Khmer Rouge chief Ta Mok indicted
PHNOM PENH, March 10 — A Cambodian military court has charged arrested Khmer Rouge leader Ta Mok under a 1994 law banning the radical Leftist group, which was held responsible for the death of some 1.7 million Cambodians during the Pol Pot regime.

Arrest warrants against KLA men
BELGRADE, March 10 — The Serbian police has issued arrest warrants for the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army, including three peace negotiators, casting doubts about the resumption of peace talks in France next week.

Jury awards life term to Dhinsa

NEW YORK, March 10 (AP) — A US jury today decided to spare the life of millionaire Indian immigrant Gurmeet Singh Dhinsa convicted in two contract killings, sentencing him to life in prison with no chance of a parole.

Dhinsa smiled broadly and hugged his attorneys after the verdict was read out in a federal court here.

The anonymous jury of seven women and two men deliberated for a hour before deciding that Dhinsa should not be executed.

In arguments yesterday, defence attorney Gerald Shargel had asked the jury “to choose life, not death... the power of mercy has a stronger force than the power of death”.

Last week, the same jury had found Dhinsa guilty on multiple racketeering charges, including rigging pumps to rip off customers of his lucrative gas station chain, evading taxes and using force to silence fellow Sikhs who threatened to expose him for capital offence.

Dhinsa committed crimes so vile, he has forfeited his right to live, Assistant US Attorney Ronald White said. He asks you to have pity when he has shown none, Mr White said.

Dhinsa (36) displayed little emotion in court during yesterday’s arguments. But his wife, Miriam Azadelli, wept on the witness stand when defence attorneys played a videotape of the couple’s three young sons talking about their father.

The jury heard how Dhinsa overcame a childhood of poverty in Punjab. After arriving in the USA in 1982 and making a fortune from his gas operations, he donated thousands of dollars to Indian charities, his lawyer said.

“He (Dhinsa) made very, very bad mistakes along the way”, the lawyer said. “But this was in the context of what set out to be a productive life”.

Prosecutors said they had proved Dhinsa hired and directed gunmen in the fatal shooting of a gas station attendant and a cab driver.

“The fact that Dhinsa was plotting other murders at the time of his arrest shows that he is a stone-cold killer.” the Assistant US Attorney said.

PTI adds: The Brooklyn in Federal Jury, which had earlier convicted him for the murders rejected the federal prosecutors’ demand for awarding the death penalty for Dhindsa and instead awarded him life imprisonment without parole, contending that he hit men he hired were equally culpable.

The hit men testified against him at the trial in return for lesser sentences.

Dhindsa allegedly ordered Man- mohan Singh Parmar, an attendant in one of his filling stations, killed in March, 1997, after he threatened to expose his misdeeds. His brother Kulwant, who came looking for him also disappeared after being kidnapped by Dhindsa’s henchmen.

The eight-week trial that evoked much interest among the sizeable Indian community here showed the murky side of a rags-to-riches story of a successful immigrant.

From a filling attendant, Dhindsa leased one and at the height of his business, he was operating 51 gas stations in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delware, frequently overcharging customers by rigging pumps.

As he muscled his way into millions, he was arrested in 1990 in connection with the kidnap and murder of one employee but served only 90 days on a lesser charge.

Dhindsa, who has a daughter Sara and two sons, was convicted in all the three cases.

2 indicted for missile knowhow leak

WASHINGTON, March 10 (AFP, Reuters) — Senior US officials have rejected allegations that the Clinton Administration moved too slowly to counter China’s efforts to steal sensitive American military technology.

Meanwhile in Boston a US grand jury has indicted a Chinese citizen and a naturalised Canadian on charges the pair tried to smuggle US missile technology to China.

Yao Yi, 33, of Beijing, and Collin XU of Montreal, and their companies Lion Photonics, Inc. Of Beijing and Lion Photonics, Canada, Inc., allegedly conspired to smuggle fiber optic gyroscopes from a Massachusetts maker to China.

“This was a concerted effort to export valuable American technology that can be used in missiles and guidance systems to China,” US attorney Donald Stern said yesterday.

Scrambling to halt congressional criticism and a rapid slide in the US-China ties, the White House said it had moved rapidly and effectively to tighten security.

White House spokesman Joe Lockhart, speaking in Honduras during President Bill Clinton’s tour of Central America, said: “The administration moved rapidly in 1997 when this came to our attention, took the steps we needed to develop safeguards against any illegal transfer.”

Vice-President Al Gore said the alleged thefts “happened in the previous administration, and the law enforcement agencies have pressed it and pursued it aggressively with our full support.”

“In the course of this, what developed was a brand new presidential directive that fixed problems that we had inherited and changed and vastly improved the security procedures in the national laboratory system,” he said in a CNN interview to be broadcast today.

But legislators are angry at Clinton’s Administration for what they regard as foot-dragging in investigating supected breaches, followed by the firing on Monday of a Taiwan-born scientist at the Los Alamos national Laboratory in New Mexico.

China’s reported theft of secrets from a major U.S. nuclear weapons facility is part of a wide pattern of spying by Beijing in the past two decades, the head of a special congressional investigation has said.

Representative Chris Cox, who chaired a special committee that conducted a six-month inquiry last year, said yesterday the disclosure of a leak from Los Alamos Nuclear Research Laboratory in New Mexico was “the latest in public, it is not the latest in private.”

Following newspaper reports and criticism by the Republicans, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced yesterday that a Chinese-American scientist at the laboratory, who allegedly passed secrets to China, had been fired.

Cox, a California Republican, told Reuters in an interview: “The topic the Energy Secretary dealt with publicly yesterday...It is part of a much larger pattern that our report addresses.”

The commmittee’s report, completed in December, is expected to be made public by the end of this month. The Congress and the White House are privately negotiating how much of the report can be made public and what parts deemed classified.

Khmer Rouge chief Ta Mok indicted

PHNOM PENH, March 10 (ANI) — A Cambodian military court has charged arrested Khmer Rouge leader Ta Mok under a 1994 law banning the radical Leftist group, which was held responsible for the death of some 1.7 million Cambodians during the Pol Pot regime (1975-79).

“We charged Ta Mok this morning under the law outlawing the Khmer Rough, in particular articles two, three and four,” prosecutor Sao Sok was quoted as saying. He said the investigation into the case against Ta Mok could take up to eight months.

Sao Sok said more charges might be filed against Ta Mok during the course of the investigation, if warranted.

Suicide squads to avenge strikes

LONDON, March 10 (PTI) — Pakistan intelligence-backed mercenary groups, the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HuA) and the Lashkar-e-Tayyba, actively involved in militancy in Kashmir, have set up “suicide squads” to avenge U.S. air strikes on their camps in Afghanistan, Pakistani media reports here said.

Survivors of the December bombings of the Zilli Khawar camps in Khost town on the Pak-Afghan border and close ally Saudi terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden have set up joint squads to settle scores with the Americans, the reports said.

“For each of us killed or wounded in the cowardly U.S. attack at least 100 Americans will be killed,” London-based Pakistani newspaper The New International quoted an unidentified HuA commander as saying.

It also quoted a retired Pakistani intelligence officer with close ties to Laden and the two militant groups as saying “whether Pakistani, Afghans or Arab Jehadi’s brothers in these camps — our main aim now is to take revenge on the USA”.

80 per cent of London women face discrimination
from Lisa Buckingham and Jill Traynor

FOUR out of five female workers in the city, London’s financial centre, say they are victims of sexual discrimination. The survey by Reuters comes as NatWest Bank launches an investigation into its employment policies to ensure women and ethnic minorities are not discriminated against at work.

The survey also found that a big majority of women in London’s financial heartland still believes it is impossible to combine motherhood with a career.

As many as 80 per cent of women sampled said sexual discrimination persists in banks. Most say men of similar rank are paid better and more than a half said employers remain unsympathetic to the demands of mothers with full-time jobs.

Although the number of women employed in the Square Mile has increased in recent years, female employees say the city is still dominated by “the old boys’ network” of former private school pupils.

“Opportunities can dry up when you reach a senior position,” said one treasury manager. “Women often have to look outside their current employer if they want to move up.”

Women regard themselves as most vulnerable to job cuts. One economist said: “Women are often at the top of the list when it comes to laying people off.”

The inquiry at NatWest, one of the country’s biggest employers, is being conducted by Ms Ros McCool.

The six-month study comes as Don Cruickshank intensifies his government-sanctioned investigation into banking competitiveness and as leading companies become increasingly aware of the racial sensitivities surrounding employment since the death of Stephen Lawrence.

NatWest says some 40 per cent of managers in its mortgage business and one in 10 of its most senior executives are women.

— The Guardian, London

Arrest warrants against KLA men

BELGRADE, March 10 (AFP) — The Serbian police has issued arrest warrants for the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), including three peace negotiators, casting doubts about the resumption of peace talks in France next week.

Serbs and ethnic Albanians are due to reconvene for negotiations on the future of the separatist province in Paris on Monday, after talks last month ended without any agreement.

The arrest warrants came as US envoy Richard Holbrooke arrived in Belgrade to try to wrest a peace accord from Yogoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who has opposed the deployment of NATO troops to enforce any peace deal.

Three members of the Kosovar negotiating team were among those named in the warrant issued by the Serbian Interior Ministry, which described all eight “terrorists” and said they are “armed and inclined to use arms”.

Six of of the eight had previously been sentenced to prison terms ranging from eight to 20 years for “enemy activities and Terrorism”.

Quake hits Tibet
BEJING: An earthquake measuring 5.3 on the Richter scale hit a sparsely populated county in the Tibet autonomous region, an official report siad on Wednesday. According to the China Seismology Bureau, the quake-hit Bangoin county on Tuesday evening and the epicenter of the quake was near Rola Kang. Initial reports said the quake hit a high, sparsely populated area, but further information about damage or loss of life was not available, Xinhua news agency said.— PTI

Saudi nod to Viagra
NICOSIA: Soom after the anti-impotence drug Viagra was introduced in Saudi Arabia last year, blackmarketeers had a roaring business so much so that a pill fetched a premium price as high as $ 80 a piece. The Saudi Arabian Health Ministry has given the green signal for the sale of the pill but in controlled concentrations of 25 mg and 50 mg. — ANI

Virgin flights to India
LONDON: Virgin Atlantic, a UK based airways, known for its low tariff world wide, hopes to fly to India within the next three months, its chairman Richard Branson has said. — PTI