Bosnian Serb MPs reject chief’s sack
LONDON, March 8 — The Western powers received a major setback to their peace efforts in Bosnia when the Bosnian Serb Parliament rejected the removal of their ultra-nationalist President Nikola Poplasen by Mr Carlos Westendorp, their top peace envoy in Bosnia, and denounced the international arbitrator’s decision to place the disputed, Serb-controlled town of Brcko under neutral control.

Japan’s Justice Minister quits
TOKYO, March 8 — Japan’s Justice Minister Shozaburo Nakamura resigned today after he blundered when allowing his movie hero Arnold Schwarzenegger into the country.

China rejects move on strategic tie-up
BEIJING,March 8 — China will not forge a strategic triangle with India and Russia, a proposal mooted by Moscow, aimed at countering US influence in world affairs.

Director of ‘Space Odyssey’ dead
LONDON, March 8 — Stanley Kubrick, the acclaimed film director of “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “A Clockwork Orange”, died at the age of 70.

Bosnian Serb MPs reject chief’s sack

LONDON, March 8 (ANI) — The Western powers received a major setback to their peace efforts in Bosnia when the Bosnian Serb Parliament rejected the removal of their ultra-nationalist President Nikola Poplasen by Mr Carlos Westendorp, their top peace envoy in Bosnia, and denounced the international arbitrator’s decision to place the disputed, Serb-controlled town of Brcko under neutral control.

Bosnia Serb MPs, who met in an emergency session late last night, also voted to withdraw all Bosnian Serb representatives from the country’s joint central bodies, including Parliament.

The parliamentarians said they could not accept Friday’s sacking of Poplasen by Westendorp, saying it was against their constitution. Mr Poplasen was also present at the parliamentary session, suggesting that he would step down only if Parliament decided to direct him to do so.

Mr Westendorp, who has sweeping powers to implement the U.S.-brokered Dayton Peace Treaty that ended the 1992-95 war, has made clear that his decision stands because Mr Poplasen was “obstructing steps to solidify peace” in Bosnia. He suggested that he might even ask the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Bosnia to enforce it, as a last resort.

The assembly also called for talks to begin among political parties on the formation of a new government following Friday’s resignation of West leaning incumbent Prime Minister Milorad Dodik over the Brcko ruling.

The vote signalled that the Western-backed Sloga (Unity) coalition was in disarray as the Socialist Party voted for the hardline President while Dodik’s Independent Social Democrats abstained.

In its resolution on Brcko, whose non-Serb population was driven out early in the war in a campaign of “ethnic cleansing”, the assembly said it did not accept the ruling to turn it a self-governing neutral district.

Bosnian Serbs see the town on the border with Croatia as a lifeline linking the eastern and western parts of their territory and say the decision to remove it from their control in effect divides the Serb republic into two parts.

Earlier, the Speaker, Mr Petar Djokic, was quoted as saying that the session would would focus on the Brcko ruling as well as what to do about Mr Poplasen’s sacking.

On Saturday, political turmoil intensified when the Serb chairman of Bosnia’s collective presidency, Mr Zivko Radisic,said he would suspend his participation in the top state body in protest over the decision to turn Brcko into a self-governing neutral district.

Mr Radisic, a Socialist Party leader,said the outcome posed a threat to both the Dayton agreement and to the Serb republic.

Bosnian Serb deputies from both hardline and moderate political parties have also served notice that they would quit the Lower House of Bosnia’s state Parliament, which groups representatives from the two autonomous regions.

Mr Milorad Djokic, the resigned Prime Minister of the Serb Republic Srpska, said Friday’s ruling by an independent arbitration panel had divided the republic into two parts. Westendorp, on the other hand, claimed that Mr Djokic and other Serb leaders were overreacting and added that the outcome on Brcko was better than they thought.

Meanwhile in a separate development, Kosovo’s separatist Albanian guerrillas may soon agree to sign an international peace deal,granting autonomy to their Serbian province after extensive international persuasion.

U.S. envoy Bob Dole, former Senator, who met leading Kosovo Albanians in Macedonia, said he expected them to sign the Contact Group peace plan, overcoming a reluctance that halted talks at the 14th century French chateau of Rambouillet about a fortnight ago.

“They (Kosovo Albanians) indicated many times they will keep their word and I think they will keep their word and they will sign tomorrow. It takes courage but in my view it will be done,” Mr Dole said.

Japan’s Justice Minister quits

TOKYO, March 8 (AFP) —Japan’s Justice Minister Shozaburo Nakamura resigned today after he blundered when allowing his movie hero Arnold Schwarzenegger into the country.

The scandal, in which Mr Nakamura is suspected of keeping Schwarzenegger’s lost-passport form as a souvenir, has led the big Opposition parties to boycott Parliament since last Wednesday, demanding his termination.

Mr Takao Jinnouchi, an Upper House of Councillors member, would be new Justice Minister replacing Mr Shozaburo Nakamura, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiromu Nonaka announced at a press conference.

Mr Jinnouchi (65) is well connected in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and belongs to the party’s largest faction led by Premier Keizo Obuchi.

“Prime Minister Obuchi chose him, considering his long experience and excellent personality,” Mr Nonaka said.

“Owing to my remarks and actions, I stalled parliamentary proceedings,” the minister reportedly told Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi before handing in his written resignation, which was accepted.

Mr Nakamura, a confessed “Arnie” fan, handed in his resignation shortly after 0530 hrs (IST), said an official in his office and the Premier’s Deputy Press Secretary, Akitaka Saiki.

“It was inevitable,” the Premier told reporters.

“Although I depended on his ability to reform the judicial system, it was unfortunate things turned out this way. I would like him to continue to work on judicial reform and other matters as a Member of Parliament.”

Asked why the minister resigned, the Premier’s Deputy Press Secretary said: “It has already been reported in the media very widely. I don’t know the real reason.”

“There have been some problems involving him and his continuation as Minister of Justice would cause difficult problems for the Cabinet to function through the parliamentary session,” Saiki said.

Mr Nakamura had also been criticised for allegedly abusing his authority by ordering a Justice Ministry probe last year into a resort development project near a hotel he effectively owned on Ishigakijima Island, Okinawa prefecture. He, however, retracted the order later.

He also triggered controversy in a New Year’s address to the ministry’s senior officials by criticising the war-renouncing constitution and calling for its revision. He later retracted these remarks also.

Indian brides on export list

OSLO, March 8 (UNI) — Eligible Norwegian bachelors may have to wink at the Indian women if they desire a marital life.

According to the Mayor of the Arctic Norwegian town of Kaalfjord, Mr Aage B Pedersen, “It is becoming increasingly customary for young women in Norway, (especially in the north where it can be night for nearly six months), to move to the cities. Consecutively, it becomes increasingly customary for eligible young men in the rural regions to remain alone, thereby depleting the population.”

So, in a last-ditch effort, (willing) Indian women, along with those from several other countries, may be brought to Norway as prospective brides to bachelors in this region whose hopes of a local girl are forlorn indeed, Mr Padersen told ths mass-circulation Norwegian daily, “Dagbladet,’’ in an interview.

“The ever growing number of young men in rural Norway should be given economic assistance to bring home wives from South Asia, Poland and Russia (regions with surplus females),’’ says Mr Pedersen.

The Mayor has proposed a motion to the Municipalities (Communes), in rural Norway, to provide the funds that will enable these rural bachelors to fetch wives from outside Norway.

“It gravely concerns the future of our communes,’’ says the worried but futuristically imaginative Norwegian politician. ‘’we must do something drastic.”

The Mayor’s ideas are not utterly utopian but grounded on solid proven precedents. Just within the last century, Norwegians did exactly what he is proposing to do: populate large tracts of USA — by taking their women out and later when that exodus proved to be dangerous for the homecountry they reversed the process.

However, it is not yet time to rush for visas, Mr Padersen said.

Clinton a please-all ostrich: Monica

WASHINGTON, March 8 (AFP) — After a year of scandal over her affair with President Bill Clinton, an unrepentant Monica Lewinsky told Time magazine she wanted to focus on her future and had no desire to speak to him.

In her first interview in the print media since the scandal broke 14 months ago, Lewinsky, 25, said: “I see him (Clinton) as such as opposite of what I used to see him,” she told Time which hits the newsstands today, explaining that he was a man who sought to hide from confrontation.

“I think he has a desire to please everybody, and he is also an ostrich, in that he avoids confrontations at all costs,” she said. “He will tell you what you want to hear to avoid confrontations.”

Of their White House liaison, she said: “I don’t think it was wrong. It didn’t affect his job, it didn’t affect my job. We were together mostly on the weekends when I was not supposed to be working and he was not really supposed to be working.”

Unemployed and notorious as the woman who nearly brought down the US President, Lewinsky is intensely preoccupied about her future. She considered law school but was frightened away by the entry exams, she said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters): Monica Lewinsky’s story of her relationship with President Clinton was “fiction, fable, fantasy, farce and fairy tale,” Linda Tripp, who befriended and betrayed the ex-White House intern, said yesterday.

In her first interview since Lewinsky’s televised appearances and book release last week, the Pentagon Public Affairs specialist also attacked First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mrs Clinton “was complicit in the time that I was there in virtually every scandal,” Tripp said on the ABC programme “This Week,” adding if the First Lady ran for the Senate from New York “many things would be a problem once they surfaced.”

LONDON: Monica Lewinsky arrived here at the start of an 18-day blitz of British bookstores to promote sales of her version of her relationship with U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Lewinsky stepped off a scheduled concorde flight dressed in black on Sunday, and was surrounded by police officers who ushered her along airport corridors to a blue jaguar car with a female chauffeur.

She declined to make any comment to photographers and television crews ahead of her 19-bookstore tour to sign copies of “Monica’s Story” by Andrew Morton.

The blitz begins today at the book department in Harrods’ luxury department store, where there is already a shrine to another woman scorned - Princess Diana

China rejects move on strategic tie-up

BEIJING,March 8 (PTI) — China will not forge a strategic triangle with India and Russia, a proposal mooted by Moscow, aimed at countering US influence in world affairs.

Beijing will instead pursue an independent foreign policy of peace characterised by non-alliance, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan told reporters here yesterday.

Mr Tang emphasised that China’s strategic partnership with Russia was not targeted at any third country and described the vastly improved Sino-Russian strategic partnership as a new “state-to-state” relationship.

Meanwhile, tensions between China and the USA escalated over the week amid allegations that China had stolen US nuclear secrets, analysts said today.

Director of ‘Space Odyssey’ dead

LONDON, March 8 (Reuters) - Stanley Kubrick, the acclaimed film director of “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “A Clockwork Orange”, died at the age of 70.

The police at St Albans, north of London, said it was notified of the death yesterday by a doctor who had been called to Kubrick’s home. The police said it did not know the cause of death.

His most famous were “2001: A Space Odyssey” featuring the idea, novel in 1968, of a talking computer with twisted emotions, and his 1971 adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s “A Clockwork Orange”, which Kubrick withdrew from distribution in Britain after it was said to have inspired copycat gang violence.

Marcos’ Swiss account
MANILA: The youngest daughter of deposed Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos has a $ 13.2 billion Swiss account kept secret from the public by the Phillipine Government, a newspaper reported on Monday. The funds are allegedly deposited in the Union Bank of Switzerland in the name of Irene Araneta, according to Reiner Jacobi, an Australian investigator hired by the government to track down wealth allegedly stolen by the Marcos’s. — AFP

Asia’s new image
DEAUVILLE (France): Images of a continent suffering from violence and deprivation marked the first Asian Film Festival to be staged in the French Channel Coast resort of Deauville at the weekend. Hard political and social realism figured in such works as Earth by Indian director Deepa Mehta, whose previous film “Fire” aroused the wrath of Hindu nationalists for its portrayal of a lesbian relationship. — AFP

US Secy saves purse
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala had a close brush with muggers but managed to escape with her purse, the police said. The intrepid 58-year-old managed to frighten the thieves off by falling to the ground and screaming at the top of her lungs, a police spokesman said on Sunday. Shalala managed to get the number plate on the jeep and phoned it into the police. Detectives arrested two women and a man about an hour later around 0100 GMT (0630 IST). — AFP

Flu kills 90
KATHMANDU: At least 90 persons mostly children, have died from viral influenza in Western and Northwest Nepal in the past month, health ministry officials said on Monday. Officials said at least 72 persons died of viral influenza in Jumla district, 395 km (246 miles) northwest of here, 14 in Indolpa district, adjoining Jumla, and four in Gorkha, 140 km (88 miles) to the west. They said 3,000 persons had contracted influenza so far this year. — AFP

No to alcohol
CAIRO (Egypt): In a ruling likely to have wide repercussions, the appeal court said on Saturday that Egyptair stewardesses have the right to refuse to serve alcoholic drinks because alcohol is banned by Islam, court officials said. Four hostesses sued the national carrier in Cairo’s labour court last year for forcing them to serve alcoholic beverages. Egyptair appealed when the women won the case, the officials said. The ruling could have a big impact on Egypt’s tourist industry as it seems to mean that all bar, restaurant and hotel personnel can refuse to serve alcohol on religious grounds. — AP

Award for Spielberg
LOS ANGELES: Fellow filmmakers honoured Steven Spielberg with the Directors Guild of America’s top award for the World War II movie “Saving Private Ryan.” “People are finding ways of embracing history,” Spielberg said on Saturday, noting that two other nominees also made films set during World War II — AP