30 air raids on Dagestan, command posts destroyed

MAKHACHKALA, Aug 19 (AFP) — Russian warplanes pounded the Muslim rebel-held village of Tando in Dagestan overnight as the death toll from 13 days of fighting climbed to 40 among Russian and Dagestani forces, Russian officials said today.

Moscow also vowed to step up its campaign to root out Muslim rebels from Chechnya who seized mountain villages in Dagestan as part of a drive to set up an Islamic state in northern Caucasus.

“Intensive military actions will continue in the coming days,” said Russian Deputy Interior Minister Igor Zubov at a Moscow news conference, adding that government forces were planning “large-scale operations on the entire territory of Dagestan against the terrorists.”

Mr Zubov said fighting in Dagestan had left 40 dead and 160 injured among Russian and Dagestani forces, up from 29 dead.

But the Russian official put the number of casualties on the rebel side much higher at between 400 to 500 dead.

Russian aircraft carried out some 30 bombing raids overnight, pounding positions held by the rebels at Tando in Botlikh district bordering Chechnya, the press centre of the Russian Interior Ministry in Makhachkala, the Dagestani capital, said.

Several ammunition depots, a fuel storage facility and two command posts of the Islamic fighters were destroyed during the air raids.

Eight Russian soldiers were killed and 20 injured yesterday in an apparent failed raid on Tando, the largest single day death toll announced by Russian officials since the violence began nearly two weeks ago.

TOKYO: Japan today supported the Russian military action to quell an Islamic insurrection in Dagestan province, saying such activities in the name of Islam were reprehensible.

“Assuming that the situation in Dagestan is a Russian domestic issue, the Government of Japan regards such activities in the name of Islam as reprehensible,’’ Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said in a statement.

West Asia talks break down on PoWs

JERUSALEM, Aug 19 (AFP, Reuters) — Talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have broken down over disagreements on the release of Palestinian prisoners, the Office of Prime Minister Ehud Barak has announced.

Israeli chief negotiator Gilad Sher and his Palestinian counterpart Saeb Erakat split up without fixing a date for a continuation of their discussions yesterday.

“Differences arose over the issue of prisoners, and at this stage Israel does not intend to modify its criteria to determine which prisoners can be released,” the office said in a statement.

Under the Wye River accord signed in October, Israel was to release 750 Palestinian detainees. A first group of 250 were set free in November, but 150 of them were common criminals, whereas the Palestinian authority is demanding that political prisoners be released.

The previous hardline government of Mr Benjamin Netanyahu objected to the release of prisoners “with blood on their hands”, the expression used for those with direct or indirect involvement in attacks on Israelis. It also refused to release members of Islamic movements opposed to peace with Israel.

At yesterday’s talks, Mr Erakat demanded that the next release should cover only political prisoners, “in accordance with the Wye agreement,” Palestinian sources said.

“When Mr Erakat heard the Israeli position, the Palestinian delegation left the meeting,” they added.

However, speaking after talks with Mr Sher on Tuesday, Mr Erakat said the Israeli side had accepted the principle that only political prisoners should be freed.

But in a rare gesture, Israel freed the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner from an Israeli jail.

Khalil Sa’Adi Al-Ra’ei, 45, a member of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah Movement, was released from prison after serving 25 years of a life sentence for murder of an Israeli police officer, a prisons’ spokeswoman said.

Palestinians had long demanded his release but Palestinian Minister of State for Prisoner Affairs Hisham Abdel-Razik said his release was unrelated to the latest deadlock.

Window on Pakistan
An economy burdened with debt

TWO issues these days dominate the pages of some of the serious newspapers and magazines in Pakistan. One naturally is Kashmir. It is a staple food. Many think that without Kashmir, Pakistan’s existence is incomplete. But now many newspapers, including Jang, the Pakistan Times and, to some extent, Nawa-e-Waqt, are devoting a lot of space to the scary economic situation there. The Friday Times, a weekly edited by the legendary Najam Sethi (remember his being picked up and charged with spying for India by the ISI, and when protests in Pakistan became loud the government quietly released him, a total volte face) has lent its powerful voice to the debate on Kashmir.

To what extent Pakistan has got the Kashmir issue internationalised is summed up by Mr Khaled Ahmed, a senior journalist. He wrote in a lengthy article, “Why is Pakistan not favoured in its dispute? Under the Eighth Amendment, Pakistan has hurt itself. Politicians in Islamabad thought that the laws against the minorities and women in general were Pakistan’s domestic affair. They continued to do politics with Shariat, allowed separate electorates to continue after Gen Zia and did nothing to defuse the cruelty of the Gustakh-e-Rasul law which targeted Christians.”

Mr Khaled Ahmed also argued, “reports on the cruelty in Pakistan through law-making offended the world. Even the Islamic world was not pleased with Shariat. Egypt was put under challenge by the assassins of President Anwar Sadat masquerading as mujahideen in Peshawar. Terrorists, gathered in Pakistan to fight the jehad in Afghanistan, flew on false passports to destinations in the West and the Arab world to blow up buildings and massacre innocents. The militias of the jehad dealt in drugs and general coercion in Pakistan. The world has seen the mujahideen as terrorist thugs led loose on India.”

In this context, Mr Khaled said, “the PML government seeks to attract support in the West by positioning the fundamentalist threat to the state: if you don’t support us, Pakistan will become rogue and fall to nuclearised mullahs. The Western support that comes to Pakistan as a result is stop-gap and tactical. The West despises Pakistan for what it does internally but has to support it for negative reasons. It dreads Kashmir falling to Pakistan to get itself stripped of all human rights under Shariat. It is attracted to India’s pluralism under the Indian Constitution and would rather ‘correct’ India’s ‘behavioural misconduct’ in Kashmir than take Kashmir away from it.”

The writer suggested, “Pakistan must ‘internationalise’ its image as a pluralist democracy. There is no gain in ‘revolutionising’ Pakistan in isolation when the ‘revolution’ means curtailment of human rights and an increase in suicidal jingoism. One must bear in mind that the 1948 UN Security Council resolutions were awarded to Pakistan because it was Jinnah’s Pakistan, where the minorities were guaranteed equal status and women were not made legally half of men. Had Pakistan the same laws on the statue book in 1948 as it has today, the resolutions would have favoured India instead.”

On the country’s economic condition The Pakistan Times carried an article by Prof M. Rashid, an economist who quoted a report from Social Development Centre. The centre is headed by Dr Hafiz Pasha, a former Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission and is known for its fair assessments. Here it is what it says,” The economy is burdened with domestic and foreign debt which has created vast distortions. When the economic situation deteriorates, the solutions found get anchored in Western aid, loans and investment. This is a pattern which has evolved over the years, turning Pakistan into a debt-ridden, dependent country. Finance Minister Ishq Dar has rushed to Washington, for the release of $280 million which was due for disbursement in August. It is the fourth tranche of the loan which was granted earlier. The International Monetary Fund is demanding an upward revision of petroleum prices by 15 per cent, extending rates on the services sector, imposition of tax on agricultural income and so on before agreeing to the disbursement of $ 280 million. Pakistan’s Finance Minister has no option but to agree to accept the conditionalities attached to the loan. So much for his claim to the freedom of choice in fiscal affairs.”

A tailpiece: Mr Yusuf Pathan, Chairman of the Balochistan Public Service Commission, and its other members were sacked by the Pakistan Prime Minister for having accepted Rs 2.5 million as bribe from each of the 18 candidates interviewed for the posts of magistrate. He had issued signed slips for the bribe money. How about the members of some of our own commissions? Not that foolish, indeed.
— Gobind Thukral

USA: Time for Milosevic to leave

WASHINGTON, Aug 19 (PTI) — The USA has said it will persist with its efforts aimed at removing Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and continuing to meet the country’s opposition leaders to “hasten” that move.

Stating that the USA had been meeting Yugoslavian opposition leaders, State Department spokesman James Rubin told reporters that “we will continue meeting them and urging unity because that will hasten the day when the people of Serbia can get the freedom and integration with Europe that they deserve.”

Accusing Mr Milosevic of being an indicted war criminal, Mr Rubin said: “His time has come to leave and this must happen to improve the lot of the people of Serbia.

“In our view, something of the order of 70 per cent of the people have already made it clear that they want to see Milosevic go”.

“Without an indicted war criminal at its head and with democratisation, the Serbian people can look forward to the support of the international community and much greater opportunity to be part of Europe they richly deserve to be part of,” he added.

Extension for Starr probe

WASHINGTON, Aug 19 (Reuters) — A three-judge panel has voted to allow independent counsel Kenneth Starr to continue his Whitewater investigation of President Bill Clinton.

In a vote of 2 to 1, the U.S. Court of appeals said yesterday: “We have issued an order declining to terminate the office of independent counsel in this matter.’’

Senior appellate judge Peter Fay and US Circuit judge David Sentelle, the two judges who voted in favour of keeping the investigation alive, said Mr Starr’s investigation had been ‘unusually productive, having resulted ... in the impeachment proceeding against a President,’’ 24 indictments and 16 convictions.

The dissenting judge, judge Richard Cudahy, said the President already had been impeached and acquitted. “This is a natural and logical point for termination, since it is not clear how additional measures against the principal subject of the investigation could be pursued.’’

In the court opinion, filed soon after the judges took their annual vote on whether to terminate the independent counsel investigation, he said, “an endless investigation ... can serve no possible goal of justice and imposes needless burdens on the taxpayers.”

The independent counsel law under which Mr Starr was appointed expired at the end of June, but the investigation has not been closed.

The decision comes after a report that said Mr Starr would leave his post after five years and spending more than $40 million before his office issues a final report, which is required under the independent counsel law.

Saddam’s deputy
VIENNA: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s second-in-command (2IC) left Austria after a Vienna official filed a criminal complaint against him for human rights abuses in Iraq. Human rights groups accused Austria of disregarding its international obligations by allowing Mr Izzat Ibrahim, Deputy Chairman of Iraq’s ruling Revolutionary Command Council, to leave rather than face arrest. He flew to Amman from Vienna aboard a Royal Jordanian Airlines flight that was delayed by a bomb threat on Wednesday. — AP

Father’s stew
MOSCOW: The police has arrested a 16-year-old boy who killed his father, carved up the body, boiled it into a stew and fed it to his cats, a newspaper reported on Wednesday. The boy had become frustrated with his father’s drunken abuse and murdered him with a meat axe, said daily Moskovsky Komsomolets. It said the police had found pieces of human thigh in the cats bowl, and in the refrigerator were plates with chunks of human flesh and a pot of broth. —Reuters

Brion James dead
LOS ANGELES: Character actor Brion James, who played the villain in a succession of thrillers but was known of camera for helping wean young Hollywood actors from drugs and alcohol, has died at age 54, friends said. James, who played the blood-thirsty “Replicant” chased by Harrison Ford in “Blade Runner,” suffered a heart attack on August 7 at his home in Malibu. — Reuters

Slippers as reward
CREMONA (Italy): An honest lavatory attendant who found and dutifully returned 50 million lire (about $ 28,000) has been offered her reward — a simple pair of slippers worth a few dollars. Alice Pozzali said. “Thanks, but no thanks” to the man who lost his cash; a vendor who sells shoes and slippers, La Stampa reported on Wednesday. He had offered her a gift certificate for a pair of slippers. —DPA