Megawati supporters turn streets red
JAKARTA, May 28 — Security was tight today as supporters of presidential front-runner Megawati Sukarnoputri turned Jakarta’s main streets red again in the campaign for the crucial parliamentary elections.

3 Chinese rebels on trial
BEIJING, May 28 — Three Chinese labour-rights campaigners have gone on trial for subversion for trying to organise workers laid-off from a state-run firm, a human rights group and official said today.

Netanyahu quits seat
TEL AVIV, May 28 — Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resigned from parliament while the Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon was elected to take over the interim leadership of their Likud Party.

Awami League MP held
DHAKA, May 28 — A ruling Awami League MP, M.P. Mohibur Rahman Manik, was arrested from his residence at Chhatak in greater Sylhet this morning for his alleged involvement in a bomb blast two months ago, police sources said today.

Israel annexes West Bank land

JERUSALEM, May 28 (AP) — Israel had added a wide swath of West Bank land to Jewish settlement, connecting it to Jerusalem, the Defence Ministry confirmed today.

The decision was made by outgoing Defence Minister Moshe Arens, who added 10 square-kilometres (four square-miles) to the settlement of Maale Adumim, located east of Jerusalem.

Palestinian officials and Israeli peace activists said the expansion violated interim peace accords and demanded that it be revoked by Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak once he takes power.

This is a unilateral act aimed at creating facts on the ground and will destroy any possibility for peace in the future, said Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi.

The interim peace accords say neither side is to take unilateral steps to change the status of West Bank land before the future of the territory is determined in talks on a final peace agreement.

The expansion of Maale Adumim further cuts off east Jerusalem, the sector claimed by the Palestinians as a future capital, from its West Bank hinterland.

One idea that had emerged in informal talks between Israel and the Palestinians was to establish the Palestinian capital in the town of Abu Dis, on the West Bank fringes of east Jerusalem. With Maale Adumim expanding.

With about 25,000 residents, Maale Adumim is the largest Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Most work in Jerusalem, commuting on a highway built to bypass Palestinian villages.

The Israelis say the land belongs to the state and will be used for parks and hotels, benefitting both Israelis and Palestinians.

Palestinian officials said it was grazing land under joint Palestinian ownership.

HC saves girl from forced wedding

LONDON, May 28 (DPA) — A British high court judge made up a document which sounded like a complex legal court order to save a 17-year-old British Sikh girl from being forced into an arranged marriage in an Indian village, according to a British newspaper report today.

Mr Justice Sringer enlisted the help of the Foreign Office, the diplomatic service, Interpol and the Indian police to ensure that the girl was returned to England before her 18th birthday.

Once she turned 18, she would have been beyond the grasp of English law, according to The Times.

The girl’s parents sent her in June last to a remote village in Punjab, where two prospective husbands were waiting.

The girl was stripped of her passport, and put to live with her aunt — her father’s sister — and was on the brink of committing suicide.

The girl smuggled a letter pleading for help to her 19-year-old sister in England, who had also fled the family home a year earlier out of fear that their parents, wanted to marry them to strangers from their home villages in India.

It prompted the older sister to start wardship proceeding in the high court. The sister won a court order stripping the girls’ parents of their passport so that she could travel and return to India to find her sister.

Lost continent found

A lost continent where small dinosaurs and lizards hunted among giant ferns and primitive trees has been discovered in the Indian Ocean.

Now more than half a mile below the sea , the Kerguelen Plateau was once covered in swamps and rivers, according to scientists who have been drilling into it for soil and rock samples.

“It was exciting to discover wood fragments, seeds, spores and pollen in ancient sediments,” said Dr Leah Moore, a physical volcanologist from the University of Canberra in Australia, who is part of the expedition team.

For more than a decade scientists suspected that the Kerguelen Bank, marked on maps as a comparatively shallow area in the ocean 2,500 miles south-west of Perth in Australia and north of the Antarctic continent, was part of an ancient land mass, but they could not prove it.

An expedition using the world’s largest research vessel, Joides Resolution, which is designed to extract cores of sediment from the ocean floor, proved conclusively that a land mass one-third the size of Australia was once densely covered in vegetation and sank into the sea about 10 million years ago.

Rock cores revealed types of rock that might be expected near active volcanoes as well as sedimentary rocks caused by river erosion, similar to those found in Australia and India. The survey concluded that the land was first thrown up 110 million years ago and may have sunk and risen again three times before finally disappearing.

Scientists once speculated that the lost land might be a chunk that had broken off Australia, Antarctica or India as the continental plates moved about to create the current world land masses. But the core samples indicate that this is wrong.

Despite the excitement it would cause, scientists are rather hoping that Kerguelen does not repeat the trick and reappear. A vast volcanic eruption or a dust cloud caused by a huge meteor collision, is thought to be one of the main reasons for the loss of dinosaurs 65 million years ago. If the lost plateau were to re-emerge, it would be on account of an eruption so large it would block out the sun.

— Guardian News Service

Megawati supporters turn streets red

JAKARTA, May 28 (AP) — Security was tight today as supporters of presidential front-runner Megawati Sukarnoputri turned Jakarta’s main streets red again in the campaign for the crucial parliamentary elections.

Extra police and troops were prominent amid reports that provocateurs might try to cause trouble for the Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle (PDI) of Ms Megawati, who has drawn by far the largest crowds since the campaign began on May 19.

Tens of thousands of people, waving PDI’s red flags, rode in a constant loop of the capital on overloaded motorbikes, trucks and buses in a repeat of Ms Megawati’s first rally on Sunday.

Tensions were rising elsewhere in Indonesia with clashes between rival parties leaving at least 20 injured.

Five Opposition supporters were stabbed by sword-wielding guards from the ruling Golkar Party yesterday. Fifteen were injured in an earlier clash between rival Muslim parties.

Meanwhile, worries that separatist rebels would continue a violent anti-election campaign in Aceh province led 10,000 people to flee their homes.

Other parties did similar but smaller-scale cruises earlier in the day before clearing out for the throngs of Ms Megawati, the daughter of Indonesia’s founding President, Mr Sukarno.

She told a rally of 15,000 cheering supporters in Metro, a town in southern Sumatra, to vote in the nation’s best interests.

“You have to vote in accordance with your inner heart,” she added.

Kosovo crisis
Shadow of indictment on peace talks
From Martin Walker in Brussels

The Russian diplomatic drive to end the war stalled yesterday as Moscow envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin delayed his planned visit to Belgrade and threatened to abandon peace negotiations altogether, while both Nato and the Yugoslav air defences stepped up their own private war in what Nato called “a desperate last stand”.

As Russia’s foreign ministry condemned the war crimes indictment against President Milosevic as “politically motivated”, Nato launched its biggest attack of the air campaign, with 308 strikes, including more than 50 on the capital, Belgrade.

Serbian air defences fired 33 Sam missiles at Nato aircraft yesterday without success, along with intense anti-aircraft fire, as Nato warplanes flew 74 missions against Sam and radar sites.

The air defence forces were becoming “increasingly hostile”, General Walter Jertz, NATO military spokesman, said. This suggested “desperation is setting in as they make a last determined stand to shoot down Nato aircraft”.

Nato said the indictment changed nothing, and insisted its bombing campaign would continue until its non-negotiable five conditions had been met, by whoever might be the “competent authorities”.

“It is for international envoys to determine who the competent authorities in Belgrade might be,” Nato spokesman Jamie Shea said.

Mr Shea rejected the practical argument that a Milosevic under indictment might prefer to fight to the end rather than concede to Nato demands, insisting there could be no political solution which defied the rights of justice.

But the prospect of a dramatic response by President Milosevic, perhaps in the form of a coup to secure full control of politically autonomous (and pro-western) Montenegro, was causing concern.

“Milosevic has nothing to lose now,” said Montenegro’s Justice Minister, Dragan Soc, in an appeal for an assurance of Nato support. “There could be serious bloodletting here.”

Montenegro is in a state of uneasy peace, with the local police loyal to their government, but no match for the Serbian troops stationed there who are currently trying to enforce a highly unpopular call-up of military reservists.

The three-way talks in Moscow broke off as the EU representative, the Finnish president, Martti Ahtisaari, left for Bonn, saying he then planned to go home. He had been expected to join Mr Chernomyrdin in Belgrade.

The war crimes indictment appears to have stopped the talks dead in their tracks, although important progress had been made. The USA had accepted in principle that some “supervised” Serb forces might remain in Kosovo after a settlement, and Mr Chernomyrdin had secured a Belgrade concession that at least Nato countries which had not joined the air strikes could join a peacekeeping force.

“Our views are approaching each other and the facts that bind everyone have been recognised,’’ President Ahtisaari said as he left Moscow.

The Russian foreign ministry said in a statement that the indictment was politically motivated. “It will only create additional obstacles on the path to a resolution of the Yugoslav situation.” (The Guardian, London)

Belgrade (Reuters): NATO-planes have knocked out the two main power distribution stations supplying Belgrade with electricity, the Serbian news agency Beta reported.

The mainly independent agency yesterday quoted a statement by the Serbian electrical company as saying much of its network was disabled.

Residents said most of the capital of more than two million people was plunged into darkness and witnesses reported seeing flames and smoke pouring from a distribution station in the Bezanijska Kosa district.

The facility distributes power from the Obrenovac generating station southwest of Belgrade.

Also hit was an installation at Lestane which relays power from the Djerdap hydroelectric plant on the Danube east of Belgrade on the border with Romania, the power company said.

Among the casualties of the blackout was Belgrade’s main hospital, the emergency medical care centre.

The intensive care ward was lit by moonlight while monitoring screens operated with power from the generator.

The water supply in Pancevo was also cut off, they said.

Washington: A group of 28 us lawmakers have released a letter urging a 72-hour halt to NATO’s bombing campaign against Yugoslavia “to encourage all sides to reach a viable peace agreement.”

“We believe it is now time for NATO to open the door to a peace settlement,” the Democratic House of Representatives members said yesterday in a missive to us president Bill Clinton.

3 Chinese rebels on trial

BEIJING, May 28 (AP) — Three Chinese labour-rights campaigners have gone on trial for subversion for trying to organise workers laid-off from a state-run firm, a human rights group and official said today.

The trial of Yue Tianxiang, Guo Xinmin and Wang Fengshan opened yesterday in central Tianshui city, 1,100 km west of Beijing, the Human Rights and Democratic Movement said.

Hearings were also held today, said officials at the Tianshui intermediate people’s court who refused to give names.

China’s Communist leaders are particularly nervous that dissidents will use the anniversary to whip up anger among millions of unemployed workers whose once-guaranteed lifetime jobs have been sacrificed to free-market reforms.

Netanyahu quits seat

TEL AVIV, May 28 (AFP) — Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resigned from parliament while the Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon was elected to take over the interim leadership of their Likud Party.

“I’ve decided to resign from the Knesset,” Netanyahu told the Likud Central Committee yesterday.

Netanyahu called for the next government not to give in to the “extremist demands of the Arabs who always want more.” He also reiterated his opposition to the creation of an “Arab (Palestinian) state in the heart of Israel because we would have our back to the (Mediterranean) Sea.”

The new Likud leader, Sharon, said other Likud officials “could submit their candidacy for party chief” at the end of his interim term.

Awami League MP held

DHAKA, May 28 (PTI) — A ruling Awami League MP, M.P. Mohibur Rahman Manik, was arrested from his residence at Chhatak in greater Sylhet this morning for his alleged involvement in a bomb blast two months ago, police sources said today.

The bomb blast took place in the residence of Manik in which two persons were killed, including one of his relatives.

Witnesses said Manik’s arrest sparked angry demonstrations by his party supporters at Chhatak, who turned violent, damaging vehicles there as the news of his arrest spread.

Race killing
SURREY (British Columbia): Five Canadian Skinheads have pleaded guilty to manslaughter for the racially-motivated killing of a Sikh temple caretaker. The men admitted beating Nirmal Singh Gill, 65, to death in the temple’s parking lot in January 1998, after they had left an all-night party of White supremacists in Surrey, a suburb of Vancouver. Royal Canadian Mounted Police have said the five were members of White Power, a Canadian White supremacist group that is affiliated with the Aryan Nation organisation in the USA. — Reuters

Dinosaur eggs
SEOUL: Paleontologists have found more than 100 fossilised dinosaur eggs, believed to be 100 million years old were found in rock beds scattered along an isolated beach near Bosung, 325 kilometres south of Seoul on Thursday. Scientists believe the eggs are from vegetarian dinosaurs. They hope to find foetuses in the eggs that will tell them what kind off dinosaurs laid them. — AP

Mission in East Timor
SYDNEY: The Indonesian Government has given permission for an Australian consulate to open in the East Timorese capital of Dili, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said. The first Australian consular official should be in Dili next week to re-open a mission that was closed in the chaos that was a prelude to Indonesian troops invading the former Portuguese colony in 1975. — DPA

Baby trade
MOSCOW: Russian police have smashed a criminal ring led by a former parliament official that sold Russian babies in the USA, the daily Kommersant reported. A group of seven people reportedly sold 20 infants to U.S. clients between 1995 and 1998. Pregnant Russian women in need of money were taken to the USA to give birth, receiving up to 2000 dollars before returning to Russia. The ring was broken up as it tried to sell a three-month old baby to U.S. clients. — DPA

Pak editor’s bail plea
ISLAMABAD: The wife of an arrested Pakistani editor filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking interim bail for her husband on health grounds, the official APP news agency reported. Najam Sethi, editor of the Friday Times weekly, was arrested on May 8 for alleged anti-state activities. In her petition on Thursday Ms Jugno Mohsin said her husband suffered from a heart ailment and high blood pressure. — AFP