The Tribune...World

	W O R L D	Wednesday, July 8, 1998
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Chaudhary a fraud,
say experts
WASHINGTON, July 7 — A week after a Pakistani man made incendiary allegations of having witnessed top Pakistani Government officials discussing preemptive nuclear attack on India, U.S. Government officials and academic experts, who have talked to him have concluded he is a fraud, says The Washington Post...

Standoff on Gaza resolved
BEER SHEVA (Israel) July 7 — Israeli and Palestinian officials reached an agreement during a meeting here overnight on preventing another flareup ...

Blair not to sack aide
LONDON, July 7 — While the worst-ever sleaze allegations to hit the Tony Blair government cost its political lobbyist Derek Draper, a newspaper assignment, Blair last night refused...

Gandhiji’s letters on amity to go under hammer

India likely to have tough time on CTBT issue
WASHINGTON, July 7 — Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s special emissary Mr Jaswant Singh is likely to have tough bargaining with US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott when they meet in Frankfurt on Thursday to discuss global nuclear non-proliferation and the question of India signing the comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT)...

Pop star made of
bits, bytes
HAMBURG, July 7 — He’s an artificial being made of bits and bytes, and he’s on a course to conquer the international pop music scene. His name is E-Cyas...

Millions work to
contain Yangtze
BEIJING, July 7 — Millions of people, including soldiers, are engaged in mammoth efforts to strengthen dikes and repair breached banks along the China’s largest river Yangtze...

Standoff on Gaza resolved
BEER SHEVA (Israel) July 7 (AFP) — Israeli and Palestinian officials reached an agreement during a meeting here overnight on preventing another flareup over the use of roads in the Gaza Strip, military sources said today.
Gen Yom Tov Samia, Israeli commander of the southern military region, and Col Mohamed Dahlan, chief of Palestinian preventive security in the Gaza Strip, held four hours of talks overnight, sources said.
They decided to work out how Palestinians could use roads near Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip.
Gen Vaacov Orr, the Israeli coordinator for the West Bank and Gaza

Strip, and Palestinian Civil Affairs Minister Jamil Tarifi also took part in the meeting.
Israeli troops backed by armoured vehicles were engaged in a tense standoff with Palestinian police on Thursday and Friday after Israel closed the main coast road in Gaza, which skirts Jewish settlements, to Palestinian traffic.
Israel reopened the road following Egyptian-US mediation but said it was only a temporary measure. The Palestinians, in exchange, cleared barriers set up in retaliation on roads leading to Jewish settlements in southern Gaza.
According to Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, self-rule agreements with Israelis allow Palestinians to use the Gaza roads which remain under the security control of the Israelis.

AFP adds from Washington: The USA is getting closer to a deal that will break the deadlock in the West Asia peace process, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has said.
Ms Albright said yesterday in a television interview she had been “on the phone intensively” in the past 48 hours with the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu to try to remove hurdles in the way of an agreement.
“I think we are coming closer. If we weren’t coming closer, we would try a different tack,” Ms Albright said on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”
Ms Albright is scheduled to discuss the state of the peace process with visiting Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Mussa here on Friday.
She also dispelled rumours she was displeased with the appointment of Mr

Richard Holbrooke as the UN Ambassador.
The White House decision to appoint Mr Holbrooke, who brokered the 1995 Bosnia peace deal, reportedly worried Albright aides who thought he would seek to outshine her.
Meanwhile, Israel has earmarked $1 billion to help Tel Aviv dominate the skies against medium-range Scuds and longer-range missiles, a media report here has said.
“Air superiority cannot truly be achieved until nations find a response to the ballistic missile threat,” Special Adviser to Israel’s Defence Ministry and former air force commander, David Ivry said..

India likely to have tough time at
Frankfurt meeting on CTBT issue
WASHINGTON, July 7 (PTI) — Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s special emissary Mr Jaswant Singh is likely to have tough bargaining with US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott when they meet in Frankfurt on Thursday to discuss global nuclear non-proliferation and the question of India signing the comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT).
The meeting, their second since June 12 after India and Pakistan

conducted their nuclear tests, is also likely to pave the way for the proposed visit of US President Bill Clinton to India in November.
Commenting on India’s position on the CTBT, US State Department spokesman James Rubin termed as not impossible the mission to ask India to sign the treaty unconditionally.
However he said, “We are not there yet by any stretch of the imagination.”
Analysts here say the question now is how far the USA is prepared to climb down from its high perch to accommodate India.
Mr Talbott, who has been designated as “lead official” by President Clinton to have contacts with Indian and Pakistani officials in the aftermath of the nuclear tests, met Sahibzada Yakub Khan, special envoy of Pak Premier Nawaz Sharif yesterday.
Nothing officially has been stated about their meeting but analysts attach great significance to it because of Mr Talbott’s proposed meeting with Mr Jaswant Singh, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission.
Mr Rubin said after Mr Talbott and Mr Khan’s meeting the USA was discussing with both India and Pakistan “the question how they can make the wise decision to join the CTBT.”
Mr Talbott last week had said the diplomacy that was under way and that “we hope will intensify, accelerate and ultimately produce some results during the months ahead needs to have an element of cooperation with the two parties.”

Chaudhary a fraud: experts
WASHINGTON, July 7 (UNI) — A week after a Pakistani man made incendiary allegations of having witnessed top Pakistani Government officials discussing preemptive nuclear attack on India, U.S. Government officials and academic experts, who have talked to him have concluded he is a fraud, says The Washington Post.
The daily quoted Mr Frank Von Hippel, chairman of the research arm of the anti-nuclear weapon federation of American scientists, as having said

that he and several Princeton University associates reached their conclusion after interviewing Iftikhar Khan Chaudhary for an hour by telephone yesterday about his supposed graduate education, work for the Pakistani nuclear agency and understanding of nuclear physics.
“Everything was wrong,” said Mr Von Hippel, who also is a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton. “He doesn’t know the most elementary facts about what a nuclear reactor is. Our guess is he doesn’t know more than high school education.”
A senior Clinton Administration official, who has reviewed government agencies’ reports about Mr Khan’s claims said he is “an absolute fraud.” U.S. intelligence has concluded the nuclear facility where Mr Khan said he had worked had no centrifuges for refining weapons-grade uranium, as Mr Khan had claimed, the official said.
Instead, Pakistan’s centrifuges are housed in facilities run by a competing nuclear agency.

Mr Khan has been interviewed twice by the FBI in relation to his claims, but the bureau has not commented publicly on the case.
Asked yesterday about the scepticism regarding his account, Mr Khan said his mind had been a blur since May, when he said his wife was detained by Pakistan security agents and he slipped out of the country.
“I’ve been very tense,” Mr Khan said from his lawyer’s office in Manhattan. “I don’t remember all the basic definitions of physics that they asked me about, I learned these things over four years ago.”
The interview with the experts from Princeton was conducted mostly in Mr Khan’s native Urdu by Mr A.H. Nayyar, a physics Professor at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, who is visiting Princeton for the summer, and by Mr Zia Mian, a Pakistani physicist and research associate at Princeton. Both have publicly criticised Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme.

Pop star made of bits, bytes
HAMBURG, July 7 (DPA) — He’s an artificial being made of bits and bytes, and he’s on a course to conquer the international pop music scene. His name is E-Cyas. He likes bands such as Kraftwerk and Underworld, hates stupidity and macho people. And he speaks German, English and French.
E-Cyas is the brainchild of German multimedia company Id-Gruppe, based in Wuertemberg. The company believes E-Cyas, whose name is short for electronic cybernetic artificial superstar, can beat out real stars made of flesh and blood in the charts. Internet surfers can meet him at http://www.E-Cyas. com.

E-Cyas is an avatar — a digital being — who lives in virtual worlds and networks. The word avatar comes from the Indian for origin. In the Buddhist religion, avatars are gods that have descended to live among humans. In the age of the Internet, avatars are usually used to represent users in three dimensional chat rooms. E-Cyas, the photorealistic image of a human and the product of 13 months of work and 60,000 polygons, has no counterpart in actual life.
Bernd Kolb, manager of Id-Gruppe, argues that the line between real and fictional words is often blurry in today’s pop music scene. Aren’t groups like the Spice Girls or the Back Street Boys also artificially created for success? He asks. The search for true reality and identity will be the central theme of E-Cyas’ first album and video, which carries the title are you real?
E-Cyas is by no means the first cyberspace pop artists. In 1996 the Japanese music agency Hori Productions, together with visual Science Laboratorys (VSL), created the avatar Kyoko Date, a slender 17-year-old Japanese beauty, who brought out a music CD and appeared on television music shows. But the virtual Japanese song girl’s record and the video sold only 50,000 copies — far less than expected by the creators.

Blair not to sack aide
LONDON, July 7 (PTI) — While the worst-ever sleaze allegations to hit the Tony Blair government cost its political lobbyist Derek Draper, a newspaper assignment, Blair last night refused to sack his key aide Roger Liddle despite opposition.
The Tories had mounted a campaign against Liddle alleging that he was planning to use his official position to the benefit of his commercial clients.
Labour leader at the Commons Ann Taylor said only allegations could not call for definite actions and the government was not contemplating taking

action against Liddle on the basis of a newspaper report.
The Tory campaign based itself on a Sunday Observer report that spoke of a taped conversations between journalists masquerading as representatives of an American representative company and lobbyists including Derek Deper.
The Observer had also claimed that Liddle, who was the co-founder of the lobbyist group Prima Europe, had offered to arrange meetings for businessmen, with key government minister’s aides.
Francis Maude, the shadow chancellor, has suggested that the allegations amounted to insider dealing and should be referred to the police. He also called for investigation by the parliamentary committee on standards in public life.

Millions work to contain Yangtze
BEIJING, July 7 (PTI) — Millions of people, including soldiers, are engaged in mammoth efforts to strengthen dikes and repair breached banks along the China’s largest river Yangtze, to prevent flooding half the country, official reports said today.
Heavy rains since mid-June has pushed Yangtze waters above flood-warning levels along 1,000 km of its middle and lower reaches, Xinhua news agency and China daily said.
Meanwhile, heavy rains also lashed Beijing on Sunday and yesterday, flooding many low-lying areas and disrupting flights in and out of the capital international airport.
“It was the heaviest rainfall Beijing has had in 42 years,” said Mr Hu Junda, Deputy Director of the Beijing municipal flood-control office.

Gandhiji’s letters on amity
to go under hammer
LONDON, July 7 (PTI) — Some rare letters of Mahatma Gandhi, centring around Hindu-Muslim unity, making secularism the main plank in

the freedom struggle, would come up for auction here next week.
The 18 letters, written by the Father of the Nation to Maulana Abdul Bari, late founder of Jamaat-i-Ulema Hind, in English and Urdu and some in his own hand, date between 1918 and 1924 and run into 38 pages of original text and 26 pages of translation.
“The letters come on ‘yellowed Indian paper’. Otherwise they are in good condition,” said a spokesman for Sotheby’s, which is organising the auction on July 15 and 16.The collection is third such set of Gandhi’s letters and papers sought to be put on auction. Earlier, twice other letters and papers were withdrawn and brought over by the Indian government.

In one of the letters written personally, the Mahatma supports the Khilafat movement led by Ali brothers (Shaukat and Mohammad Ali), influential disciples of Maulana Bari, asking the Hindus to march shoulder to shoulder with their Muslim brethren. He said this should forge an unbreakable alliance between the two communities for common purpose of launching non-cooperation movement against the British government.The letters, to be auctioned at a price ranging from £ 10,000 to 15,000 clearly bear out the deep mutual respect of the two leaders towards each other, the Sotheby’s spokesman told PTI.
In one of the letters, Gandhiji advises Maulana Bari on his plans to organise a joint Hindu-Muslim demonstration in the capital in October 1919, the spokesman said.The letters demonstrate that the Mahatma’s faith in non-violent civil disobedience was already unshakable by the mid-twenties and express his strong belief in winning the entire country over to this.
The collection contains deep insight into the progress of the freedom movement and on legal and strategic moves on the imprisonment of Ali brothers, with advises suggesting waiting for the establishment of peace in Europe before agitating for their release.In other correspondence, Gandhiji tells the Maulana of his plans for civil disobedience and on Hindu-Muslim

tensions created by the Hoshangabad incident of cow slaughters in 1921.Gandhiji calls Bari to Bombay saying that crowds were out of control in the area following these incidents and outlining measures to restore amity.Other items being put up in the same auction are some rare letters written to Maulana Bari by Motilal and Jawaharlal Nehru.The items also include a single autograph letter by Mahatma Gandhi to the editor of the Cape Town Argus in 1914, which has been priced at £ 800.

Global monitor

Roy Rogers dies
Los Angeles: Country singer Roy Rogers died on Monday. He was 86. He suffered from a congestive heart failure, a statement said. A depression-era singer armed with a guitar, six-shooters and charm, rose to be the singing king of the cowboys. For 12 years (1943 to 1954) he was number one western star at the box office. — AP

Clinton’s visit
Moscow: US President Bill Clinton will pay an official visit to Russia at the beginning of September, The Kremlin said on Monday. A Kremlin spokesman said the visit was son Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s invitation. He did not give a date.

Ahead in flesh trade
Kiev: An estimated 100,000 young Ukrainian women have gone abroad in the last seven years and been lured or forced to work in the illegal sex industry, an international organisation has said. Ukraine has become a

major source of supplying women to the international sex market, said Stephen Cook, who represents the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Ukraine. — (AP)

Traders face expulsion
Taipei: Four Taiwanese businessmen arrested in China in March on spying charges will be expelled soon after standing trial. Taiwan’s the China Times said China would expel Kou Jianming, Han Yueting, Chen Shaoyu and Zhou Changming as a goodwill gesture. It said China, because it

considered it had “concrete evidence,” would open the trials to the foreign media. — (AFP)

Paintings found
Rome: The police has announced eight arrests and the recovery of paintings by Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Cezanne stolen from Italy’s Modern Art Museum in Rome at the end of May. The overall value of the three paintings, which were undamaged, was far in excess of $ 5.5 million

authorities said. One of the arrested was a woman who had worked as a guard in the museum, Culture Minister Walter Veltroni told reporters. — (DPA)

Rise in abortions
Hanoi: More than 680,000 Vietnamese women underwent abortions in the first half of 1998, putting the country on a pace to surpass last year’s total, the newspaper Lao Dong (Labor) has reported. The figure came from official statistics released by the Ministry of Public Health. The actual total was believed to be higher. Abortion has been on the rise since 1995, with 1.1 million reported last year. Vietnam’s population is around 76

million. — (AP)

2 satellites link-up
Tokyo: Two Japanese satellites successfully docked on Tuesday in the first such manoeuver ever accomplished via remote control, Japan’s Space Agency said. The unmanned satellites “Orihime” (Vega) and “Hikoboshi” (Altair) were separated and rejoined by remote control from earth after a 15-minute rendezvous, said Yasuyki Fukumuro, a spokesman at the National Space Development Agency. Mr Fukumuro said it was the first time that two satellites effected a successful linkup after first carrying out a

rendezvous on their own. — AP

Hungarian PM
Budapest: Right-wing leader Viktor Orban was elected Hungary’s new Prime Minister today in a parliamentary vote. Orban, the 35-year-old leader of the Federation of Young Democrats-Hungarian Civic Party (Fidesz-MPP), was backed by 222 MPs, while 119 voted against, eight

abstained and 37 did not vote. — (AFP)

Hair style on Internet
Barcelona: Hairstylist Josep Maria Urbea, based in Barcelona, is offering hairstyling advice on the Internet. Within 48 hours and without even leaving the house, customers can see themselves on their computer screens with up to four different hairstyles. All they have to do is scan in a photograph off themselves, answer a few questions about their hair quality and style

preferences and transfer 20 dollars. — DPA

Gadaffi fractures leg
Cairo: Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is to undergo surgery for his fractured leg. He suffered the injury on Monday while exercising. Libyan television in a live broadcast showed Mr Gaddafi lying in a bed guarded by two female bodyguards in a meeting room in Beida, some 800 km east of Tripoli receiving several Presidents and officials from Muslim countries in Libya to mark the birth of Prophet Mohammad.— (PTI)