Islamabad, May 22
The Pakistan People Party (PPP) has sought India’s support for its move to demand a UN-led probe into the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto, saying that it would be a “monument in history” if the the two countries come together on a resolution in the world body.

The request for India’s support was conveyed by PPP chairman Asif Ali Zardari to visiting external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee during a meeting here on Tuesday.

Mukherjee, who was in Islamabad to review the Composite Dialogue process with his Pakistani counterpart, also met the country’s top political leadership.

“I’ve requested your foreign minister to help us get it (the request to the UN) through. So hopefully, in her death, (Bhutto) will bring us together on a resolution which will be a monument in history,” Zardari told PTI in an interview.

“For the first time, India and Pakistan will be demanding a resolution together,” he said.

Zardari said, “I haven’t had official confirmation but Mukherjee was sympathetic to my position.” The PPP, he said, is determined to go ahead with its demand to seek a UN-led probe into Bhutto’s assassination on December 27 last year despite reservations expressed from some quarters about involving the world body in the matter.

“The national Assembly of Pakistan has passed a resolution, the provincial Assemblies have passed resolutions. So now I don’t think there’s a room for debate.

It’s just a question of the foreign minister writing a letter to the UN and taking it up,” Zardari 
said. — PTI

Beijing, May 22
China today said its talks with India on the long-festering boundary problem were “making progress” but “it takes time” to resolve such issues as it insisted on maintaining border tranquillity to ensure that there were “no minor clashes.” The special representatives of both countries were “working very efficiently” and making progress but “it takes time and strenuous efforts to reach the final agreement,” Chinese assistant minister of Foreign affairs He Yafei told a delegation of journalists from SAARC nations.

“We do have a border issue. There is no doubt about it. We have a mechanism of special representatives designated by our leadership. They are working very efficiently and making progress. We are making progress,” he said.

But, meanwhile, he said, “I think it is important to maintain border tranquillity, to make sure there are no minor clashes in the border area so that one will be building confidence.” He Yafei, who is in charge of Asia in the ministry, said, “We are optimistic and I am personally optimistic that this (boundary) issue will be resolved if we put the larger picture in our mind and have long-term interests of our people in our heart.” “We can resolve these issues. But it takes time. It takes time, he said.

The special representatives of India and China on the boundary row have held 11 rounds of talks so far. — PTI

Bobby Jindal, the first Indian American Governor of a US state, has made to Senator John McCain’s shortlist of vice-presidential candidates.

Jindal is one of the three Republican Party leaders the presumptive presidential candidate will meet with this Memorial Day weekend at his retreat outside Sedona, Arizona. The other two are McCain’s former rival for presidential nomination Mitt Romney and Florida Governor Charlie Crist.

The New York Times reported both Crist and Jindal have accepted invitations to meet with McCain. The paper said McCain was meeting with “potential running mates at a gathering at his ranch this weekend in Arizona, suggesting that he is stepping up his search for a vice-presidential candidate”.

McCain’s campaign managers declined to comment on the meetings. “We don’t talk about the vice-president selection process,” Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser, told the paper.

A McCain spokesman played down the significance of the meeting in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. McCain strategist Charlie Black insisted the gathering would be “purely social” and had “nothing whatsoever to do with the vice-presidential selection process,” the LA Times reported.

“Wouldn’t it be difficult to interview people for vice-president’s post with the other competitors there?” he said.

Jindal is considered a rising star in the Republican Party since he was elected Governor of Louisiana in October. Choosing Jindal could appeal to younger voters. But he may be regarded as too green to be second in line to the presidency, particularly when the McCain campaign’s central line of attack against Obama is that he is too inexperienced to be president, the LA Times noted, referring to Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama.

Political analyst Larry Sabato told the Boston Glob that from McCain’s perspective the get-together “makes sense for a couple of reasons,” the Globe reported.

When picking a running mate, McCain needs to get to know them a little bit. But I think maybe they’re trying to send a signal to the Press so maybe the Press will do some work for them and scour the candidates’ backgrounds. At 36, Jindal is the youngest serving Governor in the US.

A two-term Republican congressman, he was only the second Indian- American to serve in the US Congress. Congressman Dalip Singh Saund, a California Democrat originally from Punjab, was the first.

Jindal’s parents immigrated from Punjab to Louisiana in the early 1970s. His father, an engineer and one of nine children of a poor rural family, came to the

US so that his mother could continue her graduate work in nuclear physics. Born Piyush Jindal in Baton Rouge, as a boy he asked his family to call him “Bobby”, a name derived from a character on the popular TV show “The Brady Bunch”. A Hindu at birth, he converted to Catholicism as a teenager.

President Pervez Musharraf has categorically repudiated reports that he had plans to resign as President.

Musharraf, who held another important meeting with his allies, PML-Q party chief Chaudhry Shujaat and parliamentary leader in Punjab Hamid Nasir Chattha was quoted by a participant as blaming a lobby of “vested interests” for spreading rumours about him.

“I want to see stable democracy in the country. Parliament has elected me for five years and I will continue to serve the nation,” he said. Musharraf said he would not compromise his position in return for any offer made by the coalition government.

Media reports said Musharraf had offered to resign if actions taken by him under the state of emergency imposed on November 3 last year were given indemnity.

The reposts caused panic and Shujaat and Chatth sought an urgent meeting with Musharraf during which the President strongly refuted the report.

Sources privy to the meeting said the participants discussed the proposed constitutional package being prepared by the PPP government for the reinstatement of the judges and decided that they would devise a strategy when the package was announced.

Later, Chattha confirmed to Dawn News that he and Shujaat had met the President, saying that the issue of any change in PML-Q’s leadership had not been discussed. He categorically ruled out any possibility of a PMLQ-PPP alliance at the Centre or in Punjab at this stage.

Chattha said the PML-Q was watching the situation closely. If the PPP and PML-N coalition split, then the party would review its position to join the PPP to form the government in Punjab.

The federal cabinet has decided that the army will remain in the troubled tribal areas of the NWFP but will readjust its positions to facilitate the local population.

"There will be no reduction of army in the restive areas. The government is committed to maintaining peace. The troops will be re-deployed to new positions but will remain within a 12-hour operation range," information minister Sherry Rehman told reporters here after a federal cabinet meeting presided over by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.

She further stated that the people whose houses were damaged during the military operation would be compensated.

The minister said the government was not talking to terrorists and militants and only negotiating with the people who laid down arms. "There were no exchanges or bargains over the release of Ambassador Tariq Azizuddin," she said.

The minister said the draft of the PPP's proposed constitutional reforms package was still with the Law Ministry and the cabinet would discuss it after it had been presented to it.

Asked about lawyers' plans to launch a long march on June 10, Sherry said:"People have a right to peaceful protest but it is the government's duty to maintain law and order."

She said the new minimum wage of Rs 6,000 would be part of the Finance Bill and would also be applicable to the private sector. 

Three more ministers were inducted into the Balochistan Cabinet on Wednesday, increasing its strength to 44.

Three other MPs in the 62-member Assembly were earlier co-opted as advisers with all privileges and trappings of a minister. There is only one member, Yar Mohammad Rind, a former federal minister, who sits in the Opposition. One seat was vacated by Nawab Zulfiqar Ali Magsi after his appointment as the Governor.

Counting out the Chief Minister, Speaker and Deputy Speaker besides the leader of the Opposition, only 10 members of the Assembly are left without a Cabinet or other privileged post. Aslam Raisani of the PPP, who heads the coalition Cabinet that includes all political parties, recently complained that every Assembly member wanted to become minister. The PPP won only seven seats in the February 18 elections to which it added three more on reserved women and minority seats.

Some of the left out members are being named chairmen of the standing committees of the House that would permit them enjoy privileges and influence. Raisani is also facing a problem because there are more ministers than the departments they can head. There are already seven ministers without any portfolio. This number will rise to 10 after induction of three new ministers.

Melbourne, May 22
Astronomers claim to have found evidence that there is nothing special about the Sun, a finding which adds weight to the idea that life could be common in the universe.

An international team, led by planetary scientists from the Australian National University, compared the Sun - which hosts a life-bearing planet - to other stars to reach their conclusion.

“Our research goes further than previous work which only looked at single properties such as mass or iron content. We looked at 11 properties that could plausibly be connected with life and did an analysis of these properties.”

"We found that the upshot is that there doesn't seem to be anything special about the Sun. It seems to be a random star that was blindly pulled out of the bag of all stars," according to the leader of the team, Jose Robles.

The astronomers found that the Sun's mass is the most anomalous of its properties; it is more massive than 95 per cent of the stars. The Sun's orbit around the centre of the galaxy is also more circular than the orbits of 93 per cent of its peers.

“But when analysing the 11 properties together, the Sun shows up as a star selected at random, rather than one selected for some life-enhancing property," Robles was quoted by the 'Astrophysical Journal' as saying.

The presidency is “re-energising” after a rift in the ruling coalition, PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif has said.

In an interview with Waqt TV, he said there was no need for a “no objection certificate” from any foreign country for the reinstatement of sacked judges. They would return to their benches, he said. However, he did not specify a time frame for their reinstatement. 

Nawaz confirmed that he had received intimation from the PPP that it intended to move a constitution reforms package and would comment when it was made public. But the PML-N would not be a party to any move that envisaged the indemnification for Gen Musharraf, he said. 

“The PPP may also face upheaval from within if the Zardari House pushes the party to provide a constitutional cover to President Musharraf and his wrongdoings,” he said. Nawaz said the question of providing indemnity to Musharraf’s second martial law through Parliament did not arise. “How can we think of that?” he asked, wondering if people had given them the mandate to provide constitutional cover to the unconstitutional actions of a dictator. 

Nawaz said indemnifying Musharraf’s November 3 actions would be like undoing the struggle of the democratic forces against the dictatorship.

BRIEFLY

45 Nigerian troops killed in accident
ABUJA: A petrol tanker crashed into a Nigerian army convoy on Thursday, killing 45 troops and injuring others. One officer and 44 soldiers died in the accident overnight as troops travelled to their base in northern Nigeria, an army spokesman Emeka Onwuamaegbu said. The injured were receiving treatment, he said. — AP

Indian scribe’s killing flayed
United Nations: Unesco head Koichiro Matsuura has denounced the killing of an Indian journalist, who died while covering an assignment in Jammu and Kashmir. ''The safety of journalists is a subject of paramount concern in any democracy,'' the UN headquarters in New York quoted Matsuura as saying. Ashok Sodhi, a reporter for the Daily Excelsior, died of bullet wounds suffered while working on an assignment in Samba district, south of Jammu. — UNI

UN Secy-Gen in Myanmar
BANGKOK: UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon arrived in Yangon on Thursday to facilitate international relief efforts for 2.4 million victims of the May 3 cyclone Nargis. Ban signed a book of condolences at the Myanmar foreign ministry and visited Yangon's Shwedagon Pagoda, the most sacred Buddhist shrine in the country. He made offerings to the Buddha statue and gave a donation to the temple for the cyclone victims, a UN release said. — UNI