Kumar Sanu threatened
JOHANNESBURG, June 20 — Popular Indian singer Kumar Sanu has allegedly been threatened by a Durban businessman not to perform a concert in South Africa.

Anti-pollution drive in Japan
TOKYO, June 20 — Ms Susuze Kajiura often has a hard time breathing, but she has no trouble mustering energy when it comes to joining anti-pollution campaigns.

I have been loyal to party: Anwar
KUALA LUMPUR, June 20 — Malayasia’s sacked Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has denied that he had been disloyal to the ruling party UMNO.

Seeing sun after 40 yrs
BEIRUT, June 20 — Two brothers and their sister saw the sun for the first time in 40 years yesterday after living in virtual isolation without leaving their home or talking to people.

Sharif warns of more Kargils

ISLAMABAD, June 20 (PTI) — Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has warned India that many more Kargil-like situations might crop up if the overall Kashmir issue is not settled once and for all and urged New Delhi to go beyond its stated position for the settlement of the contentious problem as per the "wishes of the Kashmiri people.’’

"The Kargil issue is an aspect of the Kashmir issue..... If the Kashmir issue is not resolved once and for all according to the wishes of Kashmiri people, many more Kargil-like issues can crop up,’’ Mr Sharif told newsmen in Lahore last evening.

While strongly dismissing the Indian allegations that Pakistan was helping the infiltrators in the Dras-Kargil sector, he stressed the need for a political settlement of the lingering problem through dialogue for which he claimed Islamabad was always ready.

The Indian government must not see the Kargil issue in isolation but in overall totality and New Delhi "must address the root cause of the problem which had been acknowledged by the United Nations,’’ the Prime Minister was quoted by media reports as telling reporters.

When his attention was drawn to the fact that the Indian and Pakistani armies were getting closer at different points on the border amidst heightening tension, he cautioned New Delhi against further escalation on the Line of Control (LoC) saying India should take steps to prevent escalation of situation as it would not go in its favour".

To a question whether Pakistan would raise the Kargil issue before the United Nations, the Pakistani premier said there already existed a UN resolution on Kashmir and accused India of "ignoring it.’’

Mr Sharif, who had signed the Lahore Declaration with his Indian counterpart Atal Behari Vajpayee in February last to intensify efforts to resolve the Kashmir problem amidst much bonhomie, stressed on the political settlement of the issue and said Pakistan was willing to work for the just solution of the dispute. "But for this, both sides will have to go beyond their stated positions," he observed.

He reiterated Pakistan’s stated position that Islamabad wanted the solution to the Kashmir issue through a 50-year-old Security Council resolution by giving the right of self-determination to the people of Kashmir.

When asked whether he knew about the developments taking place in Kargil when he was talking peace with his Indian counterpart in Lahore in February, he retorted back how he could know any such thing when he had nothing to do.

"I have no control over the freedom fighters and neither they take order from me. It’s home grown struggle which the people of occupied Kashmir have been waging against the Indian atrocities,’’ Mr Sharif said.

He urged India to show "flexibility’’ and initiate dialogue on the issue and at the same time raised the issue of third party mediation which India has rejected.

"I strongly urge the Indian government to initiate dialogue on this burning issue which has become bone of contention between the two countries", he added.

Meanwhile, the Nawaz Sharif government already under severe international pressure for the infiltration issue in Dras and Kargil yesterday came under sharp criticism from the Pakistani Opposition leaders for its diplomatic failure and being isolated in the world.

A virtually cornered government faced tough situation inside the National Assembly when the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) demanded explanation with regard to the Indian allegations that six Indian armed personnel were tortured to death which led to the USA asking Pakistan to immediately vacate the Dras and Kargil areas.

The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr Muhammad Siddiq Kanju made fervent appeal to the Opposition not to be carried away by "such allegations", which he said were being made to "tarnish the image of the armed forces of Pakistan".

Stating that government was taking all steps to strengthen its case at the international level, Mr Kanju said: "We should not get into traps by the other side on the account of propaganda against Pakistan".

He said diplomats of all countries based in Islamabad had been briefed about Pakistan’s standpoint while all Pakistani missions abroad had been activated.

He informed the House that Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz was proceeding to attend the Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers in this regard while a special representative of Pakistan had been appointed to speak to the Group of Eight countries in Germany.

The attack on the government inside Parliament was launched after the former Premier Benazir Bhutto accused the Nawaz Sharif regime of failing miserably at the diplomatic front which led to USA "tilting towards India" which had a demoralising effect on the nation.

In a statement, Ms Bhutto, who is currently in London, had said the PPP had full confidence in the armed forces to defend the territorial integrity and solidarity of the country but, "the diplomatic and political cover the armed forces needed cannot be given by the unrepresentative regime of Nawaz Sharif".

Former Pakistan President and chief of Millat Party Farooq Leghari also slammed the Sharif Government saying that the unwarranted international pressure on Pakistan to withdraw forces from the Dras and Kargil area was a ‘big foreign policy failure’.

Pak SC directs govt to pay interest

ISLAMABAD, June 20 (PTI) —Pakistan Supreme Court has severely reprimanded the Nawaz Sharif government for freezing the foreign currency accounts (FCA) amounting to $ 11 billion in the wake of nuclear test last year and ordered it to pay interest to account holders as per the original agreement.

In a landmark judgement passed on Friday, a seven-member Bench of the apex court headed by Chief Justice Ajmal Mian pulled up the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and the successive governments for breaching the trust of the FCA holders despite solemn undertaking of not imposing any restriction on the foreign currency deposits.

The Bench also expressed its dismay over improper utilisation of the FCA and the SBP’s failure to perform its statutory duty.

The court in its six-page order also warned that it would examine the list containing names of those who had withdrawn foreign currency during May 11 to 28 in 1998 and would initiate action against them “in accordance with law, if warranted”.

The verdict came on an appeal by the government challenging a Lahore High Court order which had declared the freezing of the FCA as illegal and contrary to fundamental rights. Earlier the FCA Holders Association had moved court against the government decision to freeze the accounts.

The Sharif government facing severe economic crunch and apprehending large-scale withdrawals had frozen all FCA in the Pakistani banks amounting to $ 11 billion and imposed emergency immediately after the country carried out nuclear blasts on May 28 last year.

The apex court also cautioned the government not to compel the FCA holders to convert their foreign currency into Pakistani currency and directed to “evolve a scheme within a reasonable period keeping in view the foreign exchange position of the country for gradual removal of restrictions on the operation of the FCA”.

The government had earlier argued that it did not have sufficient foreign exchange to pay back the FCA holders in foreign currency.

The order also said that FCA holders will be given interest or profit in foreign exchange and at the rates already agreed as per the original agreements between them and the respective banks and that they will also have the right to remit it abroad.

AIDS among six killer diseases

WASHINGTON, June 20 (IPA) — The World Health Organisation (WHO) has identified six infectious diseases as the world’s biggest killers of children and younger adults and called for renewed global efforts to contain them.

The six diseases — AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis (TB), measles, diarrhoeal diseases, and acute respiratory infections (ARI), such as pneumonia — account for 90 per cent of all deaths due to infectious diseases among people under 44 years of age, according to a WHO report.

Each of the six, which together caused over 11 million premature deaths last year, can be effectively contained at a cost of less than $ 20 per victim, the report says.

The vast majority of these deaths took place in poor countries where, according to WHO, infectious diseases account for almost half of all deaths, and a much bigger percentage of the deaths of children under five years of age.

The 68-page report, described by WHO as a ‘‘wake-up call’’ to spur renewed international action against the microbial threats, also stresses that time may be running out for halting their spread, particularly in an era of globalisation.

WHO’s first comprehensive report on infectious diseases, the study was hailed by Mr Nils Daulaire, President of the Washington-based Global Health Council (GHC), as a ‘‘clear battle plan’’.

Until now, the Geneva-based agency, had failed to mount an overall strategy on the problem, partly because different departments and programmes for each disease competed for funding and public attention, according to Mr Daulaire, a former top international-health official under US President Bill Clinton.

Kosovo concentration camps

LONDON, June 20 (Reuters) — NATO troops have found 60,000 ethnic Albanian refugees held by Serb forces in five ransacked northern Kosovo villages that were turned into “concentration camps”, The Sunday Telegraph reported.

The refugees told Telegraph journalists they had been taken prisoner by Yugoslav forces, to be used as a human shield in the event of a ground war with NATO.

The families had been rounded up from mountain hideouts in mid-April and driven to five burnt-out villages near Podujevo in northern Kosovo.

“The village prison camps were surrounded by Serbian tanks and soldiers. Anyone who tried to leave was shot on sight,” the paper quoted refugees as saying.

It said all refugees older than six months were given identity cards bearing their name, a registration number and the name of their prison village.

The paper said its journalists found 12,000 gaunt and sick refugees short of food and medicine in the village prison camp of Saykovac. It said the other camps were in the villages of Dumoc, Surkic, Svecel and Sekiraca.

Meanwhile, more than 100 bodies were discovered buried in a mass grave earlier this week in south-west Kosovo, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has said.

The grave in Velika Krusa, near the southern town of Prizren, was found on Tuesday by NATO troops. It was thought to contain 20 bodies.

But the site contains five times that number, according to a statement released by Mr Cook in London.

A 15-strong team of Scotland Yard Police on Saturday began the gruesome task of examining the site, it affirmed.

It was the first investigation of a site listed in the indictment of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic by the United Nations war crimes tribunal.

WASHINGTON (PTI): Ger-man NATO troops in Kosovo have helped secure release of a group of gypsies from Prizren where they were allegedly beaten and tortured by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), media reports here said.

The gypsies were also allegedly beaten by ethnic Albanians in Macedonia while both lived there as refugees, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.

The newspaper quoted German Army officials as saying the Germans disarmed about 25 ethnic Albanian rebels who had imprisoned and severely beaten 15 elderly gypsies, including a dead man found chained to a chair.

The German officer who led a raid deep inside the former Serbian interior, said the gypsy captives told troops that KLA men detained them for allegedly looting the homes of ethnic Albanians.

Kumar Sanu threatened

JOHANNESBURG, June 20 (PTI) — Popular Indian singer Kumar Sanu has allegedly been threatened by a Durban businessman not to perform a concert in South Africa.

The businessman, Shane Jaipal, who claimed through the media that the singer had a contract with him to perform in South Africa, has been directed by the Durban High Court not to communicate with or threaten or abuse the show promoter, Karamchand Sunny Gayadin.

Gayadin said before the court that Jaipal had allegedly threatened his and Sanu’s safety during the Indian singer’s tour of the country and informed the public through the media that the show would not proceed peacefully.

“The respondent, he said, telephoned Sanu in India and allegedly warned him not to go ahead with the show in this country.

Anti-pollution drive in Japan

TOKYO, June 20 (IPS) — Ms Susuze Kajiura often has a hard time breathing, but she has no trouble mustering energy when it comes to joining anti-pollution campaigns.

The 55-year-old says she got her asthma as a result of living a few metres away from a major expressway in the middle of Tokyo.

According to Ms Kajiura, thousands more Japanese have also fallen ill due to pollution, and she says she will not stop fighting until the government promises environment and health assessment checks to be carried out before any road construction begins.

‘‘I am a state recognised victim of air pollution and thus am entitled to medical compensation,’’ she says. ‘‘But what’s the use of that, when I am so sick I cannot even hold a job or go on a holiday?’’

Ms Kajiura is not the only person in Japan these days who feels more has to be done about industrial pollution. Indeed, more and more Japanese are putting pressure on local governments and Tokyo to limit — if not stop altogether —activities that damage not only the environment, but also pose health risks.

Just last week, more than a thousand demonstrators braved foul weather here to march toward the environment agency.

There, they submitted a petition, addressed to Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, calling among other things for measures to check dioxin pollution from garbage incinerators. Dioxin has been reported to be carcinogenic.

The protesters also asked that government ministries and agencies to deal with noise pollution around Fukuoka Airport, to curb reclamation of the inland sea in western Japan, reconsider plans to build a river dam in Kumamoto prefecture and reconstruct polluted regions.

I have been loyal to party: Anwar

KUALA LUMPUR, June 20 (Pool-Bernama) — Malayasia’s sacked Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has denied that he had been disloyal to the ruling party UMNO.

“I have never been disloyal to the UMNO and am totally opposed to corruption of power and greed as such things lead to the party’s ruin,” he said in a statement carried by the Star Daily today.`The paper did not say how it obtained the statement from Anwar who is currently in jail for corruption and who is undergoing trial over sodomy charges.

Seeing sun after 40 yrs

BEIRUT, June 20 (DPA) — Two brothers and their sister saw the sun for the first time in 40 years yesterday after living in virtual isolation without leaving their home or talking to people.

The police was alerted to the Palestinian family by neighbours who complained of the bad smell coming from their home in the southern Lebanese town of Sidon.

Policemen broke down the door after the 55-year-old sister and her twin brothers refused to let them inside.

“They were living like animals,” a police source said. “They looked like cave people. They had never taken a bath, had their hair cut or even cut their nails.”

Their home was littered with garbage and bodies of cats the family had kept as pets, witnesses said. “Mosquitos, fleas and flies were everywhere.”

The family shielded their eyes from the sun as they were led away to the local police station where they were given showers and haircuts and the brothers had their waist-length beards shaved.

Neighbours said the family’s father, who died 40 years ago, used to forbid the children from leaving the house.

“But they have another brother who lives elsewhere and occasionally brings them food,” one neighbour said. “We never imagined they lived the way they did.”

The three, Hisham, Nemaat and Adnan Khalaf, told the police they were afraid of strangers. They kept repeating they were not allowed to leave the house when young, the police said.

“Rape capital”
JOHANNESBURG: South Africa is fast becoming the “rape capital” of world, a report released by the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) shows. A total of 49.280 cases of rape, an increase of 16.1 per cent, were reported across the country last year, while the number of cases of murder also witnessed a rise with as many as 24,875 incidents reported, SAIRR said in a just released report — PTI

Sind Governor
KARACHI: A businessman and aide of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Mamnoon Hussain on Saturday took oath of office of Governor of Pakistan’s southern Sind province as head of a new centrally-controlled political set-up. A Central Government minister, Syed Ghous Ali Shah was made his adviser, as de facto Chief Minister of the province in the absence of a head of an elected government, which had been dissolved. Outgoing Governor Moinuddin Haider, a former Army General, was removed early this week following differences with Premier Sharif. —DPA

Chinese dissidents
BEIJING: The Chinese police on Saturday detained five more dissidents, a Hong Kong-based human rights group has said. The Information Centre for Democracy and Human Rights said the five members of the unauthorised Democratic Party were detained by the police in the Eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou. The police searched their houses, seized computers and documents. Frank Lu, a spokesman for the human rights group, said their fate was unknown. — DPA

Italians freed
TEHERAN: Three Italian Nationals, kidnapped on June 13 during an outing to a remote tourist destination in southeastern Iran, were freed on Saturday after intervention by the security forces, IRNA said. The three Italians were freed from the hands of their abductors near Bam, in Kerman province” IRNA said. It gave no other details. — Reuters

Stephen King
LEWISTON: Horror writer Stephen King was reported in serious condition last night after being hit by a van near his summer home, west of Portland, Maine, a hospital spokesman said. King (51) was taken to Central Maine Medical Centre in Lewiston after being struck from behind a Dodge caravan on Saturday. “He has been admitted and his condition is serious,” Randel Dustain, a spokesman for the medical centre said. — Reuters

8 die in clash
SANAA: At least eight persons were killed and nine injured in clashes over the ownership of a piece of land in Dhamar province about 150 km south of here. Witnesses said six members of Al-Jaradi tribe were killed on Saturday in an ambush set by the Al-Jamal tribesmen. Two members of the Al-Jamal tribe died in a subsequent revenge attack on their village. — AFP