USA to send envoys to China, Taiwan
WASHINGTON, July 21 — The USA has announced plans to send senior diplomats to Beijing and Taipei this week in a move to calm new tensions over Taiwan.

Israel plans early W. Bank pullout
WASHINGTON, July 21 — Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak assured Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat that he intended to withdraw promptly from a portion of the West Bank even while pursuing an overall West Asia settlement.

US House extends Clinton’s waiver authority
WASHINGTON, July 21 — The House of Representatives has passed a one-year extension of the waiver authority for the US President regarding sanctions imposed on India and Pakistan after their nuclear tests in May last year.

Women up in arms against cleric
KUALA LUMPUR, July 21 — Malaysian women’s groups have reacted furiously to remarks by a top opposition Islamic cleric that pretty women should not be hired for jobs as they can marry rich husbands instead, news reports said today.

Wahid still backs Megawati
JAKARTA, July 21 — Indonesian Muslim leader Abdur Rahman Wahid said today that he still backed Megawati Sukarnoputri for President, but might consider standing for the post himself if proposed as a compromise candidate.

Cops break up protest

Dissent becomes louder
from Girja Shankar Kaura
Tribune News Service

THE growing discontent in the northern areas of Pakistan, comprising Gilgit and Baltistan, which are the picture of neglect and suppression, recently forced the Pakistani Prime Minister, Mian Nawaz Sharif, to visit the region.

The voices of dissent among the people of Gilgit and Baltistan suddenly became stronger immediately after Pakistan appealed to its intruders to withdraw from the heights they had occupied in the Kargil region of Jammu and Kashmir. There apparently was a feeling of mistrust among the people who also felt that they had been exploited by the Pakistani regime and forced into the Kargil conflict.

Worried about possibility of another 1988-like revolt in the region, which geographically is very important to Pakistan, Mian Nawaz Sharif rushed to Gilgit and Baltistan last week for a face-to-face interaction not only with the people but also with the recruits of Battalions of the Northern Light Infantry (NLI), who mainly were responsible for intrusion into Indian territory.

The NLI battalions have been raised specially from northern areas of Gilgit and Baltistan and have been providing a strong face to the Pakistani Army. The NLI recruits have been trained in anti- heliborne, commando operations and snow warfare and are capable of surviving in sub-zero temperature conditions for days together, specially as they are from such areas. They have also been utilised for deployment in the Siachen sector.

Sources here disclosed that after the call for withdrawal from Islamabad, the people from northern areas felt that like on every occasion, the Pakistani regime had again made their men “scapegoats” for their unfruitful ventures into India. Over 800 of their men, including over 30 officers were killed by the Indian troops in the Kargil conflict.

With scores of others injured, the men from NLI battalions were forced to retreat in the face of advancing Indian forces. Apparently there was a feeling now among the residents that the Pakistani regime always had doubts about the success of their adventure into Kargil and had deliberately pushed men and officers from the NLI battalion into the region to become ‘cannon fodder’. Indian troops had evidence of involvement of the eight battalions of the NLI in the Kargil operation.

According to reports, Nawaz Sharif visited the headquarters of the NLI battalions in Gilgit and then had interaction with the people, which has been viewed as an unprecedented step. This specially as northern areas have been a picture of neglect and suppression with the residents having no fundamental rights. No elections have been held in the region for the last 50 years.

Sources said that Nawaz Sharif’s visit to the region had become necessary as in the Kargil conflict, the Pakistani authorities had come down heavily on the civilian population in Gilgit and Baltistan. Reports said that the police had conducted a ‘wave of detention’ to curb any dissent during the fighting in Kargil. The people of the region were being forced to support the war which they actually did not want. There was feeling among the people that they would be the losers whatever may be the outcome as it were their men who were at the front facing bullets.

The area traditionally has been under the control of the Pakistani Army and the people of the region do not even have rights to move from one village to the other. Even for travelling the residents have to seek prior permission of the Pakistani Army.

According to reports, Pakistani authorities ordered detention to avoid any confrontation with the local people. Among those arrested was an editor of the only local daily in the region.

Widespread uprising in these areas that left many dead was put down by the Pakistani Army in 1988. There have been several instances of protests since then and even the 50th anniversary of Pakistani independence was observed as ‘black Jubilee’ in the area.

Historically the northern areas were acquired on lease for 60 years by the British in 1935 from Maharaja Hari Singh and after the British withdrawal in 1947, the place of the Political Agent was taken over by a Dogra as Governor. However in November, 1947, the Gilgit Scouts rose in revolt, arrested the Governor and proclaimed accession to Pakistan. The people of Baltistan also overthrew the Dogra rule and proclaimed accession to Pakistan.

Since then Gilgit and Baltistan have been under the de facto administration of the Pakistan Government.

Under the present system of governance, the Federal Minister for Kashmir is also the chief executive for northern areas. The deputy chief executive, who is elected from the area has no powers and the northern areas Council members can propose only development schemes.

This is despite the fact that northern areas is among the richest places in the world as far as natural resources are concerned. There are vast reserves of uranium, diamond, emerald and other precious stones. Besides, Pakistan earns some Rs 4.5 billion from tourism in northern areas, which is two-third of the total income Pakistan earns from tourism.

In comparison, while northern areas get about 550 million in annual budget, the adjoining azad Jammu and Kashmir (as the PoK is called there) is given Rs seven billion.

The foremost demand of the people of northern areas is independence from the control of Pakistani bureaucracy. People want the basic right to live freely in their own land, with their own assembly and right over resources.

There were now fears that voices of dissent in the region could become louder and create further embarrassment for Pakistan. It had been off-guard once in April last when an NGO from PoK created stir at the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) session by demanding international intervention with Pakistan to grant freedom to the people of Gilgit and Baltistan.

USA to send envoys to China, Taiwan

WASHINGTON, July 21 (Reuters) — The USA has announced plans to send senior diplomats to Beijing and Taipei this week in a move to calm new tensions over Taiwan.

The US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, yesterday said the missions would precede her meeting in Singapore on Sunday with the Chinese Foreign Minister, Mr Tang Jiaxuan, when she intends to make a direct appeal for a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

At the White House, the President, Mr Bill Clinton, drove home a similar point, telling newsmen that he told the Chinese President Mr Jiang Zemin, in a telephone call last weekend that the USA would have serious concerns with “any abridgement” of the peaceful dialogue between China and Taiwan.

Ms Albright, at a separate news conference, also expressed concern about reports that Chinese companies may have transferred missile components to North Korea last month.

Cross-straits tensions flared anew last week when Taiwan’s President Lee Teng-Hui announced a new policy toward the mainland that Beijing considers a “drift toward independence.”

Ms Albright announced that Mr Richard Bush, Chairman of the board and Managing Director of the American Institute in Taiwan, the agency that handles Washington’s unofficial ties with the island, would today leave for talks in Taipei.

Similarly, the Assistant Secretary of State, Mr Stanley Roth, who oversees East Asian and Pacific Affairs, would head for Beijing for consultations with Chinese officials.

Mr Roth would then join Ms Albright in Singapore, where she will attend the annual ASEAN meeting from July 24 to 27.

BEIJING: China on Wednesday told Taiwan peaceful reunification would be impossible if the island changed its constitution to reflect its new policy on “state-to-state” relations.

China said it would invade Taiwan if the island, which it regards as a renegade province, declared independence.

Meanwhile, China’s ruling Communist Party today said the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland was a “historical task” and anyone attempting to split China was doomed to fail.

“Communists have always regarded the reunification of the motherland as their historical task and it represents the strong will of the Chinese people on the issue,” the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, ‘Peoples Daily’, said in a front-page commentary on the Taiwan issue.

Historical facts proved that anyone who defied the feelings and will of the Chinese people and dared to challenge the reunification and the “one China” principle was doomed to fail, it said criticising Taiwanese President Lee Teng-Hui for terming Beijing-Taipei relations as state-to-state.

Yesterday, Lee angered communist China further by insisting that Taiwan could only embrace a democratic China.

Anyone with even a slight knowledge of Chinese history knows that opposing splitism and upholding reunification has been the tradition of the Chinese nation since the dawn of history, the official newspaper said.

It said determination for reunification is firmly rooted in Chinese culture and words or deeds undermining it betrayed the interests of the nation.

TAIPEI: Washington has drafted measures penalising Taiwan, including suspending a sale of military planes, to show its annoyance at President Lee Teng-Hui’s provocation of a row with China, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The US State Department has urged cancellation of the sale of E-2G Hawkeye early-warning aircraft and putting sharp limits on unofficial contacts with Taiwanese officials, Taipei’s China Times reported in a front page story.

AFP adds: Taiwan on Wednesday denied that the USA had suspended arms shipments to the nationalist island.

President Lee Teng-Hui also said it had no plans to amend its constitution or another key document to enshrine its controversial view that relations with mainland China now were on a ‘special state-to-state’ basis. “We have no plans to amend the constitution or the national unification guidelines,” Cabinet spokesman Chen Chien-Jen said, according to Reuters.

USA condemns Doda massacre
Say Pak broke unwritten law in Kargil

WASHINGTON, July 21 (PTI) — The USA has for the first time taken a firm stand against cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir by demanding an immediate end to it and charged Pakistan with violating the “unwritten law” among nuclear weapon powers by crossing the Line of Control (LoC) in Kargil.

“Acts of terrorism must stop immediately because such actions make the Kashmir conflict more - not less - difficult to resolve,” the Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, told newsmen here yesterday condemning the latest massacre of 19 persons in Poonch and Doda districts.

“We condemn attacks against civilians and obviously those who perpetrate them and those who give assistance to the perpetrators,” she said in an oblique reference to Pakistan.

Regarding the situation on the LoC. Ms Albright urged both India and Pakistan to exercise restraint and said, “We hope very much that India and Pakistani will resume dialogue under the Lahore process.”

She said she would talk to the External Affairs Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh, in this regard during their meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) conference in Singapore later this month.

Meanwhile, a Senior State Department Adviser in the South Asia Bureau, Mr Mathew P. Daley, said that “Pakistan broke the unwritten law among the nuclear weapons powers that their forces do not cross each other’s borders or violate recognised zones of control like the LoC.”

“As India and Pakistan became overtly states that are armed with nuclear weapons, they accepted an ongoing obligation to follow different rules of conduct... I am not sure both parties accept the premise.. but certainly one party (Pakistan) did not,” Mr Daley told the annual Washington legislative conference of the Indian-American Friendship Council yesterday.

Asserting that USA was not a mediator on the Kashmir issue, he said, “The issues between India and Pakistan are issues that India and Pakistan are going to have to sort out bilaterally.”

Several US congressional leaders have disfavoured internationalisation of Kashmir issue, even as they applauded India for displaying restraint in the wake of Pakistani “aggression” and endorsed New Delhi’s stand regarding the resumption of talks with Islamabad.

The leaders said, “There is a sort of recognition that the Line of Control (LoC) is inviolable and should not be transgressed (by Pakistan) again, that this is a boundary we do not want Pakistan to cross anymore.”

The Congressmen, including leader of Democratic Party in the House of Representatives Richard Gephardt, Chairman of the International Relations Committee Benjamin Gilman, Chairman of the Near East and South Asia Subcommittee Douglas Bereuter and Congressman Frant Pollone, were speaking at a programme organised by Indian-American Friendship Council last night.

The speaker unanimously accused Pakistan of committing “aggression” by sending troops into Kargil and hailed India’s restraint “under great provocation”.

Israel plans early W. Bank pullout

WASHINGTON, July 21 (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak assured Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat that he intended to withdraw promptly from a portion of the West Bank even while pursuing an overall West Asia settlement.

“There is no reason to wait,” Mr Barak said yesterday as he concluded a series of meetings with U.S. President Bill Clinton’s administration and members of Congress.

The new Prime Minister’s visit produced promises of increased U.S. military assistance, top-of-the-line jet fighter planes and strengthened security ties.

It also resulted in parallel statements by Vice-President Al Gore and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright deferring decision-making to Israel and its Arab neighbours.

In Gaza, Arafat had yesterday demanded “immediate and speedy implementation” of the U.S.-guided Wye river accord.

“I fully agree with him,” Mr Barak said at a joint news conference with Mr Gore after lunch at the Vice-president’s residence. “There is no reason to wait. We do intend to implement the Wye accords. I will check with him.”

Gaza City: A U.S.-Israel 15-month timetable for making peace deals with the Arabs is “unacceptable,” Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has said, demanding immediate implementation of signed agreements.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, in Washington for talks with U.S. officials, responded: “I agree with him. It won’t take that long.”

In a weekend meeting with President Bill Clinton, Mr Barak obtained Clinton’s agreement to set a 15-month timetable for reviving the peace process. U.S.-Israel committees would review the process every four months and report directly to the two leaders.

“We don’t accept this,” Arafat said, returning from a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. “We accept only the immediate and speedy implementation of Wye river memorandum and the Hebron protocol and the other agreements.”

“We lost enough time with Netanyahu and it is not logical to waste more time with the new government,” Arafat said.

US House extends Clinton’s waiver authority

WASHINGTON, July 21 (PTI) — The House of Representatives has passed a one-year extension of the waiver authority for the US President regarding sanctions imposed on India and Pakistan after their nuclear tests in May last year.

The Senate has already adopted such an amendment.

But the Chairman of the International Relations Committee, Mr Benjamin Gilman, and several members, Republicans as well as Democrats, said it was not enough and the sanctions must be suspended altogether for five years, and preferably permanently.

The Congressmen said they would move resolutions to this effect.

The White House hoped Congress would soon pass legislation that “expands in time and expands in scope the waiver authority the President was granted last April to deal with the unintended Glenn, Pressler and Symington amendments,” Mr Mathew P. Daley, Senior Adviser with the State Department’s South Asia Bureau, said.

Women up in arms against cleric

KUALA LUMPUR, July 21 (DPA) — Malaysian women’s groups have reacted furiously to remarks by a top opposition Islamic cleric that pretty women should not be hired for jobs as they can marry rich husbands instead, news reports said today.

Women activists slammed the comments by Mr Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat, who is the Chief Minister of north-eastern Kelantan state, as “sexist and discriminatory”.

Ms Zainah Anwar, a member of Sisters in Islam, said the opposition political party led by Mr Nik Abdul Aziz should stop viewing women as mere sex objects.

“Why should women be held responsible and denied the right to public life and public space for the sins that might be committed by men, who are not able or have no desire to control their lust?” she said.

“If they still cannot do this, then it is they and not women, who should be shrouded and placed behind four walls,” she was quoted as saying in the New Straits Times Daily.

Mr Nik Abdul Aziz, the spiritual leader of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), said he had advised his men not to hire attractive women for state jobs in Kelantan, which is the sole state in Malaysia run by an opposition party.

Ms Rasamani Kandiah, President of the Association of Women’s Lawyers, said women should be assessed by their job performance, not looks. “Instructions of this kind that are not part of the endorsed state employment scheme should be condemned,” the Sun daily quoted her as saying.

The PAS-led government has banned gambling and nightclubs in Kelantan, while supermarkets have separate lanes for women and men and cinemas keep lights on during movie screenings.

PAS has vowed to set up an Islamic-run government if it wins in nationwide elections and topples Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s ruling Barisan Nasional (National Front) government.

Wahid still backs Megawati

JAKARTA, July 21 (Reuters) — Indonesian Muslim leader Abdur Rahman Wahid said today that he still backed Megawati Sukarnoputri for President, but might consider standing for the post himself if proposed as a compromise candidate.

“I myself will support Mega...that’s how democracy works,” Mr Wahid told reporters after a meeting with President B.J. Habibie.

Mr Wahid founded the Nation Awakening Party (PKB), which came third in Indonesia’s June parliamentary elections, and also heads Indonesia’s largest Muslim organisation, the Nahdlatul Ulama.

Cops break up protest

BEIJING, July 21 (AP) — The police today broke up a massive protest by a popular meditation group outside the Chinese Government leadership compound in central Beijing and detained hundreds of persons.

The protest by members of Falun Gong began late last night after at least 70 leading members of the group were reportedly arrested in a crackdown.

Held for ‘insulting’ Islam
TEHERAN: An editor at a moderate Iranian newspaper was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly insulting Islam after he published an article entitled “Two parallel lines do not cross unless God wills it”, Iran’s news agency Irna said. It said a court in Teheran ordered the detention of Kazem Shokri, editor at the liberal Sobh-e Emrouz daily, after charging him with “damaging religious principles, casting doubt on... the (Muslim holy book) Koran and insulting God’s prophets’’. — Reuters

Great Wall
BEIJING: One of the oldest sections of China’s Great Wall has been destroyed to make way for a highway bridge, officials in the northern city of Baotou have said. Provincial authorities have threatened severe punishment for those responsible for digging up the 680 square metre section of the wall. — AP

Computing project
WASHINGTON: A computer designer of Indian origin with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is heading a prestigious US project aimed at revolutionising computing, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. Mr Anant Agarwal is heading a computing project called “RAW or Raw-Architecture Workstation”, which would present the entire chip to the programmer as a blank slate on which tens of millions of transistors might be individually programmed, — PTI

9 killed in Algeria
ALGIERS: Nine persons were killed and one wounded by armed Islamic extremists in a bloodbath that took place overnight on Monday at Sidi Rabie, the security services have said. Sidi Rabie is in the Medea region, 100 km south of Algiers. No details were given regarding the circumstances of the massacre. The killings ended a short period of relative calm in Algeria, which has been plagued for years by attacks blamed on armed Islamic extremists. — AFP

Space capsule
CAPE CANAVERAL: After 38 years at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, Gus Grissom’s space capsule has been brought up to the surface. The capsule,Liberty Bell 7, which lay in water 4.8 km deep since 1961, was brought to the surface on Tuesday. The underwater salvage team’s success came on the 30th anniversary of man’s first walk on the moon. — AP

War trophies
MOSCOW: President Boris Yeltsin on Tuesday suffered a major defeat in his continued tussle with the Communist-dominated Duma when Russia’s apex constitution court upheld a law on restitution banning return of war trophies to Germany and its allies in the second world war. — PTI