UK sets up probe panel
LONDON, Aug 6 — Two leaders from Britain’s ethnic minorities have been appointed to head a commission to investigate the problem of forced marriages within immigrant communities, the government announced today.

Japan calls for arms cuts
HIROSHIMA, Aug 6 — Tens of thousands gathered in this western Japanese city today, the 54th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb, to mourn those killed and renew calls for the elimination of nuclear arms.

Rebels free 2 hostages, list demands
Protest against ‘betrayal’ in pact

FREETOWN, Aug 6 (AP) — Angry former junta soldiers kidnapped more than two dozen U.N. Military observers, aid workers, regional intervention force members and journalists, witnesses have said.

The soldiers released two of the hostages last night with demands for food, medicine and political influence.

The freed hostages, Reuters reporter Christo Johnson and an unidentified civilian member of the U.N. Military observer team, walked 10 km from the isolated village where they were held to a highway checkpoint and picked up by regional intervention force soldiers.

The newsman, speaking after his release in a telephone interview, said the rebels promised to release the remaining 28 hostages once the demands were met.

The hostages were being held in a thatched building at Magbini village, 88 km east of Freetown, he said.

“We were well treated, although at first we were held at gunpoint,” Mr Johnson said.

The freed hostages were sent to Freetown with letters for Sierra Leone President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, the U.N. observer mission and U.S. officials.

Meanwhile, more than 40 western and other hostages, including five British soldiers, began a third day of captivity in Sierra Leone today after their captors released two hostages.

One of the hostages Christo Johnson, described the hostage-takers as former soldiers loyal to a military junta that ousted elected President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in 1997 and said that they felt neglected by a July 7 peace deal, which gave them a role in the government.

They demanded food and medicine and the release of their commander, former military ruler Johnny Paul Koroma, who they said was being held against his will by their allies in the mainstream Revolutionary United Front rebel movement.

He said the hostage-takers told their captives they had nothing to fear and that all were in good health. They called for Kabbah, RUF leader Foday Sankoh (who is in Togo) and Liberian President Charles Taylor, to secure Koroma’s release. Taylor has been accused of backing the RUF.

Fighters from the rebel alliance, which came close to taking the capital Freetown in January, stand accused by victims and officials alike of conducting a reign of terror in which they have hacked the hands and arms of civilians.

Oppn draft on interim govt

BELGRADE, Aug 6 (DPA) — Opponents of President Slobodan Milosevic today put forward a draft plan on forming an interim government in Serbia covering the country’s political parties and alliances.

The paper provides a legal basis for forming a new government which could be entrusted with steering the country out of the current political crisis. The independent economic think-tank “Group 17” said in Belgrade.

The plan was drawn up a group of experts with no particular party allegiance and has already been endorsed in principle by leading democratic parties in the Opposition.

Mr Milosevic’s ruling coalition has predictably rejected the draft plan which stipulates that the President’s resignation from office is an essential condition of implementation.

Opposition see the new government as overseeing the introduction of political and economic reform during a 12-month period as a precursor to free and democratic elections in Serbia.

The interim administration would be headed by a consensus candidate of all parties and be given a free hand to choose a cabinet. The leadership of the Serbian Orthodox Church was one of the partners consulted.

The independent group of experts has urged reformist forces in the Belgrade Parliament to attend a protest rally for August 19, which also happens to be a holiday for the orthodox church.

The rally is designed to encourage the public to show its desire for political change and to lend support to the idea of an interim administration. Opposition parties have already pledged their attendance.

Pro-India mood sweeps USA
By A Balu

NOTORIOUS India-basher US Republican Congressman Dan Burton may have cited a technical error in explaining to the House of Representatives his withdrawal on Tuesday of his amendment seeking to deny American development aid to India, but the real reason was the unmistakable mood of an overwhelming majority in support of New Delhi. His volte face may be likened to the man who fell flat on the mud floor and proudly claimed the mud had not stuck to his moustache.

It has been almost an annual ritual for Mr Burton to bring abortive amendments to the Foreign Operations Bill to eliminate or reduce development aid to India. Only last year, he did not indulge in the futile exercise. In 1997, his amendment was rejected by the House by a vote of 342 to 82. Mr Burton’s penchant for anti-Indian move in the Congress had been mainly influenced by the now moribund Khalistani groups in the USA.

Mr Burton apparently made a miscalculation while drafting his amendment as part of the complex legislative appropriations. The amendment was drafted in the form of a “limitation”. He expressly said in his measure that India would get no more than $ 33.5 million in developmental assistance. Apparently, the problem was that Mr Burton thought development assistance included child support, which, in fact, is in a separate account. What he did in his calculation was to add development assistance with child support, which came to $ 44.7 million. Therefore, he probably felt that his limitation of $ 33.5 million was a 25 per cent cut of the $ 44.7 million. But the actual allocations in the appropriation were $ 28.7 million for developmental assistance and $ 16 million for child support. Because the Burton measure was specifying a dollar amount under the development assistance category ($ 33.5 million) it, in effect, was increasing the budget for India’s development assistance for the Clinton Administration budget.

The Burton retreat should be a matter of great satisfaction and gratification for New Delhi not because of the assurance of the modest development aid from the USA, but more so because it confirms the growing pro-Indian mood in the Congress. Mr Burton himself acknowledged that pro-Indian American lobby had organised so overwhelmingly a force against him.

Democratic Congressman, Mr Gary L. Ackerman, a leading member of the House International Relations Committee, has been spearheading in recent weeks a campaign on Capital Hill, highlighting the provocative acts of war by Pakistan and India’s “exceptional conduct” during the recent Kargil aggression from across its border.

According to Mr Ackerman, the withdrawal of the Burton Amendment marks the third victory in recent weeks for pro-India American opinion. First was the tough resolution on the Kargil situation in the House International Relations Committee. Second was the defeat of the Goodling Amendment which was also against India because of its voting record (against the USA) at the United Nations, and thirdly, Mr Ackerman said: “We have overwhelmed the perennial India-bashing measure.”

Mr Ackerman said in a statement issued after the House debate on the Burton Amendment to the Foreign Operations Bill for fiscal year 2000: “I am pleased to see a strong pro-India sentiment sweeping Washington, especially on the Hill. And rightly so. Our cumulative efforts in the India and Indian American caucus is beginning to yield positive and real results. Tonight’s result is an example of that trend.”

A feature of the House debate on the Burton Amendment was that besides several Democrats, some prominent Republicans spoke in favour of India. Among them were the Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Mr Benjamin Gilman, and the Republican Chairman of the Asia Pacific Sub-Committee, Mr Doug Bereuter.

Letters of Kennedy, Oswald released
from Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON, Aug 6 (Reuters) — Jacqueline Kennedy wrote to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev nine days after her husband’s assassination, saying that the US policy of “restraint’’ would continue, newly released Soviet documents have showed.

“You and he were adversaries, but you were also allies in your determination not to let the world be blown up,’’ Ms Kennedy wrote to Mr Khrushchev on December 1, 1963, after the November 22 murder of President John F. Kennedy.

“I know that President (Lyndon) Johnson will continue the policy my husband believed in so deeply — the policy of self-control and restraint — and he will need your help,’’ she wrote.

The text of Ms Kennedy’s note was one of about 40 documents provided by Russian President Boris Yeltsin to President Bill Clinton at a summit in Cologne, Germany in June, the latest in what historians have called archival diplomacy.

The documents, released to reporters by the US National Archives, included a copy of a hand-written letter from alleged Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, asking desperately for Soviet citizenship in 1959, and several messages detailing US and Soviet concerns over political fall-out from speculation about Oswald’s connections to the Soviet Union.

The text of Ms Kennedy’s note was provided as part of the translation of a coded top secret telegram sent back to Moscow by Soviet envoys in Washington.

The original note was not provided. The available version was translated back into English from the Russian translation of Ms Kennedy’s words.

The cable that included the note’s text urged Mr Khrushchev and his wife to reply with a personal letter and possibly an unofficial invitation for a summer vacation by the Black Sea.

UK sets up probe panel

LONDON, Aug 6 (AP) — Two leaders from Britain’s ethnic minorities have been appointed to head a commission to investigate the problem of forced marriages within immigrant communities, the government announced today.

In one prominent case this year, a 17-year-old Sikh girl was returned to London after a judge ruled that she had been kidnapped by her parents and taken to India to be married.

“The rights of these young women who might be forced into a marriage are being abused and the state cannot stand by and allow that to happen,” Home Office Minister Mike O’Brien said.

Baroness Pola Uddin, a native of Bangladesh, and Lord Nazir Ahmed, a native of Kashmir, were appointed to lead a wide-ranging consultation among Britain’s “Asian” community, which is mainly from the subcontinent.

“We’ve been calling for an inquiry on this for some time,” said Hanana Siddiqui, a leader of the Southall Black sisters who was appointed to the commission.

Lord Ahmed drew a distinction between forced marriages and the tradition of arranged marriages.

Nanny’s sentencing postponed

SAN DIEGO, Aug 6 (Reuters) — A California judge postponed sentencing a British nanny found guilty of shaking a 13-month-old toddler to death, saying he had been “tortured” by the case and wanted to consider options that included not sending the woman to jail.

Judge William Kennedy, indicating he was not happy at the prospect of sentencing Manjit Basuta to the mandatory minimum of 25 years in prison, yesterday said that he believed that under the Constitution he could place the 44-year-old Indian-born British citizen on probation.

The case has drawn comparisons to that of British nanny Louise Woodward, convicted in 1997 of killing a baby boy in Massachusetts by shaking him violently. The judge in that case reduced the verdict to manslaughter and sentenced Woodward to “time served” — 279 days.

Ms Basuta was convicted on June 14 of assaulting a child and causing his death. A jury heard evidence from a witness that the day care centre operator grabbed Christopher Oliver Smith on March 17 of last year, shook him violently and then banged his head on the floor when he refused to have his diaper changed. The kid died the next day.

Japan calls for arms cuts

HIROSHIMA, Aug 6 (Reuters) — Tens of thousands gathered in this western Japanese city today, the 54th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb, to mourn those killed and renew calls for the elimination of nuclear arms.

Demands for arms reduction took on a grim significance amid mounting tensions in Asia after a Chinese missile test earlier this week, rising friction between China and Taiwan, and fears that North Korea may be preparing to test-launch a new missile.

Incense spiralled from altars in central Hiroshima’s Peace Park, near the site of the atomic bomb explosion on August 6, 1945, as people clad in black made offerings of flowers and lit candles.

At today’s ceremony another 5,071 names were added to the lists of the dead, bringing the total to 2,12,116.

Dissident jailed
BEIJING: Chinese dissident She Wanbao, a member of the outlawed China Democracy Party (CDP), has been jailed for 12 years for subversion, a Hong Kong human rights organisation said on Friday. Mr She (41) was sentenced on Wednesday by the intermediate court in Guangyuan in southwest Sichuan province, the Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said. He was a founding member of the CDP in Sichuan. —AFP

Amnesty granted
JOHANNESBURG: A panel investigating apartheid-era abuses has granted amnesty to a former Cabinet minister and 16 other persons for one of the most brazen attacks against opponents of white rule: the bombing of a church headquarters. The August 31, 1988, attack on the headquarters of the South African Council of Churches heavily damaged the downtown Johannesburg building, injuring several people. —AP