Proposal for raising Mahatma Gandhi approved

WASHINGTON, Aug 12: The national capital Planning Commission in the U.S. capital has formally approved the proposal for raising a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi in a small park across the Indian Embassy on massachusetts avenue in Washington, D.C., known as Embassy.

Democratic Congressman Frank Pallone gave this information in a statement he put in the Congressional record paying tributes to India on its upcoming Independence Day.

He recalled that the house of representatives last year approved a legislation co-sponsored by him and Congressman Bill Ccollum, authorising the Government of India to establish the memorial in the U.S. capital. "The proposed Gandhi memorial will be a most worthy addition to the landscape of our nation’s capital," he added.

He said, "there is a rich tradition of shared values between the United States and India. We both proclaimed our independence from British colonialism. India derived key aspects of its constitution, particularly the statement of fundamental rights, from our own bill of rights. It is well known that Dr. Martin Luther king derived many of his ideas of non-violent resistance to injustice from the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi."

"That commitment to the use of peaceful means to overthrow tyranny has been emulated by such diverse world leaders as Nelson Mandela and Lech Walesa," he added.

Another extremely important link between India and the U.S., he pointed out, was an human link—more than one million Americans of Indian descent. "I have the honour of representing a Congressional district (constituency) in central New Jersey with one of the largest Indian-American communities in the country," he added. (UNI)

Progress made on CTB issue with India and Pakistan: US

WASHINGTON, Aug 12: The United States has said some progress had been made with India and Pakistan on signing of Comprehensive Test Ban (CTB) though some headway is yet to be achieved in restraining the missile race.

I do know some progress was made on the CTB front on indications that the parties (India and Pakistan) were willing to sign the treaty and that they were moving forward on the fissile material side of the fence, US State Department spokesman James Rubin said at a briefing yesterday.

However, he said no headway had been achieved on the restraining the two countries from entering into missile race. We will continue to work with them (India and Pakistan) on the missile question though we have not achieved our objectives.

Stating that achieving assurance on restraint on missile race was necessary, he said this was to prevent mating of this (missile) capability with the nuclear area which would rather create even greater danger and shorter hair trigger situations.

It was not clear whether by using the expression CTB and not CTBT, Rubin was sending a message that the US will be satisfied with something less than India’s signature on the dotted line.

India has already said that New Delhi adheres to the goal of the CTBT (moratorium on testing) and was willing to give even a no-first use pledge although neither the US nor Russia is willing to give such a pledge.

Pakistan is also not willing to give such a pledge and recently in a statement made by Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz that in view of India’s conventional arms superiority, Islamabad must reserve the right to first use of nuclear weapons against New Delhi.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has retracted from its commitment that it would sign the CTBT even if India did not.

At a seminar here this week, a senior Pakistani official said that Islamabad has also to take into account the Indian stand. (PTI)

Taliban shifts its stand on Laden

ISLAMABAD, Aug 12: America cannot coax the Taliban to hand over renegade Saudi millionaire Osama Bin Laden to it, nor would the Islamic militia ask Laden to leave the country, the belligerent chief of the militia, Mullah Mohammd Omar, has said.

Taliban seems to have been shifting its stand on Osama frequently. First they said that he would be handed over only if charges against him were proved. Subsequently they denied his existence in Afghanistan and now they very much admit his existence there, but are adamant that he would not be surrendered to the United States, which has redoubled its efforts to nab him following the bombings on US missions in East Africa.

Meanwhile the Osama affair has fuelled strong anti-American sentiments in Pakistan. A fundamentalist organisation ‘Jamaat 313" has threatened that if America attacked Afghanistan to capture Laden then they will target top ten leaders of the world.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s name figures in the list along with the American Secretary of State for National Security, UN Secretary General and British Premier Tony Blair among others. (UNI)

US urges India, Pak to resume dialogue to defuse tension

WASHINGTON, Aug 12: The United States has expressed concern over rising tensions between India and Pakistan and said it wanted both countries to exercise restraint and resume the dialogue process to resolve their differences peacefully.

We are again urging dialogue and restraint and hope that the tensions that are occurring between the two sides can be worked out peacefully, National Security Council spokesman at the White House David Leavy told reporters here yesterday.

Reiterating Washington’s stand that dialogue has to carry the day, he said we want both sides to get back to that (Lahore declaration), get back to discussions in the bilateral context and move beyond what has happened in the last several days, he said.

We are concerned about rising tensions. It is in no one’s interest ... To have these kind of (incidents) over the skies both in India and Pakistan, he said referring to Pakistan firing missile at an Indian helicopter a day after one of its reconnaissance aircraft was shot down.

Leavy appealed to the two countries to adhere to the 1991 agreement under which aircraft of neither side would fly within 10 kms of each other’s territory. We would urge both sides to follow those procedures that are set in place and to really try to lower tensions.

Leavy ruled out the US acting as a referee between India and Pakistan and said Washington’s approach would be to get both sides talking bilaterally.

They have a framework for discussions. That was the Lahore declaration that they put forward earlier this spring. So there is a road map there is a process in place. And it is our intent to have both parties engage in that process, not for the us to mediate directly, the spokesman said.

He said President Bill Clinton intended to make his proposed tour to South Asia despite the recent incidents.

The President believes he can go and he can engage both parties in a broad dialogue and that what has happened in the last two days shouldn’t necessarily work against that, the spokesman said.

We have tremendous interests in the region, both bilaterally with each country, but also in the subcontinent. Those include non-proliferation, security, arms control as well as economics, he added. (PTI)

Water war looms between thirsty Pak provinces

ISLAMABAD, Aug 12: "In the next five to 10 years the high acceleration in depletion of water resources in Pakistan may stir up disputes among its four provinces," warns Federal Minister for Water and Power Gohar Ayub Khan.

The Minister says he specifically fears a water war between the two populous provinces of Punjab and Sindh.

The warning does not come as a surprise given the fact that this summer all Pakistan’s major cities including the Capital Islamabad has suffered from acute water shortage.

In Islamabad the situation was serious enough for the country’s premier nuclear research, PINSTECH or the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology to have to undergo cuts in water supply.

The Sindh Research Council has identified the miscalculation in the water allocated from the Indus river, the country’s lifeline, by the Central Government as the main reason for water shortage in the coastal province.

The State-run Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) is in charge of water allocation under the 1991 water accord. The Council says the loss of water has cost an estimated 5.4 million dollar loss to Sindh’s agriculture sector alone.

According to its findings, Punjab, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s home province which is the agriculturally richest in Pakistan, was the main beneficiary of this uneven sharing. Other causes included the failure of early spring rainfall in the northern areas.

Similar reports of serious water scarcity have been reported from Balochistan, the largest of Pakistan’s provinces.

The authorities in Balochistan say a dangerous shortfall in water reserves in the provincial Capital, Quetta, could make the city uninhabitable within one decade.

In Quetta the groundwater level has sunk to 700 feet from 500 feet. The provincial Government has already banned the digging of new wells in Quetta and has asked Islamabad and International Financial Institutions to help in the building of dams nearby.

Officials in the Federal Government say Pakistan’s food import bill is rising on account of population increases and declining output as a result of reduced availability of water. Pakistan’s population is expected to double in the next 25 years.

At a recent seminar on ‘The politics of water’ organised by the Islamabad-based Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), a Non-Governmental Organisation, experts cited four principal human failures which aggravated water scarcity.

These include the reluctance to treat water as an economic as well as public good, excessive reliance in many places on inefficient institutions for water and waste water services, fragmented management of water between sectors and institutions and inadequate recognition of the health and environmental concerns associated with current practices.

Indicative of the magnitude of the problem is the fact, as the Federal Minister says, that an estimated storage capacity of 6.2 million acre feet of water is needed every five to ten years to satisfy Pakistan’s needs.

Pakistan’s total per capita freshwater consumption in 1995 was estimated to be 3,603 cubic metres. The total annual freshwater withdrawals were 153.4 billion cubic metres that is 32.8 percent of the total available water resources.

Of this 98 percent is used for agriculture with the rest available for industrial, energy and domestic consumption. Experts say that in Pakistan the water losses from irrigation are one of the highest in the world.

Shaheen Rafi Khan, consultant with SDPI, says Pakistan has one of the best irrigation systems in the world. The total available water at the farm gate is 132.05 million acre feet.

But losses in the process of reaching the water to the farmer are as high as 40 percent: About 25 percent from the canal head to the outlet and another 15 percent from the outlet to the farm gate. In addition about 30 percent water is lost from the farm gate to the fields.

Last year the Federal Government vigorously campaigned for the construction of the Kalabagh Dam on the Indus river. When completed it would irrigate 4 million acres of land. But the dam plan was criticised by all Pakistan’s provinces barring Punjab. They said it would only benefit Punjab.

Sindh province said the proposed dam would cut into its share of the Indus river’s under the 1991 water accord. It will also lower the volume of water discharged into the Arabian sea, resulting in erosion and degradation of the delta.

Prime Minister Sharif was forced by the storm of protests to delay the construction of the dam until a consensus is evolved among the provinces.

The ‘Dawn’, a leading English-language daily has urged the Islamabad Government to redress the water grievances of the tailenders’, which should be far less difficult after the conclusion of the 1991 water accord.

"The Council of Common Interests meets all too infrequently and has almost been reduced to a moribund body. If it was given the importance it deserves as a constitutional mechanism, each province would have had a better understanding of the needs of the others and misunderstandings and apprehensions could have been largely avoided," the newspaper advised.

The ‘Dawn’ has demanded that the Government make concerted efforts to compensate the loss of storage capacity due to heavy siltation in two of the country’s largest dams, Mangla and Tarbela.

The Kalabagh dam scheme is the Government’s answer to the problem. But how long would it take to construct the dam if all the provinces were to agree to it today?

Federal Water Minister Gohar Ayub answers. "If we start today, it would take 15 years - five years to prepare the feasibility, two and a half for calling international tenders and eight years for construction and completion." In the meanwhile, the water crisis will worsen in Pakistan. (IPS)

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