PPP demands use of multiple I-cards

ISLAMABAD, Aug 19: Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has urged the country’s Chief Election Commissioner to reconsider the use of multiple identity cards by the voters in the October general elections to prevent misuse of state apparatus by the Musharraf-Government.

The party said the use of multiple identity cards existed in all elections till 1988, when rules were arbitrarily changed. The multiple identity cards would include passports and driving licenses, the Dawn reported today.

Party’s acting secretary general Mian Raza Rabbani forwarded this demand in a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Justice (retired) Irshad Hasan Khan.

The party points out in the letter that the entire mess indicates a conspiracy to take away the voting rights of hundreds and thousands of voters, of which many would be from Sindh and are likely to support anti-Musharraf parties.

"The Pakistan People’s Party’s fair election programme emphasizes the need for voters to use multi-identity cards. The use of the single identity card gives the state apparatus a massive advantage and puts the voter at a serious disadvantage," Mr Rabbani said.

The PPP also attached with the request a copy of an article in the South Asia Tribune with the heading, "is this a grand plan to rig the October elections."

Mr Rabbani also quoted the article as saying that the October polls in Pakistan were in serious trouble as the Musharraf-Government had failed to provide almost 10 million qualified new voters with their computerized national identity cards (NICs) "without which they cannot vote."

He also added that "if this NIC condition is waived at the last moment, a new pandora’s box will open with chances of massive rigging and manipulation by all sides. Almost 1.2 million records are missing, 500,000 applications in Sindh were waiting to get printed which could not be done."(UNI)

India to convey concern over cross-border terrorism at SAARC

KATHMANDU, Aug 19: India is likely to convey its concern over cross-border terrorism and infiltration from across the border at the two-day SAARC Foreign Ministers meeting beginning here Wednesday during which Indo-Pak standoff may figure prominently.

External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha, who heads the Indian delegation, will be arriving here tomorrow to participate in the conference which will for the first time bring him face-to-face with Pakistan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Inamul Haq.

Official sources have ruled out any substantive meeting between the two. The courtesies expected during such meetings would be observed, they said.

Sinha will be proceeding to Dhaka on August 23 for a bilateral visit after attending the meeting of the seven-member regional grouping which, besides India and Pakistan, included Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Maldives and Nepal.

Significantly, Kathmandu had hosted the SAARC summit in January this year when the handshake by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee hogged the media limelight.

The Kathmandu meeting comes close on the heels of the war of words between Musharraf and Vajpayee in their independence day addresses, scotching speculation of some movement in the direction of resumption of the stalled dialogue.

Musharraf had termed as "farcical" the forthcoming Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections and contended that Pakistan should not be held responsible for failure of the polls there. He had renewed his threat to take the battle into Indian territory if attacked.

Hitting back, Vajpayee had bluntly asked Musharraf not to give lectures on democracy and instead take a look at Pakistan’s own track record.

Sinha, who has visited Maldives, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, all SAARC members, since taking over his new ministry, will get a second opportunity to meet his counterparts on the sidelines of the ministerial meet.

New Delhi has made it clear that it wants all outstanding issues with Pakistan to be resolved peacefully and through negotiations bilaterally and voiced its willingness to take some more steps in this direction if Islamabad created a conducive atmosphere.

Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Tyronne Fernando, who has been maintaining frequent and close contacts with Indian and Pakistani leaders, said during his recent visit here that Colombo was very concerned over the continuing standoff.

He urged both countries to settle their differences bilaterally not only for their own sake but in the interest of smaller countries in the region.

From Kathmandu, Sinha will travel to Dhaka where he will call on Bangladesh premier Khaleda Zia and have meetings with Foreign Minister Morshed Khan and other leaders.

Interestingly, Sinha’s visit comes within weeks of Musharraf’s trip to Dhaka. (PTI)

Business buys into earth summit, but at what price?

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 19: Lush rainforest trees drip with dew, pristine beaches flank crystal clear seas and the sky is a heavenly blue.

Not a holiday brochure, but an advert for global oil giant shell.

Like a number of high-profile firms deemed environmental pariahs 10 years ago, shell has been working hard to clean up its image and, like many from big business, will be showcasing its efforts at this month’s un "Earth Summit" in Johannesburg.

Everything from hydrogen cars to health care programmes and water purification projects will make an appearance at the world summit on sustainable development in an attempt to prove there doesn’t have to be a choice between principles and profits.

Green and human rights groups say it is not all a public relations exercise and that some firms have started to recognise the need to tackle poverty and environmental degradation.

But they also say that the presence of big businesses — some of whose budgets dwarf the economies of countries attending the meeting — threatens to divert Governments from setting targets that force business to do more on sustainable development.

"It needs to be up to much more than the whim of a Chief Executive as to whether corporations engage in sustainable development or not," said Matt Phillips of friends of the earth international. "Left to themselves business will not respond to the challenges. Certainly, if the outcome of the last earth summit is anything to go by, business has not come up smelling of roses.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) published a report earlier this year on achievements since the meeting in Rio De Janeiro 10 years ago and an outlook for the future.

"Improvements have occurred in areas such as river and air quality in places like North America and Europe," it said. "But generally there has been a steady decline in the environment, especially across large parts of the developing world."

UNEP concluded that "one of the key driving forces had been the growing gap between rich and poor parts of the globe."

Western consumerism, fuelled by big business, is unsustainable in its present form, green groups say.

They argue that previous non-binding agreements like the UN’s global compact have not worked and stricter rules need to be put in place to regulate the corporate environment.

The compact, a development accord between business and the UN, is seen as giving the social and environmental policies of big business a stamp of approval without a monitoring mechanism to ensure compliance with its principles.

The British Charity Christian Aid said this month there was already an indication big business that had hijacked the summit to push its agenda of self-regulation over corporate accountability.

"The draft plan of implementation — the text which is being negotiated at the summit — uses terms no stronger than ‘promote corporate responsibility and accountability and the exchange of best practices in the context of sustainable development’.

"Back in January, this read ‘launch negotiations for a multi-national agreement on corporate accountability," it said.

And that’s the way business wants it.

"On balance it’s better to have business driven by the desire to be transparent...Than by a compliance mindset," said Roland Kupers, Shell’s sustainable development vice president.

Former Shell chairman Mark Moody-Stuart, now head of the lobby group business action for sustainable development, says there are already plenty of rules on the environment.

Business and activist groups recognise the environment is not the main problem area. The crunch issue is how business treats people. Shell knows all about courting international and local ire.

Pilloried for its failure to intervene to prevent the state-ordered execution of Nigerian activist Ken Saro Wiwa — who accused Shell of devastating ogoniland in the south of the country and leaving its people impoverished — the firm is now holding regular talks with local communities in Nigeria.

But Kupers confessed: "the most difficult area is that of social responsibility. We don’t quite know how to do that."

Assuring citizens’ rights will be key to the summit’s success or otherwise, said friends of the earth’s Phillips.

Ultimately, it’s not so much the firms who will be at the summit that green groups most worry about as those that won’t.

"There are a lot of Governments...Who are influenced by businesses that are not interested in sustainable development," said Steve Sawyer, climate policy director for the environmental group Greenpeace.

He pointed to the likes of US oil giant Exxonmobil, which is unlikely to be a major presence at the summit.

Greenpeace says Exxon, viewed as a bigger economic entity than Pakistan, campaigned actively for US President George Bush to ditch the Kyoto protocol on climate change. When he did, Exxon took out adverts stressing Kyoto was "flawed".

"In my view, Exxon are the neanderthals — they are going to have to change," said Sawyer.

"Most of the business people who are engaged in the summit are doing it, a few because they believe, more because they see the political writing on the wall that it will be a necessary part of doing business in the next decade and beyond," he added.

Businesses that have come on board the sustainable development train say the case for investing in the environment and the community is compelling.

"Only those companies and industries that provide value to society in a way that is protective of the world’s resources will be allowed to operate into the 21st century," says US chemicals firm Dupont in a mission statement.

The 60 companies of Brazil’s business council on sustainable development are planning to invest about 2 billion in the coming eight years on environmental and social projects and expect to reap rewards.

"We are doing this because we are not stupid, because if we don’t change, markets won’t develop and there’s no such thing as a successful company in a bankrupt market," said Delix De Bulhoes, chairman of the council.

And it’s not just big business that says it benefits. The International Finance Corporation — the private arm of the World Bank — said in June it had found that even small, localised businesses could gain.

But whether or not businesses small and large will allow global leaders to dictate when and where they contribute to sustainable development is another question.

Friends of the Earth’s Phillips said: "The summit is asking the right questions, the danger is we get the wrong answers".

—additional reporting by Axel bugge in Brazil (AGENCIES)

Tapes shed new light on Al Qaeda

NEW YORK, Aug 19: A series of Al Qaeda videotapes shed new light on Osama bin Laden’s terror network, revealing chemical gas experiments on animals, lessons on making explosives, terrorist training tactics and previously unseen images of the international terrorist mastermind and his group.

CNN, which obtained the archive of 64 tapes from inside Afghanistan, spanning more than a decade, shows what appears to be an agonizing death of three dogs exposed to chemical agents. The experiment was conducted before September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

Nearly all the tapes pre-date last year’s September 11 terror attacks. But one tape includes recorded segments from televised news reports of the attacks on New York and Washington, including CNN coverage.

CNN which broadcast parts of the tapes yesterday, plans to air the other sections throughout this week.

The channel said it had shown them to many experts, including Rohan Gunaratna, an expert on Al Qaeda who was called on to address Congress, the UN and the Australian Parliament following the September 11 attacks.

Gunaratna, the author of "inside Al Qaeda," has interviewed members of the terrorist network and previously viewed more than 200 of them. But he had not seen the tapes obtained by CNN and believes they were intended only for the terror group leaders’ consumption.

"The collection has Al Qaeda videos taken by Al Qaeda of events," Gunaratna said, adding "whenever Osama bin Laden met with foreign journalists, he always had his own cameraman. And it is those tapes that are there, because that itself shows that this is the Al Qaeda library."

"This is not the library of someone else ... This is their history, the record room of Osama bin Laden," Gunaratna said.

CNN said the tapes were obtained by senior international correspondent NIC robertson from a source in Afghanistan, following a 17-hour drive from Kabul through treacherous terrain to a remote part of the war-torn country.

According to the source, the tapes had been found in an Afghan house where bin Laden had stayed.

Some of the tapes are video training manuals for terrorists, much different from the Al Qaeda promotional videos that have been released in the past. One three-hour tape, for example, shows how to make purified TNT from easy-to-get materials. They demonstrate sophistication in planning and explosives skills, the channel said.

One scene shows bin Laden with his security detail firing shots into the air as they get set to announce their new holy war against Americans. That scene was shot in 1998.

Among the most frightening scenes in the collection of tapes are those of testing of a poison gas on three dogs. The disturbing images show the dying moments of the defenceless animals.

The senior Bush administration official said the video of the chemical tests on the dogs suggest a very strong desire to acquire the capability to use such weapons against humans. Until now, he said, he had seen nothing that indicated bin Laden or Al Qaeda had the capability.

"This tape is unquestionable documentation that he has some capability," he said, adding it shows "some level of sophistication, and indicates they were trying to get results."

In one scene, CNN shows, a group of unidentified men wearing Afghan-style sandals rush out of an enclosure where one of the dogs is penned. A white liquid that gives off a gas is then seen seeping in from the left. Soon, the dog begins showing physical reactions.

Experts who were shown the tape by CNN had different theories as to what kind of chemical agent may have been used in the experiment. But there was agreement that, whatever it was, it was a powerful agent.

One of the tapes shows poison gas experiments being performed on dogs.

"It’s probably extremely significant, if not profound," John Gilbert, a chemical weapons specialist and arms control expert to the US Government was quoted as saying that "the fact that they were able to repeat tests or demonstrations on this tape indicates that they clearly have a way to produce a predictably lethal chemical."

Coalition intelligence sources who examined the tape of the dying dogs told cnn that this appears to be an Al Qaeda lethal weapons experiment at the remote Darunta camp in Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda documents examined by CNN last fall showed formulas for cyanide, a deadly chemical agent and Ahmed Ressam, a man trained by Al Qaeda and convicted of plotting to bomb Los Angeles international airport, testified in court about tests using cyanide to kill dogs. (PTI)

Almost 300 sexual harassment cases in Himachal

DHARAMSHALA, HIMACHAL PRADESH, Aug 19: Himachal Pradesh unit of Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) has identified almost 300 sexual harassment cases against women in the State, five of which have already been brought to the notice of the HP Women Rights Commission, HP INTUC chief Amar Jeet Singh Bawa said.

Addressing a news conference here yesterday, he said 50 more such cases were to be brought to the Commission’s notice soon.

The INTUC chief was here to inaugurate one-day women awarness camp at Guptganga organised by HP Forest Workers Association under the banner of Malaysia-based International Wood Workers Association. Forty-five women workers attended the camp fourth of its kind in the two districts of Chamba and Kangra.

He said these camps are aimed at creating awarenss among women of this hill State about their rights and ways to protect them. Ms Veena Sharma , woman coordinator of these camps, said as the police cell for women at Dharamshala was lacking the infrastructure and facilities so the women were rarely lodging the cases in this cell.

Mr Bawa said in such camps so far 165 people had been imparted training at Chamba, Dharmashala, Bagsunag and Kangra with a positive response from the women. He said woman creche workers and helpers were being paid Rs 500 and Rs 200 monthly respectively which constituted exploitation.

Ms Veena Sharma expressed concern over the increasing incidence of rapes and attempt to rapes of minor girls. (UNI)

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