More Chinese missiles deployed near Taiwan
WASHINGTON, Feb 11 — China is reportedly strengthening its nuclear missile deployment opposite Taiwan and favouring a theatre missile defence system in the country, the Pentagon has said.

Russians watch ‘missile city’
MOSCOW, Feb 11 — The dawn of Wednesday saw Russians snatching a glimpse at the real missile power their country possessed. For the first time, Moscow TV trained its cameras on a sprawling underground city, the main centre where the intercontinental missiles are housed.

More flights to Malaysia
KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 11 — India has agreed in principle to increase the number of flights between India and Malaysia and also open up new destinations for Malaysian Airlines in the country.

G-8 panel divided on aid to India

TOKYO, Feb 11 (PTI) — The expanded group of eight (G-8) task force was today divided over whether the World Bank should resume financial assistance to India suspended since New Delhi’s nuclear tests last May.

During a meeting of the task force here, the USA proposed a gradual unfreezing of the aid suspension in view of the fact that India had expressed willingness to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) when Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott visited New Delhi recently, Kyodo news agency said.

However, some participants, including Japan, expressed reservations on the proposal, saying they needed to ascertain how India would contribute to the nuclear non-proliferation regime, it said.

The meeting welcomed the restart of bilateral talks between India and Pakistan and said confidence-building efforts between the two neighbours, which carried out tit-for-tat nuclear tests last May, should be encouraged.

It asked the two neighbours to take every opportunity to make progress in their bid to improve ties, Japanese officials briefing reporters said.

Kyodo quoted a source in the Japan’s Foreign Ministry as saying that the G-8 industrialised nations — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US— could decide as early as this month to resume their loans to India in an effort to create a favourable environment for India’s early signing of the CTBT.

At the gathering, participants welcomed the readiness expressed by India and Pakistan to sign the CTBT by September this year, Kyodo said.

At the same time, they agreed to continue urging the two countries to sign the treaty as they have intended, and strictly control exports of machine parts of weapons of mass destruction.

The meeting was held to discuss ways to prevent India and Pakistan from further developing nuclear weapons.

The meeting at Japan’s Foreign Ministry was attended by senior officials from the G-8 nations, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Ukraine, South Korea and the European Commission. South Korea took part for the first time in the meeting, the third of its kind.

The group was established by G-8 foreign ministers on Japan’s initiative when they gathered in London last June after India and Pakistan’s nuclear tests last May.

Clinton trial
3 GOP senators to vote for acquittal

WASHINGTON, Feb 11 (Reuters) — Three US Senate Republicans have broken ranks and said they would keep President Bill Clinton in office as Senators held a second day of closed-door deliberations in his impeachment trial.

While the vote to convict and remove Mr Clinton is certain to fall far short of the 67 necessary, the announcements yesterday by GOP Senators Jim Jeffords of Vermont, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and John Chafee of Rhode Island raised the possibility that neither of the two impeachment counts would even attract a bare 51-vote majority.

“Absent the proof that I find necessary to justify the removal of a President, I will vote to acquit on both articles,” Mr Chafee told reporters.

Mr Jeffords said six or seven of the 55 Senate Republicans might oppose both articles of impeachment.

A less than majority vote in favour of the perjury and obstruction of justice charges would be a symbolic blow to the Republican-led House of Representatives’ impeachment drive, which has been hammered by Democratic critics for being politically motivated.

“Failure to get 50 votes undermines the credibility of the entire impeachment process,” Democratic Senator Robert Toricelli of New Jersey told reporters.

PTI adds: President Bill Clinton is likely to emerge unscathed in the impeachment trial which is expected to be wrapped up tomorrow after the Senate resumed its third day of closed-door deliberations today.

The verdict in the trial, based on perjury and obstruction of justice by Mr Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky case, is almost certain to fall short of the two-thirds majority of 67 votes in the 100-member Upper House, which has 55 Republicans and 45 Democrats.

While the Democrats are expected to stay firmly behind Mr Clinton, three Republican senators have declared that they would not vote for the President’s removal.

While the perjury count is expected to fail by a wide margin, the senators said the obstruction of justice charge might manage about 50 votes.

Meanwhile, a Democratic proposal to censure Clinton seemed to fall short of enough support with Republicans vowing to create procedural hurdles.

The House of Representatives voted to impeach Mr Clinton on December 19 for trying to cover up his affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

India, Pak must have zero N-arms: USA

WASHINGTON, Feb 11 (PTI) — The USA has affirmed that its position “remains that neither India nor Pakistan should possess or deploy any nuclear weapons” and “any number higher than zero” would not be fine.

“The US position on how much is enough is very simple: zero...We’re not going to be in the position of implying that any number higher than zero is perfectly fine with us,” Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott said though he had given an impression earlier that Washington recognised India’s need for a nuclear deterrent.

Enumerating his latest views after his recent discussions in India and Pakistan, Mr Talbott said the leaders of both the countries were working to build support in their countries for steps that would ease concerns about regional nuclear arms race.

He said his latest trip to New Delhi and Islamabad had achieved “enough progress” to warrant planning for a ninth round of talks. Have to work with their parliaments and their parliamentary oppositions. I am convinced both prime ministers are doing so. That means trying to build up political support for a progress of the kind that we believe is very much in their interest as well as ours.”

He said his latest trip to New Delhi and Islamabad had achieved “enough progress” to warrant planning for a ninth round of talks.

Mr Talbott said the USA recognised that “neither India nor Pakistan is likely to abandon its nuclear programme any time soon”, but said Washington had a “clearer sense now of not only what the two prime ministers want to achieve, working with their parliaments, but also a rough calendar on when they might be able to achieve it.”

He indicated that he pressed India and Pakistan during the eighth round of talks to define what they meant when they said that their goal is a nuclear programme that affords them “minimum nuclear deterrence.”

“While in South Asia,” he said, “we had very intense discussions on the need for both countries to translate the phraseology they use, which is ‘credible minimal deterrence,’ into actual policies and doctrine.”

“In this way,” he said, “we and the rest of the world, including their neighbours, will recognise those policies and actions as being consistent with what they have said. This means spelling out such things as whether India and Pakistan will deploy weapons-something the international community opposes-or whether they will store nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles.”

US officials said, meanwhile, that Prime Minister Vajpayee had advanced Indian signature on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty from September to spring, which means in about three months.

Mr Talbott however, did not explain whether he told Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee that the US goal is to strip India of all nuclear weapons eventually while the USA and the other permanent members of the Security Council maintain their nuclear weapons indefinitely.

More Chinese missiles deployed near Taiwan

WASHINGTON, Feb 11 (PTI) — China is reportedly strengthening its nuclear missile deployment opposite Taiwan and favouring a theatre missile defence (TMD) system in the country, the Pentagon has said.

“China has deployed both M-9 missiles, capable of delivering 500 kg payloads over a range of 600 km, and M-11s, which have a shorter range but can carry a larger payload. Both can be fitted with conventional or nuclear warheads,” a Pentagon statement said.

Military experts in the USA have expressed fear that slowly but surely China is preparing for the day when it will take Taiwan if it does not come voluntarily like Hong Kong.

“When that happens, it wants to make sure that the Americans are not able to intimidate China and save Taiwan as they did last time when they sent two aircraft carrier task forces into the Taiwan straits when Beijing began firing missiles over those waters”, they added.

Media is speculating that the White House and the State Department, anxious to salvage the “strategic partnership with Beijing,” does not want the Taiwan missile defence issue or threat to Taiwan raised when preparations are being made in Washington for the visit of Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji in spring.

Meanwhile, China only exports weapons that meet legitimate defence needs, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said today in the wake of a CIA report that warns Chinese and Russian businesses were a leading weapons proliferation concern.

The CIA’s report to Congress this week said Chinese and Russian business and quasi-government entities may be outside the control of the governments and were exporting key technology to such countries as Iran, Syria and India.

Ms Zhang Qiyue, speaking to reporters at a briefing refused to comment on the CIA report saying she had not seen it.

But the spokeswoman said China always took a “prudent attitude” to weapons sales and allowed them only if they enhanced the legitimate defence capability of the recipient countries, did not harm security and stability in the region, and did not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

Will Rushdie be assassinated in India?

NEW YORK, Feb 11 (Reuters) — Indian-born author Salman Rushdie, whose novel “The Satanic Verses” led to an Iranian call for his death 10 years ago this week, writes in the New Yorker magazine that the damage to him is “as a spear in the stomach which somehow doesn’t kill but turns and twists.”

In an article headlined “My Unfunny Valentine”, Rushdie said that since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s order issued on February 14, 1989, he had “met and been inspired by some of the world’s bravest fighters for literary freedom.”

Last year, Teheran formally distanced itself from any attempts to kill Rushdie, but Iranians belonging to various factions have said Khomeini’s fatwa is irrevocable and Islamic hardliners have continued to call for Rushdie’s death.

As recently as Saturday, a conservative Iranian newspaper, the English-language Teheran Times, said Rushdie was likely to be assassinated during a forthcoming visit to India. Rushdie has been issued a visa to visit India — his first since “Satanic Verses” was banned in the country — where he plans to convert a family home into an arts centre.

Viagra impotent against Chinese medicine?

HONG KONG, Feb 11 (AP) — Viagra has hit the stores here, but sales aren’t exactly booming and Chinese medicine vendors have said they are not worried about the modern impotence drug hurting their market for traditional remedies.

“I think Hong Kong people prefer Chinese medicine. Western medicine just cures one aspect and if you use it for a long time, it has side effects,” said one Chinese medicine shopkeeper who gave only her surname, Teng.

Hong Kong health authorities approved Viagra for sale in Hong Kong on Friday and the manufacturer, Pfizer Inc., has rushed to get it into local pharmacies.

The local Cantonese name for Viagra is “wei yi gong,” or literally “great and, moreover iron.”

But several drug stores said yesterday they haven’t found any buyers for the little blue pills that enjoyed sensational sales when they were released in other countries.

That could be in part because men who want Viagra haven’t been able to get to the doctor quickly enough to get a prescription.

Dr Peter Chan, chief of urology and kidney transplantation at Prince of Wales Hospital, said the waiting list at his office was about 20 months for people without life-threatening diseases.

Pfizer hopes to find a big market here. At least 200,000 men in Hong Kong suffer from erectile dysfunction, said Angel Choi, Pfizer’s medical affairs manager. Choi said it was too early for Pfizer to discuss how sales were going in Hong Kong.

But many Chinese men might prefer their traditional potency medicines often using animal parts unseen in western pharmacies but widely available in Hong Kong, mainland China and Taiwan.

Pfizer says Viagra can provide a quicker fix for those who want instant results.

In mainland China, Viagra has not been approved, but hospitals have begun conducting clinical trials. An official at China’s State Traditional Chinese Medicine Bureau brushed off concerns that Viagra could muscle traditional impotence cures out of the market.

“Chinese cures and Viagra each have their own advantages and disadvantages, said the official, who gave his surname as Chen.”

Chinese traditional medicines have fewer side effects,” Chen said.

“Pfizer dismissed its potential rival. People will see it as a different medication totally. The ingredients are different, there’s no scientific proof, that it works,” Choi said.

Black markets for Viagra have sprung up in Asian markets where it is not yet legal.

Russians watch ‘missile city’

MOSCOW, Feb 11 (UNI) — The dawn of Wednesday saw Russians snatching a glimpse at the real missile power their country possessed. For the first time, Moscow TV trained its cameras on a sprawling underground city, the main centre where the intercontinental missiles are housed.

The viewers were told that short- and long-range missiles were in combat-readiness here and could hit pre-determined targets all over the world within seconds after receiving screen signals.

When attacked, Russia could launch a counter-offensive by merely pressing a nuclear button. This will unleash the killer missiles, capable of destroying all incoming short and long-range enemy missiles.

The underground city is the headquarters of the weaponry division of the Russian missile force, now the backbone of the country’s defence, TV announced. Since it is an underground facility, satellites cannot trace it down.

The Centre that contains 2,000 rooms, cabins and offices, is manned by people who keep an alert eye on the panels and screens that keep flashing signals about the movement of incoming missiles.

More flights to Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 11 (PTI) — India has agreed in principle to increase the number of flights between India and Malaysia and also open up new destinations for Malaysian Airlines (MAS) in the country.

Union Civil Aviation Minister Ananth Kumar, who was here on a three-day visit to the country, told a press conference yesterday that among the new destinations that could be explored by MAS were Bangalore, Mumbai, Calcutta and Trivandrum.

“We are giving more flights, better linkages and new destinations,” Mr Kumar said, adding that “shortly bilateral talks at the airline level will take place before discussions at the government level.”

MAS currently operates one flight every day between Kuala Lumpur and New Delhi.

Principal convicted
COLOMBO: A Sri Lankan high court on Wednesday sentenced a school principal and six army personnel, including three army Majors, to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment in connection with the disappearance of 31 students during the army operation between 1988 and 1990. The prosecution had charged that 31 students from a local school were taken into custody by the army for their alleged links with the JVP and were later gunned down in cold blood at a nearby forest. — PTI

Still a princess
AMMAN: The wife of Jordan’s new King Abdallah II, Rania, will for the moment remain a princess instead of becoming a queen, a high-ranking Jordanian official has said, adding that, “it seems that King Abdallah II does not intend for the moment to make his wife a queen, probably out of respect for Queen Noor, the wife of King Hussein, who keeps her title,” Princess Rania (28), born in Kuwait and of Palestinian origin, married the then Prince Abdallah in June 1993, thus earning her title. The couple have two children. — AFP

‘Miracle’ shrine
TOULOUSE: A man incapacitated by multiple sclerosis got up and walked after a visit to Lourdes, according to religious authorities at the Roman Catholic shrine in south-western France. The “medical miracle”, the 66th to go on record at Lourdes, happened 12 years ago, but official church recognition was revealed only on Wednesday after a lengthy verification procedure. The man (51) at the time and unable to walk, recovered hours after a trip to the French pilgrimage town famed among believers for its healing powers. — Reuters

Tyre that speaks
LONDON: Engineers in the USA have designed a new smart tyre that will tell drivers when it is going flat or needs to be replaced, New Scientist Magazine has said. The smart tyre, developed by researchers from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio and the Goodyear Tyre and Rubber Company, uses tiny temperature and pressure sensors with microscopic components. Although Goodyear has already successfully tested the sensor in truck tyres the company has not announced when it will be available in cars. — Reuters

267-member family
ISTANBUL: Ayse Kaymak, a 115-year-old woman from Kahta in central Turkey, has at least 267 reasons to celebrate: namely because she has at least 267 family members, the Turkish news agency Anadolu has reported. Since her birth in 1884, Kaymak has experienced the last three Sultans of the Ottoman empire, the first World War, the republic formation in Turkey 75 years ago, World War II and 56 Turkish governments. I don’t know what illness is. I just cannot see as well as I used to,” Kaymak said. She gave birth to 12 children during her two marriages. — DPA

Exit-Russia fee
MOSCOW: Those with a weak memory, beware: soon you won’t be able to board your flight, train or bus out of Russia unless you produce a bank receipt proving you paid a “border fee” introduced by the Russian Parliament. The unusual bill was initiated by the Border Guards, who hope to use the proceeds to finance their expenses. It has been ridiculed by the media, but still made its way to final passage by the Parliament’s Lower House, the state Duma on Wednesday. — AP

New anti-tank gun
MOSCOW: A Russian company has developed a new self-propelled anti-tank gun, which it claims can pierce any armoured vehicle, a news report said. The 2S25 vehicle is equipped with a 125-millimetre smooth-bore tank gun, said Mr Valery Khvatov, Director of Volgograd Tractor Works company. Despite its name, the company has been building tanks and other armoured vehicles as well as tractors since the 1940s. — AP