NATO intensifies attacks
BELGRADE, June 1 — Slobodan Milosevic’s Government assailed NATO for the “murdering civilians” following new attacks that Yugoslav authorities said killed more than 24 persons, including residents of a retirement home.

Mine blast kills 11 in Sri Lanka
COLOMBO, June 1 — Tamil rebels set off a powerful claymore mine and opened fire at a passenger van killing nine civilians and two soldiers in the north eastern part of Sri Lanka today.

Britons want privacy laws
LONDON, June 1 — Britons loath intrusion by tabloids into the lives of celebrities and love reading the results, a poll published indicated.

Hillary undecided on Senate contest
YULEE (US), June 1 — The President and First Lady wrapped up a quiet Florida vacation in a way only the Clintons could — sitting in on a conference about progressive politics.

EU lifts sanctions against Nigeria
ABUJA, June 1 — The European Union announced that it was lifting the remaining economic sanctions against Nigeria following the weekend handover of power from military to civilian leaders in the West African nation.

China slams indictment of Milosevic
BEIJING, June 1 — China today criticised the indictment of Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic as a western plot to justify NATO’s air campaign and sabotage a political settlement of the war.

Kargil incursion
West sees role of ISI
from Sanjay Suri

LONDON: Western intelligence has information that Pakistan is behind the “loose network of international terrorists” — backed by Pakistani troops — that is responsible for the incursion into Kargil, according to a report in the Sunday Telegraph.

“The preparation of a mixed force of Afghan, Kashmiri, Pakistani and even British Muslim guerrillas, trained to fight at high altitudes, reinforces India’s contention that the current conflict was well-planned,” says the report. “It also further confirms long-standing reports that Pakistan employs a loose network of international terrorists, as well as Pakistani regulars and Kashmiri militants, not only for operations in Afghanistan but also for incursions into Indian Kashmir.”

The report quotes a western intelligence source as saying: “This current operation has all the hallmarks of the ISI (Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence). The ISI is a great tinkerer in the business of surrounding countries and this is part of its agenda of creating instability in Afghanistan and Kashmir.” The report says that a group of British Islamic fundamentalists are reported to be among the insurgents responsible for provoking the latest conflict between India and Pakistan. It quoted western intelligence sources as saying that “six Britons are reported to have recently received training in mountain techniques and high-altitude warfare.”

The British Muslims, the report says, “are among a number of Islamic guerrillas being trained in remote valleys near Skardu in Pakistani Kashmir, just north of the Line of Control (LoC) from Kargil.” Their instructor was being paid “probably by Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, the ISI Directorate which is known to train, arm and fund Islamic terrorist groups,” the report says. It says that “western intelligence has long believed that various Muslim dissident groups in Britain are front organisations for Islamic extremism, funded by an international network of wealthy Muslims and often sponsored by Pakistani and Arab intelligence agencies.”

Western intelligence also believes that “it is likely that British Muslims, acting individually or together, are prepared to take part in international ‘jihads’(holy wars),” the report says. The report cited Indian intelligence as saying that 400 more guerrillas are preparing to infiltrate from Gilgit across the ceasefire line. It quotes Indian intelligence sources as saying that these are “Pakistani army regulars in disguise.” According to western intelligence reports, however, “many are Afghan, Pakistani and even international Muslim militants backed by Pakistan’s ISI.” Principal among these groups is Al Badr, “a terrorist group linked to Osama bin Laden,” the report says. — IANS

NATO intensifies attacks

BELGRADE, June 1 (AP) — Slobodan Milosevic’s Government assailed NATO for the “murdering civilians” following new attacks that Yugoslav authorities said killed more than 24 persons, including residents of a retirement home.

Allied missiles smashed into a hospital and a retirement home early yesterday in Surdulica, eastern Yugoslavia, crushing part of a building and killing at least 16 persons, in a separate attack. Serb State Media reported at least 10 persons were killed and 20 were wounded later yesterday when NATO missiles slammed into an apartment block in the Southern Serbian city of Novi Pazar.

Condemning the murder of civilians, Mr Milosevic said the latest attacks endangered fragile peace efforts, which were scheduled to continue this week with possible talks with the Finnish president. Russia’s Balkans envoy also announced plans to meet again this week with Mr Milosevic.

Belgrade suffered another blackout last evening shortly after air-raid sirens signaled a new round of NATO attacks. The Independent Beta News Agency said two transformer stations on the outskirts of the capital had been struck for the second time in less than a week, also causing the outage in large areas of Northern Serbia.

Moments after the blackout at about 9.30 p.m. (local time) loud explosions shook the Southern Bubanj Potok area of Belgrade where a major army barracks is located.

NATO, despite being put on the defensive again over its killing of civilians including over 50 since the past weekend pressed ahead with its air campaign. In Kosovo, US A-10 “Warthog” jets struck Serb forces clashing with ethnic Albanian rebels in the hills along the Albanian border.

The alliance acknowledged striking military barracks and an ammunition storage in areas around Surdulica, 355 km Southeast of Belgrade. But journalists taken to the city saw a scene of devastation, with 11 bodies lying under sheets outside the shattered medical complex and four others, those of elderly women, on stretchers in front of the retirement home. A human hand was visible, protruding from the rubble.

In Novi Pazar, 10 persons were killed when one of 20 NATO missiles that targeted the city’s regional television and radio headquarters apparently veered off its course, hitting an apartment block, Serbian media said.

The alliance, has acknowledged killing civilians in its air campaign, in the 70th day today, but insists all such casualties are unintentional.

Marriage with Nelson a sham: Winnie

JOHANNESBURG, June 1(Reuters) Winnie Madikizela-Mandela says her marriage with South African icon Nelson Mandela was a “sham” and the birth of their two daughters “quite coincidental”.

In a rare interview to US television network ABC, excerpts of which were made available to Reuters, Mandela’s former wife also accused him of deserting their grown-up children when he divorced her in 1996.

“The fact that I was even able to get two children from him was just quite coincidental,” she told ABC’s nightline programme in an interview to be broadcast in the USA on the eve of South Africa’s second democratic election tomorrow.

Madikizela-Mandela twinned her married and maiden names after Mandela, President for the past five years, divorced her in a brutal court battle during which he described his embarrassment over her affair with a young lawyer.

“Ever since I came back from prison, not once has the defendant ever entered our bedroom while I was awake... I was the loneliest man during the period I stayed with her,” Mandela told the Pretoria divorce court in March, 1996.

Winnie shrugged off the divorce, however, saying they had hardly lived together.

But she said she still felt hurt for her daughters, Zindzi and Zenani, who were deprived of their father, first through his 27 years in prison and then by the divorce.

Both women were mothers by the time Mandela was freed in February 1990, after 27 years in jail for fighting apartheid.

“I was basically the most unmarried woman, as I’ve always been. So there was very little difference when he ultimately deserted the family. That’s the truth about him, leaving the children who waited for him all those years,” she said.

Winnie blamed an unnamed “enemy” for forcing Mandela to end their marriage, saying: ”I know that one day he will face his God and tell the truth about the divorce.”

Both of Mandela’s daughters regularly help him host official functions or travel with him.

Mandela married former Mozambican First Lady Graca Machel on his 80th birthday last year. It was his third marriage.

Mine blast kills 11 in Sri Lanka

COLOMBO, June 1 (DPA, AFP) — Tamil rebels set off a powerful claymore mine and opened fire at a passenger van killing nine civilians and two soldiers in the north eastern part of Sri Lanka today.

The van was carrying more than 25 persons after a musical show when they were attacked at Kiri-Ibbanwewa, a remote village in the Welioya area, 284 km from the capital late last night, police said.

Among the civilians killed were six men, while the two soldiers caught in the attack were in civilian clothes returning from the musical show. Initial reports said the victims belonged to the majority Sinhala community.

The attack was blamed on LTTE rebels and was seen as a renewal of its campaign against civilian targets.

The police said the injured, who included several women, had been moved to hospital and a search operation by the Army was in progress.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International has accused both sides in Sri Lanka’s long Tamil separatist war of using torture and urged the Government to bring those responsible to justice.

The London-based human rights group said in a report that torture by security forces was reported almost daily during the battle against LTTE.

Amnesty said the problem also extended to routine policing “with officers regularly torturing criminal suspects and people detained in relation to local disputes.” Routine methods included near-suffocation by pulling a plastic shopping bag containing chilli powder or gasoline over the head and tying it around victim’s neck.

Amnesty said Tamil tiger rebels were known to insert pins and nails under fingernails and burn victims with heated rods.

Britons want privacy laws

LONDON, June 1 (AP) — Britons loath intrusion by tabloids into the lives of celebrities and love reading the results, a poll published indicated.

After a hectic spate of tabloid revelations about the well-known, including publication of a partially topless picture of princess-to-be Sophie Rhys-Jones, 77 per cent of people questioned by ICM for The Observer, a liberal broadsheet, said Britain should introduce privacy laws.

A huge 78 per cent majority also said they did not trust the big selling tabloids, headed by The Sun and The Mirror, rival dailies, and weekly News of The World.

The Sun apologised on Thursday for publishing an 11-year-old picture of Miss Rhys-Jones in a bikini with one breast showing. She is due to marry Prince Edward, Queen Elizabeth II’s youngest son next month.

Hillary undecided on Senate contest

YULEE (US), June 1 (AP) — The President and First Lady wrapped up a quiet Florida vacation in a way only the Clintons could — sitting in on a conference about progressive politics.

The annual forum sponsored by a wing of the Democratic Leadership Council was held at White Oak plantation, a sprawling wildlife preserve where President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, have been relaxing since Tuesday evening.

Aides to the First Lady suggested that in between eyeing the giraffes, white rhinoceroses and other species at the plantation, she was pondering over her potential bid for the US Senate from New York.

While flying back to Washington last night, the President was asked by newsmen if Mrs Clinton had decided to run.

“Whatever, she’s for, I’m for”, he answered.

Asked whether the Clintons would vacation in New York state this summer, he replied, “I’ll go wherever she wants to go, from now on”.

Prominent players in democratic politics, as well as like-minded politicos from abroad, attended the plantation conference yesterday, which was closed to the Press.

But a long-time adviser to the First Lady said that the longer she waits to make an official more, the move likely it was that she would run.

EU lifts sanctions against Nigeria

ABUJA, June 1 (AP) — The European Union announced that it was lifting the remaining economic sanctions against Nigeria following the weekend handover of power from military to civilian leaders in the West African nation.

The EU imposed sanctions on Nigeria in 1995 during the rule of late dictator Gen Sani Abacha, whose regime became an international pariah as a result of state-sponsored human rights abuses.

Gen Abacha’s sudden death 12 months ago paved the way for the current democratic transition which culminated in the inauguration on Saturday of President Olusegun Obasanjo who was elected in February.

China slams indictment of Milosevic

BEIJING, June 1 (AP) — China today criticised the indictment of Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic as a western plot to justify NATO’s air campaign and sabotage a political settlement of the war.

China’s Foreign Ministry warned that the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal, the International Court in the Netherlands, that indicted Mr Milosevic and four other top officials last week, “should not resign itself to becoming a political tool of US-led NATO.’’

To indict the major leaders of Yugoslavia is a specially planned plot by the USA and a small number of western countries,” spokesman Zhu Bangzao said.

The tribunal announced that it indicted Mr Milosevic and four other top officials on charges of crimes against humanity in the brutal expulsion of 750,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, a province of Yugoslavia’s Serb Republic.

Suicide due to grief
COLOMBO: A Sri Lankan man drank poison and killed himself when he was overcome by grief after seeing his wife’s funeral proceedings on video wo months after she had committed suicide, a local newspaper has reported. The man, who was not named, took his life on Saturday last in the Kalutara area, 40 km south of the capital, as his children began to watch the video recording of his wife’s funeral. She had killed herself by jumping in front of a moving train. — DPA

Skydiving at 90
EAST TROY (US): The sky is no limit for this 90-year-old, Larry Gillingham celebrated his 90th birthday on Sunday with a tandem parachute jump designed to prove that any senior citizsen in good health could. “I do these crazy things because I enjoy them and I want to set an example for senior citizens,” he said. “If they are healthy, they can do whatever they want”. He plans to go to Alaska and catch a king salmon to mark his next birthday. — AP

Around the world
BREMERHAVEN (Germany): Taking a cue from the Jules Verne novel, two men from northern Germany have set out on a record-breaking 80-day hourney by car around the world. Manfred Mueller, 59, and Karl-Heinz bruemmer, 60, started their trip on Sunday from the coastal city of Bremerhaven in a 36-year-old banger of a car — a 2 hursepower Citroen 2V. The small French-made vehicle is nicknamed Difty. — DPA

Driverless train
MADRID: A Madrid underground train on Monday took off without its driver, passing through three stations before being stopped by passengers using the emergency brake, radio reports said. The reports said the driver had stepped out of his cabin to see why the train did not start. A door which had remained open then closed, and the train departed because the driver had left the start switch on. Two passengers suffered slight injuries when breaking the glass protecting the emergency brake. — DPA

Police shootout
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Haiti): In Haiti, the police on Monday said it shot and killed 11 men in a shootout with gangsters, but witnesses alleged they were executed in cold blood and that eight were innocent. The police said the 11 persons were gang members whose activity they had been investigating. — AP

Armenian poll
YEREVAN: Miasnutiun, an alliance between Defence Minister Vazgen Sarkissian and former communist chief Karen Demirchian swept to victoty in Armenia’s parliamentary election, officials have said. With all but 10 per cent of the ballots counted on Monday, preliminary official results showed Miasnutiun receiving roughly 40.4 per cent of the votes cast in Sunday’s elections. — AFP