Iranians vote in first local poll
TEHERAN, Feb 26 — Iranians voted today in the country’s first local elections, part of ambitious political reforms fostered by President Mohammad Khatami to challenge the centralised grip of the conservative clerical establishment.

Hasina’s husband refused extension
DHAKA, Feb 26 — Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed has refused to approve a one-year job extension for her nuclear scientist husband, the Sangbad newspaper reported.

Air crash: black box found
BEIJING, Feb 26 — Chinese investigators today found one of the two black boxes of the Tupolev-154 passenger plane that crashed in east China’s Zhejiang province on last Wednesday killing all 61 persons on board.

No deviation on Kashmir: Sharif

ISLAMABAD, Feb 26 (PTI) — Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has dismissed opposition criticism of the Lahore Declaration he signed with India saying that his government had not deviated from its stand on the Kashmir issue.

“I would say again that we have not deviated from our stand on Kashmir even a bit,” Sharif told reporters here yesterday.

“A national consensus exists in Pakistan over the issue of Jammu and Kashmir and in our talks with India we have represented the national thinking,” he said.

Urging India to make some progress towards the resolution of the 50-year-old dispute between the two countries, Sharif said “the Lahore Declaration strongly emphasises on the settlement of Kashmir issue and it represents the aspirations and sentiments of the nation.”

Sharif’s landmark summit meeting with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee at Lahore last week and their joint declaration dubbed as “Lahore Declaration” had come in for sharp criticism by right wing religious party, the Jamaat-e-Islami and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

The Pakistani Premier claimed that the summit meeting was in fact a “major step” towards resolution of the vexed issue and asked “is it not something new when the Indian Prime Minister has come to Pakistan to discuss the Kashmir issue.”

LAHORE (ANI): The Punjab government has transferred the entire Lahore administration, including the Commissioner and the Deputy Commissioner, in following widespread protests and attack on diplomats by Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) activists during Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s visit to the city last week.

A notification issued by the Punjab government late on Wednesday, has directed Commissioner, Lahore division, Muhammad Naeem, Deputy Commissioner, Nadeem Hassan Asif, DIG Police Lahore Range Shaukat Javed, DIG Traffic, SSP and SP Administration to report to the Services, General Administration and Information Department.

Such action was widely anticipated following the embarrassment suffered by the Punjab government as a result of the protests in the city staged by the JI. The activists had even threw stones on diplomats cars as they neared the Lahore Fort for the banquet hosted for the visiting Indian leader by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

The government has already extended its apologies to the Ambassadors. The riots during the two-day visit left a police constable dead and 12 injured.

KARACHI (AFP): More than 1,000 activists of Pakistan’s main fundamentalist party demonstrated here on Thursday against the arrest of its supporters during the recent landmark India-Pakistan summit in Lahore. The Jamaat-e-Islami activists chanted ‘’down with Sharif and Vajpayee.’’ The party, which bitterly opposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s meeting last weekend with his Indian counterpart Atal Behari Vajpayee, has launched a protest campaign against the government. ‘’Bye, bye Nawaz Sharif,’’ shouted the bearded activists, vowing to launch an Islamic revolution in Pakistan.

China vetoes UN force extension

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 26 (AFP) — China has vetoed a continued UN peacekeeping force in Macedonia to protest Skopje’s establishment of diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

China, a Permanent Security Council member, yesterday vetoed a UN draft resolution which had proposed a further six-month extension of the UN peacekeeping force in the former Yugoslav Republic.

The veto means that the 1,049-strong UN force in Macedonia should technically be wound up when its mandate expires on Sunday.

Macedonian Ambassador Naste Calovski deplored the fact that China had acted out of "bilateral considerations", which he said was "something which we all consider to be in true contradiction with the ideals of our organisation".

Russia, another Permanent Council member, abstained in the vote while the other 13 delegations cast positive votes.

TAIPEI: Taiwan today blasted China for its veto of a continued United Nations peacekeeping force in Macedonia, saying it had humiliated the world body.

“China’s veto demonstrated its abuse of power and its hegemonic mentality,” said a Foreign Ministry spokesman.

“It has concerned people working for world peace and humiliated the United Nations,” Wu said.

He said that the presence of the UN force since 1995 had contributed to the region’s stability, and he urged China to re-evaluate the situation with a “rational and objective attitude” and to change its decision.

Guatemalan civil war
Army blamed for 2 lakh deaths

GUATEMALA CITY, Feb 26 (AP) — A long-delayed Truth Commission report issued yesterday blames the army for more than 200,000 deaths and disappearances in Guatemala’s 36-year-old civil war.

Of the 42,000 deaths investigated, the commission concluded that the army was responsible for 93 per cent, 3 per cent were the work of the Leftist Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity, and 4 per cent remained unresolved. The report said 29,000 deaths involved summary executions.

“Killers, killers we want justice,’’ a group of protesters shouted at army officers, including that of Defence Minister Gen Hector Barrios Celada, as they entered national theatre here to hear the report.

Inside the theatre, farmers and union groups unfurled huge banners which read: “We have not forgotten,’’ and “never again.’’

Most of the victims were civilians and Mayan Indians, according to the commission appointed as a part of a 1996 peace accord to delve into the atrocities committed during a war that pitted Leftist rebels and their supporters against the army and paramilitary death squads.

“It was clearly genocide and a planned strategy against the civilian population,’’ said Mr Christian Tomuschat, a German who heads the three-member commission. About half the commission’s employees are Guatemalans.

The government forces blindly pursued the anti-Communist fight, without respecting any legal principle or even the most elemental ethical or religious values, reaching in this way a total loss of human morality,’’ Mr Tomuschat said.

They completely exterminated Mayan communities, destroyed their dwellings, livestock and crops in 626 massacres, according to the report which blamed the guerrillas for 32 such massacres.

Rape charge against Clinton

WASHINGTON, Feb 26 (DPA) — The NBC television network on Wednesday aired a controversial interview with an Arkansas woman who says Bill Clinton raped her 21 years ago during his first campaign to become the state’s Governor.

The interview with Juanita Broaddrick was filmed on January 20 during the Senate impeachment trial of Mr Clinton on charges stemming from his affair with Monica Lewinsky. The network delayed the broadcast, saying it needed time to research and verify her claims.

Fighting back tears, she told how, as a volunteer in Clinton’s 1978 campaign, she met the candidate — then Arkansas Attorney-General — for coffee in a Little Rock hotel where she was attending a nursing home conference.

“He kisses me,’’ she said, fighting back tears and using the present tense as she relates the alleged attack. “He starts to bite on my top lip.

“He was just a different person at that moment,’’ she said. “He was just a vicious, awful person.’’

Mr Clinton’s private attorney issued a written statement earlier this week categorically denying the charge. Mr Clinton refused to comment on Broaddrick’s account when queried by reporters yesterday.

NEW YORK (AP): Meanwhile, Monica Lewinsky has recalled feelings of terror during the past year and partly blamed Linda Tripp for having made her feel suicidal, according to TV Guide interviews.

The former White House intern reportedly told Jon Snow of Britain’s Channel Four her despondency was partly the result of actions by Mrs Tripp, who secretly recorded their telephone conversations.

Lewinsky, in another interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters, said she was no longer in love with Clinton, but occasionally felt warm towards him.

She said that she managed to survive the scandal and the trauma attached with it because of support from her family and friends as well as her sense of humour. She described herself as a “loyal person” maligned by the media.

As regard her relationship with Clinton, Monica said it was good while it lasted and very painful in its later stages. She also said that she could not be totally blamed for the affair.

While ABC has said it did not pay Lewinsky for the interview, the former White House intern has reportedly asked Britain’s Channel Four television network for $ 660,000 and 75 per cent of the distribution sales for an interview to be aired in Britain and 32 other countries on March 4.

The book, “Monica’s Story” written by Andrew Morton, Princess Diana’s biographer, will also be released on March 4.

Memorial to UK racist victim vandalised

LONDON, Feb 26 (ANI) — Vandals hurled white paint over a memorial to a black teenager, whose killing by racists and bungled police investigation provoked a national outpouring of guilt about racism in Britain.

Police cordoned off the engraved stone here, where 17-year-old Stephen Lawrence bled to death in 1993 after being stabbed, allegedly by five white youths, as he waited at a bus stop.

An official inquiry into the killing released on Wednesday said London’s police force was riddled with racism. The government pledged an overhaul of anti-discrimination laws and changes to improve policing.

Scotland Yard police headquarters said vandals apparently struck at the memorial on Thursday morning. An empty paint can lay nearby, along side flowers, and Lawrence’s name was obliterated in the attack.

“It is a bitter disappointment, but I am not surprised,” said lawmaker Clive Efford, whose parliamentary district covers Eltham, a mainly white, blue-collar area of South London.

The police immediately began house-to-house calls in the street — in contrast to the night of the killing on April 22, 1993, when the inquiry found police made little attempt to pursue the killers.

Iranians vote in first local poll

TEHERAN, Feb 26 (Reuters) — Iranians voted today in the country’s first local elections, part of ambitious political reforms fostered by President Mohammad Khatami to challenge the centralised grip of the conservative clerical establishment.

At least 300,000 candidates, from clean-shaven aristocrats in ties to bearded Islamic revolutionaries and western-trained yuppies, are vying for 197,000 seats on village, town and city councils in what officials have billed as Iran’s biggest experiment in grassroots democracy and decentralisation.

Officials said 39 million Iranians, aged 15 years and up, were eligible to vote at more than 52,000 polling stations.

In heavily politicised Teheran, some 4,200 candidates are competing for 15 seats. Despite the daunting scale, voters at number of polling places around the capital said they knew in advance exactly how they would cast their ballots.

Hasina’s husband refused extension

DHAKA, Feb 26 (AFP) — Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed has refused to approve a one-year job extension for her nuclear scientist husband, the Sangbad newspaper reported.

Government sources said Sheikh Hasina did not approve an application to Wajed Ali Miah’s contract service despite lobbying by officials.

Mr Miah, who was the chief of the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission, applied for the extension after reaching the stipulated government service retirement age. Several other scientists also applied for the position.

The 57-year-old Miah is well known in Bangladesh as an author and newsmaker, and frequently makes wry comments regarding his wife and Bangladesh politics.

Air crash: black box found

BEIJING, Feb 26 (PTI) — Chinese investigators today found one of the two black boxes of the Tupolev-154 passenger plane that crashed in east China’s Zhejiang province on last Wednesday killing all 61 persons on board.

Aviation experts say the Russian-made plane carried both a flight data recorder and a voice recorder containing, respectively, important flight information such as the aircraft’s velocity and all cockpit conversations between the pilots and the airport tower prior to the accident.

Rescuers have removed all bodies and debris and are now turning to the centre of the scene.

The China Southwest Airlines flight exploded and crashed into a farm field.

Meanwhile, China Southwest Airlines yesterday grounded the four Tupolev-154 passenger planes in its fleet for tests after 61 persons were killed in a crash, the official Xinhua news agency said. The planes will be overhauled and given safety tests, an airline source told the agency.

They will only be allowed back into the air once the cause of the fatal crash is known, he added.

A Tupolev-154 on a domestic flight from Chengdu to eastern city of Wenzhou crashed on Wednesday afternoon just before landing killing the 50 passengers and 11 crew on board.

Ban on Benazir goes
KARACHI: A Pakistani court on Thursday suspended for four months a government ban on foreign travel by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, court sources said. Ms Bhutto was last month banned from leaving the country by the Federal Interior Ministry on the grounds she was facing several corruption cases in courts. But a Division Bench of the Sindh High Court headed by Justice Nizam Hussain Siddiqui suspended the ban. — AFP

Russians on Kosovo
MOSCOW: Fifty-nine per cent of Russians surveyed in a recent poll said they opposed sending Russian peacekeepers to monitor any truce in Kosovo, the Interfax news agency reported. Twenty-four per cent said they would approve of the Russian participation in an international peacekeeping force and 17 per cent said they were undecided. The poll by the Russian Public Opinion Centre was conducted among 1,600 respondents on February 19-22 and had a margin of error of four per cent. — AP

Anwar’s wife joins rally
JITRA, Malaysia: The wife of Malaysia’s ousted Deputy Premier Anwar Ibrahim joined the Islamic opposition party leader here on Thursday for a defiant rally in the rural heartland of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. Some 10,000 supporters gathered for the evening rally in a rice-field in the village of Dok Kesop outside Jitra, about 20 km from Kadah state’s capital of Alor Setar. Anwar’s wife Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, who heads the social justice movement (ADIL), arrived earlier in the day with her 18-year-old daughter Nurul Izzah. — AFP

SC upholds HC verdict
ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court of Pakistan has upheld the Lahore High Court’ s decision to override President Rafiq Tarar order on the functioning of the Ombudsman and asked him to use his “conscious judicial mind” before accepting the government appeal against Federal Ombudsman’s order on public complaint. — ANI

US no to UNESCO
WASHINGTON: The United States of America has said it will not rejoin UNESCO due to shortage of funds to pay its dues. “If the USA rejoins UNESCO, it will have to pay $ 60 million and we have to take that funding from some other agency”, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told the House International Relations Committee here on Thursday —PTI