• Respect LoC sanctity: USA

Al-Badr ‘not asked’ to withdraw from Kargil

ISLAMABAD, July 23 (PTI) — A Pakistan-based militant outfit has said its activists are still fighting inside the Indian territory and have not received any “request or warning” from the Nawaz Sharif government to withdraw from Kargil.

The Al-Badr Mujahideen chief Bakht Zameen, said he had just returned from the posts still held by his activists in Kargil. “The Mujahideen are still occupying heights in Dras and Kargil and they have no intention to vacate them at any cost,” Zameen told newsmen in Peshawar yesterday.

The militant leader rejected the Washington accord between Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and US President Bill Clinton for restoration of the sanctity of the Line of Control (LoC).

Meanwhile, a Pakistani Army spokesman claimed that India was “violating” the disengagement agreement and that the Indian Director-General of Military Operations (DGMO) had been “warned” against it.

“The Indian DGMO was told in categorical terms, when the two DGMOs spoke on the hotline yesterday, that India should stop ceasefire violations on the LoC,” the ‘News’ daily reported quoting the spokesman.

“Pakistan told India that if unprovoked violations by the Indian Army across the LoC continued unabated, we reserve the right to respond, in order to guard the lives of the innocent civilians residing close to these areas”, the spokesman was quoted by the official APP news agency as saying.

LONDON (IANS): Pakistan’s Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto has said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took South Asia to the brink of a nuclear war by launching a peace initiative with India while ordering “a military adventure in Kargil”.

“He launched an initiative for peace with India while simultaneously planning a military adventure in Kargil,”, Ms Bhutto told BBC in an interview, NNI news agency reported. “This has undermined Pakistan’s negotiating position.

It is like playing into the hands of the hardliners in India. He has aggravated the prospects of peace,” she said.

She said she was convinced that Mr Sharif knew about the Kargil operation. “When I was Prime Minister, I was briefed on two occasions on possible Mujahideen activity that could trigger a wider war or conflict. And I cautioned restraint both times,” she said. “I said while militarily the country could defend itself or achieve the objectives, politically the support was not there. I believe Mr Nawaz Sharif knew. He has never denied in Pakistan that he knew.”

Ms Bhutto said the current leadership in Pakistan did not know what it wanted to do. “It is a blunder to go into Kargil,” Ms Bhutto said. “Why did he (Mr Sharif) permit the Pakistanis to go into Kargil when the political support was not there?

While discussing the Kashmir issue “we often forget the Kashmiris themselves,” Ms Bhutto said. “We have talked about India, we talked about Pakistan but we have forgotten about the sufferings of the Kashmiri people.”

Respect LoC sanctity: USA

WASHINGTON, July 23 (UNI) — Without specifically naming Pakistan, the USA has again called for the restoration of the Line of Control (LoC) and asked India to exercise restraint in its ongoing military operation to evict the remaining infiltrators from its territory.

“We have seen reports that some of the infiltrators on the Indian side of the LoC have not withdrawn. We think it’s vital for peace that the LoC be restored,” State Department spokesman James Rubin said, in reply to a question yesterday.

He said, “We trust that the Indian Government will continue to exercise the kind of restraint in pursuing this operation that they have throughout the Kargil crisis.”

Mr Rubin said Indian and Pakistani officials and military officers had successfully ended most of the fighting around Kargil through talks. “We hope that this remaining issue can be settled quickly,” he added.

No statehood plan, says Taiwan

TAIPEI, July 23 (Reuters) — Taiwan reassured a US emissary today it had no plans to pursue independence and never meant to cause a row with China by asserting itself as a “state”.

“We are merely stating the current situation,’’ Taiwan’s top mainland policymaker Su Chi told reporters after a meeting with Richard Bush, head of the organisation that handles Washington’s unofficial ties with Taipei.

“Our mainland policy remains unchanged, our goal of pursuing future democratic union with China remains unchanged,’’ he said.

Foreign Minister Hu said Taipei had not set out to damage an already tense relationship with china and that it did not want to aggravate US-China ties, which worsened after NATO’s May bombing of Beijing’s Embassy in Yugoslavia.

“We have no intention of hurting relations between the USA and Chinese communists when their ties are at a low point, nor do we want to damage our interaction with the USA,’’ Mr Hu said.

Officials reiterated that Taiwan was not seeking outright independence — something that Communist China suspects and promises to prevent with a military assault.

DPA, AP add: The US envoy, Mr Richard Bush, assured Taiwan of Washington’s security pledges today despite its displeasure over the President, Mr Lee Teng-Hui’s statehood claims.

Mr Bush, the top Cabinet member in charge of ties with Taiwan, gave the assurance on the first day of his visit to seek an explanation for Mr Lee’s remarks.

He met the Foreign Minister, Mr Jason Hu, the Defence Minister, Mr Tang Fei, and the Mainland Affairs Council Chairman, Mr Su Chi, this morning.

Mr Hu told Mr Bush that Taiwan had no intention to amend the Constitution. Taiwan cannot accept the “one country, two systems” model, with which China resumed control over Hong Kong in 1997, after 150 years of British rule.

In his meeting with Mr Tang, Mr Bush conveyed pledges from the President, Mr Bill Clinton, that Washington would abide by the Taiwan Relations Act and the ongoing Taiwan-US arms deals would not be affected, Defence Ministry spokesman Kong Fan-Ting said.

Meanwhile, Taiwan on Friday invites China to talks over the President’s assertion of statehood that has enraged Beijing. China should send a representative to discuss its differences with Taiwan over Mr Lee’s recent description of relations between them as “state-to-state,” said Mr Su Chi, the government’s official in charge of China police.

“We’re democratic country. There’s no way we would refuse such a thing,” Mr Su told reporters following a meeting the US envoy, Mr Bush.

Barak, Arafat to hold talks today

JERUSALEM, July 23 (AFP) — Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak will resume peace talks with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat tomorrow amid disputes over a timetable for overdue transfers of land to Palestinian control.

Moving quickly to reassure the Palestinians following a week-long visit to the USA, where he mapped out his peace-making plans for President Bill Clinton, Mr Barak will sit down with Mr Arafat at the Erez Crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, Israeli officials said yesterday.

It will be their second meeting since an encounter on July 11, four days after Mr Barak took over Israel’s Government from Right-wing hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu.

Mr Barak will then travel to Cairo on Sunday for his second meeting in barely two weeks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, his office said.

The top item on the agenda will be Palestinian demands, backed by Egypt, that Mr Barak immediately implement the Wye River interim peace accord signed by his predecessor but suspended late last year.

WASHINGTON (Reuters): US President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak talked on the phone on Thursday.

Mr P.J. Crowley, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said Mr Barak, who ended a six-day US visit on Tuesday pledging to reinvigorate the West Asia peace process, gave Mr Clinton and update on his discussions with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London on Wednesday.

Russian PM to meet Gore

MOSCOW, July 23 (Reuters) — Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin goes to the USA on Sunday to complete a mission which his predecessor aborted abruptly in mid-air because of the Kosovo crisis.

Former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov turned his plane around over the Atlantic Ocean on March 23 when Vice-President Al Gore, whom he had been due to meet in Washington, informed him NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia were inevitable.

The 78-day bombing campaign which began the next day pushed Russian-US relations to their lowest ebb since the cold war, until Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin broke the ice during an eight-nation summit in Cologne last month.

Mr Stepashin’s three-day trip, including talks with Mr Clinton on Tuesday and a meeting of the Gore-Stepashin Commission which oversees economic cooperation, offers the two sides an opportunity to build on the breakthrough made in Cologne.

"Following the meeting of President Yeltsin and President Clinton in Cologne, the meeting of Mr Stepashin and Mr Gore is going to develop the theme of that visit — which is that the relationship has a great deal to do and it’s time to get back to work,’’ US Ambassador to Moscow James Collins said.

An initial breakthrough was made in Finland, where Russia’s role in peacekeeping operations in Kosovo was agreed. Two days later Mr Yeltsin and Mr Clinton agreed in Cologne to put the row over the bombing of Yugoslavia, which Moscow opposed, behind them.

Mr Yeltsin also made a gesture by saying that Russia would consider changes to the 1972 anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty sought by Washington to develop a new missile defence system.

In return, Mr Clinton and other western leaders promised to give Russia a sympathetic hearing at debt talks.

Demoted for making Queen’s dogs drunk

LONDON, July 23 (DPA) — Queen Elizabeth II was reported to have demoted a footman who amused himself by making her corgis drunk.

Mathew King, (28) wears a red uniform to accompany the Queen’s coach in parades. Out of the public eye, one of his jobs had until now been to feed the 73-year-old Monarch’s dogs. That was until the palace found out he had been mixing alcohol into the the dogs’ food. He thought it was funny to see the dogs staggering about,“said a palace insider” quoted by the Sun.

The dogs are alleged to be the only living creatures ever seen by the public to have been caressed by the Queen.

An official 1969 film about the royal family’s private life was dubbed “Corgi and Beth” because Elizabeth appeared to spend more time with the dogs than with her husband and children.

“Mathew made sure he only played the prank when the Queen was away,” the newspaper quoted the insider saying. “I am sure she would have been horrified if she had known about it.”

Milosevic to go by fall: Oppn

VIENNA, July 23 (Reuters) — Serbian Opposition parties today urged international financial help for the democratic cities of Serbia and said they were sufficiently united to oust Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic by autumn (fall).

“We have agreed to coordinate our street demonstrations and I believe that the last bloody dictatorship of this century could be destroyed by the autumn,’’ Nenad Canak, head of the League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina, told reporters.

“If he (Milosevic) remains any longer he will stand on his feet again and all our efforts will be useless. In November, the one who will have a loaf of bread and a finger on electricity will rule Serbia,’’ Mr Canak said during a two-day meeting of European Socialist leaders in Vienna.

Opposition attempts to remove Milosevic have been hampered by infighting between the 30-party Alliance for Change Movement and the Serbian Renewal Movement of former Deputy Prime Minister Vuk Draskovic.

Mr Vuk Obradovic, president of the Social Democratic Party — an Alliance for Change member — said the Opposition would continue to hold two or three street protests per week, moving closer to Belgrade as long as Milosevic remained in power.

He said the opposition wanted Serbian President Milan Milutinovic, as well as Mr Milosevic, to resign, an interim government of technocrats should then be installed.

Pilot killed by hijacker

TOKYO, July 23 (Reuters) — The pilot of a plane hijacked by a lone knife-wielding man died after being stabbed while subduing the attacker, Transport Ministry officials said today.

The ministry said the man had been arrested after hijacking an All Nippon Airways (ANA) 747 Jumbo Jet carrying 517 persons on a domestic flight from Tokyo to northern Japan.

Pilot Naoyuki Nagashima (51) was fatally injured in the struggle with the hijacker. It was the first hijack-related death on a Japanese plane, although 19 Japanese planes have been hijacked since 1970.

The plane landed safely at Haneda Airport just over an hour after it had taken off. The previous hijacking incident in Japan occurred on January 20, 1997, when a man carrying a knife hijacked a plane flying between Osaka and Fukuoka in southern Japan.

Television reports said the ANA hijacker had been injured.

F-22 funding cut

WASHINGTON, July 23 (AFP) — The House of Representatives has voted to cut funding for the F-22 fighter in a stunning blow to the Pentagon, which warned the cut could kill the air force’s next generation fighter and threaten future US dominance in the air.

The funding cut for the F-22 was contained in the $ 266.1 billion defence appropriations Bill for 2000, passed by the House by a vote of 379 to 45 yesterday.

Mosque shut after threats

JERUSALEM, July 23 (AP) — Angry Islamic clerics have banned visitors from Islam’s third holiest shrine in reaction to a call from Jewish extremists to expel Muslims from the area which they believe is sacred Jewish ground.

The Israeli police arrested three members of the outlawed anti-Arab Kach group yesterday after they distributed leaflets near the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, calling on Jews to “expel the strangers from the Temple Mount.”

Gates to the compound known to Muslims as Haram as-Sharif or ‘noble sanctuary’ were shut yesterday. The mosque area is located on the site of the second Jewish temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

US Embassy closed
WASHINGTON: The US Embassy in N’djamena, the capital of Chad, was evacuated and closed on Thursday following a telephoned bomb threat, the State Department said. A search of the interior and exterior of the facility failed to turn up an explosive device, but the Embassy was closed until Friday. Meanwhile, the US Embassy in Maputo, Mozambique, remained closed on Thursday for “security reasons”. — DPA

Space capsule returns
CAPE CANAVERAL: The long-lost Mercury capsule that carried US astronaut Virgil “Gus” Grissom into space finally completed its round trip on Wednesday arriving at Cape Canaveral 38 years to the day after its historic space trek. The marine salvage team that hauled the Liberty Bell 7 from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean off the Bahamas on Tuesday pulled into shore at Port Canaveral, a few miles from the Cape Canaveral launch pad from which the capsule rocketed into space on July 21, 1961. — Reuters

UN membership
UNITED NATIONS: The Kingdom of Tonga has applied for membership of the United Nations, making it the third South Pacific country this year seeking to join the world body. The UN Security Council on Thursday referred Tonga’s application to its committee on admissions, which is scheduled to meet on Monday. — AP

Great-grandpa Yeltsin
MOSCOW: Russian President Boris Yeltsin (68) is now a great-grandfather. Early on Thursday his granddaughter Yekaterina (Katya) gave birth to a baby boy at the Kremlin Clinic in Moscow, Itar-Tass has Reported. — DPA