USA, China agree to mend ties

WASHINGTON, May 14 (Reuters) — The USA and China began to repair relations as President Bill Clinton agreed to investigate NATO’s bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and the Chinese President agreed to take his calls.

In a flurry of diplomatic moves, the White House yesterday said Clinton met China’s ambassador to the USA and told him the results of an investigation into the bombing which killed three Chinese journalists, would be conveyed to China.

Mr Clinton, who has apologised to the Chinese for the May 7 bombing in public and in a private letter to Chinese President Jiang Zemin, also signed a condolence book brought to the White House by the ambassador, Li Zhaoxing.

White House spokesman David Leavy said Mr Clinton spent about five minutes with Li and wrote the following message in the book: “With profound grief and sincere condolence to the victims, their families and the people of China.’’

Li, in turn, told Mr Clinton that Mr Jiang was willing to speak to him.

The White House meeting appeared to suggest that China’s official fury at the bombing, which NATO has called a tragic mistake caused by outdated maps has begun to abate.

BEIJING (PTI): Earlier, the Chinese President Mr Jiang Zemin, accused the USA of seeking global hegemony and urged like-mined nations to jointly work towards the establishment of a just and rational new world order.

Speaking at a ceremony here yesterday to confer the “Revolutionary Martyr” status to three Chinese journalists killed in NATO’s bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, Mr Jiang, for the first time directly accused the USA of seeking hegemony and bullying China.

Relying on its economic, scientific and technical and military prowess, the USA continues to pursue hegemonism and power politics and wantonly interferes with the internal affairs of other countries, the Chinese President charged.

All countries and people that love peace and uphold justice should unite together to push forward the establishment of a just and rational new international order in the common struggle against hegemonism and power politics, Mr Jiang said at the function attended by senior Chinese leaders.

China would oppose hegemonism and work to safeguard world peace, he said adding the great Peoples Republic of China can never be bullied.

Praising the three killed journalists — Shao Yunhuan, Xu Xinghu and ZhuYing as national heroes, Mr Jiang said all three died for peace, justice and the motherland and they will stay in our memory forever.

50 killed as NATO bombs village

BELGRADE, May 14 (AP) — A NATO attack in Kosovo killed 50 civilians, the state-controlled media reported today. The alliance did not confirm the attack.

NATO aircraft dropped eight cluster-bombs on the village of Korisa, some 90 km southwest of the capital, Pristina, the Serb media centre said.

More than 50 injured mostly women, children and elderly people were reportedly transferred to a hospital in nearby Prizren. Local police claimed there are no police or military installations near Korisa.

If confirmed, the casualty figure would be the highest reported so far from a single attack in NATO’s seven-week air campaign against Yugoslavia.

The latest attacks followed yesterday’s symbolic departure of about 120 Yugoslav troops from Kosovo, where President Slobodan Milosevic has some 40,000 military and special police deployed.

Foreign journalists taken to Merdere, some 200 km south of Belgrade, were invited to watch the troops, smiling and flashing victory signs as they left in a convoy. The move was evidently a bid to counter widespread disbelief about a partial Yugoslav troop withdrawal announced last Sunday.

NATO began the 52nd day of its air war against Yugoslavia by bombing power stations and blacking out large parts of its three largest cities.

Serbian State Television (RTS) broke into its programmes to announce that special short-circuiting graphite bombs had been dropped in and around Belgrade and in Novi Sad and NIS.

Some of the bombs hit the Belgrade suburb of Obrenovac, site of a huge power station which supplies the capital and large parts of the country. It has already been disabled several times during NATO’s air campaign, causing major blackouts.

Residents said large parts of Belgrade were without power.

The state news agency Tanjug said all power had been cut to NIS. In southern Serbia, at around 10:30 p.m. (8.30 GMT) yesterday and that parts of the second city of Novi Sad, in the north, had been blacked out at the same time.

RTS said the town of Smederovo, 45 km (30 miles) southeast of Belgrade, had also come under attack and that some districts were without power.

Clinton’s terms for Pak visit
‘Stop’ harassment of scribes
By Aziz Haniffa

Washington, May 14 — US.President Bill Clinton is unlikely to visit Pakistan when he does make a trip to South Asia if the government’s harassment of journalists continues, the US envoy to Islamabad warned.

Mr William B. Milam, speaking at the Asia Society, did not rule out the possibility that the arrest of Friday Times Editor Najam Sethi and other journalists would grow into a “major thorn” in US-Pakistan relations.

“If the harassment of the press continues, that will put a big bird in the whole situation,” he said, when asked what the pre-requisites would be for Mr Clinton to visit Pakistan.

Mr Milam said he hoped the arrest of Najam Sethi and others and the harassment of journalists would not turn out to be a major thorn in the bilateral relationship, “but part of it depends on whether those people are released, or whether, if they are guilty of anything, that charges are made clear and things (the rule of law) are taken in a proper way.”

Mr Milam took several swipes at Pakistan’s claim of being a functioning democracy and continued to call it a “flawed” democracy. “Democracy means more than just elections,” he said and noted, “In fact, Najam Sethi said that in his speech that seems to have gotten him into trouble.”

He said if Mr Clinton were to visit Pakistan,”We need to see some progress on the non-proliferation front, we need to see that democracy, flawed as it may be, is functioning there and so forth and so on.”

Mr Milam said the journalists “who have been taken by the police for reasons that I can’t figure out, are all friends of mine and I am terribly concerned about them,” adding that “I have trouble believing that what I’ve read about why they were taken in, is accurate.” Dismissing Islamabad’s umbrage over the tough statement issued by the State Department, he emphasised: “Frankly there are lots of people in the USA and all over the world who are quite concerned about this growing trend of harassing journalists, and these latest examples of their being taken by the police without, as far as I know, any good reasons, are quite worrisome.”

He said from everything he had heard about the case against former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, “it is regarded in many parts of Pakistan as being politically motivated.”

“Whether Ms Benazir and her husband and other people around her were corrupt is a question I am not prepared to answer,” he said. “Nobody has ever shared any of this evidence with me or, to my knowledge, with the US Government.”

Meanwhile, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Karl F.Inderfurth, spoke to Najam Sethi’s wife Jugnu Mohsin on the telephone to express his and the administration’s concern over her husband’s “safety, condition and whereabouts.”

In the 15-minute call, Mr Inderfurth told her that he had “spoken directly with Pakistan government officials on this.”

Since the day after Sethi’s arrest, he had spoken to Ambassador Riaz Khokhar virtually every day in protest against the arrest of the prominent Friday Times Editor and others and the harassment of journalists in other newspapers and media outlets.

According to sources, Mr Inderfurth had noted that “as a former journalist,” he had a “particular interest in the case, knew how important a free press is for the preservation of a healthy democracy,” and assured Ms Mohsin that “her husband’s plight would continue to command the attention and sympathy here and in other countries.” — IANS

Fact sheet released

ISLAMABAD (PTI, UNI): To counter international acrimony over the arrest of an editor, the Nawaz Sharif government has brought out a “fact sheet” which labelled journalists as “imposters” and urged the critics to “ascertain facts” before lending their support to “the opponents of the state of Pakistan”.

The fact sheet, released by the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML), also justified government actions against three leading mediapersons including the editor of weekly Friday Times, Najam Sethi, and said international organisations were fed wrong information about the journalists who were mostly “tax evaders, drug traffickers and opponents of the state of Pakistan.”

Stating that freedom of the Press was a cherished goal of all civilised societies, it said “but certain sections of opinion sometimes forget to distinguish between genuine journalism and political campaigning”.

The fact sheet described Mr Sethi as a former “bookseller” and “gun runner” before he ventured into publishing and became editor of Friday Times.

It further accused Mr Sethi with pursuing the political agenda of former President Farooq Leghari, who had given him a political position.

The PML fact sheet said that following Mr Sethi’s recent comments in New Delhi against Pakistan his alleged links with Indian intelligence agency RAW was under investigation.

Referring the actions taken by government against Rehmat Shah Afridi, editor of Frontier Post, the fact sheet accused him of being a drug trafficker and slammed criticism mainly from Amnesty International saying that Afridi was being victimised because he was critical to government policies.

The arrest of noted columnist Hussain Haqqani was justified in the fact sheet on the ground that he had misappropriated public money while working as Information Secretary.

“To describe actions against tax evaders, drug traffickers and opponents of the state of Pakistan as `crackdown on journalists’ is unfair, to say the least”, it said.

End violence, say Kashmiri groups

THE HAGUE, May 14 (PTI) — An informal dialogue of various Kashmiri groups has called for an end to violence in Kashmir amid strong pleas that the Kashmir issue should not be seen merely as a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan.

“The overwhelming view that insurgency and violence (in Kashmir) should be stamped out was the dominant theme (at the dialogue),” according to one of the Indian participants at the continuing dialogue held during the ongoing NGO International Conference on the Hague Appeal for Peace here.

The urgent need to reject violence and return to Kashmir’s traditional ethos of co-existence and “Kashmiriyat” in a pluralistic and secular society are expected to be the key principles of a joint resolution being drafted for adoption at a special session on “Global Forum for Kashmir Studying Various Options” this evening.

“Pakistan’s ISI-controlled groups cannot be expected to play a pro-people role in Kashmir,” said Mr Farooq Siddqui, who had launched the Council for Independent Kashmir (CIK).

Dr Amitabh Mattoo of the Jawahar Lal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi said a consensus was being forged among the Kashmiri groups to condemn violence and to focus attention on the sufferings of people.

Prof Riyaz Punjabi, also of the JNU, said the informal dialogue was considered significant since it was the first time that the groups like the US-based and Pakistan-backed CIK were involved in discussions with India-based Kashmiri groups.

During the dialogue, the Hurriyat leaders were chided for being unrelenting in their demand for international monitors in the event of their participation in elections with some delegates saying Indian NGOs were equally capable to observe the polls.

Warning on Duma dissolution

MOSCOW, May 14 (AP) — Russian lawmakers today resumed impeachment hearings today against President Boris Yeltsin as the Kremlin warned that any move to remove the President would be a declaration of war and plunge Russia into crisis.

Kremlin officials made the stark warnings as the Lower House of Parliament, the Duma, began a second day of hearings on five charges. Opposition leaders predict at least one of the charges will be passed.

“The President’s decisions may be most unexpected,” the officer said in an apparent warning that the Duma will be dissolved if it backs impeachment.

A senior pro-Kremlin lawmaker, Mr Vladimir Ryzhkov, warned that the impeachment proceedings had been hijacked by the Communist-dominated opposition. “We will not allow... a political mob trial”, he said.

Launch delayed
CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida): Space shuttle Discovery’s flight to the new space station will be delayed by at least a week so technicians can patch holes carved into the shuttle fuel tank by hail. — AP

3 editors charged
KAMPALA: Three Editors of Uganda’s leading independent newspaper were charged in a Kampala court with publishing seditious material involving a photograph of a naked woman alleged to have been tortured by army men. The Editor-in-Chief of The Monitor, Wafula Ogutu, and Deputy Editors Charles Onyango Obbo and David Owuma were charged with two counts of sedition and publishing false information. — DPA