Laden’s group ‘has chemical arms’
CAIRO, April 20 — A jailed member of Egypt’s second largest militant organisation the Al-Jihad, believes that the coalition of Muslim extremist groups led by Saudi dissident terrorist Osama bin Laden possess biological and chemical weapons, the prestigious international Arab newspaper Al-Hayat has reported

UN plea to Taliban
UNITED NATIONS, April 20 — The UN Security Council has urged the Taliban militia in Afghanistan to reconsider its decision to withdraw from the peace talks and return to the negotiating table.

German Parliament opens at Berlin
BONN, April 20 — The Reichstag in Berlin became the seat of the German Parliament again, 66 years after Adolf Hitler used a fire that gutted the majestic building to seize power.

Boy survives 17-storey fall
HONG KONG, April 20 — An eight-year-old boy plunged 17 storeys but landed alive, conscious with only some broken bones after he hit four clothes drying racks that broke his fall, newspapers reported today.

Mob destroys church in Indonesia

JAKARTA, April 20 (ANI) — A mob of Indonesian Muslims destroyed a church complex in the eastern city of Ujung Pandang on Monday evening after reports reached there of the bombing of Jakarta’s Al- Istiqlal mosque.

The police today said more than 1,000 persons went on the rampage, setting fire to the church complex. They also said that the situation in the city in south Sulawesi, 1,400 km east of Jakarta, was tense with Muslims stopping vehicles in search for Christians.

"Around 100 persons are still blocking the streets and checking people’s IDs. They are searching for Christians. I don’t know what they are going to do with them," one person said.

It was not clear whether troops were trying to intervene to prevent attacks on Christians.

Earlier, Indonesian President B.J. Habibie condemned strongly the attack on the mosque describing it as a barbaric and brutal act. He also called it an attempt to sabotage the June 7 elections when Indonesians, who have known little but autocratic rule, will experience their first democratic poll in more than 40 years.

As a rule, Indonesians must declare their religion on their identification cards. Most of the country’s citizens are Muslims, forming the world’s largest Islamic community.

But Christians, who include many of the country’s ethnic Chinese, make up Indonesia’s most economically successful minority. The Chinese in particular have long been the target of attacks from poorer segments of society.

Ethnic and religious violence has increased in the past year, because of economic depression and political turmoil that has thrown millions out of work and into a life of abject poverty.

DPA adds: More than 50 persons alleged to be black magic practitioners have been lynched by paid killers in a bizarre murder spree in Indonesia this year, a human rights activist said today.

The murders — reminiscent of the “Ninja” mass killings in east Java last year — have taken place in the past four months in villages of the west Java district of Ciamis, according to the Commission for Disappeared Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras).

Kontras Chairman Munir said the local security forces had failed to take serious action to stop the slayings, which were politically motivated and ordered by unknown political figures.

Mr Munir said the killings were committed by a group of 200 to 300 residents. They had admitted to being paid about $ 24 to $ 35 per month while being protected from arrest.

He said 29 persons had been arrested over the killings. Victims had been attacked because they were practitioners of black magic, not for political reasons, he said.

NATO missiles hit army HQ town

BELGRADE, April 20 (AP) — NATO blasted communications sites and a military garrison city as the USA dispatched more troops to Albania to bolster the alliance’s capability to destroy Yugoslav ground forces accused of atrocities against Kosovo Albanians.

In the 27th straight night of attacks, Serbian media reported one person was killed and 11 injured when NATO missiles slammed into the southern industrial city of Nis, which serves as the headquarters of the Yugoslav Army Corps responsible for Kosovo.

Serbian Television said 10 civilian homes were completely destroyed and 15 seriously damaged. Another Belgrade station, Studio B, said missiles heavily damaged the country’s main cigarette factory, as well as the Nis water system. Power failed in Nis district where the attack occurred.

NATO also targeted Batajnica, northwest of Belgrade, where a military airfield is located, Serbian media said. A three-year-old girl was killed there two nights ago.

Shortly after sunrise, the all-clear sounded in the capital.

UNITED NATIONS: Undaunted by Yugoslavia’s rejection of his Kosovo peace plan, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced plans to travel to Moscow next week to discuss the conflict with Belgrade’s allies.

At Russia’s request, Mr Annan said on Monday he would add a day onto a previously scheduled visit to Germany from April 26-28 to meet with Russian authorities on April 29.

The travel plans and another announcement that Mr Annan would appoint an envoy to Kosovo, signalled a clear intention by the UN Chief to continue to stay in the Kosovo diplomatic fray despite Belgrade’s rejection of his five-point peace initiative.

WASHINGTON (AP, Reuters): USA will use “any reasonable means” to gain the release of three army soldiers held by Yugoslavia as prisoners of war, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon has said.

Mr Bacon did not rule out a possible swap for a Yugoslav army officer captured by the Kosovo Liberation Army last week and turned over to US authorities in Tirana, Albania. The spokesman noted, however, that NATO does not see a strict equivalence between the prisoners since the Yugoslav was captured in combat, and the three Americans were performing peacekeeping duties in Macedonia.

In the meantime, US President Bill Clinton has failed to reverse Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s bitter oppostion to his Kosovo policy but won his pledge not to intervene militarily.

“We continue to disagree on the issue of the NATO campaign and the NATO-led international security force to implement a peace agreement,” said spokesman Joe Lockhart after the two leaders spoke for the second time on Monday since the NATO strikes were launched.

PPP stir: Cops guard Pak Parliament

ISLAMABAD, April 20 (AP, PTI) — Hundreds of policemen guarded Pakistan’s grand white marble Parliament buildings in the federal capital today stopping supporters of Ms Benazir Bhutto from holding anti-government demonstrations to protest against her corruption conviction.

Ms Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) called for protests throughout the entire country, however, there was only sporadic response.

In the Punjab provincial capital of Lahore, the police in full riot gear patrolled the provincial Parliament buildings and in major shopping districts. But there were only a few shops that shut down in Lahore, the hometown of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

In Pakistan's conservative frontier province, shops were open and police had orders to "deal strictly with demonstrators if they tried to damage property,’’ said police officials.

In the federal capital of Islamabad, home to embassies and a large foreign population, the police searched public buses entering the city. Anyone who looked suspicious or who openly expressed support for Ms Bhutto were taken off the bus and refused entry into the capital, said eyewitnesses.

Ms Bhutto, who is currently in London, was convicted last week along with her jailed husband, Mr Asif Ali Zardari, of taking kickbacks. The couple were sentenced to five years in jail and fined $ 8.6 million.

They were also disqualified from politics.

Ms Bhutto is appealing against the sentence and her party stalwarts have told her to stay away from Pakistan until the appeal is filed and it is certain that she won’t be jailed when she lands in Pakistan.

Ms Bhutto faces five other corruption charges.

"It is a serious turning point for our party,’’ said Naveed Qamar, a legislator of PPP.

"People are bitter and angry because Ms Bhutto and Mr Zardari have been convicted through a fake accountability process which denied them a fair and proper trial,’’ he said. "The protest rallies have been called to highlight the fact that our party is being targeted and marginalised through one sided accountability.’’

Mr Qamar chastised the government saying that it should await the outcome of the Supreme Court appeal.

PPP sources said Ms Bhutto would not return to Pakistan as originally planned and was expected to visit Dubai in a day or two.

She will chalk out her future course of action in consultation with party leaders in Dubai, the sources said.

The PPP is also planning to hold a countrywide agitation against Ms Bhutto’s conviction but are wary of the lukewarm response received during the strike in Sindh a couple of days ago, they said.

Meanwhile, a second corruption trial of former Pakistan premier Benazir Bhutto has resumed days after she was convicted to five years in jail in a separate graft case.

Both Ms Bhutto and her jailed husband face charges that they awarded a monopoly gold import contract to a Dubai-based company, ARY Gold, for personal gain from 1993 until Ms Bhutto was dismissed in 1996, officials said yesterday.

The brief hearing before a two-judge accountability Bench of Lahore High Court issued summons to the prosecution witnesses and fixed the next hearing on April 28.

According to the charges, the contract gave ARY Gold the right to all bullion imports into Pakistan.

Laden’s group ‘has chemical arms’

CAIRO, April 20 (DPA) — A jailed member of Egypt’s second largest militant organisation the Al-Jihad, believes that the coalition of Muslim extremist groups led by Saudi dissident terrorist Osama bin Laden possess biological and chemical weapons, the prestigious international Arab newspaper Al-Hayat has reported

Ahmad Salama Mabrouk said in an exclusive interview with Al-Hayat, conducted during the final session of a military trial of 107 militants in Cairo on Sunday, that Laden’s group had plans to use these weapons in several attacks against US and Israeli targets.

The London-based daily said yesterday that Mabrouk, who was handed over to Egypt last year by the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, revealed that Laden’s “International Islamic Front for Fighting Jews and Crusaders” had planned about “100 operations” to be launched against US and Israeli interests in different parts of the world.

The USA has officially accused the Saudi millionaire, who openly calls for attacking US troops stationed in the Gulf, of masterminding the bombings last August of two US Embassies, in Kenya and Tanzania.

Mabrouk told the paper, which is known for its contacts among Muslim militant groups, that the details of the terror campaign were registered on a computer programme which was confiscated by the CIA last September when he was arrested in Azerbaijan.

The Egyptian militant, who was speaking in the military court room before the sentences were announced, said those plans must have been altered by the Afghan-based leadership after his detention.

Mabrouk received on Sunday, along with 11 other members of the Al-Jihad, whose exiled leader is closely associated with Laden, a life sentence with hard labour for plotting to carry out attacks against economic targets, officials and the police in Egypt.

UN plea to Taliban

UNITED NATIONS, April 20 (PTI) — The UN Security Council has urged the Taliban militia in Afghanistan to reconsider its decision to withdraw from the peace talks and return to the negotiating table.

The Taliban decided to pull out of the UN-mediated talks for resolving various issues, giving almost a fatal blow to the peace process in war-torn Afghanistan and severely restricting the world body’s role.

But the council members told the Taliban that there was no alternative to a peace settlement.

Where children commit atrocities
from Peter Moszynski in Freetown

SIERRA Leone’s conflict has unleashed atrocities on a scale shocking even by Africa’s standards. Many of the savage attacks on civilians have been perpetrated by the thousands of abducted children who have been forced to join the rebel Revolutionary United Front.

Mary, who runs an interim care centre for demobilised children, knows first-hand the problem: she and her family were abducted by the rebels, and her young son and her two nephews taken away to fight.

When she escaped, she began searching for him. She found that he had been taken prisoner by the Nigerian-led Ecomog intervention force, and traced him to a hospital where he was recovering.

He and dozens of other newly demobilised children now live with her at the centre. Some are former combatants and others camp followers, those who served as cooks and porters or foraged for food for the rebels. The youngest ex-combatants are under 10; the followers as young as two.

The rebels tried to make the children bond with them by forcing them to take part in attacks on civilians. After involvement in such barbarities, they were often too frightened to try to escape, or felt they would no longer be accepted back by their communities.

Another former prisoner said: “When [the younger children] commit these atrocities, for them it’s like a game. They’re not fully aware of the consequences.’’

Most of the children, however, are initially reluctant to fight and have to be forced. One said: “We were sent to the forest for training. At first I refused but they beat me and threatened to kill me, so I had no choice. When the time came for an attack they injected us with cocaine. When they give these drugs you become fearless — you believe nothing can harm you.”

The government too has used children in combat. In return for a package of military assistance worth (pounds sterling)10m from Britain, it has agreed to stop using anyone younger than 18.

But UNICEF said: “Acceptance of the principle is one thing, implementation is another. How do you make sure those principles are enforced? Children don’t have birth certificates.’’ One rough test for a child’s age being used by child protection officers is whether he or she has wisdom teeth.

Sierra Leone’s irregular militia, the Kamajors, and its local civil defence units also appear to be using under-age soldiers.

Helping such children recover from the trauma of combat is not easy. The first step is to ensure they are demobilised. RUF child soldiers captured by local people or militias are frequently lynched.

Several hundred children have been demobilised from the army and militias. Recently more were freed from the rebels by UN observers, or captured by Ecomog and handed over to the UN.

Next, the children need rehabilitation, preferably within their families. UNICEF works to help the children’s communities forgive them.
— The Guardian, London

German Parliament opens at Berlin

BONN, April 20 (PTI) — The Reichstag in Berlin became the seat of the German Parliament again, 66 years after Adolf Hitler used a fire that gutted the majestic building to seize power.

The 669-member Federal Parliament (Bundestag) held a day-long symbolic session yesterday, shortly after the renovated 105-year-old building was declared open, signalling the first major step in the government’s plan to move from Bonn to Germany’s pre-war capital by the end of this year.

The reopening of the Reichstag, where Hitler is believed to have set foot on three occasions, comes 10 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, symbolising the unification of East and West Germany.

Boy survives 17-storey fall

HONG KONG, April 20 (AP) — An eight-year-old boy plunged 17 storeys but landed alive, conscious with only some broken bones after he hit four clothes drying racks that broke his fall, newspapers reported today.

Leung Man-Chun landed on a canopy just above ground level and was hospitalised with a broken arm and leg but no life-threatening injuries.

The police described his survival as a “miracle escape,” according to accounts in several Hong Kong newspapers.

His three-year-old sister, Kit-Ying, told the police the two had been playing at their home in Hong Kong’s suburban new territories when the boy stood on a toy car to open the window grille. The boy was peering outside when he lost his balance and plunged.

Willi Stoph dead
BERLIN: Former East German Premier Willi Stoph, who was dropped as a defendant in a manslaughter trial for killings at the Berlin wall because of illness, has died at age 84. Stoph died on April 13 in Berlin following a long illness, said Hanno Harnisch, spokesman for the former-Communist Party of Democratic Socialism, the successor party to the former East German Communists.

Nap costs millions
LONDON: A cat lost a British bus company a $ 40,000 contract after falling asleep on a fax machine and sending confidential information to a rival firm, The Telegraph reported. Rigger, a stray adopted by Boldon Executive Coaches, settled down for a snooze on the machine, releasing details of the firm’s closed bid for a contract with a local education authority by pressing the “send” button as she curled up, reported the London newspaper on Monday. — DPA

Leonardo Dicaprio
LONDON: Hollywood heartthrob Leonardo Dicaprio was forced to swim for his life in shark-infested waters off Thailand when the boat he was in started to sink, The Sun newspaper reported on Tuesday. In a clear case of life imitating art, the American star of the blockbuster ‘‘Titanic’’ had to leap into the ocean last Friday after a monsoon whipped up high waves, flooding the boat and dragging it out to sea, the newspaper said. Dicaprio, his British co-star Tilda Swinton and crew members spent 30 minutes in the water before being rescued. — Reuters

Composer dead
BEIJING: Composer Cao Huoxing, whose best-known song, ‘‘without the Communist Party there would be no new china’’, was known to hundreds of millions of his countrymen, has died at age 75, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Cao, who died in the northern port city of Tianjin on Friday, was born to a farm family in Hebei, the province where Tianjin is located. He started composing at age 16 and wrote more than 1,500 songs. His most famous one became a standard of party propaganda and was widely taught and sung. — AP

Lawnmower odyssey
PHILADELPHIA: Brad Hauter is following his dream of driving across the USA alone, at 16 kph, on a Yard-Man tractor lawnmover. On Sunday, Hauter slipped his helmet over his head, adjusted his orange vest and started the mower’s engine, then he waved goodbye and took to the highway. He is attempting to raise $ 100,000 for charity and get in the Guinness Book of World Records with a lawn tractor journey across more than 7,200 km. According to Guinness regulations, he must ride seven days a week on the same tractor until the journey is complete. The current record is 5,600 km. — AP

Girl ‘pilot’
LINZ (Austria): A girl, aged 17 landed a one-engined plane safely in Linz, Austria, on Sunday after the pilot, her father, died at the controls, the Austrian press agency APA reported. The TB-10 aircraft on a flight from Vilsbiburg in southern Germany was approaching the runway at nearby Vilshofen when the father collapsed with a heart attack. The girl, who does not have a flying licence, radioed for help and two aircraft were sent up to escort her to an airport in neighbouring Austria with a longer runway. — DPA

Row over hair
WELLINGTON: Research giving clues to the origins of man is being suppressed because of an international row over the ownership of a strand of hair, The Dominion newspaper reported here Tuesday. Biochemist Erika Hagelberg had used the latest DNA testing methods to analyse a strand of hair taken 90 years ago from an Andaman tribesman living on islands in the Bay of Bengal. She found the hair closely matched those of the Khoisan, bushmen and Hottentots of South Africa.— AFP