Fears of tainted meat cloud Muslim feast in Egypt

CAIRO, Mar 4: Millions of Muslim Egyptians approach this year’s Eid Al-Azha holiday with a mixture of joy and fear, as the latest animal health scares spread from Europe to the rest of the meat-eating world.

During Eid Al-Azha, Islam’s feast of sacrifice, Muslim families traditionally slaughter a head of livestock and donate a third of the meat to the needy. The three-day Eid, which involves vast banquets of food, begins tomorrow.

Huge amounts of red meat are consumed every Eid, but fears of disease loom over demand during this year’s holiday.

"My grandfather is really scared of red meat this year because of the news of mad cow disease. So he says this year, he’ll be eating chicken," said Walaa, a 20-year-old saleswoman at the annual Cairo Eid Trade Fair.

Over the past few months, local media reports of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease) and the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease in Europe have alarmed many in Egypt — the Arab world’s most populous nation.

News of the animal diseases has driven many consumers to domestic meat — which local authorities say is disease-free —while others have given up meat and dairy products altogether.

Officials have launched a sweeping media campaign to inform people of measures taken to ensure their meat is safe.

In early February, Egypt imposed a four-month ban on beef, live cattle and animal-based fodder from Europe because of concerns about mad cow disease.

The brain-wasting disease has been linked to its human equivalent new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which has killed more than 80 people, mostly in Britain.

Conscious of the usually buoyant Eid demand, authorities have stepped up security measures to guarantee that the 36 million Egyptian pounds 9.3 million dollars worth of imported meats for this year’s eid are safe for human consumption.

Farouk Abdel Aziz, the general supervisor for foodstuffs in Alexandria, said on Thursday that the Government had introduced a state of emergency at sea- and airports to ensure the imported meat is safe and does not contravene the ban.

He said the only meat currently imported comes from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, India and China.

For the Eid, Egypt imported some 40,000 sheep from Australia and 120 tonnes of frozen mutton from New Zealand alone.

Despite Government efforts, Egyptian consumer confidence remains shaken.

"We’ve listened to doctors on television who told us that the imported beef in Egypt is safe, that it is imported from reliable, disease-free sources. But common folk do not believe this," one man said.

Imported meats are usually cheaper than domestic products because the Government subsidises the foreign goods and sells them at state-run stores designed for low-income households.

For example, Government imports of fresh beef from Australia and New Zealand are sold at 15 Egyptian pounds 3.9 dollars per kg (2.2 lb), five pounds less than local beef.

"Even if they (authorities) decreased imported beef prices further, no one would buy it," said grocer Mustafa Kamal, adding that only poor people would resort to buying the imported meats.

Fears of disease have also taken their toll on local vendors of dairy products. Kamal said the demand for cheese had dropped radically as concerns rose that milk products could be contaminated too.

"Even if I tell buyers that this cheese is made from local milk, few people will buy it," he said, adding he was selling only about a quarter as much of the popular "rumi" cheese as he sold five months ago.

Amid the growing demand for local meat and hefty exports for eid festivities abroad, die-hard carnivores face a rise in the price of local products. For example, the price of live sheep —Egypt’s eid staple — has risen by half a pound to between 11.5 and 12 pounds per kg.

Livestock traders estimated that Egypt exported 2.5 million head of sheep to Saudi Arabia and 1.5 million to Syria for the Eid sacrifices.

At the Cairo eid fair, buyers are few and far between. But those who come head straight for the pens of local sheep.

"When meat buyers find an imported product they’re scared of it. But when they find a local product they buy it blindly," Kamal said. (REUTERS)

Bangladesh prepares for European hostages release

DHAKA, Mar 4: Bangladesh has a helicopter standing by to evacuate three European hostages being held in the densely forested Chittagong hills area who are expected to be released tomorrow, military officials said.

The kidnappers, who have been holding the trio in a remote forest in the country’s southeast, have been offered safe passage, they said.

"They (the kidnappers) have agreed to set the hostages free and asked for safe passage...Which we have agreed to provide," Colonel Sheikh Munirul Islam, a counter-insurgency officer with the Bangladesh Army, told Reuters by telephone.

"The kidnappers can use a road that links Guniapara, where the Europeans were seized at gunpoint on February 16, to Rangamati hill town without fear of arrest or intervention after they free the hostages," the officer said from Rangamati, in the Chittagong hill tracts area.

He said security officials dealing with the kidnapping did not know of any deal to pay ransom to the kidnappers, though newspapers said a ransom deal was made.

Civil administration officials were tight-lipped on this, but they reaffirmed that the hostages — two danes and one briton — would be freed "anytime from now and monday evening".

"We are keeping a helicopter on standby to fly the hostages to (the port city of) Chittagong or the capital Dhaka," one official said today.

Danes Torben Mikkelsen and Nils Hulgaard and Briton Tim Selby were kidnapped at Guniapara in the southeastern Chittagong hills. The kidnappers freed another Briton in order to deliver a ransom demand for 90 million taka (1.6 million dollars).

The group had been hired by Danish company Campsax, based in Copenhagen, to work on a road development project in the region.

The Government says it has refused to pay any ransom and rejected the kidnappers’ demand to withdraw security forces from a 30 square km area of forest where they are hiding with the hostages.

Hill Tracts Affairs Minister Kalparanjan Chakma said yesterday an agreement had been reached with the kidnappers — whose identity he did not disclose — for release of the captives by tomorrow.

He said: "The hostages will be freed without payment of ransom."

Some newspapers, quoting reliable sources, said today that the kidnappers agreed to free the hostages in exchange for 10 million taka paid by Campsax. They said the deal was being kept secret.

Neither Chakma nor Campsax officials were immediately available to comment.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina warned last week that Army commandos might launch an offensive to free the hostages if negotiations failed.

Some officials have said the kidnappers were believed to be members of a rebel faction opposing a 1997 peace treaty between the Government and the main Shanti Bahini rebel force.

The 1997 agreement ended a 25-year revolt by the mostly buddhist guerrillas for greater autonomy in the 14,200 sq km hill tracts bordering India and Myanmar. (REUTERS)

2 major storms converging on US east coast

WASHINGTON, Mar 4: Two major storm systems — a wet one moving through the south and a frigid one coming down from Canada —were on a collision course threatening to spawn a massive snowstorm in northeastern and mid-atlantic US states the likes of which have not been seen since 1966.

The national weather service said yesterday heavy snowfall could begin this afternoon and evening, blanketing an area from washington to southern maine with at least a foot (30 cm) of snow, with some areas getting even more.

Major cities including Washington, Baltimore, New York and Boston, were "under the gun for the potential for heavy snow," said Michael Eckert, a senior meteorologist with the national weather service.

Eckert called the late-winter storm highly unusual in that it represented the combination of two mighty weather systems.

"It’s very rare. We just don’t see things like this happen very often," he said.

Local officials from Virginia to New England faced the task of preparing for the approaching storm, while people flocked to stores to buy food and supplies. The storm had the potential to wreak havoc for air travelers and motorists, with the possibility of businesses, schools and Government offices being closed tomorrow

Eckert said the storm remained in its "infancy stage" on saturday. He said an extremely wet system coming out of Mexico had been dumping torrential rains across texas and the Gulf coast region. Some areas have received up to 5 inches (13 cm) of rain in the past day.

Authorities posted Tornado watches from southeastern Mississippi all the way into the Panhandle of Florida and southern parts of Alabama, as well as flash flood warnings across Louisiana, southern Mississippi and southern Alabama.

Georgia was also under a severe thunderstorm warning. A national guard C-23 Sherpa aircraft crashed in bad weather on Saturday in a field near Unadilla, Georgia, killing all 21 people on board, although it was not confirmed that weather conditions were a cause of the crash.

Eckert said "a very, very deep cold-air dome" had moved down through eastern Canada and the northeastern part of the United States and toward the great lakes and the Ohio Valley.

"What’s going to happen is they’ll eventually merge into one main system," he said. "You combine the extreme wetness of the system coming up from the south with the really deep, cold air of the north, and you’ve got the ingredients there for a major storm."

The rain could begin to turn into snow toward evening on Sunday near Washington — and perhaps as far south as Richmond, Virginia, Eckert said. The storm is then expected to track slowly northeastward up into southern New England through Monday and into Tuesday, dumping heavy snow all the way to Portland, maine, he added.

Experts said the brewing storm might not be the biggest blizzard in decades but could very well become the biggest of its kind — a merger of two storms into a single massive one —in 35 years.

"This one has similarities to the storm in late january of 1966," Eckert said. "That one produced blizzard conditions over New England and New York, and there also was quite a bit of heavy snow down into the Washington area."

That storm blanketed a large area with 2 to 3 feet (60-90 cm) of snow, with some locations east of lake Ontario getting 6 feet (1.8 metres) of snow.

Eckert said the key to the magnitude of the storm would be where the rain began to turn into snow.

He noted that one of the computer-forecasting models foresaw mostly rain in the mid-Atlantic region, with snow falling farther west in the Appalachian mountains and the upper Ohio Valley.

Eckert said communities had fair notice that a major storm could be on the way.

"Just be ready," he said. "All you can do is be prepared for how this thing will evolve. Fortunately, we’ve got a lot of time. It’s not like it’s something that’s jumping up at us from the middle of nowhere." (REUTERS)

Afghan Buddhas doomed

KABUL, March 4: Taliban officials said today Afghanistan’s ancient Bamiyan Buddhas were nearly destroyed and ruled out any hope for their preservation ahead of talks with a special United Nations envoy.

Minister of Information and Culture Mawlawi Qudratullah Jamal said the destruction of "un-Islamic" ancient statues was continuing throughout the country despite international appeals for their preservation.

He said large portions of the two massive Buddha figures in central Bamiyan province, dating back more than 1,500 years, had already been reduced to rubble, along with thousands of other statues throughout the country.

"Work is in progress on them. They are massive if you see them closely," he said.

Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakel confirmed to AFP the Bamiyan Buddhas would soon be destroyed as he prepared for talks with UNESCO special envoy Pierre Lafrance in the Taliban’s southern stronghold of Kandahar.

"The edict will be implemented Inshallah (God willing)," Mutawakel said shortly before Lafrance’s arrival.

"We would like to see the UNESCO enovy. It is good that we can explain to him that what we are doing is an internal issue and we do not want to confront the world."

The Islamic militia last week began smashing statues around the country to prevent idolatry, but Lafrance said yesterday there was a "faint glimpse of hope" they could still be saved.

He cited conflicting reports from Taliban officials about the extent of the destruction so far and the nature of the order from Taliban supreme leader Mulla Mohammad Omar which authorised the iconoclasm.

Journalists have been barred from visiting the Kabul museum and Bamiyan province where the Taliban have recently engaged in heavy battles with armed opposition forces.

Shortly after arriving in Kandahar Lafrance began meetings with officials including Mutawakel, UN sources in Kabul said.

Buddhism’s most prominent leader, the Dalai Lama, said he was "deeply concerned" about the Taliban’s attempts to erase Afghanistan’s pre-Islamic history.

The Group of Eight countries expressed "dismay and shock" at the destruction and urged Afghan leaders not to implement "this deeply tragic decision."

The Taliban fundamentalist militia are recognised only by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and are not represented at the UN or the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.

Jamal said that while the action against the statues had nothing to do with the regime’s craving for international recognition, the UN would have more influence in Kandahar if it did not still recognise the ousted Government.

"We tell the United Nations to go and ask (ousted President Burhanuddin Rabbani) for the statues’ preservation, because they recognize him," he said. (AFP)

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