India to oppose US move to block loans
WASHINGTON, Jan 24 — India is likely to oppose at the forthcoming Strobe Talbott-Jaswant Singh talks the US move to lobby among other governments against World Bank development and other multilateral funding agencies loans to Indian private enterprise in violation of their charter.

Netanyahu sacks Defence Minister
TEL AVIV, Israel, Jan 24 — In a dramatic move, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has fired his Defence Minister, Mr Yitzhak Mordechai, accusing him of disloyalty and duplicity.

Arab nations flay USA for attacks
CAIRO, Jan 24 — Arab countries today condemned last month’s US-led air strikes on Iraq even as they asked Baghdad to fully cooperate with the UN Security Council and implement all security resolutions related to Kuwait.

• US fighter attack on Iraqi site

Replace UNSCOM, says IAEA
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 24 — The chief of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency has called for the replacement of United Nations Special Commission overseeing disarmament of Iraq with an independent body.

‘Include CTBT adherence in package’
WASHINGTON, Jan 24 — New Delhi’s adherence to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has to be “part of a package” it is negotiating with Washington, Indian Ambassador to the USA Naresh Chandra has said here.

Little progress in US, N Korea talks
GENEVA, Jan 24 — US and North Korean negotiators were meeting for a second day here today over Washington’s demand to inspect an underground site it suspects is being used to revive Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme in violation of a 1994 agreement.

MQM chief gets right to UK stay
ISLAMABAD, Jan 24 — Britain has allowed exiled Muttahida Quami Movement chief Altaf Hussain to live there indefinitely, his party has said.

Scorpion venom can check brain cancer
ANAHEIM (California), Jan 24 — The venom used by scorpions to paralyse their prey may offer a way to paralyse and kill deadly brain tumours in people.

• 410 Taliban troops held

India to oppose US move to block loans

WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (PTI) — India is likely to oppose at the forthcoming Strobe Talbott-Jaswant Singh talks the US move to lobby among other governments against World Bank development and other multilateral funding agencies loans to Indian private enterprise in violation of their charter.

"We have said that the blocking of the World Bank loans is not conducive to accelerating the progress of the talks (between Talbott and Jaswant),’’ Indian Ambassador Naresh Chandra told reporters yesterday.

Official sources said India was likely to strongly object to the "highhanded American action" in lobbying among other governments to stop World Bank development loans and even IFC loans to Indian private enterprise.

"The multilateral funding agencies are supposed to be immune to political and strategic requirements of member-states and concentrate on economic and financial criteria for approving projects,’’ he said, adding, "however the USA has forced them to block the loans on political grounds.’’

Mr Chandra, however, said the latest speeches by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth were more optimistic and expressed hope that the administration would take it seriously.

He said the USA had been insisting publicly that on the issue of waiver from the post-nuclear test sanctions, it had been making a "graduated response" observing proportionality according to progress in the Talbott-Jaswant talks.

"The Clinton Administration insists that what it has done is enough under this doctrine of proportionality,’’ he said, adding "we don’t agree with that.’’

Mr Chandra said the only exception had been basic human needs "and that means International Development Association (IDA) credits, World Bank loans and even international finance corporation loans to private enterprise are blocked.’’

As the USA is a minority shareholder in these financial institutions, there would normally be no problem securing the loans over US opposition.

"However, the USA chose to go beyond what the law required it to do and actively lobbied among other members and organised opposition to loans to India in order to block them,’’ Mr Chandra said, pointing out, "these are negative developments in Indo-American relations.’’

While blocking loans to India, the USA chose "a kind of bailout" for Pakistan for the past few months, he said.

Netanyahu sacks Defence Minister

TEL AVIV, Israel, Jan 24 (AP) — In a dramatic move, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has fired his Defence Minister, Mr Yitzhak Mordechai, accusing him of disloyalty and duplicity.

Netanyahu said he offered the job to his former mentor, Mr Moshe Arens, who is challenging the Prime Minister for leadership of the Likud Party. The primaries are to be held tomorrow.

Mr Arens, 73, who served as Defence Minister in a previous Likud government, said he would consider the offer after Monday’s vote.

Mr Netanyahu’s decision yesterday to fire Mr Mordechai came after the Defence Minister conducted negotiations with a new Centrist Party and was promised the top slot if he left the Likud.

Mr Mordechai’s departure is seen as a major blow to Mr Netanyahu’s chances of getting re-elected on May 17. Mr Mordechai, a strong supporter of the peace process with the Palestinians, was the most popular minister in Mr Netanyahu’s government.

As leader of the Centrist Party, Mr Mordechai, who is of Kurdish ancestry, would appeal to voters with family origins in the Arab world a mainstay of Likud support. Surveys have indicated that he would beat Mr Netanyahu in the race for Prime Minister.

The two men traded bitter accusations yesterday night.

Mr Netanyahu claimed Mr Mordechai was being driven by personal ambition, while Mr Mordechai said Mr Netanyahu was lying and unworthy of being the leader of the Israeli people.

The first round was fired by Mr Netanyahu in a hastily arranged news conference, after briefing Likud ministers of his decision to dismiss Mr Mordechai. Reading from a letter he had sent Mr Mordechai just moments earlier, Mr Netanyahu claimed that the minister had conducted simultaneous negotiations with him and the Centrist Party.

Mr Netanyahu said Mr Mordechai demanded assurances that he would be named Defence Minister in the next Likud government and turned to the Centrist Party when he, Mr Netanyahu, refused to make such a promise.

In recent days and weeks, “I have seen that your personal ambition is stronger than anything else,’’ Mr Netanyahu said.

At the time of Mr Netanyahu’s announcement, Mr Mordechai was meeting in his home with the co-founders of the new Centrist Party, including former Army Chief Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, to discuss the group’s platform.

Mr Mordechai responded sharply to Mr Netanyahu.

The Prime Minister sent me a letter full of lies, slander, and inaccuracies that are appropriate for a petty politician,’’ Mr Mordechai said, shaking with anger.

I’m sorry to say that the Prime Minister is no longer worthy of my personal support or, I suppose, the support of the Israeli people,’’ Mr Mordechai said. Israel deserves a better leadership.’’

In an apparent reference to the suspended peace process with the Palestinians, Mr Mordechai said: Netanyahu chose to endanger everything we achieved because of his political objectives.’’

Mr Netanyahu suspended the Wye river peace agreement last month, citing what, he said, were violations by the Palestinians. At the time, hard-liners demanded that Mr Netanyahu freeze the agreement and threatened to topple his crumbling coalition if he did not.

Replace UNSCOM, says IAEA

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 24 (PTI) The chief of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has called for the replacement of United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) overseeing disarmament of Iraq with an independent body.

The sharp criticism of UNSCOM’s working came in an informal paper circulated to the Security Council by the chief of the agency, Mohamed Elbaradei.

Mr Elbaradei also stressed on rigorous control and analysis to separate “credible information from unfounded allegations and disinformation” on Iraq.

The paper, meant to be an input to the discussions on future of Iraqi oversight programme, also refers to the charges of spying and says inspectors cannot become part of a “web of intelligence agencies.”

Iraq has alleged that some of the inspectors were acting as spies of the USA and carrying out USA agenda, a charge that subsequent reports substantiated.

In the paper, which has surprised diplomats as it comes from the independent agency, Mr Elbaradei says the flow of information has to be in one direction only. “From state to the verification organisation but not the other way.”

An international organisation, the IAEA chief says, requires all information available to be able to make an independent judgement. But it cannot “reciprocate” and become part of a web of intelligence agencies.”

Iraq is under United Nations embargo for the past eight and a half years following its attack on Kuwait and the sanctions can only be lifted if UNSCOM inspectors certify that Baghdad has complied with the security resolution calling for elimination of its weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles along with related facilities.

But inspectors are nowhere near certifying that Iraq maintains that it has met all conditions and inspectors are only trying to keep sanctions which is the US agenda.

After several months of troubled relationship, the inspectors were withdrawn in mid-December just before US and British air strikes on Iraq and since then Baghdad has refused to allow them back.

Monica’s questioning ordered

WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (AFP) — Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky will be questioned by at least two house managers today, Republican manager Lindsey Graham has told CNN.

“I think it will start tomorrow (on Sunday) and there will be two witnesses present at Lewinsky’s questioning,” Graham said yesterday.

“I believe it will be professionally done,” Graham said.

The decision by house managers sparked fury among Senate Democrats, who tried to block the manoeuvre yesterday.

It followed a ruling by a federal judge ordering the former White House intern to submit to a meeting with Republican trial “managers” eager to mine information potentially useful to their perjury and obstruction of justice case against Clinton.

Clinton’s efforts to hide his affair with Lewinsky led to the House’s passage last month of articles of impeachment alleging perjury and obstruction of justice.

Republican Senator Orrin Hatch said the prosecutors “deserve some credit for trying to find some way to get to the bottom of all this.”

But Democratic Senators fumed, not least because the Republican prosecutors planned to bar them from the questioning session.

‘Include CTBT adherence in package’

WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (PTI) — New Delhi’s adherence to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) has to be “part of a package” it is negotiating with Washington, Indian Ambassador to the USA Naresh Chandra has said here.

“To say that India has not moved forward on CTBT or that we have come half-way is not correct. The talks between Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh are still on and we have said we cannot drop that card just like that. It has to be a proper package,” Mr Chandra told Indian correspondents yesterday.

Asked whether India would demand a quid pro quo for adherence to the CTBT in terms of Indian access to US dual purpose technology or high technology, Mr Chandra said New Delhi does not use the phrase “quid pro quo” because “sensitivities are involved. What is being done is variously described as “harmonising.”

“What has been fully recognised by everybody is that there are some legitimate security concerns for a large nation which represents one-sixth of humanity. We have to decide (when assessing India’s defence needs in every sphere): “Are we going to have to depend on anyone (or be able to look after our own defence)?” said Mr Chandra.

“Somebody calls it “minimum deterrence” and somebody else calls it legitimate security concerns.” You can put it any way you choose. These are important things which cannot be negotiated or bargained (away). So there cannot be a “quid pro quo” (bargaining India’s national security), he said.

The USA, Mr Chandra said, says it has “concerns”. Sometimes it is described as “demands” by people who play hard ball. Some call it “wish list”. Whatever it is called, “a bit of harmonising has to take place”. The effort in these talks is to narrow the gap to the maximum extent possible, the Ambassador said.

N-site inspection
Little progress in US, N Korea talks

GENEVA, Jan 24 (AFP) — US and North Korean negotiators were meeting for a second day here today over Washington’s demand to inspect an underground site it suspects is being used to revive Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme in violation of a 1994 agreement. But there was little sign of progress.

Before going into the US mission here, a senior North Korean official said big differences remained.

The two sides met last weekend and talked again for five hours at the North Korean mission here yesterday.

The talks come amid mounting tension on the divided Korean peninsula over the Communist North’s nuclear and missile capabilities.

In Pyongyang, North Korea stepped up its war of words against the USA, South Korea and Japan, warning any future conflict in the region would involve nuclear arms.

The talks are aimed at saving a 1994 accord under which North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear programme in return for aid and the easing of Korean-war era sanctions.

But the alert was raised in August when a US spy satellite spotted activity at an underground site at Kumchangri, north-east of Pyongyang.

MQM chief gets right to UK stay

ISLAMABAD, Jan 24 (Reuters) — Britain has allowed exiled Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain to live there indefinitely, his party has said.

The British Home Office has informed Hussain through his solicitors of the grant of the “indefinite leave to remain in the united kingdom,” an MQM spokeswoman, Nasreen Jalil, said yesterday in Karachi.

She said hussain, who has lived in self-exile in Britain for more than six years, can now stay there indefinitely. He can also travel abroad with a Pakistani passport or British travel documents.

Previously, Hussain’s passport had been held by the British authorities and he was barred from leaving the country. “But now he will have the status of a British resident,” she said.

The spokeswoman said the latest British decision was taken on Hussain’s application for political asylum in June 1992, after Pakistani authorities launched an “Operation Cleanup” crackdown against the MQM in Karachi.

Hussain remains a potent absentee force in the politics of violence-plagued Karachi, Pakistan’s commercial hub, and other towns of the southern province of Sindh.

Scorpion venom can check brain cancer

ANAHEIM (California), Jan 24 (Reuters) — The venom used by scorpions to paralyse their prey may offer a way to paralyse and kill deadly brain tumours in people.

A team of researchers at Alabama University claimed to have isolated a substance from scorpion venom that seems to act uniquely on brain cancer cells.

Harald Sontheimer and his colleagues told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science yesterday that if the findings translate into humans — something that would take years to test — the toxin could offer the first real treatment for brain cancer called glioma.

Sontheimer’s team has only done its work in test tubes and on mice. Scientists are wary of translating such experimental results into hopes for treating people.

Scientists have found in recent years that components of animal poisons may be useful in treating human disease. For example, a compound found in the skin of Amazonian poison — dart frogs — can be used to treat pain.

A protein found in snake poison, which causes victims to bleed to death, can, in smaller doses, stop blood clotting and thus may be useful in treating heart disease and stroke.

Sontheimer’s team looked at the venom of the giant Israeli scorpion, a creature about 12 cm long. They found it containing a peptide known as chlorotoxin that packs specific action against brain cancer cells.

410 Taliban troops held

KABUL, Jan 24 (AFP) — More than 410 Taliban troops have been captured and 62 men from both sides killed as fighting escalated in the far north, the Afghan-opposition said today.

Anti-Taliban alliance spokesman Abdullah said 38 militia troops were killed by forces loyal to ethnic Tajik commander Ahmad Shah Masood in north-west Faryab province in the past two days.

A further 12 opposition troops were killed by the Taliban and another 28 wounded during fighting in Faryab around the town of Sheerin Taqab, he said.

Arab nations flay USA for attacks

CAIRO, Jan 24 (PTI) — Arab countries today condemned last month’s US-led air strikes on Iraq even as they asked Baghdad to fully cooperate with the UN Security Council and implement all security resolutions related to Kuwait.

The Foreign Ministers of the 22-member Arab League were, however, yet to decide a stand on Iraq’s demand for complete lifting of UN sanctions against the country.

The draft communique of the meeting expressed concern over the use of military option against Iraq and sought diplomatic way out to solve the issue.

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa said the December air strikes on Iraq were "sheer aggression’’, which had not achieved anything except increasing the suffering of the Iraqi people.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa said that the lifting of sanctions should be an international decision and not an Arab one.

The meeting was also attended by Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Sahhaf who, some Arab diplomats said, was trying to get his country’s view incorporated into final drafting of the communique to be issued later today.

The Syrian Minister said Arab ministers should denounce the attacks and express solidarity with the Iraqi people.

Iraq yesterday said that Arab governments should support Baghdad’s demand for a complete lifting of UN sanctions.

US fighter attack on Iraqi site

WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (Reuters) — A US F-15 fighter attacked an Iraqi missile installation in the northern no-fly zone today, the second straight day of the US action against Iraqi forces, the Pentagon said.

A Pentagon spokesman said there was no damage to US planes in the incident. He said the F-15 fired in self-defence after aircraft enforcing the no-fly zone were tracked by Iraqi radar from the ground.  

"A US F-15E Strike Eagle, acting in self-defence, launched an AGM-130 precision-guided missile and suppressed the surface-to-air missile system, which had posed a threat to coalition forces in the region," the spokesman said. The incident occurred at 2 p.m. Iraqi time.

The spokesman said the US forces, which fly out of Incirlik Air Force base in neighbouring Turkey, would continue to enforce the northern no-fly zone, established in 1991 to protect the Kurdish minority from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s forces.

On Saturday, two US F-18 warplanes attacked a surface-to-air missile site in southern Iraq after Iraqi MIGs violated no-fly zones.

Pope’s message
MEXICO CITY: Pope John Paul II has issued a powerful message against drug trafficking, poverty and discrimination and commended the American continent to the protection of Mexico’s patron saint. “These are intolerable evils,” he said on Saturday in an emotional sermon to the 12,000 faithful who packed Mexico city’s Basilica of Guadalupe. “No more violence, terrorism and drug trafficking... there must be an end to unnecessary recourse to the death penalty. No more exploitation of the weak, racial discrimination or ghettoes of poverty,” the Pope said. — AFP

Top oyster shucker
LYON: A man in France has been crowned the world’s top oyster shucker after prying open 2,064 shells in an hour, officials at an annual gastronomy convention have said. Marcel Lesoille, 47, has set the world record using a 4-cm long oyster knife. He outdid his previous best — also a world record — set in 1995 of 1,429 oysters opened in an hour, officials said on Friday. Lesoille, whose record will be noted in the Guinness Book of World Records, hopes to open a French school to produce professional oyster shuckers. — AFP

‘Titanic’ divorce
NEW YORK: Being married to James Cameron was a titanically miserable experience. So says actress Linda Hamilton, who filed for divorce from the director of Titanic and The Terminator after nearly eight years of marriage. I wanted to be the one to do the final destructive act. It’s an important thing for me personally not to feel like the victim,” Ms Hamilton said in Friday’s USA Today. She said the two had nothing in common except their six-year-old daughter. — AP

Diana’s wedding dress
LONDON: Left over material from the wedding dress of late Princess of Wales, Diana, is up for sale. The spare cuttings of the ivory-silk gown that Diana wore at her July, 1981, wedding are expected to fetch at least £ 1,00,000 at auction or private sale within six months, lawyer Peter Smith said on Saturday. The six hand-made pieces of lace and silk, plus a workshop sketch and a letter of authenticity from Royal wedding dress designer Elizabeth Emmanuel, are to be sold by an elderly couple. Smith, lawyer for the unnamed couple, said the material would be sold to the highest bidder. — AFP

Gays in army
WASHINGTON: The air force and army have reported sharp increase in the number of troops discharged for homosexuality, and officials believe many are discontented recruits looking for a way out. In releasing the figures on Friday, the Defence Department said it was satisfied with its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuality in the services. It asserted that the 1998 discharge numbers “align” with those of previous years, even though they reached an 11-year high. A watchdog group said the figures were fresh evidence that gays are still being mistreated in the 1.4 million-member active-duty military. — AP