CIA blamed for Chinese embassy bombing
IT was a mistake which even NATO’s spokesman Jamie Shea found difficult to explain. “There was an intelligence error ... which obviously led to this case of mistaken identity and NATO attacking the Chinese embassy ... in terms of individual responsibility, I have no comment to make.”

Zardari appeals to SC
ISLAMABAD, May 10 — Mr Asif Ali Zardari, husband of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, filed a petition in the Supreme Court today against his conviction on corruption charges.

Bamiyan falls to Taliban
KABUL, May 10 — Independent sources today confirmed the fall of Bamiyan city in central Afghanistan to the Taliban Islamic militia.

Channel surfing leads to suicide
COLOMBO, May 10 — A Sri Lankan woman committed suicide by consuming poison after her husband changed a television channel she was watching, a news report said today.

Pentagon man gave China radar secrets

WASHINGTON, May 10 (UNI) — A scientist working on a classified Pentagon project in 1997 provided China with secrets about the advanced radar technology being developed to track submarines, says the New York Times, quoting court records and government documents.

Submarine detection technology is jealously guarded by the Pentagon because the navy’s ability to conceal its submarines is a crucial military advantage.

The information about the radar technology, which is considered promising and has been in development for two decades, was divulged to Chinese nuclear-weapons’ experts during a two-hour lecture in Beijing in May 1997 by Peter Lee, an American scientist, court records show.

Dr Lee was then working for TRW INC., which had been hired by the Pentagon.

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles wanted to charge Dr Lee with espionage but were unable to do so because navy officials in Washington would not permit testimony about the technology in open court, the daily says quoting law enforcement officials.

The Justice Department in Washington, having some questions of its own, would not approve the prosecution either, the officials said.

Instead, Dr Lee ended up pleading guilty of filing a false statement about his 1997 trip to China and of divulging classified laser data to Chinese scientists during an earlier trip to China in 1985.

Despite the failure to prosecute Lee over the radar technology, the daily points out, the case shows that the scope of the Chinese espionage is broader than the assertions of nuclear thefts at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which officials say involved another American scientist, Wen Ho Lee.

The two men were not known to be related. The submarine technology in the Peter Lee case was developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a weapons’ laboratory in California.

The Peter Lee case is also significant because it clearly demonstrates that the American government believed that China was successfully engaged in espionage — obtaining American defence secrets — during President Bill Clinton’s second term.

While the Los Alamos laboratory disclosures earlier this year prompted an array of investigations, Mr Clinton, two months ago, said no one had brought suspicions of Chinese espionage to him and administration officials initially portrayed the problem as one confined to earlier administrations.

Yesterday on the NBC news programme “Meet The Press’’, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson acknowledged that there had been espionage by China during the Clinton administration, but he did not go into the details.

CIA blamed for Chinese embassy bombing
By Richard Norton-Taylor and Martin Kettle in Washington

IT was a mistake which even NATO’s spokesman Jamie Shea found difficult to explain. “There was an intelligence error ... which obviously led to this case of mistaken identity and NATO attacking the Chinese embassy ... in terms of individual responsibility, I have no comment to make.”

NATO knew its target, the Yugoslav Federal Directorate of Supply and Procurement, but got the wrong building. The Chinese embassy is about 200 yards (metres) away from the Yugoslav government supply office on the opposite side of the street.

The monumental and extraordinary blunder was on Sunday laid firmly at the door of the CIA. A US official said the target was chosen by the CIA, and then NATO, the US European command and the Pentagon’s joint review staff all reviewed and approved it.

“This went through all these hoops, but for whatever reason it was not detected”, the official said.

The intelligence failure raises questions about how NATO chooses and verifies targets, and about NATO’s continuing high-level bombing campaign, a tactic which carries minimum risk to its pilots but a growing risk of mistakes and civilian casualties.

The tactic is used even against individuals. NATO aircraft on Saturday bombed Belgrade’s Hotel Yugoslavia, on the grounds it was used by Zeljko Raznatovic, better known as the notorious paramilitary leader Arkan, indicted for war crimes allegedly committed in Bosnia. He was not there at the time.

“The NATO council (national ambassadors at the alliance headquarters in Brussels) decide specific target lists,’’ a source said on Sunday.

The lists are drawn up by ministers. Mr George Robertson, Britain’s Defence Secretary, said early last month that “all targets” were approved by himself and the Attorney General, Mr John Morris. British Prime Minister Tony Blair is also involved in the target-choosing process.

In the initial stages of the air operation NATO confined its attacks to specifically military targets, before widening its campaign to include communications and infrastructure installations, including fuel supplies.

General Wesley Clark, NATO’s Supreme Commander, has repeatedly asked for permission to bomb a wider range of targets and to use greater destructive force than has been authorised.

Since the NATO summit in Washington last month he has been given permission to target non-military installations in urban areas, including television headquarters and political offices. This has increased the likelihood of civilian casualties and “collateral” damage.

Both NATO and the Pentagon on Sunday blamed the CIA for the “faulty information” which led to the bombing of the Chinese Embassy.

(The Guardian)

US Muslims seek political influence

WASHINGTON, May 10 (PTI) — Muslim community in the USA, guided by a new American Muslim political coordinating committee, will seek to display its voting power and policy concerns in 2000, committee officials have said.

“There was not a single mosque in California that did not participate in voter registration in 1998. There has been a tremendous institutional change,” Professor Agha Saeed, President of the American Muslim Alliance, told the Washington Times yesterday.

Noting that Muslim candidates ran for a wide variety of political offices in 1996, he said the council is “trying to develop a coherent strategy for 2000.”

“An estimated six million Muslims, including two million Arabs, are American citizens. Based on voting strength it is time for Muslims to be named to policy positions,” Mr Saeed said.

The council has just concluded a four-day meeting here which was briefed by National Security Advisor Samuel Berger.

Observers said US administration’s views have changed dramatically under President Clinton.

Previously US policy was perceived to be hostile to Muslim interests though its relations with Saudi Arabia have been cordial. This was mainly because it backed Israeli views on Palestinians ... when Israel opposed the creation of a Palestinian state, so did the USA, observers said.

Nawaz Sharif case
Pak for in-camera proceedings

ISLAMABAD, May 10 (PTI) — Pakistan Government favours in-camera proceedings of a case in which the Prime Minister, Mr Nawaz Sharif, among other politicians, has been accused of receiving Rs 1 crore from the ISI prior to the 1990 general polls, official sources said today.Attorney-General Choudhury Muhammad Farooq decided that the proceedings would be held in-camera after the court left it for the parties concerned to decide if the proceedings be held in an open court or in-camera, the sources said.

However, former Interior Minister Naseerullah Babar, who is a key witness, said everything about the case is public and there is no point in holding the proceeding in-camera.

The Supreme Court had announced it would start from May 19 the day-to-day hearings in the case which had been pending for more than one-and-a-half years, they said.

The nexus between the ISI and the politicians came to light some two years back when Air Marshal Asghar Khan drew the attention of the then Chief Justice, Mr Sajjad Ali Shah, to a statement in Parliament that the ISI took Rs 14 crore from a public-sector bank for distributing it among politicians to forge an alliance against Ms Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party.

Justice Shah had converted Mr Asghar Khan’s letter into an appeal and begun proceedings in the case. Several hearings in 1997 revealed that as former Army Chief General Beg had conceded before a court that a political cell existed in the ISI which acted as a conduit for disbursement of funds.

Gen Aslam Beg along with the then ISI chief Asad Durrani are the two defendants in the case.

Zardari appeals to SC

ISLAMABAD, May 10 (DPA) — Mr Asif Ali Zardari, husband of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, filed a petition in the Supreme Court today against his conviction on corruption charges.

Mr Zardari and his wife were sentenced by a special accountability court to five years’ imprisonment last month and asked to pay a fine of 8.6 million for receiving bribes from a Swiss firm for a government contract awarded to it in 1994.

Mr Zardari has been in jail since his wife was dismissed on charges of misrule and corruption in November 1996.

Ms Benazir Bhutto, who was abroad when the sentence was passed and is staying there, is likely to file her appeal in the next few days.

Trial starts in Vietnam’s biggest
fraud case

HANOI, May 10 (AFP) — Vietnam’s biggest fraud and corruption trial opened today in southern Ho Chi Mihn city with 77 persons in the dock, including high-flying businessmen and Communist Party officials, witnesses said.

A police convoy took the prisoners to the Ho Chi Minh city people’s court at 6 am, local time, where more than 450 policemen have been deployed to maintain security, a witness said.

A crowd of about 100 persons gathered outside the courthouse to listen to the opening of the trial which will be broadcast on loudspeakers throughout its expected 45-day duration.

It has taken investigators more than two years to untangle an alleged web of deceit by key defendant Tang Minh Phung, a businessman of the former Saigon, who is accused of defrauding banks and state companies of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Minh Phung and his partner Lien Khiu Thin allegedly built a complex network of 41 companies, then collaborated with bank officials to obtain loans using dubious or phantom assets as collateral.

The two men racked up losses of more than $280 million, much of it in state funds, before their fraud was exposed in March 1997 when Minh Phung’s flagship company defaulted on a loan to Vietnam’s biggest state-owned bank, Vietcombank, according to officials.

Bamiyan falls to Taliban

KABUL, May 10 (AFP) — Independent sources today confirmed the fall of Bamiyan city in central Afghanistan to the Taliban Islamic militia.

The ruling Taliban “recaptured Bamiyan at midday yesterday and they now occupy the city,” a western source in Kabul said.

The Hezb-i-Wahdat faction of the opposition alliance retreated to the surrounding hills after the Taliban launched an offensive, the source said.

The Islamic militia had lost the city to Wahdat amid a reported uprising on April 21. The city was earlier seized by the Taliban in September last.

The Taliban Information Minister Mulla Amir Khan Muttaqi yesterday said Bamiyan was retaken in a two-pronged operation from north and south of the city.

Channel surfing leads to suicide

COLOMBO, May 10 (AP) — A Sri Lankan woman committed suicide by consuming poison after her husband changed a television channel she was watching, a news report said today.

Sudeshna Chandana, 21, was watching her favourite soap opera when her husband Priyantha Chandana, 23, came home and changed the channel.

She protested, and an argument ensued, an island newspaper reported. Her husband left home but when he returned he found his wife dead.

Doctors at the hospital in Pamunugama, 100 km east of the capital, said she died after consuming poison.

The incident took place on Sri Lanka’s New Year’s Day.

British minister dead
LONDON: British Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Dereck Fatchett died here on Sunday at the age of 53, the Foreign Office announced on Monday. The cause of death was not given. Fatchett and held his job since Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour government came to power in May 1997. — AFP

UK-Russian memorial
LONDON: Remembering an old alliance, representatives of the British and Russian Governments on Sunday, unveiled a memorial to the 27 million Soviet citizens who died fighting the Nazis in World Ward II. But those attending the simple ceremony, which coincided with victory celebrations in Russia, were painfully aware that the relationship between the two countries are under strain as NATO continues its air bombardment on Yugoslavia. — AP

Couples lock lips
SCHROBENHAUSEN: It was supposed to be a feast of affection like never seen before but it didn’t quite rewrite the record books when only 300 couples showed up to kiss in this Bavarian town. Publicised for weeks in advance, the kiss-in at Schrobenhausen on Sunday fell short of the world record of 1,600 amorous couples who locked lips in the Spanish town of Alcala De Henares several years ago. — DPA

21 killed in mishap
NEW ORLEANS: A bus accident in New Orleans killed 21 persons on Sunday, and injured 23 others, most of them senior citizens. The charter bus was taking passengers to a casino for a Mother’s Day gambling session when it drove off the highway, a police spokesman said. — DPA

Vieira granted asylum
LISBON: Osted Guinea-Bassau President Joao “Nino” Bernardo Vieira was granted asylum in Portugal on Sunday, but it was not clear whether military rebels would let him leave the West African state. Some rebel leaders want Vieira, who took refuge in the Portuguese Embassy in Bissau after his forces surrendered on Friday, to stand trial for alleged crimes, Portuguese news media reported from Bissau. — Reuters

Thai rocket kills 4
BANGKOK: A home-made rocket launched as part of an ancient north-eastern Thai festival to bring rains, exploded over spectators, killing four persons and injuring 12, provincial officials said here on Monday. The 120-kg rocket exploded about 50 metres above the ground, two seconds after its launch, scattering iron pellets and dropping its spinning metal tail on the spectators below, said Yasothon Governor Samai Homsaen. — DPA

Farmers turn to Internet
OSLO: Norwegian sheep farmers are turning to the Internet in their long-running battle against predators killing their livestock. Two years ago, about 60 sheep farmers in the eastern Hedmark region established ‘Rovnet’, Norwegian for predator-net, using e-mail and news groups to report on wolves, bears, lynxes and other predators and to warn other farmers, the Oslo daily Dagens Naringsliv reports ‘Rovnet’ will become operational on Saturday. — DPA

Chinese writer jailed
HONG KONG: China on Monday sentenced a writer compiling a book on democracy to four years in jail for “subverting state power”, a Hong Kong-based human rights group said. Liu Xianli was arrested in March 1998 after interviewing prominent Chinese dissident XU Menli and planning to compile articles by Xu and other activists into a book. — Reuters

Indian dies over $ 3 bet
DUBAI: An Indian mechanic died after gulping down diesel for a bet of less than $ 3 with his workmates, an Emirat newspaper reported here on Monday. Three of his colleagues have been arrested on charges of incitement. — AFP