Homo antecessor (pioneer).”

In 1994 at the nearby Gran Dolina site several Homo antecessor fossils were uncovered, suggesting human occupation of Europe around 800,000 years ago, whereas scientists had previously believed the continent had only been inhabited for around half a million years.

Subsequent findings in various sites across Spain lent further credence to the earlier date.

The Sierra Atapuerca contains several caves such as the Gran Dolina site, where fossils and stone tools of Europe’s earliest known hominids have been found.

Researchers found the molar in the Sima del Elefante section of the sierra which had previously yielded fossils from mammals, including bison, deer and bear as well as birds and a mouse. — AFP

United Nations, June 30
The United Nations General Assembly handed down a victory to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon when it decided by consensus to split the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), a move over which several developing nations had shown strong reservations when the proposal was put forward.

Simultaneously, it also approved a record $5.25 billion budget for 13 active peacekeeping operations.

After months of wrangling, the 192-member Assembly agreed to create a new Department of Field Support to look after management and logistic under the supervision of an Under-Secretary-General. The Peacekeeping Department will now concentrate on operations and will also be headed by an Under-Secretary-General.

Under the new structure, the head of peacekeeping will direct the head of field support and that is causing concern among some members and the Assembly asked Ban to explicitly define the role of duties of head of the newly created department.

But it was not unbridled victory of Ban who had argued that splitting DPKO is necessary for efficient functioning of the operations which now employ record 100,000 peacekeepers around the world. — PTI