The PPP, PML-N and allied parties have evolved an agreed charter of demands for participation in the polls, but were stuck on the question of reinstatement of the deposed judges.

A Pakistani lawyer holds a placard during a protest near the residence of deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry in Islamabad on Thursday. — Reuters

Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who made an abortive attempt to meet the judges on Thursday, told newsmen here that he was confident that the differences over the question of judges would also be resolved. He said the opposition would boycott the elections if the demands were not accepted within a stipulated time.

PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto, who also spoke to newsmen after a hectic round of meetings in the capital, said the opposition was seeking to ensure free and fair elections and did not want to stir trouble on streets. She said many other demands had been conceded by President Musharraf and thought he would agree to the charter as well.

Sharif was stopped from entering the “judges colony” to express solidarity with the deposed chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and his colleagues.

Sharif said even if his party were to take part in elections, it would mobilise public opinion to end all illegal and unconstitutional actions of November 3, including purge of judiciary, amendment in the constitution and curbs on media freedom.

The government, on Thursday, issued notices to four more judges of the Supreme Court, including the second senior-most judge, Rana Bhagwandas, to vacate official residence. He told Dawn News that he, along with other colleagues, had been restricted from leaving the Judges Colony. "We are free to the extent that we can move within the colony," Rana said, adding that the Chief Justice, however, continued to be under solitary confinement.

The eight-member panel of PPP, PML-N and allied parties met again on Thursday to thrash out differences over the judges' issue.

The PPP is reluctant to make this issue part of the charter, but says it could be taken up in parliament after the elections.

The panel has agreed on demands for a neutral caretaker government, an independent election commission and suspension of local governments to prevent nazims from influencing the elections.

Meanwhile, a convention of bar associations organised here by the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) urged all opposition parties to boycott the elections until deposed judges were restored and the actions taken under the emergency were revoked.

The association reminded former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif that their return to Pakistan was made possible by the historic struggle waged by lawyers, the media and civil society for upholding the rule of law.

Meanwhile, the government has hinted it may release Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) president Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan within the next couple of days. The firebrand lawyer Ahsan has said he will launch a “judicial bus” across the country to campaign for the restoration of judiciary to its pre-November 3 status when Musharraf imposed emergency and purged independent judges. Aitzaz had defended deposed Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry before the Supreme Court (SC) after his suspension by President Pervez Musharraf, and won the case. 

The Spanish authorities dropped cases of money laundering against former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto because of insufficient evidence.

According to a press release by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) the media reports regarding the case were incomplete giving an impression that the case was abandoned because of the position taken by the Government of Pakistan that it was withdrawing from the case following a reconciliation with Bhutto.

The PPP press release said the Spanish court that disposed off the case ruled that the accusations made by the Government of Pakistan against Benazir Bhutto and her close aide Rehman Malik were dropped because sufficient evidence could not be found after two years of investigation. So the Spanish court dropped money laundering charges against the former PM and her aides.

“The public accusation of money laundering by the Spanish ministry against Benazir Bhutto, Rehman Malik Feroz and Syed Ali Jafri was dropped because there was insufficient evidence to order an investigation of the funds that had been moved.”

According to Rehman Malik successive regimes have been leveling allegations based on personal vendetta and political motives which have been proven false, and judgment of a neutral foreign court has exonerated both of them (Bhutto and Malik), which vindicates the PPP leadership. 

Islamabad, December 6
Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was tonight disallowed from taking a flight to Dubai after airport authorities found some ‘technical problems’ with her passport.

Bhutto, who was scheduled to go on a four-day trip to Dubai where her husband Asif Ali Zardari, her daughter and her mother currently live, was stopped at the international airport here.

Officials said the problem was being sorted out so that she could leave for Dubai tomorrow morning. Bhutto’s decision to travel out of the country came amidst persisting differences between the PPP and rival Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N on framing the charter of demands, especially on the issue of reinstating Supreme Court judges who were sacked for not endorsing the emergency imposed by President Pervez Musharraf on November 3.

Bhutto and Sharif had warned that they could boycott the January 8 parliamentary poll if the government did not fulfil the proposed demands.

The eight-member committee formed by the PPP and the PML-N to draw up the charter of demands could take “Between three days and a week” to complete its work, Bhutto told a news channel tonight. — PTI.

New York, December 6
An Indian American girl, Isha Himani Jain, has been declared the national champion in one of the most coveted student science competitions in the USA.

The 16-year-old student of Freedom High School in Behtlehem won in the individual category of the Siemens Competition in Mathematics, Science and Technology.

She has been awarded a $1,00,000 scholarship for her college education for identifying a cellular mechanism underlying the bone growth spurts in zebra fish, similar to the way children’s bones grow.

Isha, whose work has been published in the Developmental Dynamics journal, said she chose to study the zebra fish because the species was a good animal model.

She said her research should lead to understanding of the bone growth in other vertebrates along with the bone disorders in humans.

Talking about her plans, she said she was applying to Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Yale.

“I want to specialise in genetics, and want to eventually have my own lab,” she said.

Isha said her father, Himanshu Jain, a chair professor at the Department of Material Science and Engineering at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, and her mother Sweety Jain, who practised family medicine, encouraged her.

Janelle Schlossberger and Amanda Marinoff, students at a school in Long Island, New York, were declared winners in the competition’s team category for creating a molecule that helps to block the reproduction of drug-resistant tuberculosis bacteria. They shared a $100,000 scholarship.

One of the more popular projects at the competition was by three home-schooled girls from Pennsylvania and New Jersey who had designed a system to determine whether the E. coli bacteria in hamburgers had been safely eliminated by measuring the shrinkage of each patty when fully cooked.

Girls sweeping the competition made the US media call it the breaking of another glass ceiling and showing up the misconception that women can’t do science.

The entries were judged by a panel of scientists led by Joseph Taylor, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in physics, and a professor emeritus at Princeton University. 
— IANS

London, December 6
In today’s world, women go to work and come back home only to do the bulk of household chores. And, if British researchers are to be believed, career women actually end up working for longer hours than men.

According to researchers at Cambridge University, while men may spend longer at the office, it is the women, who work more each week if domestic and paid employment is added together, The Daily Telegraph reported here today.

The average man in full-time employment works for about 55 hours a week. In the UK, that figure includes about 3.6 hours commuting, and eight hours of domestic work such as cleaning, cooking and child-care.

By contrast, the average working week for a woman in full-time employment in the European Union is 68 hours. For British women, that comprises 40 hours in the office, 3.3 hours commuting and 23 hours a week spent doing domestic work. — PTI

Colombo, December 6
Sri Lanka has ruled out a ban on Tamil rebels saying it would block the road for future peace talks despite a fresh wave of violence, which has claimed over a hundred lives so far this week.

A top minister said government had decided not to ban the LTTE, at least for the time being, as it could impede any future peace talks.

Minister of highways Jeyaraj Fernandopulle told a gathering here on Tuesday that the government would not ban the militant group despite repeated pleas and demands by many groups and organisations. The government still does not see any need to ban the LTTE as it would block the road for peace talks, Fernandopulle said. — PTI 

Melbourne, December 6
Sikh students are likely to be allowed to carry kirpans or small daggers to schools following a recommendation by a parliamentary committee in Australia’s Victoria state but the move has outraged principals.

The committee has also given the green light for Muslim students to wear hijabs or veils in the state’s classrooms following a year-long inquiry into uniforms, which was tabled in the Victorian Parliament yesterday.

The Education and Training Committee recommended that all schools should accommodate clothing or other items that are religiously significant.

Its asked schools to work with the Sikh community to allow male students to carry a kirpan which is one of the five articles of faith that Sikhs must carry.

The committee found there were concerns from principals and teachers about students carrying the kirpan -which is hidden under the school uniform -but the item was important to the Sikh community.

Victorian Association of State Secondary School Principals head Brian Burgess said kirpans should not be allowed in schools.

‘‘It is potentially very dangerous and should not be brought to school,’’ he said.

‘‘If it was misused, it could hurt kids. And it may not be the students that bring it to school but others, who know about it and misuse it,’’ Burgess was quoted as saying in The Australian newspaper today. — PTI 

New York, December 6
A 20-year-old man dressed in camouflage went on a shooting rampage in a mall crowded with holiday shoppers, killing eight persons and wounding five others, before turning the rifle on himself in the US’ Nebraska state.

Hundreds of panic-stricken shoppers ran to bathrooms, hid under display racks and crouched behind garbage cans as Robert Hawkins, who left a suicide note that said: “Now, I will be famous”, sprayed bullets from his SKS assault rifle while perched on a third floor balcony.

“All I could think was what if he comes through the door, what if he comes through right now,” said Kevin Keline, 29, who hid in a storage room with her four-year-old daughter and four other women, including an expectant mother, as the gun shots rang out in a retail store inside the Omaha mall.

The deceased included five men and three women. The police said the Wednesday afternoon attack appeared to be premeditated but without provocation and that the gunman was acting alone.

ABC reported that the man had two magazines taped together, a technique used for faster reloading of the gun.

President George Bush was at an Omaha fundraiser but had left about an hour before the incident. The incident came almost eight months after the deadliest shooting at Virginia Tech University in which a student killed 32 people.

Friends and neighbours said Hawkins had trouble in school as also with law. He had broken up with his girlfriend and had lost a job recently at McDonald’s fast food chain.

“I had just learnt today that he had been fired and this must have triggered all of this,” Hawkins’ landlady Debora Maruca-Kovac said. — PTI

Washington, December 6
The USA today said it would move forward on the civilian nuclear deal whenever India was ready as it "understands" that New Delhi needed to work through the political process in the country.

"In terms of the decisions within the Indian political system, we (the US) respect the needs and the rights of their political leaders to work this through themselves.But we're ready and able to move forward whenever they (India) would like us to," State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said. — PTI 

Colombo, December 6
At least 24 LTTE militants were killed in a spate of attacks by the Sri Lankan Army in the north.

In a preemptive attack launched by the security forces today, one LTTE bunker was destroyed, killing four Tamil Tiger rebels in north of Uilankulam in Mannar,
it said.

Separately, two LTTE militants were killed today when the security forces ambushed their movement at Oliwattathivu in Mannar, the army said.

Three militants were killed when security forces confronted an LTTE gathering at south of Adampan in Mannar yesterday, it said.

According to the Media Centre for National Security (MCNS), security forces personnel ambushed an LTTE cadre movement killing four LTTE militants at Navathkulama in Vavuniya today.

In another incident, three rebels were killed while another four LTTE cadres were either shot dead or wounded in a confrontation that erupted in the Vavuniya area yesterday, it said.

Meanwhile, in a preemptive attack targeting an LTTE hide out located at Vaiyattankulam in Vavuniya last morning, at least three Tiger rebels were killed, the army said.

Five Tamil Tiger rebels were killed and three injured in a confrontation with troops at Muhamail and Nagarkovil in Jaffna yesterday, the MCNS said.

Meanwhile, the LTTE today said it would hand over bodies of Sri Lankan soldiers killed in clashes in Kurissidakulam in north-western Mannar yesterday, the rebels website Tamilnet said, adding the outfit did not provide any further information. 
— PTI