USA for tribunal to try Khmer leaders
BANGKOK, March 4 — The USA today demanded that the Khmer Rouge leaders be tried before an international tribunal. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told a news conference at the end of her visit to Thailand: “We want the top leaders brought to justice and support an international tribunal on this”.

‘Charge ex-IG with attempted murder’
KUALA LUMPUR, March 4 — A lawyer for Malaysia’s sacked Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim today urged authorities to charge a former police chief with attempted murder for assaulting Anwar in detention.

Progress in talks with India: Sharif
DHAKA, March 4 — Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan has said his country is making progress in talks with neighbouring India on Kashmir.

Taliban ‘helped’ Laden disappear
KANDAHAR, (Afghanistan), march 4 — Two weeks ago, suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden disappeared from his refuge in southern Afghanistan. Since then, his whereabouts have been a mystery.

Pallone has proof of Pak arming militants

WASHINGTON, March 4 (UNI) — Democratic Congressman Frank Pallone has said evidence shows that Pakistan has been playing a direct role in arming and training the militants who have converted the Kashmir valley from an earthly paradise into a living hell.

In a statement in the House of Representatives, he recalled how on the eve of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's visit to Lahore, "Islamic militants — whom Indians generally believe are backed by Pakistan — massacred 20 Hindu civilians in three places in Jammu, part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, apparently in an attempt to derail the peace efforts."

Mr Pallone said: "The issue of Kashmir frequently gets mentioned in the geopolitical calculations over the larger India-Pakistan conflict. There is overwhelming evidence of Pakistani covert support to the continued terror campaign in Jammu and Kashmir. There has, at the same time, been an overt Pakistani effort to internationalise this issue by bringing the USA, or other world powers and international organisations, into the negotiations.

"The one aspect of this tragedy that frequently is overlooked is the plight of the Hindu community of this region, the Kashmiri Pandits," Mr Pallone added.

He said he had urged Secretary of State Madeleine Albright last year to raise the issue whenever Kashmir is discussed by the USA and India.

"I have also asked the Indian Government to bring up the Pandits' issue in any bilateral discussion between India and Pakistan," he added.

"The UN Human Rights Commission also needs to address the Kashmiri Pandits issue, including it in its periodic reports on Kashmir, as well as through the commission's subcommittee on minorities," he said, adding that "I will also continue urging action by UNICEF to provide educational grants to benefit the Kashmiri Pandit children, and the WHO support to improve health and sanitation."

Meanwhile, a senior US Congressman has asked the Clinton administration to recognise China and not Pakistan, as India’s chief adversary and said the Indo-Pak bus diplomacy was an effort “pregnant with promise” of possible rapprochement between the two neighbours.

“I believe the time has come for us to closely examine our basic premise in policy-making towards South Asia, especially towards India,” Senator Gary Ackerman said yesterday, claiming he reached the conclusion about the China-threat through talks with Indian leaders.

“I have just returned from a fact-finding trip to India and responsible leaders from that country’s broad political spectrum in private conversations left no doubt about their deep concern over China - and the growing military and economic might” he said.

“Although very rarely publicly stated, there is a consensus in the mainstream Indian political leadership that China, and not Pakistan, is India’s main adversary in the region,” the co-chairman of the Congressional caucus for India and Indian Americans told the Asia-Pacific sub-committee of the house’s international relations committee.

India-Pakistan ties are undergoing some dramatic changes, he said, on Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s recent bus journey to Lahore.

“We must see this as a beginning of a possible rapprochement between the two neighbours,” Senator Ackerman said.

He said the “competition” between New Delhi and Islamabad was only a “minor portion” of a much larger contest between a “democratic and pluralistic” India and a “totalitarian” China.

“The question, therefore, is not merely “on whose side are we on?” But, more importantly, do we understand and acknowledge this new reality in the region?

“I strongly urge the administration to seriously review and replace its myopic mind-set of the past with a new mind-set of the future so that our South Asian policy will rise up to the challenges of the next century in the subcontinent,” he said.

Iraq urges UN to stop US attacks

BAGHDAD, March 4 (AFP) — Iraq has urged the UN Security Council to halt US air strikes after they brought its oil export pipeline to a standstill, as Britain said the latest attacks were a mistake.

A UN official in New York, meanwhile, said the pipeline could come back on stream later the same day, and an Iraqi Oil Ministry expert told AFP that pumping might resume within 24 hours.

“We call on the Security Council to intervene to stop the continuation of these aggressions and to condemn them,” the official Baghdad newspaper Al-Jumhuriya said yesterday.

“At the same time, we stress that Iraq is determined to continue to oppose the US and British planes,” it said.

The cry of defiance came as President Saddam Hussein presided over a meeting of top officials to review Iraq’s air defences, for the second time in as many days.

US jets on Sunday and Monday carried out a series of bombing raids in which communication centres were hit along the Iraqi-Turkish pipeline that carries more than half of all Iraq’s UN-authorised crude exports.

In a letter to UN Chief Kofi Annan, Iraq’s Foreign Minister Mohammed Said Al-Sahhaf charged that “this act of aggression was deliberately intended to half the export of Iraqi oil.”

But a US diplomat at the UN nations said the planes did not hit the pipeline itself or a pumping station, but a relay centre which was a “dual-use facility” with military and civilian purposes.

In contrast, Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair said the attacks were a mistake. “It certainly was not by purpose, and we don’t even know yet what the extent of the damage clearly is,” he told Parliament.

Russia’s Ambassador to the UN, Mr Sergei Lavrov, said Moscow was “very seriously concerned” by the damage. Backed by China, he said the no-fly zones were illegal because they were not set up by a UN resolution.

Moscow and Beijing have called for an immediate halt to the US-led air strikes, and Paris, another Security Council permanent member, has also criticised the continuing attacks.

Israel blackmailed Clinton?

NEW YORK, March 4 (AFP) — A new book alleges Israel’s intelligence service secretly taped US President Bill Clinton’s racy phone talks with Monica Lewinsky and used them to blackmail him, the according to the New York Post.

Israel’s renowned Mossad agency used the tapes of conversations between the President and the former White House intern to compel Clinton to call off an FBI hunt for an Israeli spy working at the White House, according to the post’s description of the book reported yesterday.

Written by respected British author Gordon Thomas, “Gideon’s Spies — the Secret History of the Mossad” was due out at bookstores next week.

The White House emphatically denied Gordon’s account.

“The book is nonsense to tell you the truth. Book sellers ought to consider selling it in the fiction section,” said White House spokesman Barry Toiv. Another White House spokesman, David Leavy, maintained that presidential communications were secure.

“I am not aware of any phone tapping of the President’s lines. We take all precautions to make sure that his communications are secure. The story is nonsense in my view,” he said.

But the post recalled that in the report by independent council Kenneth Starr to Congress, which formed the basis for Clinton’s impeachment trial, Lewinsky said the President suspected their telephone calls were bugged by a foreign government. She said Clinton told her that if she were ever asked about the phone sex, she was to pretend that the calls were just a joke.

USA for tribunal to try Khmer leaders

BANGKOK, March 4 (ANI) — The USA today demanded that the Khmer Rouge leaders be tried before an international tribunal.

US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told a news conference at the end of her visit to Thailand: “We want the top leaders brought to justice and support an international tribunal on this”.

She said unlike Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, she did not think that such a move might be destabilising.

Mr Hun Sen had said that efforts to bring Khmer Rouge leaders to trial could create panic among members of the group who have already surrendered and could shatter Cambodia’s recently — found peace. He had also suggested in a letter to UN Secretary-General that Cambodia was considering setting up a south Africa-style “truth and reconciliation commission” to investigate almost 30 years of conflict since 1970.

But Mrs Albright said such a truth commission would be no substitute for an international tribunal.

Former Khmer Rouge fighters have warned of trouble if attempts are made to arrest their leaders. The government has let them live freely in former strongholds. Nearly two million Cambodians died during the Khmer Rouge’s “Killing Fields” (reign of terror) in the late 1970s.

Monica had abortion during Clinton affair

LONDON, March 4 (Reuters) — In her book Monica’s Story, published today, Lewinsky says she had an abortion during her affair with Bill Clinton following a romance with a Pentagon official, the British tabloid Mirror reported in London.

The newspaper which had rights to serialise the book “Monica’s Story” written by Andrew Morton, the biographer of Princess Diana, said Lewinsky discovered to her horror that she was pregnant as she ended a fling with the Pentagon official called Thomas.

“I wasn’t emotionally prepared for it. It was horrible and very depressing,” the Mirror quoted Lewinsky as saying in the book.

It said President Clinton did not know she had had an abortion.

She had turned to the Pentagon official while President Clinton was romancing her but ended the affair after three months when she found the official was seeing other women.

“Not wanting to be a single parent, and still in love with President Clinton, Monica reluctantly decided to terminate the pregnancy,” the Mirror quoted the book as saying. Thomas offered to accompany her to the abortion but she went alone, the Mirror said.

Despite her affection for Thomas, whom she met in the summer of 1996, Lewinsky could not bring herself to end the illicit affair with Clinton, the Mirror said. The White House romance continued.

Contemplated suicide
In a television interview Lewinsky said the seriously contemplated suicide as she was being grilled about her relationship with President Clinton.

During 10 hours of interrogation on the tenth floor of a Washington hotel by Kenneth Starr’s prosecutors, she became so stressed she considered jumping out of the window.

The admission was made in an interview on Britain’s channel 4 television, to be aired this evening. Excerpts were released in advance.

“I thought maybe if I’m not here it won’t happen so I seriously considered jumping.”

She said she was threatened with 27 years in jail for perjury for denying her relationship with President Clinton in an affidavit for the Paula Jones case.

New York: Two days before its release, “Monica’s Story” was no 5 yesterday on Amazon. Com’s best-seller list. St. Martin’s Press is shipping 450,000 copies to book sellers and “we’re ready to reprint in a second,” said Sally Richardson, president of the publisher’s trade division.

Still many in the book industry expect the confessional to make a big initial splash, then fade away fast. And many readers claim to be absolutely, positively uninterested in seeing a single word more about Monica Lewinsky’s affair with President Bill Clinton.

So who are all those folks getting ready to pay down 24.95 dollars to read the former White House intern’s collaboration with Princess Diana biographer Andrew Morton?

“Everybody says, ‘we’re all sick of this,’ and yet every book and every video has done well,” said Amazon. Com spokesman Bill Curry. You just know in the industry that certain books are going to be big with a capital ‘B.’

And “Monica’s Story,” he said, is likely to be one of them.

Washington:Monica Lewinsky says US President Bill Clinton was her “sexual soulmate” and their relationship, which almost cost the President his job, was that between “a man and a woman” and not between “President and an intern”.

“We would talk, we would laugh, we would tell jokes. He was very tender with me. He was very affectionate. I think you know when someone is attracted to you”, the former White House intern told ABC-TV in a two-hour interview.

The interview was aired on Wednesday and extracts of the tape were published by the New York daily in advance and its authenticity was confirmed by the KV network.

She told her interviewer, Barbara Walters, that she “did not feel cheap” and refused to take responsibility for her 18-month-old relationship with the President that began with a “small, subtle, flirtatious gesture.”

“From the beginning,” said Lewinsky, “there was a very intense sexual attraction, and I don’t necessarily think a sexual attraction is a bad thing. I didn’t feel that way and I still don’t.”

‘Charge ex-IG with attempted murder’

KUALA LUMPUR, March 4 (Reuters) — A lawyer for Malaysia’s sacked Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim today urged authorities to charge a former police chief with attempted murder for assaulting Anwar in detention.

“The commission should recommend a charge of attempted murder on the part of Tan Sri Rahim Noor,” Anwar’s lawyer Karpal Singh told a Royal Commission investigating injuries the former Finance Minister sustained after being arrested in September. A former police chief had admitted to hitting Anwar.

Rahim Noor’s lawyer told the Royal Commission, which completed its hearings today and will later submit a report to the King, that there were no grounds for charging the ex-police chief with attempted murder. “There is no proof of intention to commit murder,” Teh Poh Teik said.

The panel’s chief investigator said the Commission had established a clear case of unprovoked assault by the former Inspector-General of police against Anwar.

“It is a clear case of a calculated assault by Tan Sri Rahim on a defenceless person,” Abu Talib Othman said.

Progress in talks with India: Sharif

DHAKA, March 4 (AP) — Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan has said his country is making progress in talks with neighbouring India on Kashmir.

“The ice has started breaking. But we have a long way to go,” Mr Sharif said in an interview with Dhaka’s Ittefaq newspaper published today.

Mr Sharif, who left for home today, was in Bangladesh to attend this week’s summit of an eight-nation Islamic economic bloc, known as D-8.

Kashmir, a territory claimed by both India and Pakistan, is the source of all conflicts in the region, Mr Sharif said.

“Once we are able to resolve this dispute we will have little problem in establishing peace and security in the region,” the Pakistani leader said.

He said his talks last month with Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had been very fruitful.”

“We have agreed to find out solution to all our problems, including that of Kashmir,” Mr Sharif said.

Mr Sharif said officials of the two countries would meet to follow up his talks with the Indian Prime Minister.

Taliban ‘helped’ Laden disappear

KANDAHAR, (Afghanistan), march 4 (AP) — Two weeks ago, suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden disappeared from his refuge in southern Afghanistan. Since then, his whereabouts have been a mystery.

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers say they have no idea where he is even though, according to a top Taliban official, he was accompanied by 10 Afghan agents sent to both protect and spy on him.

Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, who speaks for Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, says the Taliban sent bin Laden his escorts on February 10.

Others worked for the secret service. Their job was to spy on him’’ and “still others worked for the foreign ministry because he is our foreign guest,’” he said.

Women abused
PARIS: Amnesty International denounced the violation of fundamental rights and dignity of women held in US prisons, in a report released here on Thursday. Cases of rape, groping and fondling during body searches, and the use of handcuffs and leg shackles during childbirth, led Amnesty’s Director in France, Mr Michel Michel Forst, to speak of a “double sentence”. — AFP

Youngest climber
KATHMANDU: A Nepalese schoolboy, seeking to become the youngest person to climb Mount Everest, was given permission to make the attempt on the world’s highest mountain. Nepal’s Tourism Ministry on Wednesday said 15-year-old Arbin Timilsina could make the climb in spring. Timilsina has never been on a mountaineering expedition but has undergone four short training courses. — Reuters

Dicaprio sued
NEW YORK: A personal damage lawsuit against Leonardo Dicaprio and four of his friends alleges that the superstar incited an assault on another entertainer. The civil suit, filed on Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court by Roger Wilson, claims that the alleged attack severely damaged Wilson’s throat and larynx and kept him from a movie assignment. It asks for $ 45 million in damages. Dicaprio emphatically denies ever ordering or taking part in any assault on Wilson, Dicaprio’s lawyer, Paul Callan said. — Reuters