JERUSALEM : Former rivals, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak (left) his wife Nava (centre) and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) and his wife Sara, toast at the Prime Minister's office during the official changing-of-the-guard ceremony in Jerusalem on Wednesday — AP/PTI

Israeli PM to meet Arafat JERUSALEM, July 7— Wasting no time in carrying out his promise to revive the stalled West Asia peace process, the new Israel Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, will meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo on Friday and Palestinian chief Yasser Arafat on Sunday, his office said today. Netanyahu retires

Fake lawyer jailed for cheating
NEW YORK, July 7 — A man who milked hundreds of people out of their life savings by posing as an immigration lawyer has been sentenced up to 20 years in prison.

‘Father of open heart surgery’ dead
ST PAUL (Minnesota), July 7 — Dr C. Walton Lillehei, a medical pioneer who became known as the “father of open heart surgery”, has died of cancer. He was 80.

• Hillary campaign

Islamists bay for Sharif’s blood

ISLAMABAD, July 7 (PTI) — Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returns here tomorrow with resentment mounting among opposition parties and religious groups, over his agreement with US President Bill Clinton for a pull-out of intruders from the Indian side of the Line of Control.

Official sources here said Mr Sharif was reaching Islamabad tomorrow morning from London where he met British Premier Tony Blair as part of his efforts to ease tension on the LoC with India.

He would be holding a high-level meeting with his top political leadership and military officials to discuss implementation of the withdrawal, media reports here quoting official sources said.

There was a likelihood of a meeting of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet (DCC), the highest decision-making body in security affairs, to discuss the next course of action.

A Jamaat-e-Islami spokesman told PTI from its Lahore headquarters that Mr Sharif would be shown black flags on his return home and their countrywide agitation against the Clinton-Sharif agreement would continue as a show of solidarity with the Mujahideens.

The demonstrations and agitations would be stepped up after party chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed returned on Sunday, he said.

Mr Sharif’s commitment to US President apparently had the backing of army chief General Pervez Musharraf who had said on Tuesday that there was “complete understanding” between the government and army. Modalities for withdrawal of Mujahideens would be discussed after the return of Sharif to Pakistan.

The Sharif government on Wednesday had virtually confirmed its backing of the infiltrators when the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Muhammad Siddiq Khan Manju while making a statement in the National Assembly on the Clinton-Sharif meeting had said, “the only concrete step on our part can be to appeal to the Mujahideens (to withdraw since) they have already achieved their objectives”.

IPS: Following the Washington declaration, the popular mood in Pakistan has turned hostile towards Nawaz Sharif, who returned to power in February 1997 with a massive majority in general elections.

Many believe that Pakistan has military supremacy over India and that this has been compromised by Mr Sharif with his intention to announce a withdrawal of Mujahideen from the Kargil heights.

On the other hand, the Mujahideen groups, who are fighting against Indian Army across the LoC, have refused to surrender and declared that the war will go on.

We will not accept any agreement made between Pakistan and the United States of America on Kargil or Kashmir, said Amir Mehmood, leader of a Kashmiri militant group at a press conference in Rawalpindi. “America is our enemy we can not trust American solution.’’

As major Kashmiri militant groups formed an alliance to fight the Indian Army in Kargil, a spokesman for the Hizbul Mujahideen group told the press in Muzafarrabad that “neither Pakistan nor any other country could compel them to vacate the territory they ‘liberated’ from Indian occupation.’’

“Sharif is a shrewd politician and he must have played his cards in Washington. Unless he shows his cards to people and the Mujahideeen, one should not reach conclusions,’’ commented Shakil Shaikh, a senior defence analyst.

Mr Shaikh says Pakistan has the option of cutting off supplies to the Mujahideen. “I believe Pakistan enjoys influence over the Mujahideen and will be able to convince them to withdraw in the larger interest of peace and stability in the region and also a step towards a long-term and permanent resolution of the Kashmir dispute.’’

Retired Deputy Army Chief K.M. Arif was also cautious in his comments and said, “let the Prime Minister come back and disclose what he has done, but ostensibly they have agreed on the modalities of withdrawal.’’

Mr Sharif, who has not made any public comment after his meeting with Mr Clinton, has gone on a religious trip to Saudi Arabia, where he is likely to meet the Saudi leadership in order to gain broader support for his peace initiatives.

Standing alongside the Mujahideen are the country’s pro-Islamic parties, which are trying to use the situation to turn tables on Mr Sharif.

Aslam Beg, who took over as army chief after Gen Zia-ul-Haq’s plane crashed in 1988, was also hostile in his comments and charged Mr Sharif with compromising the blood and sacrifices of Mujahideen.

“Bad guess” led to bombing

WASHINGTON, July 7 (Reuters) — The series of errors that led to NATO bombing the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade began when a U.S. intelligence officer guessed street numbers by extrapolation from the numbers on parallel streets, according to a State Department document released yesterday.

The officer, trying to locate the headquarters of the Yugoslav Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement (FDSP), took a 1997 map and marked three prominent buildings for which he knew the street addresses, U.S. Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering told the Chinese Government last month.

The State Department made public on Tuesday the 14-page briefing paper which Mr Pickering used in his presentation.

The officer then drew perpendicular lines from the known buildings until they intersected Umetnosti Boulevard, the street on which the FDSP lies, and assumed that the buildings at the intersecting points would have the same numbers.

The method assumes a systematic method for numbering the buildings in parallel streets, widely found in U.S. cities with a grid layout, but relatively rare in Europe.

“These techniques.... are totally inappropriate for precision targeting and were used uniquely in this case. To use these techniques for targeting purposes was a serious mistake”, Mr Pickering told the Chinese Government.

In the case of the FDSP, the officer located a building 300 yards (metres) away from the true site. It turned out to be the new site of the Chinese Embassy, which moved from old Belgrade in 1996 and was not marked at this site on any U.S. maps.

Once the officer had identified the building as the FDSP headquarters, no one ever checked the target from the ground and no one updated the intelligence database with the new site of the Chinese Embassy, the notes said.

A B-2 Stealth bomber from Whiteman Air Force base in Missouri dropped five 900-kg satellite-guided Jdam Bombs on the building on May 7, killing three Chinese.

Angry Chinese attacked U.S. diplomatic missions in China in protest and the Beijing Government has not accepted Pickering’s argument that the bombing was a mistake.

Mr Pickering told the Chinese that the people who updated U.S. military databases had given low priority to diplomatic premises because they were more interested in targets.

Many U.S. and other NATO diplomats had visited the new building, but their knowledge never reached the database.

“Persons familiar with the layout of the city of Belgrade were not consulted in the construction of the target and no-hit databases...... this points to a flaw in our procedures,” Mr Pickering said.

One intelligence officer did have doubts about whether the targeted building was really the FDSP, but never suspected that it contained the Chinese Embassy.

He tried to communicate his doubts to senior officers, but failed through missed phone calls. He was still checking the accuracy of the identification when the bombing happened.

Mr Pickering said an internal review of the procedures would continue and the Clinton Administration would then decide whether disciplinary action was needed.

The Chinese Government has demanded the USA punish those responsible for the bombing error.

He dismissed the theory that the bombing was the work of “rogue elements” opposed to China inside the U.S. Government.

“The errors we have identified.... took place in three different areas. It is just not conceivable, given the circumstances, that the attack could have been brought about by a conspiracy or rogue elements”, he said.

Pak "smuggled" 1,000 soldiers
into Kargil

WASHINGTON, July 7 (PTI) — Pakistan "smuggled" 1,000 soldiers into the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC) in the Kargil area last spring and then announced they were "Kashmiri freedom fighters", a media report here says.

The reason for this, Newsweek, said in its latest issue, was that Pakistan felt that sympathy for "insurgents" would bring international pressure on Delhi to negotiate a settlement to the Kashmir problem.

However, the plan misfired and Pakistan obtained no sympathy of the USA and other Western powers.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, the magazine said, felt "personally betrayed" by Mr Sharif, who had signed the Lahore Declaration with him.

"Indian officials", said the weekly, "say Mr Sharif owes them at least a private apology. Mr Vajpayee's men want their Pakistani counterparts to admit their real role in it even if they refuse to be honest with the people of Pakistan."

Israeli PM to meet Arafat

JERUSALEM, July 7 (AFP) — Wasting no time in carrying out his promise to revive the stalled West Asia peace process, the new Israel Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, will meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo on Friday and Palestinian chief Yasser Arafat on Sunday, his office said today.

Mr Barak will then travel to Washington on July 16 for talks with US President Bill Clinton and other senior officials as part of his government’s campaign “to put the peace process back on track,” an official statement said.

Mr Barak would also meet Jordan’s King Abdallah next week, it said.

The summits were announced just a day after Mr Barak was sworn in at the head of the broadest coalition government in Israel’s history with the declared aim of achieving peace accords with the country’s Arab neighbours.

“We have taken the initiative to revive the peace process by organising these meetings,”said Mr Danny Yatom, Mr Barak’s Chief of Staff.

He said the meeting with Mr Arafat would take place on the Israeli side of the Erez crossing between Israel and the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip.

Taking office last night, Mr Barak told Parliament: “A historic chance for peace has been given to us”.

“We can expect difficult negotiations, but if we find the same determination on the other side, no power in the world can stop us,” he said.

July 21 deadline for vote counting

JAKARTA, July 7 (AP) — Indonesia’s Electoral Commission has set July 21 as the deadline for final results in the nation’s first free parliamentary vote in 45 years, a report has said.

“We have set July 21 as the tentative deadline,” Mr Adnan Buyung Nasution, a Deputy Chairman of the commission, was quoted as saying by the English-language newspaper Indonesian Observer yesterday.

Yesterday — a month after the vote — the National Election Committee began tallying votes on the national level for the first time. During the past month, vote counting had been conducted on the provincial level.

The Electoral body has been under fire for the snail-paced count that has raised fears of political manoeuvres aimed at delaying the presidential election, scheduled for November.

The vote count has drawn special attention following an indication from President B.J. Habibie, whose ruling Golkar Party is trailing in unofficial results, that the selection of the next President could be delayed until December.

Latest unofficial results shows the Opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, headed by Megawati Sukarnoputri, in the first place with about 35 per cent of the vote. Golkar has garnered about 22 per cent.

Fake lawyer jailed for cheating

NEW YORK, July 7 (AP) — A man who milked hundreds of people out of their life savings by posing as an immigration lawyer has been sentenced up to 20 years in prison.

Curtis Van Stuyvesant, 45, was convicted yesterday of bilking immigrants up to $ 10,000 each for help in obtaining green cards, visas and citizenship papers, which he never delivered, and for arranging family reunions and re-entry permits, prosecutors said.

Van Stuyvesant solicited clients through newspapers and radio ads from March 1997 until June 1998, creating a fake law firm with nonexistent offices and partners in Britain, Japan, Russia, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and the Cayman Islands, the prosecutors said.

He was arrested last August after several of his clients complained to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

Van Stuyvesant deliberately “used the U S Government as an unwitting accomplice to deport hundreds of people” after he took their money because he knew they would not be allowed back into the country to testify against him, Assistant District Attorney Rahul Kale said.

He was convicted on June 24 on 13 counts that include grand larceny, attempted grand larceny, scheme to defraud and practising law without a licence.

State Supreme Court Justice John Stackhouse ordered Van Sturyvesant to serve 10 years before he was eligible for parole. He was also ordered to repay his victims nearly $ 64,000 in restitution over the next 10 years.

‘Father of open heart surgery’ dead

ST PAUL (Minnesota), July 7 (AP) — Dr C. Walton Lillehei, a medical pioneer who became known as the “father of open heart surgery”, has died of cancer. He was 80.

Lillehei, who died on Monday, created many innovative heart surgery techniques during the 1950s while serving as a Professor of Surgery at the University of Minnesota.

He also served as the Chairman of the Department of Surgery at the Cornell Medical Centre-New York Hospital for several years beginning in 1967, and authored of more than 700 clinical publications.

NRIs raise 80 lakh for Kargil martyrs

DUBAI, July 7 (PTI) — Noted singer Peenaz Masani’s charity concert in support of the Kargil martyrs generated Rs 5.5 lakh, raising the total contributions from NRIs in Kuwait for the National Defence Fund and Central Army Welfare Fund to Rs 80 lakh.

The Indian Ambassador to Kuwait, Mr Prabhu Dayal, who started the fund raising few weeks ago, said the concert by the ghazal singer organised at the embassy auditorium was a sell-out.

Mr Dayal said the newly formed Indian Business Council of Kuwait with 80 members had chipped in with generous contributions for the Kargil martyrs while the response from the other members of the Indian community was also overwhelming.

Netanyahu retires

JERUSALEM, July 7 (AFP) — Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's defeated Prime Minister, bowed out of politics today, handing the reins of power to his Labour Party rival Ehud Barak. "I announce my retirement," Mr Netanyahu told Parliament immediately after Mr Barak presented his new government to the chamber.

Hillary campaign

WEST DAVENPORT, July 7 (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton has been to New York a dozen times this year as the nation’s First Lady, but on today’s trip she’s a candidate for the Senate.

For the first official campaign appearance, Hillary chose the homestead of the man she hopes to succeed, Senator Daniel Pat Rick Moynihan. It is the first stop on what aides describe as a summer-long “listening tour” of the state.

Court sides with chickens
KARLSRUHEK: Germany’s highest court came down on the side of chickens on Tuesday, describing regulations passed in 1987 on battery farming as inconsistent with the nation’s laws against cruelty to animals. The Federal Constitutional Court struck down a rule allocating 450 sq cm — equivalent to three quarters of an A-4-sized sheet of writing paper — for each laying hen. — DPA

Baker’s barrage
LONDON: A well-aimed cornish pasty and a barrage of buns and bread rolls foiled a robber’s attempt to steal the day’s takings from a London bakery shop, according to a published report. Alan Parsons (35) armed with a knife, snatched the money as the staff at the East London shop were counting the day’s takings. But as he fled, assistants Patricia Beaton and Edith Loughlin rose to the occasion, the Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday. — DPA

Drug dealer shot
MONTERREY (Mexico): The leader of Mexico’s powerful Gulf drug cartel has been shot to death and his body dumped near the U.S. border following a vicious internal feud, the authorities have said. Angel Salvador “el chava’’ Gomez Apparently was executed by other members of the cartel with a bullet to the head after stealing $ 1 million in cash from them, said Julio Cesar Saucedo of the State Prosecutor’s office in Northeastern Tamaulipas state on Tuesday. — Reuters

“Dinner pirate”
LEEUWARDEN (Netherlands): For nearly 20 years, he feasted for free. Now, the man the Dutch have dubbed the “dinner pirate” will have to make do with jailhouse grub for the next three months. A judge in the northern city of Leeuwarden ordered the felon diner, identified only as Albert B., to serve a three-month jail term on Monday after he confessed to ordering meals and wine at restaurants around the Netherlands, only to plead poverty when the bill came. — AP