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Al Qaeda planning Jakarta foreign school strike-NYT NEW YORK, Nov 18: The Al Qaeda-linked network that carried out the Oct. 12 nightclub bombings on Indonesia’s....more Al-Qaeda
again NEW YORK, Nov 18: The Al-Qaeda is running at least a dozen camps in Afghanistan, where hundreds of recruits are....more Musharraf
convenes ISLAMABAD, Nov 18: As pressure over forming a new Government in Pakistan mounts..........more China’s
‘iron lady’ BEIJING, Nov 18: Veteran Chinese trade boss Wu Yi is not the first woman to win a seat in .....more |
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for India, Bhutan to confirm participation: Pak ISLAMABAD, Nov 18: Pakistan today said it has not yet fixed a deadline for India and Bhutan to .........more Neighbours play down N SEOUL, Nov 18: A North Korean Radio broadcast that seemed to confirm for the first time that the ......more Hard-up Palestinians mark JENIN, WEST BANK, Nov 18: Palestinian baker Jihad Al-Azab arranged traditional qatayef cakes .....more Iraqi forces fire WASHINGTON, Nov 18: Iraqi air defence forces fired anti-aircraft artillery at US and British war .......more |
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Pro-Musharraf party wins Speaker nomination support ... Sudan factions extend ceasefire until March.... Assailant takes 25 children hostage at Elementary School.... |
NEW YORK, Nov 18: The Al Qaeda-linked network that carried out the Oct. 12 nightclub bombings on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali is planning to strike international schools in Jakarta, the New York Times reported today, citing Western and Indonesian officials. The plan to attack Western students at the schools was uncovered in the last few days, and officials said the schools would be closed until at least Wednesday, the Times said in its online edition. Officials declined to say precisely how they had learned of the plot, but the United States and Australia have stepped up intelligence gathering in Indonesia since the Bali attack, which killed more than 180 people, including many Australians, the newspaper said. Based on information from Western intelligence agencies, diplomats said the planned attack was directed primarily at the Jakarta International School, which has 2,500 students, about a third of whom are Americans, the paper said. Diplomats told the times the Australian and British schools also plan to close, the report said. They are to remain closed until Indonesian Police provide adequate security, one diplomat told the newspaper. The plotters are thought to be a cell within the Al Qaeda network of Muslim extremists that has carried out several terrorist actions in Indonesia, and nearly succeeded in blowing up the American, Australian, British and Israeli embassies in Singapore last December, officials told the newspaper. That plot was thwarted by Singaporean authorities, but investigators have concluded that the planners of the failed Singapore plot had shifted their resources and efforts to Bali, the newspaper said. Indonesian Police yesterday identified several Indonesian suspects in the Bali blast, including a suspect they believe to be the chief planner in the attack, Imam Samudra. The head of the multinational investigation team, Major-General I Made Mangku Pastika, said he believed Samudra was involved in the failed attack on the American Embassy in Singapore, and Western diplomats agreed with that assessment, according to the Times article. Indonesian authorities said at the time that none of their citizens were involved in the Singapore plot last December, and had long insisted that there were no terrorists in Indonesia, making it easy for Al Qaeda to regroup and plan attacks inside Indonesia, Western officials told the newspaper. "No matter who gets arrested, there are others out there ready to move into the plan," a Western intelligence official in the region told the times. "That’s the scary thing. There could be several more Bali operations planned." (AGENCIES) |
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Al-Qaeda again running terror camps in Afghanistan NEW YORK, Nov 18: The Al-Qaeda is running at least a dozen camps in Afghanistan, where hundreds of recruits are believed to be imparted training in terrorist activities. This follows the Al-Qaeda’s dissatisfaction with its allies in Afghanistan, where the outfit has "spent a lot of money, put in a lot of time... With little result", a Taliban source in Karachi was quoted by a magazine as saying. The magazine also interviewed three Afghans who confessed to having undergone training at separate camps, with one of them disclosing that the training programme included use of firearms, rockets and antipersonnel mines, making bombs and even suicide bombing. However, military experts in Washington, though not denying the existence of such camps, believe that the stories are exaggerated. Nevertheless, the Pentagon soon plans to increase on Al-Qaeda all over Afghanistan, where according to a US administration official, 10 new installations are to come up somewhere around December. The installations will have a core group of 50 personnel, comprising special forces and civilian reconstruction specialists, and the deployment could be enhanced as and where required, ‘The Newsweek’ said. The idea is to beef up regional security while getting on with the business of re-building the country, it added. (PTI) |
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Musharraf convenes NSC Council meet ahead of PM’s election ISLAMABAD, Nov 18: As pressure over forming a new Government in Pakistan mounts, President Pervez Musharraf has convened a meeting of the military dominated National Security Council (NSC) tomorrow to discuss the emerging political situation and the election of Prime Minister. His decision to call for an NSC meeting within two days after he held the joint meeting of the cabinet and NSC surprised officials and political parties. Musharraf held the joint meeting of the cabinet and NSC on Nov 16 within few hours after he took oath of a five year term. Members of the newly elected National Assembly too took oath on the same day. The Nov 16 meeting of the Cabinet and NSC was officially stated to be the last meeting of the two bodies as the National Assembly has formally been constituted, marking an end to military rule. Tomorrow’s NSC meeting would take place around the same time as the election for the Speaker and Deputy Speaker were to be held. Election for the post of Prime Minister would be held on Nov 21. Local daily ‘Dawn’ quoted officials today as saying that Musharraf, this time only called for the meeting of the NSC, whereas in the past joint meetings of the NSC and federal cabinet meetings were held. The NSC is composed of the top brass of country’s military as well as Provincial Governors. Political analysts view the nsc meeting, called within an interval of two days, to be of immense importance as elections to the offices of the Speaker and Deputy Speaker to be held tomorrow would clear to some extent the political stalemate and herald a breakthrough in the efforts of the political parties to form the Government. In view of tomorrow’s meeting, Musharraf has cancelled all engagements for the day and asked members of the NSC to cancel other activities, the newspaper quoted officials as saying. The meeting was likely to discuss the formation of new Government and the election of Prime Minister after the elections of the Speaker, Deputy Speaker and take some important decisions, the officials said. They said a breakthrough was expected from ongoing talks between the pro-Musharraf, Grand National Alliance (GNA) and the six-party religious alliance the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA). A team of government officials including high-ranking officers of the establishment, were involved in the effort to bring about a rapprochement of the two alliances to form a coalition Government, the newspaper said. They said the two alliances have come closer on a several issues but had differences over Musharraf’s Legal Framework Order (LFO) which incorporated his election through a referendum and powers to dismiss the parliament. All mainstream political parties, including MMA, have rejected Musharraf’s LFO and declared the April referendum as "unconstitutional." They have made it clear that they would recognise only the 1973 constitution which was not amended by him. (PTI) |
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China’s ‘iron lady’ puts a crack in glass ceiling BEIJING, Nov 18: Veteran Chinese trade boss Wu Yi is not the first woman to win a seat in the Communist Party’s powerful politburo, but she is the only one to get there without a husband’s help. Her jump from "alternate" to full membership in the party’s second most authoritative body on Friday was a big step. Chairman Mao Zedong famously said that "women hold up half the sky", but in reality, they barely register in China’s male-dominated political landscape. Wu follows in the footsteps of just three other women who have made it to the politburo — Mao’s radical wife Jiang Qing Ye Qun, wife of Mao’s one-time heir apparent, Lin Biao and Deng Yingchao, the widow of revered premier Zhou Enlai. "Wu Yi’s promotion to politburo membership is the first by a woman whose husband is not also in the politburo, and that should be seen as a significant advance within an overall situation which is bleak for the political careers of talented chinese women," said Kenneth Lieberthal, a China hand at the University of Michigan. A State Councillor and former Trade Minister, the unmarried Wu, 64 this month, has earned a reputation as a deft politician, a tough negotiator and a scandal-free ally of former party chief Jiang Zemin. Her promotion was consolation to women who saw their number of seats on the 198-member central committee drop from seven to five at the 16th party congress that ended last Thursday. On the new list of the body’s 158 alternate members, there are now 21 women, four more than at the last Congress five years ago, but the total number of alternates rose by more than 10. "Wu’s done very well, but it’s one person, it’s not a trend. She hasn’t been able to pull other women up behind her, essentially," said a Western diplomat in Beijing. The dismal situation for women in Chinese politics still stacks up alongside — if not slightly below — the records of other countries in the region. "Women throughout east and southeast asia rarely do well in high-level politics," Lieberthal said. "The women who get ahead in east asia have, in most cases, been people whose family connections have been a significant factor in their being considered viable leaders or viable people at a high level of the political system," he said. Cases in point: Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri and Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, both daughters of respected Presidents in the 1960s, who have exploited their family names to build their reputations. The Chinese Communist Party has championed women as a key economic force, and quotas under mao helped women gain positions of power in communes and local party branches. Today, the Government and ruling party have been pushing to ensure that women make up 10 per cent of state and party bodies and at lower levels, particularly in cities, women have been breaking into senior Government and party posts. But women made up only seven percent of the central committee and its alternates and Wu, known by some as China’s "iron lady", represented just four percent of the politburo. "People, left to their own devices, tend to choose people like themselves. If you have a whole bunch of ageing Asian men they will choose another bunch of ageing Asian men," the diplomat said. "It’s certainly more of an old boys’ club than a bastion of affirmative action." But Wu’s elevation put a big crack in the glass ceiling. "Women hold up half the sky’ is talking about the overall importance of women. It doesn’t mean everything is half-and-half," said Chen Naifang, one of 300-odd women among the Congress’s 2,114 delegates. Another delegate to the 16th party Congress, which ended on Thursday after voting in the new central committee, said Wu was the only candidate to win 100 percent of the votes, beating even the party’s new general secretary, Hu Jintao. And she is now the most senior politburo member after the nine standing committee men and the one with the most credentials in foreign relations, setting her up to possibly take over from foreign policy Guru Qian Qichen. "She is the representative of women in the country’s high-level administration," said a Chinese professor of political science who preferred not to be named. "Even though women’s status has improved since liberation in various ways, such as with the marriage law and having equal pay and the same right to work as men, it is a qualitative leap that Wu Yi has entered the politburo." (AGENCIES) |
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for India, Bhutan to confirm ISLAMABAD, Nov 18: Pakistan today said it has not yet fixed a deadline for India and Bhutan to confirm their participation in the SAARC summit proposed to be held here in January. "Pakistan was still awaiting confirmation from India and has not fixed any deadline," Pakistan Foreign Office Spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said here. He said any decision about the cut-off date will be taken at an appropriate time. Pakistan is going ahead with the preparations despite reports of uncertainty over Indian participation, Khan added. "Pakistan’s proposal to hold the summit from january 11 to 13 in Islamabad was mooted at the SAARC Foreign Ministers’ meet on the sidelines of the UN meeting in last September, the spokesman said. "We expect all leaders to attend the meeting, he said. SAARC charter requires attendance of all seven heads of the member states for the summit to take place. Replying to questions about India purchasing arms from the UK and the US, he said "we have seen (this) offensive posture against Pakistan. We have maintained in the past that acquisition of more and more arms (by India) when it is not threatened by any country meant more aggressive posture towards its neighbours." About India trying to acquire sophisticated weapons systems, Khan said "we feel that international community should be mindful of this." Commenting on a reported statement of Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Omar Farooq that time has come to give up arms, he said Pakistan believed in resolving the Kashmir dispute through negotiations that included representative of the Kashmiri people. "Dialogue is the only way to resolve all problems," he added. Khan took serious exception to a reported statement of the Afghan envoy in India that Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan’s western Baluchistan province. He said the New-Delhi based Afghan Ambassador seemed to have more information than the US forces who are inside Afghanistan. "He (Afghan Envoy) is either living in the world of delusion or is affected by the `Bollywood’ movies," he said. Asked about the FBI personnel carrying out investigations into acts of terrorism in Pakistan, he said few members of the FBI were in Pakistan to help it in intelligence gathering and combating terrorism. Referring to reports in the Los Angles Times that Pakistan followed a revolving door policy while dealing with militants, he said several world leaders have praised the steps taken to curb terrorism. (PTI) |
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Neighbours play down N Korea nuclear arms report SEOUL, Nov 18: A North Korean Radio broadcast that seemed to confirm for the first time that the communist state has nuclear weapons was probably misinterpreted, analysts in Japan and South Korea said today. Yesterday, Pyongyang radio said the country "has come to have nuclear and other strong military weapons to deal with increased nuclear threats by the US imperialists", according to Seoul’s Yonhap news agency, which monitors North Korean broadcasts. The statement, in a commentary blaming the United States for escalating tensions over North Korea’s atomic arms programme, appeared to go further than Pyongyang’s previous remarks it was "entitled to have nuclear weapons" in the face of US threats. South Korean Unification Ministry official Bae Taek-Hue said the ministry had not completed a final analysis of the broadcast text, "but the report appears wrong in its wording". Yonhap, which said yesterday the statement may have been deliberately misleading or was a rare mistake by the North Korean state broadcaster, quoted a Unification Ministry official as saying the announcer’s accent had thrown southern listeners off. Dialect differences? At issue is one syllable which in the announcer’s northern accent turned "is entitled to have" (Kajige Tui-o-Itta) into "has come to have" (Kajige Tui-Otta), the official said. The ethnically homogeneous 48 million South Koreans and 22 million North Koreans share a common language but there are substantial differences in pronunciation across the long peninsula, which is slightly smaller than Britain. An analyst at radio press, a Tokyo-based agency which monitors North Korean media, told Reuters it also had difficulty analysing the statement. The agency concluded the statement did not depart from Pyongyang’s assertion on October 25 it had the right to possess nuclear weapons, the analyst said. Tension in one of the last cold war flash-points has mounted since US officials said last month that North Korea had admitted pursuing a nuclear arms development programme, violating a landmark 1994 agreement with Washington. Under the 1994 agreed framework, the north promised to freeze its nuclear weapons programme in return for fuel oil, paid for by Washington, and two light water reactors that cannot easily be converted to produce weapons material. On Thursday, the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union agreed to suspend the fuel oil shipments to North Korea from December in response to its violation of the pact. North Korea has not yet responded to the decision to cut the fuel shipments to the energy-starved country just ahead of winter, which typically brings sub-freezing temperatures. North Korea’s ruling party newspaper, in a report with similar content to the Pyongyang radio broadcast, said the United States was the one who had broken the pact but was trying to deceive the world by pinning the blame on the north. "The lie is aimed to tarnish the international prestige and authority of the DPRK and isolate the DPRK on a worldwide scale," said a Rodong Sinmun article, carried by the state-run Korean central news agency. "And it is a cunning plot to cover up the criminal nature of the US posing nuclear threats to the DPRK and divert the public attention at home and abroad elsewhere," it said. DPRK stands for the state’s official title, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. North Korea also reiterated terms it set late in October for addressing US nuclear concerns: A non-aggression pact and a guarantee of the impoverished state’s sovereignty. In 1994, at the height of an earlier North Korean nuclear crisis that was defused by the agreed framework, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) made public an estimate that North Korea had possible already produced one or two nuclear weapons. (AGENCIES) |
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Hard-up Palestinians mark Ramadan in gloomy mood JENIN, WEST BANK, Nov 18: Palestinian baker Jihad Al-Azab arranged traditional qatayef cakes on his market stall, hoping to entice shoppers eyeing food and sweets for a grand meal at the end of the daily Ramadan fasting period. Although he slashed the price to four shekels (0.85 dollars) per kilo, he had trouble convincing the few customers in this northern West Bank city to buy the baked cake filled with cheese or almonds and sugar that is a Ramadan favourite. "Is this a Ramadan atmosphere? where are Ramadan shoppers? you can find the answer in peoples’ faces. We are witnessing incursion after incursion by the Israeli Army. People have used up their savings," he said, pouring batter on an oven surface. Ramadan is the Muslim month of abstinence from food, drink and sex during daylight and is marked by festivities at night, with lanterns, balloons, firecrackers, feasts and visits. But a Palestinian uprising for statehood that flared in 2000 after peace talks stalled prompted Israel to blockade and then reoccupy self-ruled West Bank cities, creating a sombre atmosphere when Ramadan began earlier this month. Scope for celebrations has been severely limited by Israeli military closures and curfews. Israel says these measures help prevent attacks by Palestinian militants, but they also thwart movement by ordinary Palestinians. An Army spokesman said curfews in cities imposed after suicide bombings in June had been lifted in a nod to ramadan but he did not say whether travel restrictions would be eased. Palestinian economists estimate that unemployment has jumped to 60 percent from 11 percent before the uprising began, and many people have little or nothing to spend on feel-good items. "If people buy qatayef, then you can say they are happy, but they are not," Azab said, dressed up in his white chef’s robe and white hat in Jenin’s market. Aid groups say more than half of all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip live in poverty on two dollars or less a day. Economist Naser Abdel-Karim said donations had helped people survive hardships. "People are living on Arab and foreign aid. They have consumed their savings." Rami Hussein, a shopowner in the West Bank city of Tulkarm, said the curfew there, in its fourth week, had put a damper on things. "The curfew has ruined everything. How can people feel Ramadan while they are confined to their homes?" In the West Bank city of Ramallah few were shopping. "People are not willing to risk their lives to circumvent army checkpoints," said Abdel-Qader Ehdeib, a butcher. Palestinians were bitter about a recent, two-week incursion into Jenin by Israeli tanks and troops following a Palestinian car bombing that killed 14 Israelis in October. "This is the ugliest behaviour," said Najeeb Hithnawi, a retired teacher. "We could not move. They suffocated us." After Israeli troops withdrew, municipal cleaners rushed to remove rubble left by tanks barging through narrow streets. Many rural Palestinians no longer stream into Jenin to shop and trade because of impassable checkpoints and barricades placed on access roads. "There are only two ways by which villagers and farmers can enter Jenin — either by parachute or helicopter," said Mahmoud Al-Omari, a 32-year-old merchant. Palestinians and human rights activists here and abroad say Israel’s measures amount to "collective punishment" of hundreds of thousands of people and breed bitterness that drives ever more people into militant violence. (AGENCIES) |
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Iraqi forces fire on US planes WASHINGTON, Nov 18: Iraqi air defence forces fired anti-aircraft artillery at US and British war planes patrolling the northern no-fly zone today, US military sources said. The planes responded by dropping precision-guided bombs on "elements of the Iraqi integrated air defence system," the US European Command said. The incident occurred northeast of Mosul, the same region where Iraqi artillery challenged allied aircraft yesterday, the command said. Meanwhile, US planes continued dropping leaflets in Southern Iraq warning troops not to fire on the allied planes, the US Central Command said. The latest drop of about 120,000 leaflets occurred shortly before midnight Iraqi time yesterday near the town of Ar Rumaythah, about 160 kilometres Southeast of Baghdad. It was the fourth leaflet drop over southern iraq in the past eight weeks. (DPA) Pro-Musharraf party wins Speaker nomination support KARACHI, Nov 18: Pakistan’s main pro-regime party has won the support of a minor party for its nomination of the powerful position of speaker in the new National Assembly, a party official said today. The ethnic-based Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which holds 17 seats in Pakistan’s first civilian Government in three years, said it would support the Pakistan Muslim Party-Quaid (PML-Q) in elections for the Speaker and Deputy Speaker positions tomorrow. The support followed an undertaking by President Pervez Musharraf to abandon no-go areas in the port city of Karachi, which MQM activists were not permitted to enter due to fears of violence held by its major rival, the Muhajir Qaumi Movement, a party official said. "In view of the brave step taken by President Pervez Musharraf ... MQM has decided to support PML-Q tomorrow in the National Assembly for the election of Speaker and Deputy Speaker," Coordinating Committee member Farooq Sattar told reporters. Elections for the powerful Speaker’s spot are being seen as a litmus test for Prime Ministerial elections, which usually occur one to three days later. The signal of support could be crucial for the PML-Q, which holds the largest number of seats in the 342-seat Assembly but is unable to form Government alone. Earlier today the party was dealt a blow when the country’s newly-powerful Islamic alliance declared its own talks with the PML-Q had failed. (AFP) Sudan factions extend ceasefire until March NAIROBI, Nov 18: Sudan’s warring factions agreed today to extend a ceasefire until the end of scheduled peace negotiations on March 31, but did not reach a comprehensive agreement on power sharing that mediators had hoped for. After five weeks of talks in Kenya, the Khartoum Government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) signed two documents — one extending the truce, the other covering a few points on power sharing which both sides accepted. "This is yet another step, small as it may be, but a significant one towards the resolution of the conflict in Sudan," head of the Government delegation Ghazi Salah Al-Din said shortly after signing the documents. The two sides signed an initial ceasefire, the first of its kind, on October 15, which was due to expire on December 31. They are due to meet again in Kenya in January to resume negotiations aimed at ending Sudan’s 19-year war, which has killed an estimated two million people. (AGENCIES) Assailant takes 25 children hostage at Elementary School MADRID, Nov 18: An armed man is holding 25 children hostage at a school near Barcelona, officials said today. Police are negotiating with the assailant at the school in the town of Hospitalet De Llobregat, a town hall official there said. The official declined to confirm news reports that the man is armed with a knife and the children at the Casal De L’Angel School are 12-year-olds. The Interior Ministry office in Barcelona said details were unclear but the motive appears to be money. A spokesman said the area around the school had been cordoned off. The rest of the school has been evacuated, town hall said. Ambulance crews were in the area to help parents in distress. Hospitalet De Llobregat is an industrial town just south of Barcelona. (AP) Arafat slams Sharon over Hebron corridor plan RAMALLAH, WEST BANK, Nov 18: Palestinian President Yasser Arafat today voiced alarm at Israel’s plan to tighten its grip on Hebron by building corridors for Jewish settlers that would snake through the West Bank city. "This is a big crime," Arafat said about the proposal, raised by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon after Palestinian gunmen killed 12 soldiers and security men on Friday on an open route settlers use to reach a holy site in the city centre. Building walled-in passages could entail razing Palestinian homes and heighten tensions, threatening US efforts to keep the region calm as washington prepares for possible war on Iraq. In another sign that Sharon would make security his first line of offence with a Likud Party election looming against Hawkish Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli forces attacked a Palestinian security agency’s headquarters in Gaza. Israel said it found and destroyed an explosives factory in the Palestinian preventive security service building it attacked with tanks and helicopters. Palestinian officials denied weapons were being made there. Israeli officials said Sharon’s Hebron plan, still in drafting stages, involved creating a secure "corridor" linking the tomb of the patriarchs — holy to both Muslims and Jews —and settler enclaves inside the volatile city to the adjacent settlement of Kiryat Arba, where Friday’s ambush took place. (AGENCIES) |
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