Israel nabs Palestinian suspects, peace plan lags

JERUSALEM, Dec 15: Israeli forces has detained at least 14 Palestinians in the West Bank in a new sweep for militants as international peace efforts looked likely to be eclipsed by wider Middle East developments.

An Israeli army spokesman yesterday said 12 "terror suspects" were seized overnight around Ramallah, political base of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, and two in the Bethlehem area. Troops continued scouring the city after daybreak.

Last night, the Israeli army killed a Palestinian at the Gaza strip’s flashpoint border with Egypt.

Israeli military sources said forces opened fire at Palestinian gunmen approaching them near the frontier town of Rafah around midnight and that one of them was hit. Palestinian security officials said Israel had handed over a man’s body from the scene.

On Friday, the army killed two militants in the West Bank. Hamas, an Islamic group sworn to Israel’s destruction which has spearheaded suicide bombings in a more than two-year-old Palestinian independence uprising, issued new calls for revenge.

A "quartet" of West Asia mediators was due to meet next week in Washington on a peace plan initiated more that six months ago.

But diplomats said it was unlikely the so-called road map for three-stage rapprochement between Israel and the Palestinians, culminating in security for the former and statehood for the latter, would be completed as scheduled on December 20.

"The signal the United States is sending us is that you should not expect a completed road map. Our side is arguing back on that," a European diplomat said on Friday. The mediators — the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations — broadly agree on what the plan should include but disagree on when to release it.

Israelis and Palestinians disagree on the fundamental question of how specific the plan should be.

Israeli general elections are scheduled for January 28.

"Washington has made it clear that no final plan will be presented before the new Government is in power," an official in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office said. "Of course, that new Government will then have to approve the plan."

A Palestinian official said that demonstrated the United States was again acting as Israel’s guardian ally.

"This shows that the American policy intervenes only for the good of Sharon, not for the good of the peace process," Palestinian official Saeb Erekat told agencies.

But most in the region believe the road map will go nowhere until the Iraq issue is resolved. The United States has demanded Baghdad give up its alleged weapons of mass destruction voluntarily or face military action to disarm it.

Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz was to leave on Saturday night for a week of high-level talks in New York and Washington, the official in Sharon’s office said.

Mofaz was due to meet US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who in a Washington policy speech on Thursday blamed the West Asia stalemate on Palestinian "terror".

Washington backs Israel’s stance that Arafat bears responsibility for suicide bombings and other militant attacks, and has called for new Palestinian leaders to be elected.

Arafat denies culpability and says Israeli countermeasures in the territories have undermined his security forces’ capabilities. On Saturday, he hinted that his continued popularity would be proven at a Palestinian ballot tentatively scheduled for January 20.

"Palestinian people will decide the new Palestinian leadership in the coming elections," Arafat told reporters at his battered Ramallah headquarters on Saturday.

At least 1,720 Palestinians and 670 Israelis have died in the violence which erupted in September 2000, after peace talks stalled. (AGENCIES)

New anti-sleaze laws on the anvil in Britain

LONDON, Dec 15: The British Government plans to introduce new anti-sleaze laws to clean up political life even as a senior Labour Party leader launched a frontal attack on the British media for "indulging in a massive campaign of abuse and distortion" in the case of Cherie Blair, wife of the Prime Minister.

Under the proposed anti-sleaze laws, MPs will no longer be protected by the right of Parliamentary privilege, a centuries-old rule which gives them immunity from allegations that they acted corruptly in the Houses of Parliament.

The new proposals, being drawn up by Home Secretary David Blunkett, are expected to be included in a new bill presented to Parliament next year. There would also be a separate offence of corruption, punishable by up to seven years in jail, covering MPs as well as public officials.

A senior Home office source said that the Home Secretary was looking to revive these proposals in the next year.

The rule was amended by Conservative Prime Minister John Major to enable the tory MP Neil Hamilton to sue the Guardian for alleging that he was corrupt.

The courts originally ruled that they could not hear the libel case because it would involve them in making a ruling on whether hamilton had or had not broken commons rules, which was matter purely for Parliament.

Hamilton subsequently ducked out of going to court, but another tory MP, the former Cabinet Minister Jonathan Aitken, sued the Guardian and world in action for alleging that he received commissions from arms sales.

The case failed and Aitken was jailed for perjury. There was no law that would have enabled the police to investigate allegations that Aitken or Hamilton was corrupt.

Twy MPs who were caught accepting 1,000 pounds from an undercover journalist were punished with suspension from the commons, but were immune from prosecution.

"These anti-corruption measures would stop Aitken-type offences where officials abuse parliamentary privileges," the Independent, daily, said today quoting Home office sources.

In a strongly-worded attack on the media for its "despicable" attacks on Cherie Blair, the outspoken Secretary of State for International Development Clare Short said: "this kind of crummy journalism must stop."

After two weeks of obsessive media attacks on Cherie Blair, "it is time for fair-minded people to stand back and admit that she has been unfairly hunted and hurt and that a halt should be called to the frenzy," she wrote in the Sunday Telegraph today.

"The absolutely worst thing that she did was to tell the number 10 press office that peter foster was not her financial adviser - which he was not. This left them with the impression that cherie was denying that he helped her buy the flats in Bristol, and thus they unintentionally misled the press.

Stating that it had been an awful two weeks for Cherie and very sad two weeks for political journalism, Clare said "I feel the quality of the whole of British politics and public life is being damaged by this kind of crummy journalism." (PTI)

EU summit failed to tear down the last Berlin wall

NICOSIA, Dec 15: The European Union leaders may have celebrated the union’s historic Copenhagen enlargement summit as the final end of the divisions of the cold war - but the last Berlin wall in Europe still stands.

The demarcation line cuts across Cyprus. It is 180 kilometres long, at times only a few metres wide, at times a strip of several kilometres’ width, with Greek cypriots living to one side and Turkish cypriots to the other.

"We have full European Union entry and half a solution," Greek cypriot media commented yesterday. As long as the island’s 28-year-long division is not resolved, European Union law will hold only in the southern ethnic Greek part of Cyprus.

However, the door was still open for the Turkish north, commentators continued to hope. Nonetheless, according to Turkish editorials, Rauf Denktash, the Turkish north’s leader, is regarded by many as having ruined the chances for a solution - whether deliberately or not.

Denktash did not attend the negotiations in copenhagen as he was in hospital in Ankara, still recuperating from his October heart operation in New York.

Prior to the summit, however, he repeatedly criticized the international pressure put onto the two Cypriot sides to reach a deal, insisting he would not accept "a forced marriage".

Now, Denktash can boast of having resisted the United Nations’ call to use the "historic chance" for the reunification of the island in the context of its EU entry.

After the failed negotiations in Copenhagen the talks are now scheduled to continue on Cyprus, with February, 28, as a deadline set by the EU.

"And if they talk for 100 years they will not move an inch," a Turkish commentary Saturday said in despair of the situation. "It’s over," claimed another editorial. Whilst the Greek Cypriots toasted the beginning of a new era in the island’s south on Friday night, the Cypriots in the Turkish controlled part of Nicosia took to the streets in protest.

Several thousand people demonstrated in front of Denktash’s official residence, shouting "Denktash traitor". The Turkish Cypriot leader had never been called this before, the Turkish newspaper Radikal noted.

By comparison, Greek-Cypriot President Glafkos Clerides - whose negotiation skills are seen as exceeding those of Denktash, as even Turkish Cypriots admit - is full of confidence. Cyprus’ big national goal to be admitted to the EU had been reached, he declared.

"I call upon our Turkish Cypriot fellow citizens not to lose faith in the necessity to live together in prosperity in a reunited Cyprus," he said in an address on Friday night and announced an economic aid package for Turkish Cyprus in the near future.

The Greek Cypriot media followed the same line. "Now the new aim is solidarity with our Turkish fellow citizens. We (the greek cypriots) can’t abandon them," the newspaper phileleftheros wrote.

For the Greek Cypriots, who have an average annual income of more than 19,000 euros, the entry to the European Union had not predominantly been about money anyway.

The EU membership rather signified the hope for greater security on the island.

"We have wealth. What we don’t have is security and stability. And that we will hopefully find soon in the arms of the European Union," a commentary of the Cypriot television said. (DPA)

Catholics seen gaining in N Ireland’s numbers game

BELFAST, Dec 15: In Bombay street, an address which resonates with Northern Ireland’s violent history, houses crowd up against the high "peaceline" dividing West Belfast’s Roman Catholic falls district from the Protestant Shankill.

But in Cupar Way, where tourists taking one of the "troubles tours" have photographs taken by the ugly 12 metre concrete and mesh wall separating the two streets, things are different.

Here on the shankill side of the line, which has divided West Belfast since the turbulent summer of 1969 when the old Bombay street was burned down by a protestant mob, the homes are further back, separated from the wall by a stretch of wasteland.

Many Catholic districts of Belfast are bursting at the seams, while some protestant zones feel half-empty, illustrating a demographic shift which may have huge political consequences for the future of the British-ruled province.

"Belfast is now a city with perhaps a small Catholic majority," Eamonn Phoenix, politics lecturer at Belfast’s stranmillis college, told media.

"Historically that’s terribly symbolic, here you have a city which was the unionist citadel, industrially, economically... Which had a catholic population of a quarter until the 1960s."

The changing make-up of Northern Irish society will be confirmed later this week, when census data collected last year is due to be released. It is expected to show the Catholic population at an historic high. Perhaps nowhere else would you hear talk of "winning" or "losing" a census, but in Northern Ireland — whose boundaries were drawn to ensure a protestant majority that favoured continued British rule — religious demographics matter.

"Census results in Northern Ireland are highly significant politically, in the sense that since time immemorial protestant and Catholic have been equated with (pro-British) unionist and (pro-Irish) nationalist," said Phoenix.

"Essentially they are an index of the way the political wind is blowing on the major question of the union (with Britain) versus Irish unity."

The 1998 Good Friday peace agreement, which aimed to end three decades of bloodshed, enshrined the "principle of consent" which states the province will remain under British rule for as long as the majority of its population wish it to.

When Northern Ireland was created in 1921 protestants who wanted to remain part of Britain were in a two-thirds to one-third majority over Catholics, who would have preferred independence in the newly-formed Irish free state to the south.

The consensus among experts is that this month’s census data will show the catholic population has risen to 44-46 percent.

A number of factors complicate predictions for the future — the Catholic birthrate is slackening and migration patterns have changed since the guerrilla ceasefires of the 1990s — but many predict a 50/50 split within a generation.

In a recent speech in the Irish republic, Mitchel Mclaughlin, chairman of the Irish Republican Army’s political ally Sinn Fein, said it was a question of "when, not if, a majority in the north favours Irish unity".

Republicans, who backed the IRA’s war to drive Britain out of the province, are keen to highlight the rising Catholic population, and some predict a United Ireland by 2016, the centenary of the dublin easter rising against British rule. But recent calls for a referendum on the province’s future have come from unionists, with Northern Ireland’s mainprotestant leader david trimble saying a so-called border poll would "take the border out of the political debate for many years to come".

Their confidence stems from the fact that, while protestants who favour a United Ireland are a tiny fraction, a significant minority of Catholics are thought to favour the status quo.

"There’s always been a proportion of Catholics who, opinion poll evidence would suggest, have been supportive of maintaining the union," said Bob Osborne, professor of policy studies at the University of Ulster.

"Now while that proportion has gone down over the years, it’s still perhaps one in four or one in five. Whether they would keep that view if it were put to the test in a referendum we don’t know."

Most analysts believe the most immediate result of the census figures will be to add to the mood of pessimism among unionists, while fuelling the growing confidence of nationalism.

"Nationalists...Will trumpet this as the beginning of the end, and protestants are so nervous at the moment they will tend to believe what they are told by nationalists rather than taking a robust look at the figures themselves," said Osborne.

"A lot of protestants feel the skids are under them and Sinn Fein shouting ‘we are on our way’ will frighten them even more." (AGENCIES)

Bush for active participation of Indian Americans in politics

EDISON, NEW JERSEY, Dec 15: Lauding the contribution made by Indian Americans in all walks of American life, US President George W Bush has said while their dedication to the democratic process was noteworthy, there was need to encourage the emergence of a well-defined Indian American political identity.

In a message read out at a convention organised by the Indian Forum for Political Educaiton (IAFEP), Bush praised the contribution made by the Indian-Americans in various fields of American life and called for encouraging their participation in local and national politics. Indian Ambassador to the US Lalit Mansingh said it was time for the Indian American community to move towards the mainstream and to nurture the next generation Indian Americans to be involved in the political process.

Almost all speakers at the convention stressed the need for the younger generation of Indian-Americans to join and play an increasingly effective role in the political field, warning that otherwise they will face the risk of being marginalized as a group.

New Jersey Governor James E McGreevy spoke about growing relations between India and the United States and said both shared the basic values of democracy and freedom.

Urging Indian-Americans to actively participate in the political life of the country, he said "what we need is your involvement and commitment, whether it is for the democratic party or the Republican Party."

Addressing the convention organised by the forum to celebrate its 20th anniversary, its newly elected President Sudhir M Parikh stressed on the need to put in place a framework to encourage the emergence of a well-defined Indian-American political identity.

While emphasizing the need for strengthening Indo-American relations in political and trade fields, Pariksh said the homeland paradigm and politics are becoming more and more irrelevant as Indian Americans make a success of life in America.

"US politics is our politics. And to be players in the great American democracy, money and numerical strength are key factors. And to achieve real political empowerment, the political architecture, which our community has attempted to construct over the past decade and a half needs some serious reworking, and urgent upgrading in an intelligent manner," he said.

The Forum, Parikh said, intends to work closely with members of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, the various Congressional Committees, the agencies of administration, think tanks and the media to push the Indian American political agenda.

One of the major tasks of the Forum, Parikh said, would be ensure that the coming generations of Indian-American do not face discrimination in any field.

"Under no circumstances should we tolerate discrimination" and the forum will resolutely fight this menace, he added.

But to ensure that, "we have to be politically alive and deeply involved in the affairs of this nation," he told about 700 Indian Americans who attended the function. (PTI)

Nepal ready to hold polls within six months: pm

KATHMANDU, Dec 15: The Nepalese Government has said parliamentary elections could be held within the next six months to avert a constitutional crisis.

"As the present Government does not want to precipitate any crisis, we may conduct elections within the next six months," Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand told reporters in Pokhara yesterday.

Chand had earlier said that elections could only be held after restoring peace and security in the country.

There is a provision in the constitution that requires Parliament within a six-month period.

The Prime Minister spelt out a time-frame for elections a day after visiting US Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca reiterated her Government’s support for strengthening democracy in Nepal under the constitutional process.

Rocca expressed the US Government’s support to Nepalese democracy and fight against terror during her meetings with leaders of various political parties here.

Chand also said that the recent royal audience to leaders of two major parties - Girija Prasad Koirala and Madhav Kumar Nepal - will open doors for solving the present political crisis in the country, the report said.

"I am happy that they met the king and discussed the crisis facing the country," he said.

Chand also said that the recent Royal audience to leaders of two major parties - Girija Prasad Koirala and Madhav Kumar Nepal - will open doors for solving the present political crisis in the country, the report said. The Prime Minister also reiterated that the Maoists are "terrorists," the `Kathmandu Post’ newspaper reported.

"The Deuba Government’s decision to term the Maoists as terrorists is valid for the present Government," he said, adding that the cabinet has not taken any decision to revoke the price tags on the heads of Maoists leaders.

Chand, however, blamed the leaders of the other political parties for not helping the Government in its efforts to bring the maoists to the negotiating table through mediators.

The political parties are not creating an atmosphere conducive for talks with the Maoists, Chand was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, more than 40,000 demonstrators marched through the streets of Kathmandu today, demanding immediate parliamentary elections and protesting the king’s sacking of an elected premier.

The protest was organised by the United Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Nepal, the country’s second largest political party. (PTI)

India must re-think its policy to not talk to Pak: Jamali

ISLAMABAD, Dec 15: Accusing India of adopting an intransigent policy towards Pakistan, the newly elected Pakistan Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali has said New Delhi should review its policy to avoid talks with Islamabad as it was "not at all good" for the region.

"Apart from Indian attitude at Government to Government level, what I understand, India is not even ready to talk to pakistan," he told reporters here while inaugurating an exhibition today.

Stating that he hoped India would resume dialogue after installation of his Government, which formally ended the military rule, he said "whatever reservation, if there was any, India had about military Government, was no more there and we were expecting that with elected Government in place in Pakistan, India would show flexibility and initiate dialogue".

"My Government and people of Pakistan were not expecting this Indian attitude and this would not be at all good for the region" Jamali said.

India has to re-think and review its stance about initiating a dialogue with Pakistan, he said adding Indian intransigence could not be tolerated for long.

India continuously shunned Pakistan’s request for dialogue to resolve all outstanding issues. "So many times Pakistan has offered India to sit across the table, talk and discuss all outstanding issues with us," he alleged.

To a question about extending invitation to Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Jamali said so far he had only heard the Indian Prime Minister.

"I have not seen or met Prime Minister Vajpayee but I heard him. Whatever Indian Prime Minister is saying about our relations is beyond my comprehension," Jamali claimed. Rocca is scheduled to arrive in Islamabad today to hold talks with Jamali and President Pervez Musharraf on a host of issues, including Indo-Pakistan relations. (PTI)

Man arrested in anti-US plot regrets not completing mission

KARACHI, Dec 15: The main suspect detained in a plot to kill two US diplomats in a suicide bombing told Pakistani investigators he regretted not achieving "martyrdom," police said today.

Asif Zaheer, the 28-year-old son of a retired Government employee, is also wanted over a May 8 suicide attack in the southern port city of Karachi that killed 11 French engineers and three Pakistanis, police said.

Police said they found in Zaheer’s possession the registration book of the Toyota Corolla used in the anti-French attack. He himself was supposed to have been the suicide bomber then but backed out at the last minute, said the provincial police chief, Kamal Shah.

Instead, Zaheer was preparing to detonate an explosives -Laden Volkswagen bug to kill the US diplomats in Karachi, Shah said. Zaheer was arrested yesterday with two younger men allegedly involved in the plot.

"The only regret I have is that I could not secure the status of martyr," Zaheer told investigators, according to another police source.

"I can tell you something (about the plot) but cannot give you all the details, as that would reduce my reward in heaven," Zaheer was quoted as saying.

Zaheer reportedly said he had chosen a Volkswagen bug for the attack against the diplomats "because the trunk is in the front of the car and can fit a lot of explosives."

Police said Zaheer was also wanted over a suspected sectarian murder three years ago in Rawalpindi, Islamabad’s twin city.

Police said Zaheer would be presented before a court tomorrow. (AFP)

11 Nepal Maoists, one soldier killed in clashes

KATHMANDU, Dec 15: Eleven Maoist rebels and one soldier were killed in clashes in Nepal, state-run radio announced today.

"One Army security guard was killed and two others were gravely injured when they were attacked by seven Maoist terrorists at Talawaang locality in Rolpa district, 360 kilometres West of Kathmandu," the radio report said.

"The Maoist rebels and the army guards had clashed in Lamjung, Surkhet, Bardiya, Rolpa in Western Nepal and Kabhrepalanchok in the east resulting in the deaths of 11 Maoist terrorists," it said.

The Army also recovered firearms, bullets, explosives and pipe bombs in the operations, it said.

The rebels’ fight for a Communist Republic in Nepal has claimed more than 7,300 lives since 1996. (AFP)

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