Bhutto says she will run for Premier in October

KARACHI, Aug 17: Pakistan’s self-exiled ex-Premier Benazir Bhutto said today she remains determined to contest elections in October, despite being disqualified from running in the polls by President Pervez Musharraf.

The two-time former Prime Minister said if she remained barred from contesting the October 10 poll, the elections would lack credibility.

"I am sure people will question the credibility of an electoral process where their chosen representative is excluded," she told AFP.

"I hope that I can participate and look towards the people ... Of Pakistan to support the Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPPP).

"I hope to run for premier myself as I am still qualified to contest and I will file my nomination papers by August 24," she said referring a deadline set by Pakistan’s Electoral Commission deadline.

Bhutto told AFP in an interview from London earlier this month that she would return to Pakistan in late August or early September to pursue her bid for re-election, despite threats she would be arrested on her a rival.

But she still has to win a legal battle which was continuing in a Karachi court yesterday to qualify for participation in the October 10 polls.

She is contesting two laws which have resulted in her disqualification from the elections, the first since President Pervez Musharraf seized power in a bloodless military coup in October 1999. (AFP)

Vacationing Bush warns Democrats on spending

CRAWFORD, TEXAS, Aug 17: Warning that growing deficits could imperil the US economy, President George W Bush threatened today to block spending bills that breach his budget plans.

Stepping up the partisan war of words over the economy and budget policy, Bush used his weekly radio address to lash out at the Democrat-led Senate, accusing it of ignoring fiscal discipline by pushing for new spending on nonemergency programs like public housing.

"We cannot go down the path of soaring budget deficits. We must meet our defense and homeland security needs, and hold the line on other spending," Bush said from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he is spending most of August on vacation.

While Bush stopped short of issuing a blanket veto threat, he made clear he would not shy away from an appropriations battle in the run-up to the November Congressional elections.

The White House is counting on Bush’s hard-line stance on spending to help shore up confidence in his handling of the beleaguered US economy.

Democrats blame Bush’s 1.35 trillion dollars tax cut in 2001 for bringing back federal budget deficits after four straight years of surpluses.

The White House expects the Federal Government to post a deficit of more than 165 billion dollars this fiscal year — the largest since fiscal 1994. It expects surpluses to return in fiscal 2005, assuming that democrats who currently control the Senate stick to the administration’s proposed spending levels.

Republicans said Bush’s tax cuts helped the United States recover from the twin shocks of a recession and the Sept 11 attacks. They blame a surge in Government spending advocated by democrats — not lower taxes — for the red ink.

Hoping to convince voters that he is dealing aggressively with the nation’s economic troubles, Bush this week convened an economic forum and said he may propose a new economic stimulus package to entice investors back to a stock market hard hit by accounting scandals. (AGENCIES)

Afghan nomads have nothing left to sing about

SPIN BOLDAK, AFGHANISTAN, Aug 17: "During the time of the king we used to sing about everything. Women would dance, especially at weddings, and during childbirth we would recite a poem called a Nashra.

"But all that has gradually disappeared," said 28-year-old Shamir. "Poor people cannot afford drums and music. This war and now this drought have swept everything away."

Shamir is one of more than two million Kuchi nomads in Afghanistan. The Kuchi — Persian for "those who move" — have trekked with sheep and goats through Afghanistan for centuries, a rugged Pashtun tribe that was largely left to its own devices.

But today the Kuchi lifestyle is dying a slow death, weakened by 23 years of war, tempted by modernisation, mortally wounded by four years of drought and denied medicine by rising ethnic tensions.

This year many Kuchis are trying to stick to traditional migration routes, driving their sadly depleted flocks from the lowlands in the winter towards the summer highland pastures.

Others, like Shamir, who has lost all 200 of his sheep and goats in the drought, are ready to give up.

"The nomadic life is a tough life, but at that time we did not know any different," he said, sitting cross-legged and sipping tea inside his tent in a camp for the displaced near the southern Afghan border town of Spin Boldak.

"Now we have seen people who have settled. They get education, health services. They can find work. If I could just get some shelter and water, I would settle down."

Nearby, Kuchi women interrupt their sewing to peer curiously at the unexpected visitor.

Instantly recognisable, their blue, green and purple dresses are delicately embroidered, their faces tattooed, their hair braided and decorated with brightly coloured beads, their wrists and necks glinting with jewellery crafted from silver.

Even the extremist Taliban respected the nomadic tradition of their Pashtun brethren and never forced the Kuchi women to wear the burqa. But now the Taliban are gone, and the Kuchis are facing even tougher times.

Kuchi tribes are scattered all over today’s Afghanistan. Those in the north have suffered particularly badly during two decades of war, their migration blocked by fighting and the ever-shifting frontlines.

Many were first moved there during the time of King Abdul Rahman in the late nineteenth century, but have hardly won acceptance in an area dominated by ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks. "During the war many of their animals were looted, and their migration routes closed," said Frauke De Weijer, a consultant on the Kuchi for the UN’s World Food Programme. "That’s when many of them decided to settle."

In the south, the migrations continued until drought struck in 1998. Haji Mundai is the leader of a group of eight families who set up distinctive tents — a ragged patchwork of blankets and cloth — by the road on the scorching plain outside Kandahar.

The men work for just 2 dollars a day baking bricks in a kiln under the blazing sun. But they still dream of the Kuchi life.

"Each household had at least 400 to 500 sheep, goats and donkeys," Mundai said, sitting on a blanket outside his tent as the sun set after a hard day’s work.

"Half died through drought, the rest we sold cheaply for our own survival. Now, between all of us, we have just three goats, a sheep and a couple of donkeys."

"In our hearts we will always remain Kuchi, but we know we would need a lot of assets to get our old lifestyle back," he said. "We would now like a plot of land where we can erect our tents without being harassed by the locals."

Mundai and his family used to migrate away from the plains towards the highlands of central Afghanistan during the summer. Those who still make the journey have found a whole new set of problems this year.

These days, the Hazara people of the central highlands have also turned against the Kuchi, denying them entry to their traditional pastures.

The Kuchis are accused of supporting the Taliban, and even supplying part of their fighting force. But the resentment is also rooted in three centuries of Pashtun rule in Afghanistan — unlike the Hazaras, the Kuchis have never had to pay taxes.

True or not, the charge of collaboration with the Taliban has provided a convenient excuse for the newly assertive Hazara to keep the Kuchi off their land. In the north, Kuchis have also suffered in a wave of post-Taliban revenge, indiscriminate "justice" meted out by gangs of Uzbek fighters.

This time last year, De Weijer estimates there were 20,000 Kuchi families grazing their herds in the Nawur district of Ghazni province, in the foothills of the Hazarajat. Today, there are just 198.

"We had a good life under the Taliban," said the straight-backed and bearded Mullah Gul Mohammad, a yellow turban around his head, a grey blanket or pattu over his shoulders.

"There was security and there was peace, and we could go anywhere with our animals."

"But we were not people of the Taliban. We were not people of any Government. We were only busy grazing our animals."

Many Kuchis fled to refugee camps in Pakistan during the long years of war. Like Shamir, they found a taste for having their children educated and a medical clinic nearby. Others, like Gul Mohammad, know they can never adapt to a new way of life.

"We don’t know construction work, or canal digging," he said. "If I could get some animals back, I would become a Kuchi again. The Kuchi life is a productive life."

This is the worst drought in living memory in Afghanistan. In the dusty camps around Spin Boldak, there is a sense of finality.

"Nomadism is finished," said 50-year-old Daoud. "It is the will of god." (AGENCIES)

US, free of treaty, plans missile defense test

WASHINGTON, Aug 17: The United States, freed from the constraints of its anti-ballistic missile treaty with Russia, will try to shoot down a dummy missile over the pacific this month relying partly on a sea-based radar system for the first time, the Pentagon has said.

The August 24 flight test will be the seventh of the ground-based leg of the multibillion-dollar, layered shield President George W Bush is developing against limited missile attack by a foe such as North Korea, Iran or Iraq.

It involves using a prototype interceptor fired from Kwajalein Atoll in the marshall islands to try to smash a modified Minuteman 2 missile launched 4,800 miles (7,725 km) away from Vandenberg Air Gorce base in California.

Being used to gather data in a test of this type for the first time, the Lockheed Martin Corp. "Spy 1" radar is designed to track hundreds of targets at the same time, from the wave tops to outer space. It will be deployed on the guided-missile cruiser Lake Erie, one of 61 US navy aegis-class ships afloat.

Under the 30-year-old antiballistic missile treaty with Russia, the use of sea-based antimissile systems, including radars used to track missiles, was banned along with any systems based in space or aboard aircraft. The treaty was meant to bar a nationwide missile shield defence as a means of preserving strategic stability.

Bush formally withdrew from the treaty on June 13, clearing the way for the advanced testing required to build overlapping defenses at sea, on the ground, in space and aboard modified boeing Co. 747 jumbo jets. Cancelling the pact was strongly opposed by Russia, China and many other countries for fear it would trigger an arms race. The Bush administration is racing to launch what it calls a missile defense testbed based at fort greely, Alaska, by September 30, 2004.

The Spy-1 radar will gather data about the target and interceptor missiles. If everything goes according to plan, they will collide about 140 miles (225 km) above the central pacific during the midcourse phase of the mock warhead’s flight, the Pentagon’s missile defense agency said.

The results are meant to demonstrate the potential role that Lockheed’s aegis weapons system — which hinges on the spy-1 radar — could play in a projected future sea-based leg of missile defense, the agency said.

The first 100 million dollars test took place on Oct 2, 1999, resulting in a successful intercept. Overall, the military is 4-for-6 in hitting its target, including the last three in a row.

Separately, TRW Inc has won a 868.7 million dollars contract to start developing satellites using infrared technology to track incoming ballistic missiles and help interceptor missiles shoot them down, the US Air Force said yesterday.

The initial order is for two so-called space-based infrared system low (sbirs low) satellites, with unpriced options to procure up to eight more.

Plans call for launch of the first satellites in 2006 and 2007 as part of the so-called ground-based segment designed to down missiles in the middle of their trajectory. Other systems are being developed to knock them out in their initial "boost" phases and their final descents. (AGENCIES)

| home | state | national | business | editorial | advertisement | sports
| international | weather | mailbag | suggestions | search | subscribe | send mail |