Anwar ‘hid papers’ abroad
KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 16 — The Malaysian police is probing claims that sacked Deputy Premier Anwar Ibrahim stashed secret government documents abroad, as outraged politicians demanded action against his “treasonous” act, news reports said today.

Anti-Taliban forces seize two districts
PESHAWAR, Aug 16 — Anti-Taliban forces captured two districts and a provincial capital in eastern and western Afghanistan last night from the dominating Islamic militia, the Afghan Islamic Press news agency said today quoting opposition sources.

Plea for multi-polar world
MOSCOW, Aug 16 — India has said New Delhi, Moscow and Beijing can jointly contribute to the establishment of a new multi-polar world and announced that a declaration on the Indo-Russian strategic partnership would be signed during the next summit between leaders of the two nations.

Kosovo mass grave exhumation

Russia alerts Caspian Sea Fleet

MOSCOW, Aug 16 ( DPA) — Russia’s Caspian Sea Fleet was placed on alert today as fighting in the Caucasian republic of Dagestan escalated, Interfax news agency said.

A battalion of paratroopers from the Dagestan town of Buynasks had been sent to reinforce troops fighting Islamic insurgents in the Botlikh region near the Chechnya border.

The agency said the insurgents commander, Shamil Bassayev, had announced that his forces would mount a counter-offensive in the next three days.

In the Volga delta city of Astrakhan to the north, the Caspian Sea Fleet was testing its combat-readiness and beginning exercises on orders from here.

Dagestan authorities were meanwhile, quoted by Russian media as saying that two Polish women working for the Polish Academy of Science had been abducted in central Dagestan.

Russian Government sources said nearly 10,000 civilians had fled the region since the fighting flared up 10 days ago, while the Duma defence committee said 18,000 Russian troops and militiamen were involved.

Meanwhile, Russian forces, Dagestani police and armed volunteers were said to be entering what they saw as the final phase of driving the rebels out.

Russia’s designated Prime Minister, Mr Vladimir Putin, has said the Muslim rebel insurgency would be put down by the end of the month.

The rebel leaders are seeking to establish an independent Islamic state of Dagestan which they want to unite with Chechnya. Chechnya would then have access to the Caspian Sea in what is seen as a campaign to seize the entire northern Caucasian region from Russia.

Meanwhile, President Boris Yeltsin today ruled out imposing a state of emergency in Russia and predicted his candidate for Prime Minister would be approved by the Lower House of Parliament “calmly, without shouting”.

“There will be tough measures in the North Caucasus and we will restore order there in Dagestan and other regions,’’ Russian news agencies quoted Mr Yeltsin as saying. “But once again, I state it firmly as President — there will be no state of emergency.’’

Mr Yeltsin was speaking after ten days of fighting between federal forces and Islamic rebels in the southern region of Dagestan, and ahead of a vote in the Lower House of Parliament, to confirm Russia’s fifth Prime Minister in 17 months.

The 46-year-old Mr Putin, nominated by Mr Yeltsin a week ago after the abrupt sacking of Sergei Stepashin’s short-lived government, today met the Communists and their allies.

Mr Putin, has already met most Duma leaders, and they have indicated they will not oppose him.

Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said his faction, the biggest in the Duma, would want to know how Mr Putin would deal with a situation when people were living off a pittance, the conflict in Dagestan and with a sharp rise in petrol prices.

But the Communists seem to have little reason to reject the tight-lipped Mr Putin who, like his predecessor, has strong links to security bodies.

Over 400 rebels killed

MAKHACHKALA (Dagestan), Aug 16 (AFP) — Some 400 Islamic insurgents have been killed in 10 days of fighting in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan, an Interior Ministry official said today.

The official said Russian forces also destroyed three tanks and seven anti-aircraft rocket launchers.

The ministry spokesman refused to provide any information on the number of Russian soldiers killed in the battle.

Talks on Palestine deadlocked

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip, Aug 16 (AFP) — Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have failed to reach an agreement on a timetable for further Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank.

The negotiating teams headed by Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat and Israeli prime ministerial envoy Gilad Sher had started their meeting at 5:00 p.m. in the Gaza Strip on the Palestinian side of the border yesterday.

“We continue to have differences on a calendar for the Israeli redeployment,” Mr Erakat told journalists after a second meeting in 24 hours with Sher.

The first meeting took place for three hours in West Jerusalem late on Saturday. Mr Erakat said a joint commission would be set up to look into the issue of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

“We agreed that each party present lists of prisoners and we will meet again on Tuesday after a meeting by the commission to discuss the issue,” he said.

The Palestinian minister in charge of prisoners Hisham Abdel Razek said Israel last year freed a first contingent of 250 prisoners, but only 86 of them were political prisoners.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak briefed his government before the resumption of the talks, noting that he had instructed the army to prepare for the implementation of the second phase of the Wye River Accord on September 1.

Mr Barak also reiterated his hopes to merge part of the withdrawal agreement with the so-called final status talks on a permanent settlement.

Beijing weighing military option

BEIJING, Aug 16 (PTI) — China has launched a project under which top official think-tanks have been asked to look into the military options that it could adopt to pressurise Taiwan over the issue of statehood, a media report said today.

Research bodies under the Central Military Commission and the General Staff Department of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have also been asked to find out how the USA and other Western powers would react if Beijing implements the military option against Taiwan, the report in a Hong Kong newspaper said.

The elite Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is co-ordinating the project being conducted jointly by several foreign affairs institutes under various ministries, it said quoting a Chinese scholar who refused to be identified.

Relations between Beijing and Taipei worsened ever since Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui recently redefined cross-straits relations as “state-to-state”.

China, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province, has rejected Mr Lee’s definition saying it amounted to “splitting the motherland”.

Chinese scholars were also sent to the USA recently to collect opinions from Sinologists in America on the matter, and reports from Washington last week said they had sounded a warning to their American counterparts on the Taiwan issue, a source told the newspaper.

Several Sino-US affairs experts told the newspaper that they believed Washington would come to Taiwan’s defence in certain ways, such as through the supply of more advanced weapons and intelligence information, if it faced Chinese aggression.

Chinese sources told the paper that such warnings to the USA through scholars “were quite normal”.

Anwar ‘hid papers’ abroad

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 16 (DPA) — The Malaysian police is probing claims that sacked Deputy Premier Anwar Ibrahim stashed secret government documents abroad, as outraged politicians demanded action against his “treasonous” act, news reports said today.

Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi directed the police to immediately investigate claims by an Anwar aide that Anwar had kept at least six boxes of classified government documents overseas.

Mohamad Ezam Mohamed Nor, Anwar’s former political secretary, claimed last week that the documents were provided by sympathetic top civil servants and contained proof of corruption by government leaders.

Anwar, who is now serving a six-year jail term for corrupt practices, had also made similar threats that he had secret documents against the government, following his sacking last September.

He has since filed three police reports of corruption against Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad and other leaders, and submitted what he claimed were private government documents and letters to prove his allegations.

However, Mohamed Ezam’s statement unleashed an uproar among Mr Mahathir’s ruling party politicians, who slammed the action as unheard of in Malaysian politics and unbecoming of a man who had been tipped to rule the country.

A Deputy Minister, Mr Ibrahim Ali, suggested the government enact a treason act which would provide death sentence for offenders as well as for those who discredited the nation abroad.

Mr Mahathir said the claims by Anwar only showed that he had conspired while in office to topple the government.

Under Malaysia’s Official Secrets Act, classified government documents cannot be published or handled by the unauthorised. Offenders can be jailed, and journalists have been fined in the past.

Anti-Taliban forces seize two districts

PESHAWAR, Aug 16 (DPA) — Anti-Taliban forces captured two districts and a provincial capital in eastern and western Afghanistan last night from the dominating Islamic militia, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) news agency said today quoting opposition sources.

“We have started a new offensive in a few provinces and captured Khewa and Daulatshah districts and the provincial capital of Chakh Charan”, a spokesman of the opposition Commander Ahmad Shah Masud told the private news agency.

Spokesman Engineer Toryali said the opposition wanted to put pressure on the Taliban militia, which was carrying on a campaign against Masud positions in the Shomali region, north of Kabul.

Khewa is situated about 25 km north of Jalalabad, capital of Ningarhar province, and Daulatshah in Laghman province. Chakh Charan is the capital of Ghor province.

Toryali said the Taliban attacked Masud forces on the Ishkamish front line in northern Takhar province last night but were repulsed.

Plea for multi-polar world

MOSCOW, Aug 16 (PTI) — India has said New Delhi, Moscow and Beijing can jointly contribute to the establishment of a new multi-polar world and announced that a declaration on the Indo-Russian strategic partnership would be signed during the next summit between leaders of the two nations.

“In the context of recent events in Kosovo, India, Russia and China independently and separately reached almost similar assessment of the situation,” New Delhi’s Ambassador to Moscow S.K. Lambah said in an interview published in the Russian Government daily, “Rossiskaya Gazeta”..

Pointing out that the three nations together represented almost half of the world’s population, he said: “Their views and decisions can contribute to the establishment of a truly multi-polar world and ensure peace, prosperity and stability.”

He, however, ruled out the formation of any strategic triangle among the three countries and said: “Independent India has propounded and followed the policy of non-alignment and always opposed the formation of blocs or military alliances”.

In an interview to another daily, “Pravda” he said a declaration on the strategic Indo-Russian partnership would be signed during the next summit.

Kosovo mass grave exhumation

RAKOS, Serbia, Aug 16 (Reuters) — UN war crimes investigators have begun exhuming a mass grave in Kosovo believed to contain around 100 ethnic Albanians who may have been executed in a Serbian prison in reprisal for NATO air raids.

A Spanish forensics team hired by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has exhumed and autopsied 16 bodies on a grassy hill in northwest Kosovo.

S. Korean amnesty
SEOUL: About 1,742 prisoners, including 56 political detainees, walked free from prisons across South Korea o Sunday in an amnesty to celebrate the country’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule. Seven long-term political prisoners were among those freed in the amnesty which also pardoned 1,112 other convicts, including the once-jailed son of former President Kim Young-Sam. — AFP

Pop concert a big draw
TIRANA: More than 50,000 people packed central Tirana’s central square last evening to hear the most heavily attended western pop concert ever held in Albania. The fans, mostly young people, had come also from nearby cities to watch the Swiss pop group D.J. Bobo perform in a concert organised by Swiss based open heart cultural organisation and the city of Tirana. Western pop music was banned in Albania until 1991. — DPA

Rape on videotape
KUALA LUMPUR: A Malaysian man was jailed for 33 years for raping two underaged girls after his shocked wife turned him in when she found videotapes of the rapes, news reports said on Monday. Ng Liang Neng, 35, was also ordered to be whipped 23 times by a judge in northern Alor Setar town on Sunday after he pleaded guilty to raping and sodomising the two girls, aged 12 and 15 years, at his house last September and this February. He had videotaped the rapes which occurred after he lured the girls to his house on the pretext of doing housework. — DPA

UK flying squad
LONDON: Britain is drawing up plans for a “flying squad” of police officers ready to answer international calls for help, the Home Office said on Monday. The government plans to have a standby force ready to fly out at a moment’s notice to help peacekeeping and train foreign police. — AFP