Naypyidaw (Myanmar), July 4
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today said he was “deeply disappointed” that military-ruled Myanmar’s top general had rejected his request to meet with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Ban, who was made to wait overnight for the decision, said he pressed junta supremo Than Shwe but was told that Suu Kyi was on trial and the regime did not want to be seen to interfere with the judicial process.

“I’m deeply disappointed,” Ban told reporters after his 30-minute meeting with the regime”s reclusive 76-year-old leader.

“I think they have missed a very important opportunity of demonstrating their willingness to commit to continuing reconciliation with all political leaders. I pressed as hard as I could as a way of committing themselves to this (democratisation) process,” he said.

Ban requested the visit during a rare meeting yesterday with Than Shwe, but he left the two-hour session with no clear answer.

Suu Kyi, who has spearheaded the campaign for democracy for two decades in the former Burma, is currently on trial for breaching terms of her house arrest by allowing an American intruder to stay at her home on May 4.

Suu Kyi's trial was adjourned yesterday until July 10 because of a clerical error by the court, according to her lawyer.

The Secretary-General said he urged the regime to drop the charges against Suu Kyi and other political leaders, but received no guarantees.

He asked for the release of more than 2,000 political prisoners ahead of the polls, the opening of real dialogue between the government and opposition, and the creating of conditions conducive to free and fair elections.

Ban said the junta leader expressed his commitment to ensuring the elections were “free and credible”. — Reuters

Producing newspaper clippings Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif nailed what he called as Gen. Musharraf’s “utter falsehood” that he (Musharraf) had not asked him to go to Washington to seek then US President Clinton’s help for a ceasefire in Kargil in July 1999.

“He was pushing me to go to Washington for talks on Kargil situation for a face-saving retreat,” Sharif told reporters in London. The clipping showed a Dawn report datelined Karachi, June 26, 1999, citing Musharraf as hinting at “ongoing efforts” to arrange a meeting between Sharif and Clinton on the issue.

Sharif flew to Washington a week later on July 4 to meet Clinton who had set Pakistani withdrawal from Kargil as precondition for the meeting.

Musharraf, who is currently in London, claimed in a TV interview last week that he was totally in the dark about Sharif-Clinton meeting until the Prime Minister informed him about it just before flying off to Washington.

“Nawaz Sharif has been telling lies about Kargil,” Musharraf had said.

Sharif said Musharraf had actually wanted a face-saver to cover up the Kargil debacle and so he kept pressing him to approach the Americans for the purpose. “I should had taken him along,” he added with a broad smile.

Musharraf had said two days before Sharif’s departure he had briefed a top-level meeting chaired by Nawaz Sharif to explain that military situation on Kargil was sound. But he left it to the political government to take a decision on withdrawal.

Information secretary of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League -Nawaz (PML-N), Ahsan Iqbal, said Musharraf had trapped the premier to shift responsibility for Kargil disaster, which he later used to instigate military coup against the government.

He quoted retired chief of US CENTOM, Gen. Zinni, writing in his book that Musharraf urged him to persuade Sharif to go to Washington.

Political leaders and retired army officers have been demanding an inquiry into the Kargil misadventure that seriously undermined Pakistan’s position on Kashmir at international level. It also brought the United States and India closer for the first time in the post-cold war era - a relationship that has now solidified into strategic ties. Musharraf stonewalled the demand while the democratic government has also shown little interest in it.

London, July 4
Michael Jackson had attributed his changing skin colour to the rare disease of vitiligo but his close friend and ‘Thriller’ producer Quincy Jones has come out saying that the singer altered his appearance because he did not like being black.

Jones claims that Jackson lied about his skin condition as he just “didn’t want to be black”, Sun online reported.

Jones, the man behind some of Jackson’s greatest hits, including ‘Bad’ and ‘Thriller’ said that whenever asked about his changing appearances, the pop star always claimed that it was a disease that lightened his skin from black to white.

“You’re justifying something that’s destructive to your existence. But when somebody’s hell-bent on it, you can’t stop him. What his face turned into is ridiculous. Chemical peels and all of it. And I don’t understand it. But he obviously didn’t want to be black. You see his kids?” said Jones.

“He’d come up with, ‘Man, I promise you I have this disease’, and so forth, and ‘I have a blister on my lungs’, and all that. It’s hard, because Michael’s a Virgo, man, he’s very set in his ways. You can’t talk him out of it. I’m just a musician and a record producer. I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t understand all that stuff. We all got problems,” he added. — PTI