Ignition facility to simulate H-bomb blasts
WASHINGTON, Dec 21 — Faced with cost overruns and dust problems, the USA is planning to go ahead with the national ignition facility to simulate hydrogen bomb explosions without the actual testing of the bomb.

Russia captures Grozny airport
MOSCOW, Dec 21 — Russian forces were battling their way into the Chechen capital Grozny and mountain gorges in the south of the breakaway region today in what could be a decisive phase in their three-month campaign.

UK scotches rumours on citizenship
ISLAMABAD, Dec 21 — This is a message for British visa seekers who heard rumours that anyone in the millennium dome in London on December 31 will automatically get British citizenship or become a British resident: forget it.

NATO chief warns war criminals
PARIS, Dec 21 — NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson today warned that the Atlantic alliance-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) would soon bring more war criminals to justice.

Accept Kashmir dispute as reality: Pak

ISLAMABAD, Dec 21 (PTI, Reuters) — Pakistan has rejected India’s assertion that Islamabad should take confidence-building measures first before stalled bilateral talks could be resumed and said New Delhi has to accept the Kashmir dispute as a “reality”.

Accusing India of not being interested in resuming the talks, Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmed said here yesterday, that “there has never been any trust between Pakistan and India. The trust had been shattered the day India sent its troops into Kashmir 50 years ago.”

He said Indian leaders should admit the “reality of Kashmir as a dispute which could not be wished away”.

Rejecting the possibility of talks in the near future, Mr Ahmed said: “Let’s talk about the real issues instead of talking about talks.”

Pakistan’s military ruler today dismissed speculation that he would reconvene Parliament to give his two-month old government some domestic and international legitimacy.

General Pervez Musharraf, Chief Executive of the government, a Reuters report from Karachi said, which seized power on October 12, also denied media reports that he had made contact with deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif or members of his Pakistan Muslim League (PML) Party.

“There is nothing like that. It is all nonsense,” General Musharraf told reporters when asked to comment on local media reports of a proposal to restore the National Assembly, which he suspended shortly after taking power.

General Musharraf was talking to reporters after a ceremony to conduct a French-made Agosta 90-B Submarine at a naval base near Karachi port.

Pakistan and France signed a contract for three Agosta submarines under a technology transfer contract in 1994, and the first arrived this month.

Agosta 90-B submarines are conventionally powered attack subs used against other subs and surface vessels, as well as for intelligence-gathering and special missions, such as commando transfers.

Newspapers had reported that some PML leaders had proposed to the army that if Parliament was restored, they would drop Mr Sharif as party leader, choose a successor and cooperate with the military.

An AP report, meanwhile, has said deposed Premier Nawaz Sharif has accused the military of destroying evidence in a case of treason and suspended hijacking, which the army has lodged against him and six of his former colleagues.

No charges have been formally filed in the case against Mr Sharif, who has been accused of refusing an aircraft returning Gen Pervez Musharraf to land in Karachi on October 12 — the day the military took over in a bloodless coup.

Yesterday the prosecution told the anti-terrorist court, which was to hear the case, that there was no incriminating evidence on any of the black boxes aboard the aircraft and that the recordings would not be used as evidence in the case.

But Mr Sharif in an interview with AP before going into the court accused the army of erasing the recordings, which he said would have vindicated him.

Meanwhile, preliminary hearings against Mr Sharif were adjourned until January 12 to give the court time to respond to a defence challenge to its jurisdiction.

“The case is now fixed for January 12 for the order on the issue,” Special Judge Justice Shabir Ahmed said.

The judge said his anti-terrorism court would remain closed for the winter and Eid festival holidays from December 25 to January 10.

Revival of Pakistan Parliament ruled out

ISLAMABAD, Dec 21 (PTI) — Pakistan’s military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf today rejected the possibility of restoration of the suspended Parliament and termed as “nonsense” the speculations that his regime was holding secret talks with deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

General Musharraf, who toppled the Sharif government in an army coup on October 12, told reporters in Karachi that his government was working “smoothly” on its seven-point agenda and there was no room for restoration of the suspended Assemblies.

Asked about media reports that his government was holding secret talks with the detained Premier Nawaz Sharif, General Musharraf said: “This is all nonsense. This is not true. The case against the previous prime minister is in the court. I must not talk to him, nor am I (doing so).”

Communists stay ahead in Duma poll

MOSCOW, Dec 21 (AFP) — The Communist Party stayed marginally ahead of the pro-Kremlin Unity bloc with 90 per cent of the votes counted, the Central Election Committee said today.

Communists garnered 24.55 per cent of the vote compared to 23.88 per cent for Unity, a party which was launched less than three months ago to bolster President Boris Yeltsin’s allies in the state Duma, Interfax reported, quoting the Commission.

The Fatherland-All Russia (OVR) faction led by ex-Premier Yevgeny Primakov stood third with 11.98 per cent of the vote.

The reformist Union of Rightist Forces (SPS) picked up 8.63 per cent, the pro-Kremlin Zhirinovsky bloc 6.18 per cent, and the liberal opposition Yabloko faction 5.94 per cent. The three parties were the only other groups to cross the 5 per cent threshold to win a seat in Parliament.

Half of the Duma’s 450 seats are decided by results of the party list section of the ballot, the other 250 seats being distributed through local single-mandate elections where independent candidates fare best.

The results have dramatically boosted the stature of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who has openly backed the Unity faction, as presidential hopefuls vie for position to succeed Boris Yeltsin in June’s presidential poll.

They have also heavily impaired Mr Primakov’s standing. He had hitherto been seen as the Kremlin vote front-runner until Mr Putin’s political emergence.

The Russian Prime Minister’s fortunes are closely linked to the federal force’s progress on the battlefield in breakaway Chechnya, where troops have encircled the rebel capital, Grozny.

Epidemic feared in Venezuela

LA GUAIRA (Venezuela), Dec 21 (AP) — A paratrooper broke into tears as he pulled a thick wad of identification cards from his pocket.

“They’re all dead,” he said referring to the victims of the widespread floods and mudslides that have killed thousands of Venezuelans in the country’s worst natural disaster in this century. Official estimates of the death toll range from 5,000 to 20,000.

The paratrooper, Col Mario Arvalaez, Commander of an elite unit that is leading the rescue effort, gazed at the tarmac where the wounded were being whisked from helicopters yesterday and wept for the dead.

“When you stop in a moment of quiet, you begin to feel the pain,” he said. The smell of death was everywhere along the northern coast, the area most heavily hit on Wednesday when mud, boulders and water came crashing down a mountain that separates the capital of Caracas from the Caribbean Sea.

As paratroopers and sailors rushed to evacuate survivors yesterday, authorities feared an outbreak of epidemics among children suffering from diarrhoea and dehydration.

For the fifth straight day, desperate and hungry survivors in the port city of La Guaira wandered in search of food and water, both in short supply. Security forces shot into the air to keep back looters.

Ignition facility to simulate H-bomb blasts

WASHINGTON, Dec 21 (PTI) — Faced with cost overruns and dust problems, the USA is planning to go ahead with the national ignition facility to simulate hydrogen bomb explosions without the actual testing of the bomb.

The seven-storey facility at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California, The Wall Street Journal notes, is designed to ring 192 powerful beams of light to bear on a small coin-sized target of frozen hydrogen isotopes for about 20 billionths of a second.

The beam would be powerful enough to implode the target almost instantly, creating the world’s first “ignition,” the term used by physicists for a minuscule thermonuclear explosion.

The project, for a laser the size of a football stadium, with its critical component installed in a hollow aluminium sphere, was originally to cost $ 1.2 billion.

However, the dust problem — one speck of dust can jam up the works — has proved difficult to solve and it is now expected to cost at least a few hundred million dollars to resolve.

The facility was originally scheduled for completion in the spring of 2000. Now it is expected to take longer, the journal said.

Testing of a hydrogen bomb will be barred under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) if the Senate after the next elections ratifies the treaty.

The world’s biggest and most powerful laser will have three purposes — to give US weapons scientists, who will no longer be permitted to conduct nuclear tests under the CTBT, a way to simulate hydrogen bomb blasts; to provide a new window for studying the thermonuclear fires that light the sun and stars; and to aid research on harnessing such reactions to generate a safer, cleaner form of nuclear power.

The project has been made possible by Russian technology for a key part, The Wall Street Journal revealed.

The project threatened to grind to a halt because it seemed impossible to produce mineral crystals large enough to meet the needs of the giant laser’s optics system.

However, that key problem was solved when the labortory found Natalia Zaitseva, a scientist from Moscow University, who taught the American scientists at the facility her technique for growing suitcase-sized crystals.

Mass-producing 150 tonne of near — flawless glass for the laser’s amplifiers had been thought by some to be an insurmountable hurdle, but, according to the Energy Department officials, two giant glass companies are now close to achieving the goal.

To beat the dust problem, the scientists had a hangar-sized clean building built outside the NIF. Its ventilation system was designed to filter the building’s air 300 times per hour.

Russia captures Grozny airport

MOSCOW, Dec 21 (Reuters) — Russian forces were battling their way into the Chechen capital Grozny and mountain gorges in the south of the breakaway region today in what could be a decisive phase in their three-month campaign.

Russia yesterday said it had seized the main civilian airport in the north of the capital. It had already secured control over Grozny’s Khankala military air base last week.

Both sides today reported heavy fighting in Serzhen-Yurt, mouth of the Vedeno gorge, one of two main access routes into the rocky Caucasus mountains to the south, Europe’s highest range, where Chechen fighters have set up rear bases.

Russia’s army denied the latest report accusing its troops of killing civilians. The BBC broadcast vivid testimony yesterday and today of residents Alkhan-Yurt village, west of Grozny, who said rampaging Russian troops had killed 41 persons there.

UK scotches rumours on citizenship

ISLAMABAD, Dec 21 (Reuters) — This is a message for British visa seekers who heard rumours that anyone in the millennium dome in London on December 31 will automatically get British citizenship or become a British resident: forget it.

The British High Commission in Islamabad took the unusual step of denying such rumours, which were rife this week among Pakistanis hoping to live in the UK.

The multi-million dollar millennium dome opens to the public on the night of December 31 and will be the highlight of official celebrations marking the advent of a new century.

NATO chief warns war criminals

PARIS, Dec 21 (PTI) — NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson today warned that the Atlantic alliance-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) would soon bring more war criminals to justice.

The organisation was determined to carry out its mandate in a firm and even-handed manner, he said.

Commenting on the arrest of Bosnian Serb General, Stanislav Galic, in Bosnia-Herzegovina by the SFOR yesterday, Lord Robertson said persons indicted for or involved in war crimes, who were still at large, should realise that they too would be brought to justice.

Granny spy won’t be prosecuted
LONDON: Melita Norwood, the 87-year-old British “granny spy”, said to have passed crucial nuclear secrets to Moscow before and during the World War II, will not be prosecuted, it was stated on Monday. Any prosecution against Norwood, who was exposed as a spy only recently in papers published by KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin, would clearly fail, Britain’s Solicitor-General said. — DPA

Award makes cop a millionaire
VANCOUVER: A city police officer became a millionaire when a provincial court judge awarded him a bag full of money he found in a city park. But constable Mel Millas was warned on Monday not to spend the more than $1 million for six years in case the true owner came forward. — AP

Mad cow-brain diseases link
WASHINGTON: A laboratory experiment gives powerful new evidence that an infectious protein that causes mad cow disease also causes a new type of fatal human brain disease that has killed 51 persons in Europe. The study, appearing on Tuesday in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, makes clear that people in Britain who developed a new type of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease could have gotten it from eating meat from cattle infected with bovine spongifor encephalopathy, the so-called mad cow disease. The brain disease has not been found in the USA. — AP

First Japanese POW dead
TOKYO: Kazuo Sakamaki, who was taken prisoner of war (POW) right before Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941, has died of an illness, a veterans group said on Monday. He was 81. Sakamaki, the first Japanese to be taken prisoner in World War II, died on November 29, but his death was not announced at the request of his family. — AP

Cards for unruly New Zealand MPs
WELLINGTON: The Speaker of New Zealand’s new Parliament introduced a soccer-style system of yellow and red cards to the House on Monday to keep unruly MPs in line. “I have here a yellow and a red card which I hope I won’t have to use,” newly appointed Speaker Jonathan Hunt told the first sitting of Parliament since the November elections. — Reuters