Secretary of State Madeleine Albright greets Polish Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek (right) along with Czech Republic Foreign Minister Jan Kavan (left) and Hungarian Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi (second from left) at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Mo. Albright accepted admission papers from the foreign ministers, marking their countries' formal entry into the 50-year-old NATO alliance. — AP/PTI

Ex-Warsaw pact allies join NATO
PARIS, March 13 — Former Warsaw pact countries, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have formally become part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, their rival a decade ago, marking a new beginning in the European security alliance, despite stiff opposition from Russia.

Sex scandals rock Clinton marriage
WASHINGTON, March 13 — A series of sex scandals involving US President Bill Clinton seem to have taken their toll on the American first couple with the media reporting a "shouting match" between the two during a family trip.

5 killed in Kosovo blasts
PRISTINA (Serbia) March 13 — At least five persons were killed and 57 wounded when three bombs went off in two towns in the Serbian province of Kosovo today, international monitors said.

Indo-Pak Foreign Secretaries to meet
COLOMBO, March 13 — Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan will meet ahead of a crucial meeting between their Foreign Ministers’ on the sidelines of a SAARC conference to draw up a broad agenda for the first high-level contact between the two sides after the Lahore declaration.

Arafat orders release of detainees
GAZA, March 13 — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who returned from a brief visit to London and the Hague, has ordered the release of all Palestinians detained during two days of unrest in the Gaza Strip.

Cambodia rejects UN request on trials
UNITED NATIONS, March 13 — Cambodia today ruled out recommendations by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to allow trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders by an international tribunal for “genocide”, but offered to consider UN assistance in helping Cambodian courts for a “fair trial”.

Ex-Warsaw pact allies join NATO

PARIS, March 13 (PTI) — Former Warsaw pact countries, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have formally become part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), their rival a decade ago, marking a new beginning in the European security alliance, despite stiff opposition from Russia.

“Today a new chapter opens in the history of the Atlantic alliance of Europe,” NATO said in a welcoming statement, issued from its headquarters in Brussels. The membership applications of the three countries were formally ratified at a special ceremony in Missouri, USA, last night.

“This is the most important moment in our history. We are entering NATO, we are returning to the place which is our proper home,” a jubilant Polish President, Mr Aleksander Kwasniewski, said.

Terming it as a historic event, Czech President Vaclav Havel said: “We will have a solid security anchoring for the first time in our history, and an anchoring in the democratic world, in the world of protection of democratic values.”

The expansion of the Western military alliance from 16 members to 19 came just three weeks ahead of celebrations to mark its 50 anniversary.

The alliance, including the USA, Canada, Britain, Germany and France, decided to include the three Eastern European nations in 1995 as part of the first wave of NATO expansion, a process which was completed yesterday.

The Prime Ministers of the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary will visit the NATO headquarters next week to attend a special ceremony making them full and equal allies of the security alliance.

The NATO statement also said the “arrival of three members is just a beginning” and “the alliance will continue to welcome new members,” receiving a stern response from Russia for which the eastward expansion of NATO will ultimately harm its security interests.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov earlier warned that NATO’s expansion was a movement in wrong direction and “if the NATO infrastructure comes any closer to the borders of the Russian federation, this will undoubtedly lead to change in the situation in Europe”.

Moscow argues that since NATO was formed to meet a perceived ‘threat’ from the Soviet Union, the alliance should have dissolved after the break-up of the Soviet Union and Warsaw pact.

Russia’s opposition is not without reason as it feels that NATO’s role in the Balkans in the past and its authority to launch air strikes against Yugoslavia, even without the approval of the U.N. Security Council, can open a Pandora’s box of the alliance’s arms reaching outside Europe.

While former Communist countries like Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria are willing to join NATO in the second wave of expansion, the three Baltic states - Lithuania, Lativa and Estonia - which were under Soviet occupation for more than four decades, feel a NATO membership card will give them a secure place in Europe.

Meanwhile, observers say to be part of NATO military alliance, the newly-inducted NATO countries will also have to get rid of many of their Soviet equipments and adapt to Western armoury, communication gadgets and modernisation of air defence systems in the coming years.

Indo-Pak Foreign Secys to meet

COLOMBO, March 13 (PTI) — Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan will meet ahead of a crucial meeting between their Foreign Ministers’ on the sidelines of a SAARC conference to draw up a broad agenda for the first high-level contact between the two sides after the Lahore declaration.

Foreign Secretary K. Raghunath and his Pakistani counterpart Shamshad Ahmad, due here tomorrow to take part in preparatory talks for the SAARC Foreign Ministers’ conference beginning March 18, will lay the ground for one-to-one talks between Foreign Ministers Jaswant Singh and Sartaz Aziz.

Mr Raghunath and Mr Ahmad will meet at the picturesque hill resort town of Nuwera Eliya in Central Sri Lanka, some 200 km east of Colombo, during a meeting of the SAARC Foreign Secretaries’ Standing Committee from March 15 to 17, official sources here said.

Both Mr Raghunath and Mr Ahmad, who played a key role in drafting the historic Lahore declaration following Prime Minister Vajpayee’s bus trip to Pakistan, will try to meet as many times as possible to work out a detailed agenda for the two Foreign Ministers, the sources said.

Both the Foreign Secretaries and Foreign Ministers, will during their talks, concentrate on ways and means to take the Lahore process forward, the sources said.

Meanwhile, the SAARC’s programming committee met today at a luxury hotel in Nuwera Eliya amidst tight security as a prelude to the standing committee meeting.

The 21st meeting of the committee of seven members will during its two-day deliberations, review several programmes jointly undertaken by SAARC nations under the integrated programme of action (IPA)

SAARC officials will also take a detailed look at the report on an independent expert group on the IPA, the report of the 17th meeting of SAVE, (SAARC Audio Visual Exchange) committee, which was held in New Delhi last year.

Arafat orders release of detainees

GAZA, March 13 (AFP) — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who returned from a brief visit to London and the Hague, has ordered the release of all Palestinians detained during two days of unrest in the Gaza Strip.

“President Arafat met Palestinian security officials at the Gaza international airport to hear a report on the rioting, and then ordered the release of all Palestinians detained in connection with it,” Col Tawfik Jaber, chief of Palestinian Secret Services, told reporters last night.

Mr Arafat then went to offer condolences to the families of two 17-year-olds slain on Wednesday in the rioting that followed the announcement of a death sentence for a Palestinian security agent, Colonel Jaber said.

The two boys should be considered “martyrs”, he said.

Dozens of policemen were wounded in and around Rafah on Wednesday and Thursday in some of the most violent and widespread protests against Mr Arafat’s Palestinian authority since its creation in 1994.

Sex scandals rock Clinton marriage

WASHINGTON, March 13 (PTI) — A series of sex scandals involving US President Bill Clinton seem to have taken their toll on the American first couple with the media reporting a "shouting match" between the two during a family trip.

"I don’t want to be in the same room with him, let alone the same bed", Fox News Television quoted unnamed insiders, who heard Ms Hillary saying so, on Wednesday night, adding that she even refused to accompany President Clinton on a Central American trip as she could not get her own bedroom.

This is the first time that a mainstream TV network has carried such a report, though tabloids had reported quarrels between President Clinton and his wife earlier.

Fox News Television, part of the Murdoch empire, reported that the President and the First Lady were involved in a "shouting match" while on a skiing trip to Utah.

It said that Ms Clinton stormed out of the room saying she wanted her bags.

The Utah trip was, subsequently, cut short by a day.

But, Ms Clinton’s press office said that the trip was cut short as she had hurt her back, which also kept her from accompanying President Clinton on his Central American trip this week.

"If Ms Clinton had not injured her back, she would be in Guatemala right now. She will be meeting with New York Democrats tomorrow on whether she should be a candidate for Senator from the Great Apple," Hillary’s spokeswoman Marcia Berry, said yesterday.

However, Fox News said it stood by its story about the quarrel between the Clintons. "We had good sources and more than one source on this story," said Fox Bureau chief Brit Hume yesterday. "The sources are friends of the Clintons, and they were not spinning the story."

The quarrels were "plausible" in the light of the travails of both Clintons in the past year. "The implausible side of this," he added, "is the White House attempting to show the Clintons as the happy couple."

White House spokesman Joe Lockhart had earlier dismissed the story as tabloid fare and said that "I would suggest that those who deal in this sort of rumour and gossip and innuendo should go back to journalism school and do a little more work".

Meanwhile, The Washington Times noted that charting the Clintons’ marriage has been a national pastime since the days of Gennifer Flowers’ very public revelations of her 12-year affair with Mr Clinton.

It said that despite half-a-dozen "photo opportunities" of the Clintons holding hands, dancing and strolling contentedly during scandal prime time, "the pleasant patina faded toward the year’s end.

"Ms Clinton went on a four-day mission to Eastern Europe on the couple’s 23rd wedding anniversary in October and was in San Francisco during the President’s final apology over the Monica Lewinsky matter from the rose garden" (the American tradition is to have the wife standing by the side during such an apology), the paper said.

In mid-December too Ms Hillary gave her husband the cold shoulder felt around the world as TV cameras accidentally caught her shrinking from her husband’s touch, it added.

5 killed in Kosovo blasts

PRISTINA (Serbia) March 13 (Reuters) — At least five persons were killed and 57 wounded when three bombs went off in two towns in the Serbian province of Kosovo today, international monitors said.

Two bombs exploded in Podujevo, 35 km north of Pristina, Kosovo's capital, within 15 minutes of each other just after 5.30 p.m. (IST). At least one of the bombs went off behind the town police station, monitors told Reuters.

Monitors said the police arrested two persons in connection with one of the explosions but their ethnicity was not yet known.

The bomb in Mitrovica, 30 km north-west of Pristina, went off at 6.50 p.m. (IST) in the town market place, half a mile from the monitoring office of the Kosovo Verification Mission.

Dogs pay for man’s cruelty

LONDON, March 13 (ANI) — Thousands of pedigree dogs in Asia are said to suffer systematic cruelty: some are blow-torched alive, others electrocuted or sold for their meat.

The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) said in a survey report on Thursday that they found “dogs suffering from disease and crowded conditions in pet shops, cramped in factory-like breeding centres, sold to be eaten at meat markets, abandoned in rubbish heaps and destroyed by cruel methods such as drowning and electrocution”.

A Taiwanese dealer had conceded that 50 per cent of his animals died before they could be sold.

In South Korea, where the trade in pet meat is thriving, dead dogs are worth more than alive dogs.

“Animals are usually hung until dead. Afterwards most dogs are skinned and their bodies browned using a blow torch. Video evidence has shown that this can often take place while animals are still alive”, the WSPA said.

Cambodia rejects UN request on trials

UNITED NATIONS, March 13 (PTI) — Cambodia today ruled out recommendations by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to allow trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders by an international tribunal for “genocide”, but offered to consider UN assistance in helping Cambodian courts for a “fair trial”.

“The Cambodian Constitution prohibits extradition of a Cambodian for trial”, Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong told Mr Kofi Annan.

“The crimes of genocide were committed in Cambodia. Culprits are Cambodians. Therefore, they should be tried in Cambodia with foreign assistance. They will be given a fair trial”, he said. He said Ta Mok, former Khmer Rouge leader arrested recently, would appear in the court.

But he did not indicate whether any other leader of the outfit, held responsible for the killings of two million people during its regime in the 70s, would be tried.

A three-member legal team, appointed by Mr Annan, recently recommended setting up of an international tribunal somewhere in Asia but outside Cambodia to try Khmer Rouge leaders.

The report is due to be submitted to the Security Council. But the 15-member body might find it difficult to set up the tribunal as China, which has veto power as permanent member, is opposed to it, arguing that it is an internal affair of Cambodia.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, a defector from the Khmer Rouge, had recently ruled out an international tribunal.

Speed-building record
AUCKLAND: A team of about 100 builders and painters knocked nearly one hour off a world speed-building record on Saturday by constructing a house in South Auckland in less than four hours, reports said. The house was built for the Suafoa family as part of the Christian Housing Project Habitat for Humanity, the New Zealand Press Association reported. It went up in just three hours, 44 minutes and 59 seconds. — AFP

Eichel appointed FM
BONN: Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder named low-key economics expert Hans Eichel as Germany’s new Finance Minister on Friday. He was also nominated to head the governing Social Democrats. The moves consolidate Mr Schroeder’s grip on power a day after Mr Oskar Lafontaine’s resignation from both influential posts, and gives him the chance to reshape his four-month-old government after a shaky start. — AP

Suspended sentence
LONDON: A court in Estonia has handed down a suspended sentence of eight years to an 80 -year-old man for his role in deporting several families to Serbia during the fag-end of World War II. According to sources in the Estonian capital, Tallinn Mr Vassilli Beskov was found guilty of deporting at least seven families while serving with the then Soviet secret service, the NKVD. — ANI

5 police officers freed
BUENOS AIRES: A Judge on Saturday freed five of the nine top police officers arrested for suspected involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre that killed 86 persons, officials said. The five were never brought to trial on the charges they faced. But Federal Judge Juan Jose Galeano ordered the release of the men because they had already been imprisoned for more than two-thirds of the sentence they would have received, had they been convicted. The July 18, 1994 terrorist attack destroyed the headquarters of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) killing 86 and injuring more than 200. — AFP

Trade union in private sector
BEIJING : The first trade union in China’s private sector has been formed in the eastern Zhejiang province, the official Xinhua news agency said on Saturday. The union set up in Lucheng district in Wenzhou city with some 200 members, “is aimed at protecting the legal rights of employees in the private sector in line with state laws and regulations,” Zinhua said. Trade unions are allowed to be formed in government offices, enterprises and institutions, but the organisation in Wenzhou is the first such body to be formed for the country’s nascent private sector. — AFP