Daily Excelsior... World

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

Kofi Annan to see grim plight of Afghan refugees

SHAMSHATOO, PAKISTAN, Mar 12: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan visited refugee camps in Northwest Pakistan today to see the plight of tens of thousands of Afghans, many of whom live in squalor, with plastic bags as their only ...more

Annan flies over squalid Afghan refugee camp

SHAMSHATU, (PAKISTAN) Mar 12: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan promised aid to Afghan refugees in a border camp today before flying over a squalid field jammed with 80,000 other refugees without landing because of security fears. ..more

Congress welcomes Annan’s statement

NEW DELHI, Mar 12: Congress today welcomed the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s endorsement of India’s stand on Kashmir but said it would been "better" if he had "invoked" the Simla agreement as well. ..more

Islamic appeal to Taliban probably too late: Annan

KABUL, Mar 12: A group of scholars from the world’s largest Islamic organisation made a last ditch effort to save Afghanistan’s historic statues....more

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori

Japan’s PM denies announcing de-facto resignation

TOKYO, Mar 12: Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori today denied his decision to bring forward a ruling party leadership election amounted to his ..more

Stiff commonwealth warning: follow
constitution or else

SUVA, Mar 12: Fiji’s political leaders were warned today that they face domestic turmoil and international censure if.......more

Kofi Annan to see grim plight of Afghan refugees

Children and the elderly people are dying every day of disease in Jalozai camp, the worst of the refugee outposts, where an estimated 80,000 people are packed into a dust-choked patch of land with open sewers and no drinking water.

Annan had wanted to visit that camp first, but Pakistani authorities canceled that plan at the last minute, citing security concerns. UN officials had expressed concern that mobs of desperate refugees could get out of control during such a visit.

Instead, Annan stopped first at the Shamshatoo camp, where about 70,000 refugees have been settled by the United Nations since early January.

As Annan and his aides arrived by helicopter and entered the camp, thousands of refugees squatted on its hillsides and watched his entourage pass by. He was to visit a religious school at the camp where about 20 young girls wrapped in scarves study the Koran.

Conditions for the many refugees are worsening each day, said Yusuf Hassan, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Spokesman in Pakistan.

"I shudder to think what it will be like," in the next few months, when winter temperatures begin to climb toward summer highs of 40 celsius," the spokesman said.

Annan, who arrived in Pakistan on Saturday during the first leg of his South Asian tour, said the wretched conditions of the estimated 200,000 Afghani refugees in Pakistan will be a priority of his. In addition to Jalozai and Shamshatoo, about 50,000 refugees have found refuge in other camps in Pakistan or with relatives who fled there earlier from Afghanistan.

The influx began in September as Afghanistan’s protracted civil war and a devastating drought drove hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.

Inside Afghanistan, the situation also is grim, with the world food program warning that as many as 1 million people could face starvation. An estimated 80,000 people are living in UN-supported camps in Herat in Western Afghanistan, and 10,000 are stranded on the northern border with Tajikistan.

In Afghanistan’s northern Mazar-e-Sharif, 150,000 Afghans are living in makeshift sheltes in search of food and water, say UN officials, who warn of a catastrophe if more help is not forthcoming.

"We are trying to convey the message that things are getting worse, that it is not the same as last year," said Erick De Mul, the UN coordinator for humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.

While a relentless civil war has shattered Afghanistan’s economy, a devastating drought that threatens to worsen this year has broken the backs of farmers, destroyed entire herds and wiped out crops, he said. (AP)

Annan flies over squalid Afghan refugee camp

Annan discussed with Pakistani authorities their ban on admitting more refugees fleeing war and famine in Afghanistan or allowing a new refugee camp inside Pakistan, but neither side reported any progress on the dispute.

"What I want to tell you is that we are going to do our best — and we are doing our best — to get as much assistance to you as possible, both here in Pakistan and in Afghanistan, for those who are in need and are displaced," Annan told a gathering of refugees in Shamshatu camp.

"I heard the message your elders gave us and I want to let you know that you are not without friends," he said. "I know it is not easy to find yourselves uprooted, your lives disturbed, and into a foreign country without knowing what happens tomorrow."

Annan arrived in a convoy of three military helicopters but after he began moving through the dusty camp in a motorcade, some stones were thrown at vehicles behind him. Pakistani police intervened to halt the protest by several hundred Afghans.

A village elder said the 52,000 refugees in Shamshatu —which has filled since last September — faced shortages of food, water, medicine, schools and shelters.

But conditions are good at Shamshatu, which is an official UN refugee camp, compared to the field at Jallouzai, where an estimated 80,000 Afghans are living under plastic sheets with little assistance.

The United Nations had to abandon efforts to move refugees from Jallouzai after Pakistan refused earlier this year to allow the opening of another refugee camp. Since then it has been difficult to provide any aid, with crowds enveloping those coming to help.

Although the United Nations had talked of Annan visiting Jallouzai, Pakistani authorities warned they could not provide security.

Instead, UN officials in Shamshatu said Annan was flying over the refugees stranded at Jallouzai in a Puma helicopter before continuing on for lunch at a base of the Khyber rifles near the border with Afghanistan.

Annan was scheduled to return to Islamabad in the afternoon and leave on his private plane for Nepal, the second leg of a four-nation South Asian tour.

Although Annan had extensive talks with Pakistan’s military ruler General Pervez Musharraf about Afghan refugees, they did not answer when asked at a joint news conference last evening in Islamabad if there was agreement on opening a new refugee camp.

But the Governor of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah — who joined Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar and others in accompanying Annan — said at Shamshatu that Pakistan’s priority was getting Afghan refugees out of the country.

"We can’t handle them, so new camps should be set up in Afghanistan," the Governor said. "Ultimately the refugees will have to be repatriated." (REUTERS)

Congress welcomes Annan’s statement

"While we welcome Secretary General’s observation that UN resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir are now irrelevant ..... It would have been better if he had invoked the Simla agreement which ensured peace between India and Pakistan for 27 years," Congress Working Committee (CWC) member Natwar Singh told PTI here.

Singh, who had also served as envoy to Pakistan, said that within three months of the Lahore declaration the Kargil conflict had surfaced.

UN Secretary General during his visit to Pakistan yesterday ruled out implementation of the UN resolutions on Kashmir saying a lasting solution to the problem lay in implementation of the Lahore declaration.

"I call upon both India and Pakistan to retain the spirit of the Lahore declaration," Annan said. (PTI)

Islamic appeal to Taliban probably too late: Annan

KABUL, Mar 12: A group of scholars from the world’s largest Islamic organisation made a last ditch effort to save Afghanistan’s historic statues but UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said it was probably already too late.

A delegation from the 55-nation Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), who arrived in the southern Afghan town of Kandahar yesterday for talks with Taliban authorities, were to continue talks today.

A Pakistan-based Afghan news service quoted the Taliban Ambassador in Pakistan as saying Kabul could halt the destruction if it was unanimously ordered by visiting Islamic scholars and Afghan religious scholars.

The OIC delegation, led by Qatar Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Ahmed Bin Abdullah Zaid Al-Mahmoud, included Egypt’s top cleric, the Mufti Nasr Farid Wassel, and renowned Muslim figures.

But Afghan sources in Islamabad said it was unlikely the Taliban’s hardline Ulema, or scholars, would agree with the OIC delegation.

Annan said after a meeting yesterday in Islamabad with Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil that there may no longer be anything to save — including the two giant statues of the Buddha at Bamiyan.

"He confirmed that all movable statues have been destroyed and the destruction of the two (Namiyan) statues had begun but he could not tell me the status of the demolition," Annan told a news conference. "I had hoped for much better news."

A Taliban spokesman in Kandahar said demolition of the Buddhas, which towered 53 metres (175 feet) and 38 metres, continued yesterday after being 80 percent complete by Saturday.

Muttawakil told a separate news conference the order by Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was "totally an internal religious matter" and could not be halted. He dismissed protests by Islamic figures.

The destruction has triggered world-wide alarm western countries see the attacks as an assault on world heritage and countries with many Buddhists consider the smashing of the statues as religious bigotry.

The destruction of Afghanistan’s heritage — most from the Buddhist period nearly 2,000 years ago — could make it more difficult to raise aid for the impoverished country, Annan said, urging donors to remember that assistance is not aimed at the rulers.

Annan, who arrived in Pakistan on Saturday at the start of a regional tour, expressed concern about conditions in Afghanistan, where drought and war have driven hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in the past year.

The Taliban had already faced strong criticism before the statue dispute over their treatment of women, alleged support of terrorism and their continued focus on war at a time of near famine in Afghanistan.

"If they do carry through this lamentable decision I think they will be doing themselves a great deal of disservice," Annan said. "And they will be doing a great deal of disservice to Islam, in whose name they claim to be doing this — but I don’t think anyone will accept that."

The United Nations has refused to recognise the Taliban as the legal Government of Afghanistan despite holding more than 90 percent of the territory, a position that could harden with the destruction of the statues.

Shortly before Annan spoke, Muttawakil told a news conference at the Taliban embassy — Pakistan is one of only three countries to recognise the movement — that he had told the UN chief he would not halt the destruction of what the Taliban see as heathen idols.

"We do admit all these statues were the cultural heritage of Afghanistan," Muttawakil said. "But we will not leave the part which is contrary to our belief." (REUTERS)

Japan’s PM denies announcing de-facto resignation

TOKYO, Mar 12: Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori today denied his decision to bring forward a ruling party leadership election amounted to his de-facto resignation, as the opposition stepped up calls for him to go.

"The media wrote that it was a de-facto resignation," mori told the budget committee in Parliament’s upper house in his first public reference to a meeting on Saturday with five powerbrokers in his Liberal Democratic Party.

"However, none of the five senior LDP leaders I discussed this with understood that I had expressed my intention to resign," the embattled Prime Minister said. "And I myself did not say such a thing."

Mori told the LDP elders to bring forward elections for the party’s presidency. The LDP is the largest single party in the powerful lower house of Parliament.

The decision to move up the party’s election, originally scheduled for September, was hailed by newspapers — which had confidently predicted Mori would announce he was stepping down on Friday or Saturday — as tantamount to Mori’s resignation.

Rejecting the interpretation of a de-facto exit, Mori even hinted at running for the LDP presidency again in the election.

"I cannot act alone," Mori responded to an opposition member who pressed him on whether he would run for the LDP leadership.

"I have to listen to voices both within and outside the party, and if anyone recommends me to run, I would surely consider that," the Prime Minister said.

Meanwhile, four opposition parties agreed today to bring a motion of censure against Mori to demand his immediate resignation.

"During the past year, Mori brought nothing but economic and political problems. He has no credentials to be a Prime Minister, said an official from the Communist Party of Japan.

"And the Prime Minister is creating yet more political confusion by saying he will hold on to his job while the rest of the country and the world believe he will go soon," the official said.

The opposition bloc was expected to bring the censure motion later in the day to the upper house. Even if passed, the censure has only moral weight and is not legally binding.

Saturday’s move was a typically opaque Japanese political face-saving formula, permitting the premier’s right-hand man to insist at the time Mori was not yet ready to quit, while clearing the way for him to do so.

"It is not his expression to resign," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told reporters.

LDP Secretary General Makoto Koga, one of the five party officials who met with Mori, also insisted that Saturday’s comments by the premier did not imply resignation. (AFP)

Stiff commonwealth warning: follow constitution or else

SUVA, Mar 12: Fiji’s political leaders were warned today that they face domestic turmoil and international censure if they fail to return the country to democracy.

Commonwealth Special Envoy to Fiji, Justice Pius Langa, said steering the country back to democratic rule must not undermine the rule of law. The Commonwealth is an organisation of Britain and its former colonies.

Langa said Fiji’s President must act in accordance with the 1997 multiracial constitution.

"It is unthinkable that the President could knowingly sanction unconstitutional behaviour," Langa said.

"The consequences would be too serious, too traumatic, both inside Fiji and internationally."

Langa’s comments came a day before Fiji’s traditional chiefs meet in Suva to considering appointing a new President to guide the republic back to democracy.

They also follow a court of appeals ruling earlier this month which confirmed the 1997 constitution remains the legal basis for Government, and that the country’s military-backed interim Government is illegal.

Britain, Australia, New Zealand and European Union have warned they will slap economic sanctions on Fiji if it fails to signal an orderly return to constitutional Government.

The Commonwealth’s ministerial action group, which deals with crises within member states, is to meet March 19 in London to review Fiji’s position.

In a worst case, the country could be expelled from the 50-nation body, losing valuable economic, technical and development aid programs.

Observers in Fiji expect the 52 traditional chiefs to select acting-President Ratu Josefa Iloilo as President when they meet tomorrow.

After two days of deliberations last week, they broke up without deciding on the next step in Fiji’s political crisis.

One issue was that elder statesman and power broker Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, a former President who stood aside when armed nationalist gunmen ousted the democratically elected Government in a May 2000 coup, was considering accepting a nomination for President.

Few observers believe his name will go forward to the traditional chiefs, but if it does, Ratu Mara as a high chief is seen as a automatic selection.

The continuing political uncertainty has seen Fiji’s economic growth slow sharply, as tourism faltered and export markets contracted.

Iloilo has backed plans for elections in late August, meantime governing the country through an Advisory Council till mid-June, when he is expected to recall Parliament and dissolve it for the elections. (AP)