UNP says no to Chandrika
COLOMBO, Dec 28 — Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s efforts to form a national government with the Opposition United National Party (UNP) in a bid to find a political solution to the ethnic problem has suffered a major setback with the UNP family rejecting her invitation.

Ambon toll rises to 50
JAKARTA, Dec 28 — Christians and Muslims battled through the night in the ravaged eastern Indonesian island of Ambon, and the police and residents today said the number of dead from two days of sectarian violence could exceed 50.

Sudanese crisis resolved
KHARTOUM, Dec 28 — A senior official of Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party has said a breakthrough has been achieved in reconciling President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and his rival Islamist Parliament Speaker Hassan al-Turabi.

Discovery returns to earth
CAPE CANAVERAL, Dec 28 — Space shuttle Discovery and its seven-member crew returned to earth after fixing the Hubble space telescope during a Christmastime mission that gave NASA badly needed success.

Kohl loses ground
BERLIN, Dec 28 — Helmut Kohl faced fresh attacks today from fellow Christian Democrats who increasingly view the former Chancellor as a political burden because of his refusal to help clear up a party funds scandal.

Fujimori to run again
LIMA, Dec 28 — Peru’s President Alberto Fujimori has said he will run for an unprecedented third term in April’s elections in a bid to consolidate his free market reforms and tough anti-rebel policies of the last decade.

Chechen President’s HQ destroyed

MOSCOW, Dec 28 (Reuters) — Russian Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev said today Russian forces had made a breakthrough in their drive on Grozny, but local media reported that determined rebels were using mines and oil fires to defend the Chechen capital.

Troops and pro-Moscow Chechen paramilitaries launched a concerted attack on the city, the last rebel stronghold in lowland Chechnya, four days ago. They quickly ran into stiff resistance from about 2,000 rebels thought to be holed up in city basements and sewers.

“Russian units and the Chechen militia have achieved a breakthrough in Grozny,’’ Interfax news agency said, quoting Mr Sergeyev. It did not say what the breakthrough was.

Interfax said over the past 24 hours several raids had been made against rebel bases in the mountains and had destroyed the headquarters of President Aslan Maskhadov.

Mr Sergeyev, in an interview with the Krasnaya Zvezda army newspaper, said there was virtually no chance Moscow would negotiate with Maskhadov, whom he accused of siding with “terrorists”.

“It is impossible to draw a line between him and the terrorists,” Mr Sergeyev said. “That is why I think that the real possibility of talks with Maskhadov is close to zero. And Maskhadov himself seems to understand it.”

Mr Sergeyev also declined to name city districts under Russian control, but said Russian forces were methodically closing in on the city centre from several directions.

It said the rebels had ignited oil-filled trenches throughout the city and thick smoke-screens, created by the blazing oil, prevented troops taking aim accurately.

The agency said bad weather also complicated things for the attacking forces. Early today, thick fog grounded all warplanes, Russia’s main trump card in Chechnya.

South of Gronzy, troops were pushing rebels deeper into the mountains, Interfax said. It quoted officers in the eastern front as saying troops had encircled several mountainous villages including Nozhai-Yurt and Zandak and were tightening the noose around Vedeno.

Meanwhile, Russia’s first deputy chief of the armed forces, Gen Valery Manilov, said Russian troops, fighting Chechen rebels in Grozny, have reached areas two km from the city centre.

“In the north, northwest, northeast and south our troops are steadily noving towards the centre and...are standing at distances ranging between two to three km and four to five km from it,” he declared.

UNP says no to Chandrika

COLOMBO, Dec 28 (PTI) — Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s efforts to form a national government with the Opposition United National Party (UNP) in a bid to find a political solution to the ethnic problem has suffered a major setback with the UNP family rejecting her invitation.

A combined meeting of the UNP’s Working Committee and Parliamentary Party yesterday decided on an emphatic “no” to Ms Kumaratunga’s oral invitation to Mr Ranil Wickramasinghe to join her new government.

Ms Kumaratunga had urged Mr Wickramashinghe to join her government after she defeated him in last week’s presidential poll.

Even as it rejected the President’s proposal to join the government, the UNP unanimously decided to support any “meaningful steps” taken by her government to solve the ethnic conflict, a party spokesman said.

The UNP’s decision is very much in line with Mr Wickramasinghe’s recent remarks that he preferred to extend support to Ms Kumaratunga’s peace moves from outside the government and at the same time preferred to wait till he received any concrete proposals from her.

Meanwhile, even as the latest development has taken place, senior UNP leaders have openly admitted to the local media that several party MPs were currently engaged in secret discussions with the ruling People’s Alliance to cross over to the government.

Five dissident UNP members left the party last month and formed an alternative UNP group in Parliament, two of them being made ministers in Ms Kumaratunga’s cabinet. Media reports here said 10 more UNP MPs were ready to cross over.

A senior minister and confidante of Ms Kumaratunga yesterday said the government was planning to table a bill in Parliament to permit members to cross over to other parties. It would enable the disgruntled UNP MPs to overcome all legal hurdles while crossing the floor.

Greenwich to keep electronic time

LONDON, Dec 28 (DPA) — The historic status of Greenwich as the home of time is to be assured for the new millennium under a scheme to make the London site the global timekeeper for the internet, The Times reported today.

The paper said British Prime Minister Tony Blair will this week announce the creation of Greenwich electronic time — known as GET — to act as an international standard for all electronic commerce.

The move will provide a common 24-hour clock for internet traders and users around the world in the same way that Greenwich mean time has helped travellers to keep time since 1884. Then the world’s 25 leading nations agreed the need for a single time reference based around a uniform nautical and astronomical 24-hour day.

GET is set to be launched on New Year’s Day by the Prime Minister and Patricia Hewitt, the E-Minister at the Department of Trade and Industry.

One senior Whitehall source said: “because people measure time from GMT, we are pretty confident this is going to take off. It is a stroke of genius. It plays to the Prime Minister’s whole thing about making Britain the best in the world for E-commerce, and it goes nicely with the millennium and Greenwich.”

The project will give all Internet companies and consumers a single time standard.

All E-mail messages and E-commerce transactions already carry a “time stamp” based on co-ordinated universal time — the modern equivalent of GMT. But most computer clocks have software which converts E-mail and message dates into local time. Supporters of GET argue that although this is suitable for personal E-mails, it is not workable for worldwide electronic trading.

As more companies move online, purchase and delivery times have to be exact across all time zones to avoid legal and logistical problems.

Forrester Research, an American research firm involved in the GET initiative, estimates that online business and consumer trade in Europe will more than double every year for the next four years.

Prisoners’ release: talks fail

JERUSALEM, Dec 28 (AFP) — Israelis and Palestinians failed to resolve a dispute over the release of Palestinian prisoners and a long-overdue Israeli withdrawal from parts of the West Bank, Palestinian negotiator Saef Erakat told AFP.

Mr Erakat said yesterday that he met chief Israeli negotiator Oded Eran one-on-one in a west Jerusalem hotel for a couple of hours.

“Unfortunately, we din’t reach any agreement on any of the issues,” he said.

Israel had announced on Sunday that it would release more than 24 prisoners as a gesture of goodwill to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for the Muslim holy month of Ramzan.

“Some 33 prisoners from the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem will be released. That is a very small number and we are not happy,” Mr Erakat said.

“Eleven Palestinians have between two and six months of their sentence left. They were going to be released soon anyway,” he added.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak met Mr Arafat in secret on December 21 to try to resolve the dispute over both the prisoners and the withdrawal.

A senior Palestinian official, who asked not to be named, told AFP after that meeting that the two leaders had “made progress”.

“The Palestinians accepted the Israeli maps for a second redeployment and the Israelis promised to meet Palestinian demands on the two remaining redeployments according to the agreements as signed”, the officials said, without specifying the demands.

Ambon toll rises to 50

JAKARTA, Dec 28 (Reuters) — Christians and Muslims battled through the night in the ravaged eastern Indonesian island of Ambon, and the police and residents today said the number of dead from two days of sectarian violence could exceed 50.

The latest violence erupted in Ambon, provincial capital of the Moluccas, on Sunday after reports that a 14-year-old Muslim boy had been run over by a vehicle driven by a Christian.

“We still can hear shooting and explosions. The situation is tense. There is a blackout in a number of areas,” a policeman told Reuters on the phone from Ambon, 2,300 km east of Jakarta.

At least 38 persons have died in the renewed fighting, some of the fiercest violence to hit Ambon, already battered by almost a year of communal violence. But residents said the death toll would rise.

“The fighting hasn’t stopped since last night. I am sure the death toll could reach more than 50 this afternoon,” said a Church source. Another source said at least 20 Christians had been killed in the violence.

Sudanese crisis resolved

KHARTOUM, Dec 28 (Reuters) — A senior official of Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party has said a breakthrough has been achieved in reconciling President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and his rival Islamist Parliament Speaker Hassan al-Turabi.

Chairman of the consultative council of the National Congress Party Abdel Rahim Ali yesterday said it had been agreed that Bashir should remain chairman of the party while Turabi should continue as secretary-general.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the council, which brought Bashir and Turabi together for the first time since Bashir declared a three-month state of emergency and dissolved parliament on December 12.

Discovery returns to earth

CAPE CANAVERAL, Dec 28 (AP) — Space shuttle Discovery and its seven-member crew returned to earth after fixing the Hubble space telescope during a Christmastime mission that gave NASA badly needed success.

Air force Col Curtis Brown landed the shuttle at 0001 GMT (0531 IST today) at Kennedy Space Center.

“Welcome back to earth after a fantastic flight,” said mission control’s Scott Altman.

NASA passed up the first opportunity for the shuttle to land at 2218 GMT (0448 IST) because of concerns about crosswinds on the runway. Instead, Discovery made the 13th night landing in the history of the shuttle programme.

During the eight-day trip, Discovery travelled 5.15 million km.

Kohl loses ground

BERLIN, Dec 28 (AP) — Helmut Kohl faced fresh attacks today from fellow Christian Democrats who increasingly view the former Chancellor as a political burden because of his refusal to help clear up a party funds scandal.

Deputy party chief Christian Wulff insisted that “nothing can be covered up, kept secret” after Kohl admitted to receiving up to 2 million marks ($ 1 million) in apparently illegal campaign funds while he was the party boss.

Fujimori to run again

LIMA, Dec 28 (Reuters) — Peru’s President Alberto Fujimori has said he will run for an unprecedented third term in April’s elections in a bid to consolidate his free market reforms and tough anti-rebel policies of the last decade.

Polls show voters could re-elect the two-term leader, the hemisphere’s longest-serving democratically elected President, despite economic downturn, widespread human rights criticism and opposition accusations his candidacy is unconstitutional.

6 killed in plane crash
BOGOTA: Six persons died in the crash of a Colombian military transport plane that vanished last week in stormy weather over the country’s north-west jungle, authorities said. — Reuters

Party shows door to former PM
BUCHAREST: Former Romanian Prime Minister Radu Vasile has been expelled from his party after attempting to divide the group and “resorting to blackmail,” its president announced today. Vasile “gravely infringed party discipline after he created a dissident movement within the National Farmer Christian-Democratic Party (PNP-CD) and resorted to blackmail,” said Ion Diaconescu. — AFP

Hitchcock century’s best director
PARIS: British master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock has been chosen as the most influential film director of the century in a French opinion poll. Hitchcock, director of such classics as “Dial M For Murder”, “Rear Window” and “Psycho” , won 33 per cent of votes from 1,016 French people surveyed by French daily newspaper Le Parisien. — Reuters

Minister found in stolen vehicle
ATHENS: Greek Customs officers caught Albanian Interior Minister Spatak poci in a stolen Mercedes last week, the police revealed. The poci had been about to start a two-day official visit to Greece when his large black Mercedes was impounded at the Kristallopygi Frontier Post, the sources said yesterday. — AFP