Pak Islamist softens stance on US bases

ISLAMABAD, Oct 25: One of Pakistan’s main Islamist political leaders has said he was willing to give the United States time to withdraw its bases from the country, marking a softening of his stance on the issue.

Fazal-ur-Rehman is the Prime Ministerial candidate for the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) religious alliance, which exploited anger over Pakistan’s cooperation in the US-led war on terror to emerge as a political force after this month’s general election.

The MMA campaigned for the immediate withdrawal of US bases from Pakistan and the imposition of Islamic law in the country. But it appears to be softening its stance slightly as it vies for a place in a future coalition Government.

"Measures should be taken to assure the Pakistani people that they are vacating the bases," Rehman told media in his first interview since the election. "After these measures are taken, a time frame can be decided for the vacation of the bases."

There is a small US military presence in Pakistan concentrated at the Jacobabad air base, from where search and rescue operations in neighbouring Afghanistan are launched.

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents are also helping track down Al Qaeda suspects who may have taken refuge in the country.

"We want to assure the US, the West and international community that we don’t need foreign assistance in maintaining peace in Pakistan, and its soil will not be allowed to be used against anyone," Rehman said.

Rehman, a stout Islamic cleric with a bushy grey beard who was imprisoned last year for leading protests against US military action in Afghanistan, leads the hardline Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam, the strongest party in the MMA.

Rehman welcomed an announcement by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that some of the Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects being held at a naval base in Cuba would be released after months of interrogation failed to yield grounds for prosecution.

The prisoners were taken to Cuba after the fall of the Taliban late last year. US and Afghan opposition forces ousted the Taliban in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the Untied States, blamed on Taliban ally Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network.

Some of the prisoners to be released are Pakistani citizens, according to a senior US defence official.

"These US measures are bringing it from extremism to moderation," Rehman said. "Like...A softening of their position on Iraq, it is a step towards creating a good environment. These should be encouraged and more steps should be taken to bring peace in the world."

But Rehman condemned the detention of a prominent orthopaedic surgeon this week in the eastern city of Lahore by Pakistani intelligence agents working with their US FBI counterparts.

"These are the measures that create suspicions that our sovereignty is permanently in danger," he said. "He was a doctor and served humanity, and such measures are against humanity."

The brothers of Dr Amir Aziz said FBI agents had accused him of supplying Anthrax to Taliban and Al Qaeda militants, but Rehman said the FBI’s reported involvement was exactly the sort of foreign interference that had brought voters out for the MMA.

"Our people have given their opinion against such measures and it shows the US is not respecting the verdict of the people of Pakistan," he said.

Rehman described as an injustice the way the Taliban’s image had been "defamed", and said the movement had brought peace to Afghanistan.

He declined to say how he would respond if Washington asked an MMA-led Government to hand over former Taliban leaders who may have taken refuge in Pakistan, but said former members of the Taliban would not cause trouble under an MMA Government.

"If they are here...They will not create a problem," he said. "We expect from them that they will respect religious people because they are religious-minded people."

Rehman said his movement would not seek to impose Islamic law but would work within Parliament and the constitution to promote legislation compatible with the Koran and the teachings of the Prophet Mohammad.

He said the MMA should be allowed to lead the next Government to neutralise the anger of Pakistanis upset about President Pervez Musharraf’s close co-operation with Washington.

"Those people who were moving towards extremism a year ago, the leadership of the religious parties has brought them back to the path of moderation and democracy," he said. "It would be much better for internal security...If the Government was formed under the leadership of MMA." (AGENCIES)

Singh supports demand for registering Sikhs separately

LONDON, Oct 25: The vice chairman of the National Minority Commission Tarlochan Singh has supported the demand for Sikhs being registered as a separate community but opposed demands for "Khalistan."

"I fully support the demand here for registering Sikhs as a separate community but they should not join the demand for separation. We are in the national mainstream and we should work together for the good of everyone," Singh said here last night.

"We are a 20 million-strong minority community in India. Sikhs here should not mix this with the `Khalistan’ demand."

Singh, who has been meeting representatives of Sikhs here, said he has written to External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha to alleviate difficulties faced by a sizeable number of Sikh youths who had illegally entered European countries and were facing hardship.

"Because of unemployment conditions in Punjab these young educated boys were lured by unscrupulous travel agents to leave India and were charged heavily with the promise of jobs and better prospects in European countries.

A number of them had died in foreign land and quite a few were sent to jails. The Ministry of External Affairs has been very helpful in getting them out of jails and deporting them to India," he said in a communication to Sinha.

Singh said many European countries like Italy were now granting them citizenship and for that purpose they needed help from Indian missions. And the missions in turn could seek documents from Punjab Government from their respective villages.

Stating that similar conditions prevailed in USA and Canada, Singh said "some of them were forced by disgruntled leaders to participate in anti-India demonstrations."

Now that the pro-Khalistan agitation had died down, Indian Government must facilitate these misguided youths to join the mainstream by extending whatever help they could render.

Singh also wanted Indian missions abroad to be liberal in issuing visas to such persons who were earlier "black listed".

This would go a long way in changing their attitude altogether, he said. (PTI)

Sniper suspects detained, seized rifle linked to shootings

NEW YORK, Oct 25: Ending a three-week harrowing experience for the residents of Washington-area, police arrested two suspects in the sniper shooting spree case and recovered a rifle linked to the killings of 10 people.

Police detained the Gulf war veteran John Allen Muhammad and a teenager John Lee Malvo as they were sleeping in a car at a highway rest stop in Maryland. Investigators are questioning the two who have been ordered to be held without bail.

Ballistics tests have linked the .223 caliber telescopic assault rifle to eight of the ten murders which created panic in the area and forced people to keep children indoors and authorities to close down playground for fear of being hit by the sniper.

Muhammad was charged with violating the federal weapons laws and Malvo was being detained as material witness.

The charges could be upgraded to homicide or murder as the investigation proceed. But it was not yet clear whether both or only Muhammad would be charged with the murders.

Detectives say that modification made in the suspects’ backseat and trunk area suggests that it could have been used as sniper’s perch with gunman hidden flat in the car and firing through a hole that has been bored in the trunk lid.

"We now consider them suspects in the string of shootings in Maryland, Virginia and the district of Columbia," Montgomery county police chief Charles Moose said.

President George W Bush has congratulated the authorities for the arrests.

"The entire nation is grateful to all of the local, State and Federal law enforcement officials who have worked with such urgency and with such urgency and with so little rest to solve the sniper case," Bush said in a written statement. (PTI)

Iraqi Ambassador loses temper at criticism of Saddam

NEW DELHI, Oct 25: Iraqi Ambassador Salah Al Mukhtar today lost his temper at a public function when political analyst Brahma Chellaney described President Saddam Hussain as a military dictator who won a sham referendum.

"We strongly protest as iraq has been insulted, attacked by Dr Chellaney’s cruel conclusions against Iraq. He represent the us and Israel and in fact he is more of an American and Israeli as he repeated the US allegations against Iraq. Mr Saddam Hussain is a national hero and a freedom fighter for Iraq and not a dictator," an emotionally-charged Mr Mukhtar asserted at a discussion on the Iraq crisis and US foreign policy organised by the Delhi study group here.

Mr Chellany, while analysing the US policy on Iraq, had described Mr Hussain as a military dictator who had ruled ruthlessly. He also alleged that the Iraqi President had got 100 votes in a sham referendum.

Taking strong exception to the criticism of the President, the Ambassador alleged that it was part of the US strategy, particularly CIA, to demonise and distort the image of the enemy country or leader so that when they launch a war against them nobody would come out in that country’s support.

Lauding the achievements of Mr Hussain, he said he had removed poverty and illiteracy completely in his country. He was not a military dictator but had removed a military dictatorship in 1968 through an uprising. A dictator cannot survive in Iraq which has 100 literacy and 30 percent of whose population was armed, he asserted.

The criticism on Mr Hussain was today more painful than the US attack. He said if he had known that his country and leader would be insulted by the DSG, he would not have attended the function. The Ambassador also reminded the gathering that Iraq was among the few Arab countries which have supported india on Kashmir issue.

He regretted that despite complying with all the UN resolutions, the severe embargo imposed on Iraq was not removed for the past 12 years and thousands of innocent people have suffered. The restrictions had resulted in the death of about 300 people every day which depleted a sizeable section of Iraq’s 23 million population. The Ambassador said the US was trying to destroy iraq by provoking its pride and dignity by its "barbaric and criminal acts" and to cover it up it was "demonising" the President of Iraq.

Claiming that there was true democracy in Iraq despite an emergency-like situation prevailing in the country, he said that National Assembly elections were held every four years. Every section of the society like doctors, engineers, women have regular polls. The country has a multiparty system and recently, the President was elected in a referendum.

Earlier, Mr Chellaney had analysed how domestic compulsion of the bush administration brought Iraq to the limelight as in its war against terrorism, the US Government has not been much successful. So it wanted to show by defeating Iraq that it has won a war.

The US, which had declared a war against terrorism, had failed to arrest Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar and the Bush administration in its frustration and desperation wanted to punish Iraq which symbolised a rouge state instead of taking action against the real culprit. The US, in its bid to show unchallenged authority, would attack Iraq in January, he said.

Criticising the US for adopting double standards in its war against terrorism, he said it would make the fundament change of how nation states existed in future. He accused the US of adopting new nuclear postures making them a weapon of choice.

Moreover, the United Nations also faced a major dilemma as in the unipolar world the US has threatened to make in irrelevant if it not supported its stand on Iraq issue.

Mr Sheshadri Chari, Editor of Organiser, stressed the need to check the increasing number of flash points in the world and the UN’s inability to keep its peace agenda. Terrorism should be checked but who would decide which was a terrorist state was the question.

Delhi study group president Vijay Jolly said India should protest against the proposed attack on a sovereign nation like Iraq. (UNI)

US sniper case arrest may link to Alabama killing

MONTGOMERY, ALA., Oct 24: One of the two people arrested today in the investigation of this month’s 20 Washington-area sniper slayings might be linked to a September robbery and murder in Alabama, state police said.

John Wilson, the police chief in Montgomery, Alabama, said there were "very good similarities" between John Lee Malvo, 17, a Jamaican citizen held in the sniper shootings, and a sketch of the suspect who shot two women at the ABC beverages liquor store on September 21 in the city. One of the women died.

But Wilson said the ammunition used in the Alabama robbery and murder did not match the .223-caliber bullets used in the attacks that terrorized Washington area for three weeks.

"I’ve been told officially that the same weapon that was used here is not the weapon that was used up there," Wilson said at a news conference just hours after Malvo and his Stepfather, John Allen Muhammad, were arrested at a highway rest stop in Maryland, about 100 km northwest of the US capital.

Wilson denied reports one of the September 21 shooting victims was robbed of a credit card. "There was no credit card connected to our crime here," he said.

No one has been charged in the Alabama murder or the sniper attacks, but law enforcement officials, who asked to remain anonymous, said they were cautiously optimistic the two men under arrest were connected to the sniper killings.

Alabama Police had been stymied by the liquor store killing until the task force investigating the Washington-area sniper case called to say an anonymous tip had mentioned a possible link to the Alabama crime.

The FBI in mobile, Alabama, denied reports its agents were investigating a military-style training camp called ground zero in Marion, Alabama, for a possible connection in the sniper shootings.

"The FBI has no interest, nor have we searched, nor have we visited (ground zero in Marion) in connection with the ongoing events" around Washington, tim munson, special agent in charge of the FBI’s mobile office, told Reuters. "It has been reported that the FBI served a search warrant there. That is not true."

Some news organizations had reported that a training camp linked to Islamic militants had been operating in Marion and that european security officials believed Muslim extremists were using it to prepare for a holy war.

While some reports have suggested one of the suspects held in the sniper case had shown sympathy to a terror-related cause, there has been no evidence connecting either suspect to militant groups.

In Washington state, where Malvo went to high school, police chief Randy Carroll of Bellingham said: "It appears that these people that have been taken into custody are not acting with any group or with any organized group of people. It appears that they have acted on their own." (AGENCIES)

Bush, Jiang discuss North Korea nuclear weapons

CRAWFORD, TEXAS, Oct 25: US President George W Bush and a tardy Chinese President Jiang Zemin discussed ways to pressure North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program in talks today at Bush’s Texas ranch.

Jiang and his wife, Mrs. Wang, were greeted warmly by Bush and his wife Laura as they showed up more than 30 minutes behind schedule, possibly due to a flight connection from houston on a gray, rainy day.

"How are you, sir?" Bush said as he shook hands with Jiang, and he kissed Mrs. Wang on both cheeks.

"Welcome to our home," Mrs Bush said.

Minutes earlier, as Bush, Mrs Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell waited outside a ranch house for Jiang’s arrival, the President jokingly checked his watch and announced, "we could be fishing."

Besides North Korea, Bush aides said the President would restate to Jiang US concerns that Iraq and its suspected weapons of mass destruction pose an imminent threat that requires a tough new UN resolution requiring Baghdad to disarm.

China, while opposing the use of military force against Iraq, is widely expected to abstain from a Security Council vote possible next week rather than exercise its veto power. France and Russia have led the opposition to a US draft resolution.

Bush and Jiang were to meet for 90 minutes then break for lunch with their wives, followed by a pickup truck tour of the natural features of Bush’s 648-hectare ranch on the prairie of central texas near the tiny town of crawford.

Both are on their way to a weekend summit of Asian leaders in Los Cabos, Mexico. North Korea’s admission that it has a secret nuclear weapons program, which US officials say has spawned one or two nuclear bombs, figured to be a dominant theme at the Bush-Jiang talks.

White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush and Jiang "will seek a common approach on how to convince North Korea to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons."

A senior Bush administration official said Bush would discuss with Jiang potential "diplomatic, political and perhaps financial pressures on North Korea."

Shortly before the two leaders met, North Korea’s Ambassador to the United Nations said Pyongyang hoped to keep up contacts with the United States despite the dispute with Washington over its nuclear program.

"We will always prefer negotiations," Ambassador Pak Gil Yon told reporters at the United Nations when asked if there were any current plans for further negotiations.

US officials said China is unique in having a substantial relationship with North Korea and, as the biggest provider of economic aid to Pyongyang, has a great potential ability to exercise some leverage.

Bush will also talk to leaders of Japan and South Korea while in Mexico and Washington is also reaching out to Russia and European Nations with ties to North Korea.

Washington at this point is not seeking support for any specific punishment of North Korea as it seeks a diplomatic solution to the crisis. (AGENCIES)

Nepal’s Maoist rebels say ‘door open’ for talks

KATHMANDU, Oct 25: Nepal’s Maoist rebels fighting to topple the constitutional monarchy said today they were ready for peace talks to end an increasingly deadly insurgency that has racked the Himalayan Kingdom for six years.

"Our door for talks and dialogue is open for a positive and progressive political solution," Maoist leader Prachanda said in a statement.

The statement came after Lokendra Bahadur Chand, the new caretaker Prime Minister appointed by King Gyanendra, said he wanted to restart peace talks with the rebels who are battling to install a Communist Republic in the impoverished nation.

Chand was named Prime Minister early this month after the king fired Sher Bahadur Deuba from the post for seeking to delay national elections slated for November because of a threat by the rebels to derail the vote.

Last year, the rebels broke a truce and walked out of peace talks after Deuba rejected their demand for abolition of the monarchy, a hugely popular institution in the world’s only Hindu Kingdom. (AGENCIES)

Priority to save hostages’ lives,says Putin

MOSCOW, Oct 25: Russian President Vladimir Putin said today the priority in the Chechen hostage-taking crisis was "to keep the hostages alive."

"Let us put aside all political statements and debates, they are untimely and harmful now that we are dealing with the suffering of hundreds of innocents," Putin said in televised comments addressed to Russian deputies.

"First of all we need ... Coordinated actions aimed at helping people and keeping them alive," he said. "We are open to all contact and all my proposals remain in force," he added.

Putin said yesterday he would not give way to "provocations," but the head of Russian security services Nikolai Patrushev said today Russian authorities were prepared to grant the rebels safe passage to another country if they spared the lives of the hostages.

The rebels, who have vowed to die for their cause, have threatened to start executing some of the 700 hostages held in a Moscow theatre from tomorrow unless Russia takes steps to end the war in Chechnya.

However, Putin dismissed the claim by the hostage-takers that they were merely working toward peace in Chechnya.

He said the 50 men and women were "now calling for an end to war and bloodshed," but added: "I am sure that that is the very thing they do not want."

The hostage-takers "and those who stand behind them are afraid of further stabilisation in Chechnya," he said. (AFP)

Britain holds top Al Qaeda suspect

LONDON, Oct 24: Britain has arrested a Muslim cleric suspected of being a top Al Qaeda figure in Europe, Britain’s Times newspaper reported today.

It said special British anti-terror units had swooped on a house in South London and arrested Abu Qatada, who disappeared last December after British officials seized his passport and froze his assets.

The Times said Qatada, who is wanted in several countries, had been held under new anti terrorism laws enacted after the September 11 attacks on US cities which Washington blames on Al Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden.

In a ruling later today, Britain’s court of appeal declared the new anti-terrorism, crime and security act was lawful following a legal challenge.

Qatada is wanted in Jordan on terror-related charges, and was described by a Spanish Judge as the spiritual leader of Bin Laden’s militant network in Europe.

The Times said German, Italian and French intelligence agencies had also collected evidence against him.

A spokesman for Britain’s Home Office (Interior Ministry) said authorities had arrested a foreigner under the new anti-terror laws on Wednesday, but would not comment on whether the suspect was Qatada or where the arrest took place.

Britain has detained 12 foreigners under the act, which came into effect last year. It has never named those it is holding.

Abu Hamza Al-Masri, a radical Islamic cleric in Britain who says he supports Al Qaeda’s aims, told Reuters he knew Abu Qatada through Islamic circles. "He’s like us: He’s a supporter of Al Qaeda but has no formal links to the group," Al-Masri said.

Qatada, a Palestinian who moved to Britain as a political refugee in 1993, was briefly arrested and released without charge in February, 2001.

After the September 11 attacks, authorities took a renewed interest in his case, seizing his passport, freezing his assets and ordering him confined to his house.

But he suddenly disappeared before new laws came into effect allowing police to intern foreign suspects.

The Times said Qatada had broken his cover a few days ago after 10 months on the run, by issuing a 10-page document on the internet defending the September 11 attacks.

Today, Britain’s court of appeal overturned an earlier decision that detention of foreign terror suspects without charge or trial was unlawful.

Opponents of the new laws had argued it was unlawful to single out foreign suspects.

But Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, who presided over the appeal, said: "The court has concluded that Parliament was entitled to limit the measures proposed so as to affect only foreign nationals suspected of terrorist links." (AGENCIES)

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