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Saturday,
November 3, 2001, Chandigarh, India  
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Anthrax sent to Pak daily tests positive
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Pak manhunt for WTC suspect Islamabad, November 2 The authorities here have launched a nationwide manhunt for a key suspect in the September 11 terror attacks in the USA after he apparently entered the country from Afghanistan, officials said. US hunt for Laden
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Rumsfeld for more US troops in Afghanistan |
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Brand Jaish, LeT terrorist: Ashcroft Halt crossing, Pak told USA reverses stand on bio-arms treaties
Turkish troops for Kabul Trimble’s re-election bid fails
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Anthrax sent to Pak daily tests positive Islamabad, November 2 The incident has forced the newspaper offices in Karachi to put its editorial staff on antibiotics and to move the staff out of the infected area until it is properly disinfected, the report said. A Jang reporter received a contaminated envelope on October 23, supposed to contain a press note. Instead, it carried white powder which was sent for examination to Aga Khan University Hospital. Physicians had prescribed antibiotics for the exposed staff who worked mainly in the editorial department, the report said. The laboratory report, issued on yesterday, confirmed the white powdery substance as anthrax spores. The contaminated letter was sent by a social welfare organisation. “We have hired Aga Khan Hospital’s microbiologists to disinfect our main editorial sections,” the paper quoted an administration official. The Quetta office got a mail with a short message. “Anthrax gift for you and your staff.” Meanwhile, the top government spokesman Major-Gen Rashid Qureshi said two incidents of anthrax had been reported in Pakistan. “There have been two cases of anthrax from what I have learned so far. One is in a newspaper office and the other is in a computer factory or a computer laboratory,” Qureshi told a briefing at the Foreign Ministry. He said those possibly infected by the two cases had received antibiotics and he did not think anyone was seriously ill. WASHINGTON: The strain of anthrax bacteria that killed a Vietnamese immigrant in New York is “indistinguishable” from the bacteria sent to a US senator and various media offices, authorities said as they struggled to find those responsible for recent germ warfare attacks. The U.S. Supreme Court building, closed for a week after anthrax was found in a basement mailroom, was set to reopen on Friday. But anthrax contamination was found on Thursday in four U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mailrooms in offices outside Washington. In New York, investigators sought clues about how Kathy Nguyen (61) encountered the bacteria that took her life, making her the fourth person in the USA to die in the past month after inhaling anthrax spores. The hospital stockroom employee died on Wednesday at a Manhattan hospital. “As far as the organism itself, we did have a number of cultures from the patient herself before she died, and those specimens have been looked at ... and it is what we call indistinguishable from all of the others,” said Stephen Ostroff, an epidemiologist with the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, investigating anthrax cases in New York and New Jersey. The seeming match of the anthrax involved in the Nguyen case and in letters sent by unknown perpetrators to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle in Washington and media offices in Florida and New York could indicate that the dangerous germs originated from the same source, officials believe. In the latest discovery of anthrax contamination in government offices, preliminary tests detected anthrax in four FDA mailrooms in the federal agency’s buildings in Rockville, Maryland, north of Washington. The FDA, which regulates pharmaceuticals, most foods, medical devices and other products, has closed all of its Rockville-area mailrooms until they can be decontaminated. Meanwhile, Secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson has named Dr Donald Henderson, who spearheaded the successful global battle to eradicate smallpox, to head the new Office of Public Health Preparedness. “His role will be to coordinate efforts regarding bioterrorism, including strengthening the state and local health structure,” Thompson told reporters. “He will also help oversee our vaccine development and production efforts.”
UNI, Reuters |
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Pak manhunt for WTC suspect Islamabad, November 2 Said Bahaji, (26), was believed to have returned to Pakistan to take a flight on Tuesday from Karachi to Istanbul, Turkey. Bahaji did not show up for the flight but is believed still hiding in Karachi, the officials yesterday said on condition of anonymity. Bahaji, a German citizen of Moroccan origin, is sought under an international arrest warrant in connection with the September terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon. The German authorities have said Bahaji had close contacts with some of the hijackers who flew commercial airliners into the World Trade Center. Bahaji rented an apartment in Hamburg in 1998 and shared it with Mohammed Atta, a Bin Laden lieutenant believed to have been the leader of the hijackers.
AP |
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US hunt for Laden
narrows New York, November 2 They said hunt for Bin Laden had narrowed to a few complexes of caves and tunnels which could be safe hideouts of the suspected terrorist behind the September 11 attacks. ABC television network quoted the officials as saying that the USA has information about Bin Laden’s mountain hideouts and is keeping them under 24-hour surveillance from the air and ground. Now, the debate is whether to go after Bin Laden and other leaders of his Al-Qaida terrorist network by using giant £ 5,000 “bunker buster” bombs, or to take the greater risk of sending in commandos, the network said. Expert say the benefit of sending in special operations forces after Bin Laden is the certainty of knowing his fate. “I think there’s a huge upside for the American and allied efforts to actually capturing or very definitively confirming the killing of some of the Al-Qaida leaders to include Bin Laden,” said John Hillen, who was in the US special forces for six years. Defence sources told the network that plans for raids against Bin Laden’s strongholds were constantly being revised and rehearsed.
PTI |
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WINDOW ON PAKISTAN IN normal circumstances the Press in Pakistan these days would have been busy studying the balancesheet of two years of General Pervez Musharraf's rule. But very little discussion has taken place on the subject, and the reason is obvious. The war in the neighbourhood — Afghanistan — with Pakistan as the principal ally of the USA because of its geopolitical significance has overshadowed almost every development in Islamabad. People are so much involved in the goings-on in Afghanistan that even Kashmir, their first obsession, is getting sidelined. The military government has made an attempt to bring Kashmir on the centrestage as part of its great game but without success. No questions are being asked about what the General did during these two years and what he had promised when he captured power on October 12, 1999, in a bloodless coup. Only his Afghan policy is under scrutiny. No ordinary person is prepared to listen to General Musharraf's argument that his non-cooperation with the US-led international coalition against terrorism would have been suicidal for Pakistan. It seems the masses regard the military ruler as an agent of the West because of the U-turn in his policy vis-a-vis Afghanistan. This single factor has put the Pakistani public and the government in two opposite camps. The demonstrations after Friday prayers every week, and tribal youngsters in large numbers attempting to cross over the border illegally to join the Taliban show that the situation is taking an explosive turn. Hence the American warning to the clergy leading the movement against the military regime's Afghan policy that dislodging General Musharraf from power will result in Pakistan's nuclear weapons getting seized by Washington. This means the superpower will not allow the General to be toppled by the forces working against him. He could not ask for a bigger reward for his loyalty to Uncle Sam. Now he does not have to worry about the general election as directed by the Pakistan Supreme Court. Since international aid will be available in abundance, the General will have enough resources to take care of the people's economic worries. But his past record on this front has been contrary to his claims. "We saw no real movement towards the goal of economic revival. The Finance Minister and his boss certainly stated that the government had saved the country from economic disaster and put it on the path to recovery. However, there was hardly any solid evidence to support this. Sure, the government did manage to get an IMF pat on the back for its economic reforms, secure rescheduling of crippling external debt and obtain new foreign loans. But the economy didn't get what it needed most — heavy foreign and domestic investment. Investor confidence was not restored. The government also failed to come up with an effective plan of action to cope with the emerging water crisis. This despite the country being hit last winter by the worst even water shortage." This assessment by Nadim Shahid was carried in The Nation on October 22. The truth is that Pakistan today is at the crossroads. Any direction it takes is fraught with dangers. This is the result of the successive rulers' thoughtless policies. The country is unlikely to experience socio-political stability for a long time to come. Even the economic gains arising out of the General's cunning moves may not help. |
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Rumsfeld for more US troops in Afghanistan Washington, November 2 Mr Rumsfeld revealed that one recent attempt to land US special operations troops was called off after the helicopter-borne troops encountered ground fire, presumably from the Taliban militia. Other landing teams have been thwarted by bad weather, he said. He announced that he would visit countries on the periphery of Afghanistan this weekend after meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Ivanov in Moscow on Saturday. “I’d like to see as soon as humanly possible the number of teams go up by three or four times”, Mr Rumsfeld said. He said the present number was “nowhere near as many as we need.” Other officials have said the Pentagon is considering setting up a base inside Afghanistan from which such forces could operate. The army’s special operations soliders include special forces, often called Green Berets, who are trained in
unconventional warfare, clandestine reconnaissance and in training and advising rebel forces. Other special operations troops, such as Army Rangers, specialise in airborne assaults behind enemy lines such as the night-time attack on October 20 on a Talibab-controlled airfield in southern Afghanistan. At the outset of his news conference, Mr Rumsfeld read a statement defending the scope and pace of the US-led military campaign, which some have criticised as too slow and constrained by concern that arrangements for a stable post-Taliban government have yet to be worked out. He called that criticism “absolutely false.”
AP |
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Brand Jaish, LeT terrorist: Ashcroft Washington, November 2 The Rabita Trust of Lahore, alleged to be a front for fund raising for terrorists and of which Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is a board member, is among the outfits recommended for branding as terrorist
organisations. Designating the Jaish and Lashkar as terrorist organisations is a long-standing demand of India so far resisted by the State Department which has, instead, placed these in the category of “other terrorist groups”. The US froze the finances of these outfits in the aftermath of terror strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on black Tuesday. General Ashcroft, America’s chief law enforcer, said in a communication to Secretary of State Colin Powell: “I hereby request that you designate as terrorist organisations certain groups that the President has identified in executive order. “The executive order finds these organisations commit, or provide material support for, terrorist acts, and thus satisfies the statutory predicate for your designation.” “In addition, I request that you designate as terrorist organisations certain groups that you jointly identified with the Secretary of the Treasury. “I also request that you designate as terrorist organisations certain groups identified in the Department of State’s 2000 Patterns of Global Terrorism report, published in April 2001,” General Ashcroft said.
PTI |
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Halt crossing, Pak told Washington, November 2 “We certainly have raised this with the Pakistan Government and we will continue to raise this,” the official said yesterday. “What we want is no one going in (to Afghanistan) to support the Taliban and we want any terrorist that leaves Afghanistan to be interned and interrogated.... This is an issue that we are raising and will be raising again,” he said. He gave no details but in addition to normal diplomatic channels, the issue could be raised when President George W. Bush meets Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in New York on November 10 at the time of the United Nations General Assembly. The senior official also expressed concern over reports that Pakistani military and intelligence services are providing military goods, including ammunition and fuel, to ruling Afghan Taliban leaders in contravention of a pledge by General Musharraf to back the US-led anti-terrorism war.
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USA reverses stand on bio-arms treaties Washington, November 2 He also recommended that the UN should devise means to investigate suspected biological warfare attacks. This move to strengthen the 1972 UN Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention is, in fact, a reversal of the White House policy that resisted backing international treaties of this kind before the September 11 terror attacks. The disease has also been discovered at a mail processing facility in Kansas City, Missouri — the first incidence in the Midwest.
IANS |
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Food packets' colour changed Washington, November 2 “It is unfortunate that the cluster bombs — the unexploded ones — are the same colour as the food packets,” said Gen Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, yesterday.
AFP |
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Turkish troops for Kabul Ankara, November 2 The decision came in response to a request by the USA, Turkey’s number one ally, which has also asked several other countries for military help for the campaign launched in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks in the USA. Ankara, a NATO member often criticised by Arab nations for its West oriented policies, insisted the operation to root out suspected terrorists based in Afghanistan would benefit everyone.
AFP |
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Trimble’s re-election bid fails Belfast, November 2 His defeat was a blow for the landmark Good Friday Agreement just a week after it received a boost from the Irish Republican Army’s decision to start disarming. Pro-British politician Trimble won support from pro-Irish Roman Catholic politicians, but Protestant hardliners hostile to the accord voted against him, thwarting his re-election bid. Britain might now suspend the Parliament or call fresh province-wide elections, political analysts have said.
Reuters |
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