Lockerbie suspects: Blair to appeal for Mandela’s help
LONDON, Jan 3 — British Prime Minister Tony Blair is to launch a fresh appeal to South African President Nelson Mandela to broker a deal with the Libyan Government over the Lockerbie trial, he said today.

Another UN plane shot over Angola

LUANDA (Angola), Jan 3 (AP) — United Nations officials today pleaded for information and access to a UN-chartered cargo plane shot down by rebel forces, the second UN plane attacked in Angola in eight days.

The C-130 aircraft, with eight people aboard, was hit by anti-aircraft fire 20 minutes after it took off from the city of Huambo yesterday, about 480 km southeast of the capital, Luanda, UN spokesman Hamadoun Toure said.

The plane was carrying four Angolans, two Filipinos, an American and a Namibian, he said. Four of those aboard were crew members, three were from the United Nations and another was working for the World Food Programme. He refused to give their names or further information about them, and said it wasn’t known if there were any survivors.

The plane, chartered from the Transafric company, was headed for Luanda. After it was hit, the aircraft tried to return to Huambo airport, but crashed about 80 km outside the city in an area held by UNITA rebel group, he added.

UNITA rebel officials were not available for comment.

Mr Toure said the United Nations had suspended all flights in the country and was waiting for more information from UNITA before sending a rescue team to the area.

Another UN-chartered C-130 with 14 people aboard including eight UN peacekeepers crashed in the same area on December 26 while flying over an area of fighting between the army and rebels.

The plane that crashed yesterday was carrying UN equipment out of Huambo.

Last week, the UN evacuated dozens of staff members from the city after it was briefly shelled by the advancing rebels. More than 100 UN staff remain in Huambo.

The UN mission in Angola already wants to ask UNITA rebel leaders about government claims that the movement is holding survivors from the earlier crash. A rebel leader told Associated Press earlier yesterday that government claims of survivors were a ploy.

“It went down in flames. I can’t believe there are any survivors,’’ UNITA Secretary-General Paulo Lukamba Gato said by telephone. “They know (the passengers) died, but they want to get some political advantage out of making UNITA look bad’’.

On Friday, army spokesman Brig Manuel Jota said captured rebels had told the government they shot down the plane in the first crash and that an unknown number of survivors were being held at rebel bases near Huambo. He did not say how many of those aboard had survived, and the report could not be independently confirmed.

The Angolan Government has often used the radio to broadcast claims against UNITA that are difficult to verify because of the remoteness of many regions of the country.

The UN Security Council has condemned the rebels for failing to help the the world body determine the fate of the crash victims and has signalled it may take unspecified action against UNITA.

Yesterday, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan reiterated the plea for the government and rebels to assist in rescue efforts.

“All threats to UN personnel in the air and on the ground must cease immediately.’’ Mr Annan said in a statement, urging both sides to observe an immediate ceasefire.

Washington also insisted yesterday that UNITA and the government cooperate with efforts to reach the crash sites.

“The USA is shocked and saddened by the loss of a second UN Observer Mission plane,’’ Acting State Department spokesman Lee McClenny said in a statement.

Reuters adds: A UN spokesman said the aircraft had been evacuating seven UN workers from Huambo, a central city under rebel siege, to the capital Luanda when it was downed around 3 p.m. (1930 hrs IST) yesterday.

Angolan state radio said the plane was hit near Bailundo, a UNITA stronghold, some 80 km north of Huambo, and the fate of those on board was not known. “The aircraft...tried in vain to make an emergency landing at Huambo airport,” it said.

ISI ‘using Taliban’ to keep power in Gilgit

ISLAMABAD, Jan 3 (UNI) — Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is taking help from the Taliban to consolidate Pakistan’s control over Gilgit and Baltistan and also to use these territories for training militants for disruptive activities in Kashmir and Xinjiang (Sinkiang) province of China.

Chairman of Balwaristan (Gilgit and Baltistan) National Front Abdul Hamid Khan, in a letter, has appealed to the United Nations, the Security Council and different countries to restrain Pakistan from its terrorist activities in this northern part of the occupied Kashmir, reports here said.

The letter quotes the central executive committee of the BNF as warning the government against violating the United Nations resolutions by trying to consolidate its illegal occupation of the region with the help of Taliban fanatics.

The committee also warned Pakistan against forcing local young boys to fight in Kashmir and Afghanistan in the name of Islam.

These boys were sent to Kashmir without informing their parents. Many of them died but the police was not willing to register a case against the ISI which sent them out.

It alleged that the ISI had established torture cells in Gilgit to crush nationalist parties and their activists who have been carrying on a movement against the Pakistani occupation of this part of Kashmir.

Besides sending militants into Kashmir, the ISI has also been training Turkish Sunni Muslims for subversive activities in Xinjiang, says the letter. They train young boys from Xinjiang and also influence those who pass through Pakistan for going to Haj in Saudi Arabia the letter said.

It said that a large number of Sunni Pathans are being settled in Gilgit and Baltistan. They have been storing arms in secret places with the help of the Pakistani Army and the Frontier Corps. But at the same time the Army has disarmed the locals.

The Pathan settlers, are creating sectarian tension here. The northern region of the occupied Kashmir is Shia majority while non-locals are Sunnis.

BNF executive committee has appealed to the United Nations, the Security Council and sympathetic countries to take necessary steps against Taliban fanatics and their masters who, they said, had intentions to exterminate non-Sunnis in this part of Kashmir.

Laden trained Yemen kidnappers?

LONDON, Jan 3 (AFP, PTI) — The FBI has evidence that the extremists involved in the Yemen kidnapping were trained at camps run by Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden, a report said on Sunday.

Ten US intelligence officers who flew to Yemen to investigate the hostage shootout, believe the 16 tourists were kidnapped as “direct retribution” for last month’s US and British air attacks on Iraq, The Sunday Telegraph said.

They suspected that the tourists might have been kidnapped to “shield” Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from further bombing raids, with the threat they would die if Iraq was attacked again, it said.

FBI agents and four Scotland Yard detectives are in Yemen investigating the circumstances of the killings.

Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden has declared that acquiring nuclear and chemical weapons for defence of the Muslims is a religious duty and said the Muslims will be able to “end the legend of so-called superpower” America.

“It would be a sin for the Muslims not to try to possess the weapons that would prevent the infidels from inflicting harm on the Muslims,” Bin Laden, Saudi financier accused of masterminding bombings at two US embassies in Africa in August, told Time magazine.

Asked if he was trying to acquire chemical and nuclear weapons as stated by Washington, Bin Laden, now based in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, said “acquiring weapons for the defence of the Muslims is a religious duty.

“If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank God for enabling me to do so. And if I seek to acquire these weapons, I am carrying out a duty,” he said in the interview, the first since the USA tried to kill him with Cruise missile strikes on his base.

Answering a question on the US air attacks on his camp in southern Afghanistan nearly two weeks after the embassy bombings, Bin Laden said the American bombardment had “only shown that the world is governed by the law of the jungle.”

Charging the USA with launching a “brutal, treacherous” attack that killed a number of civilian Muslims, he said material damage was minimal claiming that the missiles were “ineffective”.

“The raid proved that the American Army is going down the hill in its morale. Its members are too cowardly and too fearful to meet the young people of Islam face to face,” he said.

According to the interview, Bin Laden has been on the move since the US attack on his headquarter, and he avoids using a satellite phone for fear that it could betray his location.

Asked if he was responsible for the attacks on two US embassies in Africa, he said: “International Islamic Front for Jehad against the USA and Israel has given a `fatwa’ calling on the Islamic nations to carry on a jehad aimed at liberating holy sites. The nation of Mohammad has responded to this appeal.

“If the instigation for a jehad against the Jews and the Americans in order to liberate the Al-Aska Mosque and the holy Ka’aba (Islamic shrines in West Asia) is considered a crime, then let history be witness that I am a criminal,” he said, adding “our job is to instigate...”

Lockerbie suspects
Blair to appeal for Mandela’s help

LONDON, Jan 3 (AFP) — British Prime Minister Tony Blair is to launch a fresh appeal to South African President Nelson Mandela to broker a deal with the Libyan Government over the Lockerbie trial, he said today.

Blair, who embarks on a four-day visit to South Africa on Wednesday, told the British weekly Sunday Business that Mr Mandela had played a “unique and important role” in trying to resolve the controversy.

And he said he would be asking the South African leader to intervene again to get the two suspects released from Libya for trial.

“The UK-US initiative for a trial in the Netherlands has been on the table for four months. I will appeal to President Mandela to convince the Libyan Government that a third-country trial should now proceed,” he said.

Britain and the USA agreed in August that the two Libyans, Abdel Basset Ali El-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, could be tried in the Netherlands under the Scottish law by Scottish judges, dropping demands that they be tried by a US or British court.

Libyan leader Moamer Qadhafi agreed to the arrangement in principle, prompting the UN Security Council to vote unanimously for lifting the sanctions once the two were extradited for trial.

Man of millennium
LONDON: William Shakespeare, picked as Britain’s man of the millennium, was hailed on Saturday as an international superstar — but scientists felt Charles Darwin or Isaac Newton should have taken the prize. The choice of the playwright in a poll of BBC radio listeners — he just pipped wartime leader Winston Churchill — provoked a heated new year debate about his perennial appeal. Acclaimed Shakespearean actress Judi Dench said: “He is known in our house as the gentleman who pays the rent.” The Royal Shakespeare Company took his plays to five continents last year. — Reuters

Frozen baby
MOSCOW: The police found a baby’s corpse in its mother’s freezer in northern Russia, Interfax has reported. The woman, now 38, had hidden her pregnancy and delivered the baby at home. It was not clear whether the child was stillborn or was killed, Interfax said on Saturday, citing a prosecutor in Pechora, about 1450 km northeast of Moscow. The woman had kept the corpse in her apartment for more than a year, the prosecutor said. The report did not say whether the woman would face any charges. — AP

Rocket engines
MOSCOW: Russia is shipping the first of a new generation of rocket engines to the US, NTV television said. The Russian RD180 engine will go into Lockheed Martin’s Atlas 3 rocket, used for launching satellites into orbit. A contract for18 engines has been signed, the amount for which was undisclosed, the TV said on Saturday. “It’s time for us to make our own products and move into the 21st century, using not only government money but also commercial opportunities,” said Boris Katorgin, general director of the rocket’s manufacturer, Energomash. — AFP

Forest fire
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has sought international assistance to control the massive forest fire in the occupied Kashmir which the officials say is raging over an area of 50,000 hectares and has gone out of control. “There is a dire need of international help to control this menace”, an official of the Kashmir Affairs Ministry was quoted as saying by the official APP news agency while referring to the fire in the Neelum valley forests of the occupied Kashmir. — PTI

Historian dead
BERLIN: German journalist and historian Sebastian Haffner, who fled to London to escape the Nazis and worked for The Observer newspaper, died here on Sunday at the age of 91 after a long illness, his daughter Sara said. His book, “Remarks on Hitler”, published in 1978 as an antidote to a possible return to Nazism, is considered one of the key works on the subject. Haffner was credited with making history more easily understandable for generations of Germans through his articles and books which were marked by originality and free from bias. — AFP

Czech sets record
OPAVA (Czech republic): After 202 days of watching TV and lifting weights to pass the time, Michael Svoboda emerged from a Skoda Octavia station wagon on New Year’s Day as the world’s record holder for sitting in a car non-stop, organisers said. Svoboda beat off competition from seven other finalists, breaking the previous German-held record by 118 days. The competition was promoted by a local car showroom in this northern Czech town. — AFP

Liebermann dead
PARIS: Rolf Liebermann, a Zurich-born composer who directed the Hamburg opera and administered the Paris opera, died here after a prolonged illness, Paris opera director Hugues Gall said. Liebermann (88) died on Saturday, Gall told AFP. During the second half of the 20th century, he marked the world of European opera, first in Hamburg from 1959 to 1972, then in Paris from 1973 to 1980. — AFP

Slowing blindness
CHICAGO: Low doses of radiation can slow vision loss in many patients with a difficult-to-treat condition that blinds thousands of people every year, a researcher has said. The condition, age-related macular degeneration, affects about 1,70,000 Americans, usually over the age of 60, and affects more women than men. The researcher, Dr Robert Sagerman, was to present results of his study on Wednesday at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North American. Radiation can be used only in the ‘wet’ type of macular degeneration. — AP

Parking space
ROME: Italian motorists on average spend two years of a lifetime looking for parking, according to an investigation by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) published in Italian newspapers. Motorists daily spend between half an hour and an hour looking for a parking space, which adds up to between one and two weeks per year, according to the study published on Wednesday. The WWF proposes a better use of public transport. — DPA