• Intrusion at Sharif's behest: Leghari

USA wants talks with Taliban
WASHINGTON, July 10 — The USA wants to hold talks with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban on how to bring Saudi millionaire and suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden to justice, a U.S. official said.

20-hr opera staged in 400 years
NEW YORK, July 10 — “The Peony Pavilion,” a 20-hour Chinese opera branded “feudal, superstitious and pornographic” in China, is getting its first full-length performance anywhere in the world in nearly 400 years.

Cabinet reshuffle

Russian troops set to move in Kosovo

Respect LoC, Germany tells Pak

BONN, July 10 (PTI) — Germany has unequivocally told Pakistan that withdrawal of militants from the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir was the “first important step” towards de-escalating the current armed conflict with India.

“The agreement reached in Washington between Premier Sharif and President Clinton, on concrete steps to re-establish the LoC is a first important step towards defusing the current crisis,” the German Deputy Foreign Minister told Mr Nawaz Sharif’s special envoy Mr Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, here yesterday.

During the two leaders’ 30-minute meeting, the German Minister, Mr Gunter Verheugen, made it clear to Mr Kasuri, that for the international community “full respect” of the LoC was “indispensable”.

He also said the German Government had a “great interest” in security and stability in South Asia, and would therefore “encourage” India and Pakistan to resume their dialogue on “all controversial questions”, including Kashmir, as soon as the current conflict ends.

The minister said the declarations made by the European Union and the Group of Seven industrialised countries and Russia (G-8), on the Kargil conflict also reflected the positions of the German Government.

The G-8 leaders at their annual summit in Cologne last month, while virtually putting the onus on Pakistan to end the conflict condemned violation of the LoC and termed as “irresponsible” any military action to change the status quo on the LoC.

Intrusion at Sharif's behest: Leghari

ISLAMABAD: Former Pakistani President Farooq Ahmed Leghari has said that it was the Pakistani army which captured the Dras-Kargil heights and "it was done at the behest of Premier Nawaz Sharif."

Pakistani army "captured" Kargil heights at the "behest of Sharif", Mr Leghari said yesterday adding, "in order to save himself. Sharif was now giving a false impression to Washington and the world that Pakistan army occupied Kargil without the government’s permission, thus creating tension between the two neighbours," media reports here said.

"Whatever the army has done so far is with the permission of the government and in future too, the army will behave accordingly," Mr Leghari, who now heads his own Millat party, said addressing a press conference in Lahore.

The former President also said the Prime Minister could have affected the cease-fire by some other means instead of "betraying the blood of Kashmiris" and added that, "the Washington declaration had brought down the morale of the Pakistani forces".

"Sharif has bartered away the blood and honour of Kashmiris to perpetuate his rule and sell sugar to India," Leghari said adding, "the nation and Kashmiri people will never forgive him."

Efforts to salvage North Ireland
peace pact

BELFAST, July 10 (Reuters) — Northern Ireland’s politicians today launched fresh efforts to break an impasse over the handover of guerrilla arms and save the province’s peace accord before next Thursday’s deadline.

The British province’s main Protestant unionist party and its leader, Mr David Trimble, yesterday denounced a British-Irish plan to implement the peace plan as “fundamentally unfair” yesterday, but said they would not rule it out altogether.

Mr Trimble will travel to London early next week to meet Prime Minister Tony Blair and seek assurances about the plan, a last-ditch effort by Mr Blair and his Irish counterpart, Mr Bertie Ahern, to implement last year’s landmark Good Friday accord.

The political wrangling centres over whether Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Roman Catholic Irish Republican Army, should be allowed to take up seats in an all-party executive before or after its guerrilla wing hands over all its weapons.

An Irish Times poll today showed 65 per cent of the people in Northern Ireland — divided between the Protestant majority and Catholic minority — want the executive to be set up as planned on July 18.

But a narrow majority in the province also doubt the peace plan will be fully implemented by May of next year as planned, according to the poll of 1,000 residents.

The row is taking place only days before the height of annual Protestant marches that celebrate centuries-old battlefield victories over the Catholics.

Provincial authorities were today due to decide whether the hardline Protestant Orange order could hold a mass demonstration near a Catholic enclave in Belfast on Monday after they ruled out a similar plan earlier this week.

The institution — named after late 17th century Protestant Dutch King William of Orange — changed its route to a city park skirting the Catholic lower Ormeau road area and wants officials to approve the new plan.

Monday marks the “12th of July” climax to a two-week “marching season” when the province’s Protestant majority display British flags, build huge bonfires and march with pipes and drums in colourful, but often violent, parades.

Several hundred Protestants gathered near heavily armed police in the flashpoint of Drumcree early on Saturday and threw rocks at Catholic homes. The police said no injuries were reported.

Lee redefines ties with China

TAIPEI, July 10 (AP) — In his latest step to highlight Taiwan’s separate status, President Lee Teng-Hui has redefined the island’s relations with mainland China as “special nation-to-nation relations”.

The comments, made in an interview on German Radio, were the strongest Lee has made to refute China’s claim that the island is a renegade province to be reunited with the mainland.

For years, however, Taiwan has refrained from calling itself a nation for fear it could raise Beijing’s suspicion that the island has given up its proclaimed pursuit for eventual reunification.

“Since we made our constitutional reforms in 1991,” Lee told the Voice of Germany Radio, “we have re-defined cross strait relations as nation-to-nation, or at least as special nation-to-nation relations”.

“Under such special nation-to-nation relations, there is no longer any need to declare Taiwanese independence,” he said.

The comments were given in a presidential office statement issued today. It also quoted Lee as saying Beijing “has totally ignored historical and legal facts” in claiming Taiwan a renegade province.

Lee also urged China to “proceed with democratic reforms at an early date to create better conditions for democratic reunification” with Taiwan.

In making the statement, Lee has gone one step beyond Taiwan’s former claim that the two sides are equal political entities that should recognise each other’s jurisdiction in areas they control.

USA wants talks with Taliban

WASHINGTON, July 10 (AFP) — The USA wants to hold talks with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban on how to bring Saudi millionaire and suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden to justice, a U.S. official said.

“We’d be more than happy to discuss it with them, but it’s not clear what the Taliban want to do,” said a State Department official yesterday, who asked not to be named.

U.S. officials cite conflicting signals from the Taliban, which controls more than three-quarters of Afghanistan, over how it wants to handle Bin Laden’s fate.

The militant movement, which Washington does not recognise as a government, faces stepped-up pressure in the form of new U.S. trade and economic sanctions to cooperate in handing over Bin Laden for trial.

On Thursday, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) quoted the Taliban authorities as confirming they were harbouring Bin Laden and were seeking talks with Washington.

The report quoted Taliban spokesman Wakil Ahmed as saying the 41-year-old Saudi millionaire was living in Afghanistan “under the protection of a special security commission”.

Only the “special commission” knew Bin Laden’s precise whereabouts, he said.

Until the AIP report, the Taliban had maintained they did not know the whereabouts of Bin Laden, whose presence in Afghanistan prompted the White House this week to slap sanctions against the Islamic militia.

“We are ready to hold talks with the USA on Osama,” Ahmed told AIP. “We want to resolve the issue but nobody is willing to listen to us,” he said.

Japanese doctors’ feat

TOKYO, July 10 (AP)— After a series of operations lasting 26 hours, teams of Japanese doctors today completed the world’s first liver transplant involving four patients.

Working in four teams, 20 doctors at Kyoto University Hospital finished the final operation today morning implanting half of a liver into a teenage woman, a hospital official said, requesting anonymity.

In all, three patients with liver ailments received parts of new organs from one healthy donor and one of the patients, who also served as a donor.

The procedure is called a domino transplant because it involves a string of operations conducted one after the other, like a line of falling dominoes.

The transplant is common in Europe, where it is used to help critically ill patients who might not survive the long wait for a healthy liver.

Previous domino transplants have involved only three donors and recipients. The Kyoto transplant is also unique because the first donor is living. In prior domino procedures, the first liver has been taken from a brain-dead donor.

In domino procedures, the first two operations are just like a regular liver transplant. In this case, doctors removed half of the liver from a healthy donor and gave it to his younger brother, who was suffering from a liver disorder that was not immediately life-threatening.

Doctors can transplant half a liver because the organ can regenerate and become a healthy organ.

20-hr opera staged in 400 years

NEW YORK, July 10 (AP) — “The Peony Pavilion,” a 20-hour Chinese opera branded “feudal, superstitious and pornographic” in China, is getting its first full-length performance anywhere in the world in nearly 400 years.

A $ 1.5 million production sponsored by the Lincoln Center’s Annual Arts Festival began this week at a high school across the street from the complex.

On three stages extending over a pond where the orchestra pit would be, 33 actors and musicians are telling the story of a young woman who meets her lover in a dream, but dies longing for him. When her ghost finds the man, she is brought back to life and they marry.

Getting all that across is no mean feat. “The Peony pavilion” — 90 minutes longer than the four “ring cycle” operas by Wagner — has 55 acts and more than 160 characters. Its script weighs more than medium-sized dictionaries.

The opera is broken into six segments, each three hours plus without intermission. The first two were performed on Wednesday and Thursday nights, and the last four were being staged on Friday and Saturday. The entire cycle will be shown again twice this month.

There is no nudity, merely references to sexual tension and an implied sex scene in which the lovers disappear behind a screen.

Cabinet reshuffle

BANGKOK, July 10 (Reuters) — Thailand named six new ministers and eight deputies today in a Cabinet reshuffle forced by resignations and withdrawal of a party from the ruling coalition but not expected to affect stability or policies.

The reshuffle involved changes in less influential ministries and, as expected, did not affect the key portfolios of Finance, Commerce, Transport, Communications, Interior, Industry and Defence currently held by Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai’s majority democrats.

Russian troops set to move in Kosovo

MOSCOW, July 10 (DPA) — A first contingent of Russian troops was poised to move into the US-controlled sector this morning as part of the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo, Interfax news agency reported.

The report quoted Major-Gen Valery Yevtukovitsch, the commander of Russian troops stationed at the airport in the Kosovo capital, Pristina.

The Commander said a contingent of Russian troops would move into the German sector in southern Kosovo tomorrow.

‘Destitute children’
JOHANNESBURG: Six South African teenagers charged with robbing and raping a visiting Brazilian journalist have conducted their own defence in a local court. It is alleged that the boys, all aged between 15 and 16, were part of a gang which robbed and gang-raped the 28-year-old visiting journalist near an entertainment centre in Bruma, a suburb to the east of the city. The court described the boys as “destitute children” who lived in a derelict flat in the Johannesburg inner city and they were denied bail, Sapa news agency said. — DPA

Camel jockey
DUBAI: An eight-year-old Pakistani boy who was kidnapped in the UAE to work as a camel jockey has been rescued by the police, the Gulf News newspaper reported. It said on Friday that the boy, Saddam Hussein Shiekh, had been kidnapped from the Pakistani city of Larkana two years ago and was found late last month in the Emirate of Al Ain, one of the seven Emirates that make up the UAE, where he was being used illegally as a camel jockey. — DPA

Elton John
LONDON: Pop star Elton John has had a heart operation to install a pacemaker, the Sun newspaper reported on Saturday. No comment was available from the singer, who had cancelled concerts and appointments over the past week. Britain’s biggest-selling tabloid said John, 52, underwent surgery at a top local hospital on Friday after tests revealed an irregular heartbeat. — Reuters

James S. Farmer dead
FREDERICKSBURG (Virginia): James S. Farmer, who served alongside Martin Luther King Jr and other US Civil Rights giants of the ‘50s and ‘60s, is dead. He was 79. He battled pneumonia and complications from diabetes that included blindness for the past five years,died on Friday at Mary Washington Hospital. — AP