Daily Excelsior... World

Bangladesh
opposition seeks
urgent move on guns

DHAKA, July 17: The leader of the Bangladeshi opposition pressed the country’s caretaker Government today to round uvp illegal weapons to ......more

Musharraf "hurt,
disappointed" at
Agra summit failure

ISLAMABAD, July 17: Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf was "hurt and disappointed" that an agreement on the disputed Kashmir territory withered in the 11th hour of a ....more

British PMO
upfront on Hindujas

LONDON, July 17: British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Office has insisted that there is nothing wrong with the issuance of passport to NRU businessmen Hindujas or their one million pound sponsorship of.....more

Pak parties asserts
only elected Govts
can negotiate

ISLAMABAD, July 17: Pakistan’s mainstream political parties have said that the failure of the.......more

India, Israel sign two
billion dollar arms deal

JERUSALRM, July 17: India and Israel have signed a two billion dollar contract to boost cooperation .....more

Pak statement following
summit with india

ISLAMABAD, July 17: Following is the text of statement issued by Pakistan’s Foreign Minister.......more

British PMO
upfront on Hindujas

LONDON, July 17: British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Office has insisted that there is nothing wrong ....more

Bangladesh opposition seeks urgent move on guns

DHAKA, July 17: The leader of the Bangladeshi opposition pressed the country’s caretaker Government today to round up illegal weapons to ensure elections expected in October are peaceful and fair.

"We...Discussed with him some preconditions for holding the election in a peaceful manner," Begum Khaleda Zia told reporters after talks with the newly appointed head of the interim Government, which will oversee elections within three months.

"We requested immediate drastic measures to recover illegal arms," said Khaleda, leader of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

Khaleda is seen as the main election challenger to outgoing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who stepped down on Sunday after completing her five-year term in office. It was the first time in the country’s history a Government had completed its term.

Former Chief Justice Latifur Rahman was on Sunday appointed head of a caretaker Government, which under the constitution must oversee a general election to ensure impartiality.

Bangladeshi politics is often marred by violence between supporters of rival parties and there are fears the run-up to the vote could see more clashes between supporters of Khaleda’s BNP and Hasina’s Awami League.

Khaleda, Prime Minister before Hasina won the country’s last election in 1996, said she had assured Rahman of her party’s cooperation in preparing for the parliamentary elections.

"We assured him of our full cooperation in organising and holding the election," she said.

Hasina, daughter of Bangladesh’s independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman who was assassinated in a 1975 coup, has also pledged her support to the caretaker Government.

Intolerant leaders

Rahman blamed the country’s political volatility on confrontation between parties and the intolerance of their leaders.

He said he would try to get Hasina and Khaleda — who have no spoken to each other for years — to meet for talks.

Rahman said on Monday he would do his best to ensure the election is fair and would soon launch a sweep for illegal guns.

There were some 250,000 illegal weapons in the hands of criminals and political activists across the country and the problem was getting worse, Rahman said.

"More arms are flooding the country. This is an alarming situation. A further cause of concern is that many illegal weapons are being legalised and even legal weapons are being used illegally," he said. He did not elaborate.

Rahman transferred 13 top civil servants to other ministries or jobs shortly after he was appointed in a move widely interpreted as an attempt to ensure impartiality in the poll.

Chief Election Commissioner, M A Syed, also met Rahman on Tuesday, Government officials said. They gave no details of the talks. (REUTERS)

Musharraf "hurt, disappointed" at Agra summit failure

ISLAMABAD, July 17: Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf was "hurt and disappointed" that an agreement on the disputed Kashmir territory withered in the 11th hour of a peace summit with neighbor India, a senior official said today.

"The President did not hide his feelings," Pakistan’s Information Minister Anwar Mahmood said in an interview.

"He was very, very disappointed and hurt that he and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had agreed to everything, they had settled on an agreement and six hours later it was in tatters," he said. "How can this happen?"

In the end the summit agreement collapsed over wording, said Mahmood.

Musharraf’s failure to return home with an agreement is seen as a major setback to his attempts to try to wean Kashmiri guerrillas off of war and into diplomacy as a means to settle their dispute.

"This is unfortunate, particularly because for the first time there was a sentiment from within the political leadership of Kashmir, but also from other elements in Kashmir that there is a need for dialogue to resolve this issue. This was happening for the first time in more than 50 years," he said.

Despite the failure of the two sides to get an agreement, Mahmood said Pakistan’s invitation to Vajpayee to visit still stands. "We certainly hope that the talks will continue. It is a disappointing set back but the doors are always open for talks," he said.

Although no date for fresh talks has been set, Mahmood said it’s possible that the two leaders may meet in New York when both leaders will be there to attend the UN General Assembly.

AFP adds: Islamist parties said the summit’s failure only proved that the Indians were not serious about solving the festering Kashmir dispute.

"We all knew the Indian side will remain uncompromising but this rigidity has further exposed the real Indian face," said Sajid Naqvi, leader of Shiite Muslim party Tehreek-i-Jafria Pakistan.

"There were hopes the summit would pave the way for a reduction of tension and usher an era of peace and prosperity in South Asia but the opportunity has been lost due to the Indian attitude.

"The International Peace and Human Rights Organisations will now be able to understand better who wants peace and who is the enemy of peace in this region."

Ordinary people in the southern port city of Karachi also expressed a range of emotions, from frustration and anger to sad resignation.

"He (Musharraf) just wanted to take his wife to show her the Taj Mahal and do some shopping," taxi driver Sher Khan, 18, said.

"He should now wait and give a chance to our Mujahideen." (AFP)

British PMO upfront on Hindujas

"The issue of (passport to) the Hindujas and sponsorship of the Dome is something which we have always been upfront about. We have always said that there was nothing wrong whatsoever with that. The charge was that in some way passports were traded for sponsorship, which is what the Hammond inquiry looked at, and concluded that there was no impropriety," an official spokesman of Blair said.

His comments came in the wake of media reports claiming that it was Jonathan Powell, chief of staff at Prime Minister’s Office, who had first told Peter Mandelson to contact the Hinduja brothers, S P Hinduja and G P Hinduja, chairman and president respectively of the Hinduja Group, over Millennium Dome sponsorship.

According to an updated version of political commentator Andrew Rawnsley’s book, ‘Servants of the People’, Powell wrote an official minute to the then Cabinet Office Minister, saying he should follow up the Indian millionaires’ offer to help build the Dome.

Mandelson lost his job as Northern Ireland Secretary after giving PMO a confusing account of his involvement in Srichand Hinduja’s later application for British citizenship. Mandelson was said to have called the Home office to see if the application could go ahead after Hinduja and his brother made a one million pound Dome donation. An inquiry headed by Sir Anthony Hammond, QC, concluded that it was ‘likely’ that the call took place, but cleared Mandelson of any impropriety.

Rawnlsley’s book claims that Powell’s memorandum was never submitted to the inquiry.

Prime Minister’s spokesman refused to say whether Sir Anthony either saw the memorandum or was aware of its existence.

He said "Sir Anthony was able to look at all material in relation to passports, the Hindujas, what have you. There are well documented paper trails in Whitehall, and obviously, he had a secretariat who could help him with that. He was able to look at things, to make judgements."

The spokesman said the Government would not be "getting into" details of precisely what documentation "Sir Anthony did or did not see." (PTI)

Pak parties asserts only elected Govts can negotiate

ISLAMABAD, July 17: Pakistan’s mainstream political parties have said that the failure of the Indo-Pak summit at Agra could spell disaster for the region and asserted that only the democratically elected Government in Pakistan would have the mandate to negotiate from a position of strength.

Reacting to the news from Agra that both sides failed to sign a joint declaration, senior vice president of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) Sayed Zafarul Ali Shah said that "the breakdown of the talks could spell disaster to the region. This could lead to another confrontation as both sides are guided by military establishments."

Both sides miserably failed due to mismatch of the nature of the Governments, he said adding one party was trained in football and another in hockey. So naturally they could not play ball, he said meaning that India’s is an elected Government while Pakistan has a military regime.

Shah told PTI here that Pakistan side lacked political vision as it was not an elected Government. Despite eight hours of one-to-one talks between President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, this was first time in the history that talks between both the sides broke down even without an agreement on joint declaration, he said.

Shah said Lahore talks were not successful as Pakistan did not have an elected Government. He said however the breakdown of talks in Agra was a big set back to the peace process set in motion by the Lahore accord. This spelt disaster to the peace in the region. Unless political wisdom prevailed between both the countries it could spell disaster to the entire region, he said.

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) led by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said in its reaction that "the lesson is clear: It is only the democratic Government backed by the mandate of the people which gives confidence to the leader to negotiate from a position of strength.

In a statement here, a party spokesman said that "as was expected General Pervez Musharraf has failed and has returned home empty handed. He could not convince Prime Minister Vajpayee of the centrality of Kashmir dispute even after he agreed to describe Kashmir as the main issue rather than its being the core problem."

He said a major reason for General Musharraf’s failure is that the General lacks public backing. The fear of a strong backlash in Pakistan because of the unrepresentative character of the Government lurked in his mind, he said.

PPP said "this failure of an unrepresentative Government is in sharp contrast with the success achieved during democratic Governments in talks with Indian leaders be it the 1972 Simla agreement between late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Indira Gandhi or between Benazir Bhutto and Rajiv Gandhi when the latter visited Pakistan in 1989.

"A number of agreements including no first attack on each other’s nuclear facilities, redeployment of troops in Siachin and setting up of hot line between the military headquarters of the two countries were signed during Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to Pakistan."

Benazir had already predicted well before the summit that Musharraf would not succeed and return empty handed.

The President of the 19 party Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD) Nawabzada Nasurllah Khan said that Pakistan’s chances of negotiating a better deal over Kashmir would have brightened had it returned to democracy.

He, however, strongly criticised India for its rigid stand on the Kashmir issue. He said that failure of Agra summit was a strong indication that resolution of the Kashmir issue should be sought through international mediation.

He told Pakistan daily The News that the failure of Agra summit was not a surprise to him as he had told Musharraf during a meeting last month that it could happen.

Nawabzada said "I told Gen Musharraf that India would not budge a single inch from its stand on Kashmir and would never accept that Kashmir was a disputed territory."

In its reaction, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, led by former cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan said the outcome of the Agra summit shows that the Indian leadership has missed yet another historic opportunity to break from the past on the critical issue of Kashmir that bedevils the relationship between the two countries.

The party said the Indian leadership’s failure to agree to a framework including a time frame for the resolution of Kashmir dispute has dampened hopes, raised by the media hype and praised the forthright stand taken by Gen Musharraf on the Kashmir issue. (PTI)

India, Israel sign two billion dollar arms deal

JERUSALRM, July 17: India and Israel have signed a two billion dollar contract to boost cooperation in weapon systems and technology, an Israeli defence spokesman said today.

The agreement, signed between Israel Aircraft Industry (IAI) officials and Indian Defence Ministry delegation led by Defence Ministry General Subir Datta, would ensure Israeli supply of sophisticated radar systems, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAVs) and upgrading of Indian aircraft with avionics systems, the spokesman said.

Indian embassy officials here, however, refused to comment on the issue saying the embassy was not dealing with the matter.

IAI, which specialises in high tech weaponry, will transfer Israeli technology to Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.

The Indian delegation, comprising top defence officials, visited IAI and is due to visit other Israeli companies engaged in defence production.

The sale of three phalcon early warning aircraft systems is also understood to be the part of the upcoming cooperation between India and Israel.

According to sources, Israel has shown keen interest to buy pilotless target aircraft ‘Lakshya’.

The visit of Indian delegation assumes significance in the backdrop of the recent media allegations that Indian peace troops in Lebanon were bribed by Hezbullah guerillas to kidnap three Israeli soldiers last October.

Israeli Defence Minister told the visiting delegation that Israel regretted the media reports which created misleading image of Indian soldiers working with unifil, sources said.

The Indian delegation, consisting of military brass and senior members of Indian defence industry, will be in Israel for a few days as guest of Defence Ministry Director-General Amos Yaron who visited India earlier this year. (PTI)

Pak statement following summit with india

ISLAMABAD, July 17: Following is the text of statement issued by Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar today, a day after the summit between Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.

"President Pervez Musharraf has returned from India optimistic about prospects for better relations between Pakistan and India. Considerable progress was made in summit level discussions and in evolving the text of a declaration.

"It is unfortunate that the expected consummation did not materialise. Nevertheless, the President remains convinced that the existing goodwill on both sides can and will achieve mutually desired results.

"President Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee share a common vision of peace, progress and prosperity for their peoples in the 21st century. The President has complimented the Indian Prime Minister for the gracious initiative to invite him for the resumption of dialogue between the two countries after a hiatus of nearly two years.

"Recognising the benefits of peace and cooperation between the two neighbouring countries, President Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee held wide-ranging discussions on Pakistan-India relations, particularly on Jammu and Kashmir.

"They affirmed commitment to addressing each other’s expressed concerns, creating an environment conducive to the establishment of peaceful, friendly and cooperative ties, for the welfare of the two peoples.

"While in New Delhi, President Musharraf welcomed the opportunity to meet with the leaders of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. We hope India would accord them travel documents to visit Pakistan for consultations.

"Time did not permit substantive discussion on any specific issue. But valuable progress was made at Agra on evolving a structure for a sustained dialogue process, that would take up Jammu and Kashmir, peace and security, and terrorism and drug trafficking at the political level.

"Economic and commercial cooperation, Siachen, Wuller Barrage, Sir Creek and promotion of friendly exchanges in various levels would be addressed at the level of high officials.

"All these issues need to be addressed purposefully, constructively and in an integrated manner, with a sense of urgency.

"Responding to press questions, the President of Pakistan was forthcoming on discussion of any issues of concern to India. He emphasised again and again that realism requires a focus, and that progress on settlement of Jammu and Kashmir would be conducive to normalisation of bilateral relations."

"Prime Minister Vajpayee has accepted our President’s invitation for a return visit. The two leaders are expected to meet in New York in September and continue efforts to promote agreement. The goodwill between them is an asset for better relations between the two countries.

"President Musharraf had a valuable opportunity to meet a large number of prominent Indian leaders. His exchanges of views with intellectuals and media luminaries will no doubt contribute to better mutual understanding.

"Enlightened opinion in India is no less keen than that in Pakistan to extricate bilateral relations from the time wrap in which they have been trapped for 54-years.

"Like the Indian Prime Minister, the Minister for External Affairs, Mr Jaswant Singh brought equal goodwill to the task of translating the convergence of thoughts at the summit level into words.

"The two sides came very close to bringing the declaration close to adoption and approval. In fact twice yesterday it appeared we had succeeded in arriving at a mutually acceptable formulation. It is unfortunate that the fruition of the exercise was aborted.

"The Agra summit remained inconclusive but it did not fail. In fact, the two leaders succeeded in covering a broad area of common ground in the draft declaration. That will provide a valuable foundation for the two leaders to reach full agreement at their next meeting.

"Compliments are due also to intellectuals, media and the common people in India as in Pakistan for their contribution to building an environment of opinion conducive to forward movement. Heartened by the prevalent goodwill, President Musharraf believes popular support will be an asset also to leaders in India who want to work for a future better than the past."(REUTERS)

British PMO upfront on Hindujas

Rawnlsley’s book claims that Powell’s memorandum was never submitted to the inquiry.

Prime Minister’s spokesman refused to say whether Sir Anthony either saw the memorandum or was aware of its existence.

The spokesman said the Government would not be "getting into" details of precisely what documentation "Sir Anthony did or did not see." (PTI)

Sino-Russian treaty will promote world peace: Putin

MOSCOW, July 16: The treaty of good neighbourly relations, friendship and cooperation between Russia and China, which was signed here today, will promote stability and peace all over the world, President Vladimir Putin said.

"The treaty will be an important element in the building of international relations in general," he told a press conference after holding summit talks with his Chinese counterpart Jiang Zemin.

Itar-Tass news agency quoted Putin as saying that in his opinion, "predictable, good-neighbourly relations between Russia and China will influence in a most favourable way the world situation in general."

Russia and China today presented a common front against US plans to build a missile shield and signed the landmark friendship treaty during the Putin-Zemin summit at Kremlin. "President Putin and I both believe that our strategic partnership or cooperation is not only in the fundamental interests of both peoples but in the interest of global peace and security," Jiang said.

"This is also of importance for our strengthening consultations on the global strategic stability of the anti-ballistic missile treaty," he said.

In a joint statement issued at the end of their summit, the two leaders called for setting up of a special international committee to negotiate steps and agreements for the prevention of an arms race in outer space.

Kremlin sources said the issue of NMD had topped the agenda of Putin-Jiang talks, especially in the wake of yesterday’s testing of a killer missile by the Pentagon.

By signing of a comprehensive, bilateral treaty, Russia and China today formalised their earlier declaration of "no first use" of nuclear weapons and not to deploy their strategic forces against each other, they said.

After two earlier unsuccessful attempts in the last 150 years of bilateral relations, for the third time Russia and China have taken obligations not to use force for resolving their mutual disputes.

The "unique" part of the treaty signed today is that Beijing has addressed Moscow’s concern of the Chinese expansion in its eastern parts by adding a clause that neither Russia nor China have any territorial claims on each other’s territory.

Itar-Tass said the motto of the treaty is "friends forever and foes never".

Under the accord, China and Russia have also taken obligations not to join blocks and alliances with the third countries directed against them.

They have also declared that the treaty was not directed against third countries.

The maximum that Beijing could extract out of Moscow by signing the treaty is Russia’s opposition to "any form of independence" for Taiwan, seen by the Kremlin as the integral part of mainland China.

The treaty, according to Jiang, lays a solid foundation of their healthy and close friendly relations and is for the coming generation in the two countries. (PTI)