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| China still hopeful about Karmapa Lama’s return BEIJING, Nov 18: Nearly two years after his dramatic escape to India, China seems willing to accept the 17th Karmapa Lama back citing his young age and attempts to use him for activities aimed at splitting Tibet from China. ......more FBI says
anthrax mailer a WASHINGTON, Nov 18: A newly discovered letter suspected of containing anthrax and sent to the......more Taliban leave behind SHINDAND AIRBASE (AFGHANISTAN), Nov 18: Abdolsalam and Nurahmad — father and son......more Foreign prisoners languish KABUL, Nov 18: Department three of Kabul’s security ministry was one of the Taliban’s most feared.....more |
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Australia’s worst maritime disaster still a riddle SYDNEY, Nov 18: Australians are still sore about the sinking of the navy cruiser hmas sydney 60 years ago by a German cargo ship, as well they might be. The engagement on November 19, 1941, was not only the country’s worst....more Rabbani
returns KABUL, Nov 18: White-bearded and white-turbaned, a professor of Islamic law, Burhanuddin Rabbani........more Bullet cases tell one Afghan JALALABAD (AFGHANISTAN), Nov 18: From the outside, the mudbrick building set in orchards.........more G-20 adopts plan to freeze assets of terrorists, aides WASHINGTON, Nov 18: Strengthening the global crackdown on funds for terrorism, top finance officials from industrialised and developing countries including India have adopted an action plan calling on each G-20 member ........more |
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China still hopeful about Karmapa Lama’s return BEIJING, Nov 18: Nearly two years after his dramatic escape to India, China seems willing to accept the 17th Karmapa Lama back citing his young age and attempts to use him for activities aimed at splitting Tibet from China. Karmapa had said the purpose of his trip (to India) was to fetch the black hat of successive Karmapa living Buddhas and religious instruments, according to the head of Tibet Government, Raidi. He would not betray the motherland, the country, his monastery and the leaders, Raidi quoted the Karmapa as saying in his purported letter before his escape to India in late December, 1999 and his eventual reunion with the exiled Government of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. The 16-year-old Karmapa Lama, the third highest Tibetan Lama whose authority is recognised by Beijing and the Dalai Lama, arrived in India on January five, 2000 after a 1,400-km-treck across the Himalayas. Raidi did not comment on how the Karmapa along with his close aides managed to slip out from the Tsurphu Monastery and the outcome of any investigation into the entire episode. The Tsurphu Monastery in Lhasa, the traditional seat of the Karmapa Lama, was once viewed as one of Tibet’s leading "patriotic monasteries" by the Chinese Government. Thus, the Karmapa‘s escape had dealt a severe blow to Beijing’s efforts to nurture a new generation of "living Buddhas" that are patriotic to Chinese communist rule in Tibet. The Tibetan Government-in-exile says the Karmapa fled to avoid religious repression and human rights abuses in Tibet. Raidi, an ethnic Tibetan leader, noted that the Karmapa Lama has not reached adulthood. Using a minor to reach their political purpose is inhuman, Raidi said adding that those who want to use him for anti-China activities also failed to show any responsibility to the development of the Karmapa. In the past, China has accused the Dalai Lama Clique and some foreign forces of attempting to control and use the Karmapa for their own ulterior motives. "Whoever wants to use the Karmapa to interfere in the internal affairs of China, we will resolutely oppose," Raidi said. Asked about India’s stand on the Karmapa issue, including granting of refugee status to him, Raidi said the Chinese Government has made its stand very clear to the Indian side. He said that on February 15, China had asked India to "abide by its commitment" on the issue of Karmapa to which "the Indian side indicated that they understood China’s position on this issue and that their position remained unchanged." (PTI) |
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FBI says anthrax mailer a ‘cold-blooded murderer’ WASHINGTON, Nov 18: A newly discovered letter suspected of containing anthrax and sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman will provide more evidence for investigators searching for "a cold-blooded murderer," an FBI official said. "T"this is a cold-blooded murderer. There are four individuals dead as a result of this, none of them the intended targets, and we are working aggressively and furiously around the clock trying to resolve this," Assistant FBI director Van Harp told a capitol hill news conference. The FBI discovered the suspicious envelope sent to Sen. Patrick Leahy, a vermont democrat, on Friday, and said it appeared to contain anthrax. Harp said the FBI awaited the results of tests to confirm the letter had anthrax. The leahy letter was similar to anthrax-contaminated letters sent to senate majority leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, to NBC News Anchorman Tom Brokaw and the New York Post newspaper, the FBI has said. The FBI has been investigating to find out who is responsible for the germ warfare attacks that have killed four people. There have been 17 confirmed cases of anthrax, mostly connected to the US mail, after the Sept. 11 hijacked plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. "We’re looking for a needle in a haystack, but we’ve found those needles before and I hope we are able to find this person," Leahy said. "I’m hoping that the one bright light in all of this might be that this letter will give us further evidence to find out who is doing this," he said. Leahy said he agreed with the opinion of the FBI and other authorities that the sender was "somebody within this country who is acting out." Harp appealed for the public’s help and said there was a 1.25 million dollars reward for information about the anthrax-laced letters. The case will be solved, he said, through a tip, good police work, or work by the scientific and medical community. Harp called the leahy letter "an additional piece of evidence." Leahy also appealed for the public’s assistance. "Come forward if you know something about it before more innocent people die," he said. The Leahy letter was discovered as the FBI examined 280 barrels of unopened letters to congress after the discovery of the Daschle letter on Oct. 15. The Leahy letter had the same trenton, New Jersey, Postmark as the other three letters, the FBI said. The postmark was dated Oct. 9. At the news conference, the FBI released a copy of the envelope, which was addressed to "Senator Leahy, 433 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510-4502." Like the Daschle letter, it had a return address of "4th grade, Greendale School, Franklin Park, NJ 08852." FBI officials have said there was no such school. FBI officials have been unable to determine who sent the anthrax-laced letters and are looking at the possibility both of a domestic extremist or some connection with those who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. Leahy hailed the senate leadership’s decision to sequester unopened mail in the capitol complex after the discovery of the daschle letter, a move that may have limited his staff’s possible exposure to anthrax-tainted letters. US capitol police said the Russell and Dirksen Senate office buildings were closed on Saturday to collect samples from every office for testing. Nichols said further testing of employees on capitol hill and additional prescriptions of antibiotics would not be necessary. Leahy said there was no need for him to be tested for anthrax. (REUTERS) |
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Taliban leave behind corpses and tales of torture SHINDAND AIRBASE (AFGHANISTAN), Nov 18: Abdolsalam and Nurahmad — father and son — returned from Iran together six months ago to join the Mujahideen and fight harsh Taliban rule in their homeland Afghanistan. Now their semi-decomposed bodies lie side by side, their hands bound behind them, ears cut off and the backs of their skulls smashed by bullets fired into their mouths. Abdolsalam’s brother sits on the ground, his head bent, weeping over the heaps of bones, rotting flesh and rags that were once his close relatives. Nearby lay the bodies of two more men captured by the Taliban, tortured, killed and buried in a ditch about four months ago according to local officials. Soon after forces loyal to anti-Taliban warlord Ismail Khan overran the huge Shindand Airbase on Thursday, they began to uncover gruesome evidence of apparent atrocities. The remains of 26 prisoners have already been exhumed and the Mujahideen, helped by locals, say they expect to find more. "There were many prisoners executed by the Taliban," said local Mujahideen Commander Golamresul Shehidzadeh. "We are trying to find the bodies and hold a ceremony for them." Battle-hardened Mujahideen covered their faces against the putrid stench as the bodies were removed for a proper burial. Beyond them stretched a vast scrapyard of soviet military hardware — jet fighters, transport planes and tanks, the rusty legacy of an earlier conflict. Large craters scarred the runway where US bombs had hit. The fighters displayed two thick posts about two metres (yards) long they said they had found in a building in the base used by the Taliban intelligence forces. The posts had a series of short metal bars sticking out of them each with a small hole in the end through which a long bar could be passed, trapping the feet of up to 10 prisoners. One former prisoner said he had been repeatedly beaten across his feet with a length of cable by his Taliban captors, a punishment known as the Falaka. "I received the Falaka five to 10 times a day," said Golahmad, a truck driver arrested by the Taliban a month ago on suspicion of being a spy for Ismail Khan. "Any guard who felt like it would come along and beat us." Golahmad was lucky. Imprisoned in the nearby town of Shindand, he and about 35 others were freed when local people rose up against the Taliban as Khan’s forces took the airbase and began to bear down on the town’s dusty streets. Dozens of heavily armed Taliban militiamen in the town joined more fleeing from the city of Herat to the north and withdrew in four-wheel drive pick-up trucks to nearby mountains. Shindand marks a boundary between the Persian-speaking northwest of Afghanistan and the Pashto-speaking south, the heartland of the Taliban with its capital in Kandahar. Mujahideen commanders say although there is no longer any organised opposition facing them, bands of desperate Taliban fighters were in the territory beyond preying on passing travellers. While their commander Ismail Khan says he intends to advance on Kandahar, his forces have halted their drive towards the city for now and say they are waiting to see whether local Pashtun opposed to the Taliban manage to overcome the hardline militia. (REUTERS) |
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Foreign prisoners languish in notorious Taliban jail KABUL, Nov 18: Department three of Kabul’s security ministry was one of the Taliban’s most feared institutions. Those suspected of working to undermine the regime or of breaking its strict Islamic codes were taken for interrogation to its rows of grey-walled rooms on the ground floor. In the basement beneath was a prison, where up to 300 prisoners were locked in its dank, stinking cells. The overthrow of the Taliban in Kabul has changed many things. But there are still prisoners in the basement today. The difference is that these are foreigners accused of backing the Taliban and generally associated with Osama Bin Laden’s feared Al Qaeda network. The prisoners incarcerated by the Taliban walked free late on Monday after their jailers fled the city. The opposition Northern Alliance is now in control and the squalid prison houses up to 30 foreign prisoners accused of collaborating with the fundamentalist militia. Some clutched copies of the Koran, others rocked back and forth on the blanketed floor of the cells. A few wanted to speak, but only to declare their innocence. "I came here as a tourist, to see afghanistan," said 22-year-old Pakistani Ahmad Nur, speaking in Urdu. "Also I was preaching Islam. But I don’t know the Taliban. I don’t like the Taliban. Now I don’t know how long I will be here." Holding his headscarf over his nose and mouth against the stench of human waste, the prison’s new Director Abdul Qayun said all the prisoners were handed over by civilians. Foreign volunteers — Pakistanis, Arabs, Chechens, Uzbeks even Filipions — who joined the hardline Islamic Taliban were the most loathed by ordinary Afghans. "Our seurity forces didn’t capture these people," he said. "They are all Taliban handed over by Kabul citizens. They were cruel people who made trouble for us." On the floor of the cell is a kettle of tea and dishes of rice and bread. But the prisoners are fasting in daylight for the holy month of Ramadan and none will eat until nightfall. In the corner, 18-year-old Shafura Rakhman from the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta is fixated on his copy of the Koran. "I am not thinking anything. I am just reading the holy Koran," he said numbly when the Prison Director pushed him to speak. "I know I am in jail but I don’t care. I just want to read the holy Koran." In a separate cell, a Saudi citizen who says his name is Zabeen pulls back the blanket covering his chest to reveal a deep, open wound below his left shoulder — a sign that he may have been a fighter for Saudi-born milloinaire militant Bin Laden. No one present can understand his arabic shouts. Prison Director Qayun is unperturbed. "These Arab people belong to Osama," he said. "They were terrorists working for Al-Qaeda. We will bring a doctor to him later." Zabeen keeps shouting even as the steel door slams shut. (REUTERS) |
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Australia’s worst maritime disaster still a riddle SYDNEY, Nov 18: Australians are still sore about the sinking of the navy cruiser hmas sydney 60 years ago by a German cargo ship, as well they might be. The engagement on November 19, 1941, was not only the country’s worst maritime disaster but the only recorded instance of a merchant vessel sinking a battleship. All 645 men aboard the cruiser were lost when it went down off the coast of western Australia. All that was found of the navy’s newest ship was a couple of bullet-riddled lifejackets and an empty lifeboat. The Kormoran, a mine-laying ship disguised as a freighter, also sank. But 319 of its crew survived to tell of how German captain Theodor Detmers outwitted Australian captain Joseph Burnett. Detmers, who was flying a Dutch flag and sailing as the Straat Malakka, fooled Burnett into thinking his ship was a harmless merchantman. Exactly what happened is still the subject of fierce debates and bitter arguments. Some Australians maintain that without warning, and in breach of its own rules of engagement, the Kormoran opened fire, hitting the pride of the Australian navy amidships, blowing up an explosives store, and sending it to the bottom within minutes. Survivors, including 87-year-old former German Lieutenant Commander Heinz Messerschmidt, insist that captain detmers behaved honourably and ran up the German flag before firing. "The Sydney was not ready for battle," Messerschmidt has said. "It was half an hour of continual fire. It’s no surprise no one survived." What still puzzles maritime historians is why Burnett pulled to within 900 metres, exposing the Sydney’s flank as the easiest of targets for the Kormoran’s gunners. Fritz engelmann, a gun loader on the Kormoran who came over from Germany to attend the ceremony in Perth marking the 60th anniversary, insists the battle was fought fair and square. Engelmann, 79, dismisses speculation that a third vessel, perhaps even a Japanese submarine, was responsible for the sinking. "A lot of theories here are baseless," Engelmann, who turned 19 on the day of the battle, said through a translator. "I just hope that something like this will bring to an end these very unusual theories." Engelmann, who will lay a wreath in honour of those who perished on the Sydney, estimates that the Kormoran’s guns must have hit a sitting target with more than 200 rounds. He sees no reason, in these circumstances, why the Sydney should not have gone down with all hands. Historian John McArthur, who has just completed a doctoral thesis on the loss of the Sydney, echoes the view that burnett was principally responsible for the disaster. "Incompetence plays a part," he told Australia’s ABC radio. "I think there’s inter-service rivalry. I think there’s confusion over signals." Engelmann, who is representing the german marine association at this week’s proceedings, recalls the damage to the Kormoran inflicted by the Sydney’s eight six-inch guns. "One shell from the Sydney passed through us amidships before exploding in the ocean," he said. "It rained splinters everywhere and I’ll never forget the perfectly round hole it left." He took to one of the Kormoran’s lifeboats, floating for five days before being rescued, interrogated and interned. Along with other survivors he must wonder why, 60 years on, the money has not been found to finance a comprehensive search for the two ships, which one maritime historian believes lie 4,500 metres below the Indian Ocean some 170 kilometres from the coastal town of Geraldton. (DPA) |
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Rabbani returns to centre stage KABUL, Nov 18: White-bearded and white-turbaned, a professor of Islamic law, Burhanuddin Rabbani scarcely looks like a man who could pose a risk to peace in Afghanistan. But the return of the ousted President to the capital yesterday after a little more than five years in the wilderness could open up rifts in his Northern Alliance, a grouping of friends and former foes cobbled together just last year and united by little but a common loathing of the Taliban. Rabbani, 61, drove into Kabul from his Northern Alliance base in the Panjsher Valley to the north of the capital, heading a cavalcade of cars. His arrival will not be widely welcomed. The Pashtun majority and Shi’ite groups fear the ethnic Tajik and Uzbek Northern Alliance that seized Kabul on Tuesday will try to cling to power rather than build an inclusive Government. The deposed President, who still holds Afghanistan’s United Nations seat, is unpopular even within some factions of the Northern Alliance. Many anti-Taliban groups want deposed former King Zahir Shah, in exile in Rome, to be the figurehead of a new regime rather than the ethnic Tajik Rabbani. The cracks in Rabbani’s own administration surfaced yesterday when one official said the de facto ruler of Kabul, Northern Alliance Defence Minister General Mohammad Fahim, and his security council had given themselves a three-month mandate. After that, they will try to find a way to hand over power to Rabbani, said Engineer Arif, the Northern Alliance’s deputy head of intelligence. "This has been decided that the Government of Ustad Rabbani will remain out of Kabul until then," Arif told Reuters. Within hours Rabbani was back. It is not only members of the Jamiat-i-Islami party that Rabbani heads who fear he may try to declare himself President again. Senior leaders of several other groups in the alliance of mainly Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara minorities voice similar concerns. Rabbani had no sooner arrived in kabul than he tried to allay concerns. "We have not come to kabul to extend our Government. We came to Kabul for peace. We are preparing the ground to invite peace groups and all Afghan intellectuals abroad who are working for the peace," Rabbani told his first news conference back in Kabul. Rabbani has long maintained that he is the head of the Government, and is recognised by the United Nations as such. Since the assassination of famed Mujahideen fighter Ahmad Shah Masood — the real power in the Northern Alliance — by suicide bombers just two days before hijackers piloted airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, many wonder if Rabbani will try to expand his influence. Rabbani’s Jamiat-i-Islami, which leads the alliance, is an Islamic Party made up mainly of ethnic Tajiks, and is supported by persian-speaking Tajiks and Uzbeks, who resent the domination of the majority Pashtuns of the south. Zahir Shah is a Pashtun. But without Masood, "the lion of Panjsher" and the most redoubtable opponent of the Taliban, Rabbani’s support base within the Northern Alliance could be weakened. Rabbani and the alliance, which swept into Kabul on Tuesday in the wake of the retreating Taliban in a capture that was a virtual action replay of their own humiliating defeat by the Taliban in August 1996, are not popular in the capital. (REUTERS) |
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Bullet cases tell one Afghan school’s dark story JALALABAD (AFGHANISTAN), Nov 18: From the outside, the mudbrick building set in orchards looks like an ordinary Afghan school. Inside the classroom, spent bullet casings and a silhouetted target riddled with gunfire tell a different story. Here, local residents said, is where some 30-40 children of the foreign fighters who form the backbone of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network were taught to shoot straight. Below the school, built on a rocky outcrop, lie vegetable patches and the houses, now looted, where the fighters lived with their families. "This is Osama’s centre. These are the people of Osama’s centre. The families were living here and this is the school for their children," a local resident, Baz Mohammad, said as he showed a visiting reporter round the school yesterday. "And this is the target where they trained their children to use Kalashnikovs and other weapons," Mohammad said, glancing over his shoulder at the wooden target with a black silhouette stencilled onto it. The wall against which it has been set is also pock-marked with bullet holes. Jalalabad, some 75 km (45 miles) from the Pakistani border, was known as a centre of the training camps used by Saudi-born militant Bin Laden and his shadowy Al Qaeda guerrilla network, suspected by Washington of having carried out the devastating September 11 attacks on the United States. The foreign fighters fled with their families after a shootout with the forces of the opposition, which took the eastern city of Jalalabad on Wednesday following several weeks of heavy US bombardment. By all accounts they left in a hurry. Books and shards of glass litter the floor of the ransacked classroom. In the school grounds, two armouries still bulge with weapons. Mortars and mines nestle next to guns and bullet belts. A long steel contains perhaps 100 Rocket-Propelled Grenades (RPGs). The foreign fighters — residents say they were Arabs, Malaysians and Egyptians — had apparently tried to bury their weapons before they fled. RPGs and mortars lie in a right-angled trench measuring about 15 metres (16 yards) in one direction and 10 metres in the other. "These are the fields and these are the houses where the men of Osama lived. This is the centre for them," said school watchman Gul Mohammad. "They just ran away from here with their families — maybe to Pakistan, I don’t know," he said. Muslim militants from the Philippines to Chechnya, from Pakistan to the Middle East, heeded Bin Laden’s call to wage Jihad, or holy war, and came in their thousands to Afghanistan to train in weapons and bomb-making in a string of remote camps under the protection of the Taliban. Those foreign fighters — collectively dubbed Arab Afghans —that have not escaped now face a do-or-die fight after assertions by the rampant Northern Alliance that they will not be spared. Several thousand foreign fighters are believed to be among the thousands of Taliban defending the northern town of Kunduz, one of the few remaining pockets of Taliban control. Afghan Taliban in Kunduz are negotiating a surrender, but the foreign fighters — Arabs, Pakistanis, Chechens, Uzbeks and Bangladeshis — feel they have nothing to lose, said Zubai, a Northern Alliance Foreign Ministry official. "The mayor of Kunduz is negotiating with local Taliban and they say we will give up the city for you. But the foreign taliban will never accept this," he said yesterday. (REUTERS) |
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G-20 adopts plan to freeze assets of terrorists, aides WASHINGTON, Nov 18: Strengthening the global crackdown on funds for terrorism, top finance officials from industrialised and developing countries including India have adopted an action plan calling on each G-20 member to freeze the assets of terrorists and their associates and close their access to the international financial system. The action plan, adopted at the end of the two-day annual meeting of the group of 20 countries at Ottawa yesterday, also asked the members to cooperate with international bodies to implement standards to combat abuses of the financial system including financing for terrorism and money-laundering, which Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha had suggested. Addressing the meeting of G-20 Finance Ministers, Sinha stressed the need for a "united, comprehensive and truly global action" to choke funds for terrorists, saying the plan should include prompt action. "Every single member of the G-20, without exception, has signed on to that action plan," Canadian Finance Minister Paul Martin, who chaired the meeting, told a news conference. He said the members agreed to take action to block financing by groups such as Al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks on US. "The barbarous attacks on the US were attacks on all of US intended to shake global economic confidence and security. We will ensure that these efforts fail," said a communique issued at the end of the meeting. "We are committed to combating terrorism by cutting off its financial sources. There should be no safe havens for the financing of terrorism. To this end, we have agreed on an action plan to deny terrorists and their associates access to our financial systems. We call on other countries to take similar steps," the communique said. The ministers also said they welcome the Doha development agenda agreed to at the World Trade Organisation ministerial conference. They said they look forward to working with the IMF and World Bank to ensure that appropriate international support is available to complement sound policies needed to generate economic recovery of the world’s poorest countries, whose economies have been hard hit by the terrorist attacks. The G-20 consists of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States and the European Union plus the IMF and World Bank. The Finance Ministers said they will work with the international finance institutions, financial action task force, financial stability forum and other international bodies to prevent abuses to the international financial system. The communique said that each member committed to: — Implement the relevant un security council resolution. — Freeze assets of terrorists and their associates within their jurisdictions and close their access to the international financing system. — Make public lists of terrorists whose assets are subject to freezing and the amounts of assets frozen. The Finance Ministers also said they would continue to promote adoption of international standards for transparency, macroeconomic policy, sound financial sector regulation and corporate governance to strengthen the integrity of the international financial system. To reduce susceptibility in financial crisis, they said they would continue to work on appropriate exchange rate regimes, prudent liability management and orderly capital account liberalization. "We are confident that the attacks of mine our future economic prospects. We have taken policy actions to maintain liquidity and stabilise markets. We stand ready to take additional actions as necessary," they said. The ministers reaffirmed their commitment to free trade and open international markets as a key source of global prosperity. Maintaining that globalisation poses a number of challenges and risks, they said: "we recognise the need to work with the international financial institutions and WTO to ensure that the benefits of globalisation are shared by all, including the poorest countries." "We accepted the generous invitation of India’s Finance Minister Sinha to hold our 2002 meeting in New Delhi," they added. (PTI) |
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