Pakistan arrests 41 Indian fishermen

KARACHI, Dec 7: Pakistan has arrested 41 Indian fishermen and seized their seven boats for alleged illegal entry and fishing in Pakistani waters, police said today.

Coast guards from the maritime security agency handed over the fishermen to police yesterday, said Athar Rashid Butt, a Karachi police official.

The fishermen were arrested late Sunday about 200 kilometers southeast of Karachi, Pakistan’s main port on the Arabian Sea, he said.

On Tuesday, the fishermen were produced in court which ordered them held in jail, Butt said. (AP)

Vatican flags Christianophobia as new social evil

PARIS, Dec 7: A Vatican diplomatic campaign to have "Christianophobia" recognised as an evil equal to hatred of Jews and Muslims is causing concern among some Christian activists and diplomats who draft new human rights rules.

The discreet drive, which the Roman Catholic Church first mentioned publicly last Friday, seeks official recognition by the United Nations and other international organisations of discrimination against and persecution of Christians.

The holy see is pressing this point despite two setbacks this year when the European Union refused to refer to the continent’s Christian heritage in its new Constitution and turned down a traditionalist Catholic as a new Commissioner.

In discussing religious bias, the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva now speaks of "anti-semitism, Islamophobia and Christianophobia," terms the current general Assembly in New York is due to approve later this month.

"Obviously we have seen many countries where Christian minorities are in danger, but we don’t think this is the appropriate way to really ensure protection," said Alessandra Aula of Franciscans international, a Catholic pressure group.

"What we fear is that this is the way to start eroding universal human rights," she said from her office in Geneva. "You will then have Sikhs and Buddhists and all the others coming and claiming rights. Where does it end?"

This campaign has been so discreet that the term was hardly known until the Vatican’s Foreign Minister, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, said last Friday that the holy see had insisted the UN list it along with anti-semitism and Islamophobia.

"It should be recognised that the war against terrorism, even though necessary, had as one of its side-effects the spread of ‘Christianophobia’ in vast areas of the globe," he told a US-organised conference on religious freedom in Rome.

The World Council of Churches (WCC), which is also based in Geneva and unites over 340 protestant and Orthodox Churches around the globe, said it was not consulted on the new term.

"There is always a risk with these kinds of labels," said WCC International Affairs Director Peter Weiderud. "It’s not helpful to look at the problem as one religion against another."

In the United States, a major evangelical protestant publisher and a prominent religious rights activist also told reuters they had never heard the term.

The Vatican has suggested the organisation for security and cooperation in Europe in Vienna include Christianophobia as an evil to be monitored, diplomats there say. But the OSCE annual session now under way in sofia was unlikely to fully back that.

"We don’t want any more terms ending in ‘Phobia’," a diplomat there said. "Once you single out something beyond racism and Xenophobia, you have to list so many of them."

Doudou Diene, the UN special rapporteur on racism and Xenophobia, said specifying certain religions was acceptable if the universal nature of religious discrimination was also noted.

He said the problem arose because some countries tried "to put a hierarchy among different forms of discrimination."

Vatican officials say privately they could not stand aside while Judaism and Islam got special attention at the UN, which demands regular status reports from member countries on issues officially recognised as problems of international concern.

A US Jesuit expert on religious freedom noted Christian minorities were persecuted in countries like Pakistan and India.

"I think there is Christianophobia out there and it’s not recognised," said drew Christiansen, deputy editor of America magazine in New York. "Christians have a sense of being a privileged majority, so we don’t see ourselves as victims."

But even he had to confess he had not heard the term Hristianophobia until the human rights commission invited him to discuss the issue at a meeting last month. (AGENCIES)

Asia religious leaders join to fight radicals

YOGYAKARTA, INDONESIA, Dec 7: Leaders at a 13-nation interfaith conference that ends today said they would go home with new ideas on working together against violence-prone religious radicals and solving problems that fuel extremism.

The two-day meeting had begun with a call for tolerance by President Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia and a condemnation of terrorism as the enemy of all religions.

Participants at the international dialogue on interfaith cooperation ranged from Buddhist Monks in orange robes to Muslim Muftis and Catholic cardinals. Jews, protestants, Hindus and confucionists were also on hand.

"I think the conference has been extremely successful for us from Papua New Guinea," that Nation’s Social Welfare and Development Minister Lady Carol Kidu told .

"It has brought some of our very major faith-based leaders together in a way we have probably never been together before ... When we go home we’ve made this resolution to maintain this ongoing dialogue and expand it."

She mentioned a talk with a Philippine expert on conflict resolution as providing useful ideas on solving her country’s problems of communal and urban violence.

Such problems are not unique among the nations at the meeting. Majority Buddhist Thailand is struggling to cope with a restive Muslim minority, as is the mostly Christian Philippines.

Indonesia, whose Government helped sponsor the meeting, suffers from sporadic deadly Christian-Islamic clashes and in recent years from bombings that in the worst case killed 202 people in Bali, mostly tourists.

Eighty-eight of those victims were Australian. Australia and Indonesia’s second-largest Muslim organisation, Muhammadiyah, were the other sponsors of the meeting in the ancient royal capital of Yogyakarta in Indonesia’s Muslim heartland.

The Bali attack as well as other blasts in Indonesia and elsewhere in southeast Asia have been blamed on Jemaah Islamiah, a southeast Asian militant Islamic group linked to Al-Qaeda.

Komaruddin Hidayat, a religious philosphy lecturer in Indonesia, told he was optimistic the meeting would make things tougher for terrorists.

"It gives good impact in declaring that we are against terrorism, so it narrows up the space for them if Government and society can be working hand in hand."

More than 100 religious and community leaders and interfaith experts from Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, east Timor and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) were delegates at the forum, held at a Luxury Resort Hotel where tight security included an armoured truck mounted with a machinegun.

But ASEAN member Malaysia, a Muslim country whose nationals have been among the leaders of violent militant groups like Jemaah Islamiah, was effectively a non-participant, belatedly sending just one representative from its embassy in Indonesia while no other country had a delegation of fewer than five.

Despite that absence, delegates from elsewhere in ASEAN saw the meeting as worthwhile.

"It really broadens our perspective on how to obtain peace," said Genesis Udang, president of the Evangelical ministers of the Philippines.

A Catholic colleague, Elmer Abacain, who works in a peace programme with other religions, said he would go home with useful ideas on bringing youth into interfaith efforts.

"With the sharing coming from (other) countries, we have a new approach, for instance the idea of the young people to come together ... Trying to erase the prejudices and biases of one another," he said.

Other delegates said they had picked up tips on how to deal with social problems like AIDS, family violence and poverty which can breed religious extremism.

Participants were spending today in closed-door plenary sessions discussing the outcomes of various workshops the previous day and how to implement their recommendations.

Indonesian President Yudhoyono wants the interfaith dialogue to become a permanent process involving more countries.

He told the delegates on Monday that tolerance was "imperative to human and social development" while terrorism "must be regarded as the enemy of all religions". (AGENCIES)

US army opens new probe of Tillman’s Afghan death

WASHINGTON, Dec 7: The US Army has opened a new investigation into the circumstances of the April death in Afghanistan of Cpl Pat Tillman, a former professional football player killed in a "probable" friendly fire incident, officials said.

The investigation was ordered on November 3 by then-acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee and was prompted by questions raised by Tillman’s family about his death in a remote Canyon in southeastern Afghanistan, Army officials said. One official said the investigation could trigger criminal charges if any US personnel are deemed culpable in his death.

Tillman played for four years in the national football league but walked away from a 3.6 million dollars contract with the Arizona cardinals to sign up as an elite army ranger.

His mother has accused the military of burning her son’s uniform to try to hide the circumstances of his April 22 death, and his father has said the initial investigation was a lie.

The new investigation is looking into the circumstances of his death, decisions made by commanders away from the scene that may have contributed, and actions taken by the military after he died, officials said.

Army rangers opened fire on comrades after a series of missteps and miscommunications, the initial investigation found, but it did not lead to criminal charges.

One person from Tillman’s platoon faced formal administrative charges, while four others, including an officer, were discharged from the rangers but not kicked out of the army, said Sgt Kyle Cosner, a spokesman for Army Special Operations command at Fort Bragg, north Carolina. Two other officers were given Reprimands, Cosner said.

Initial official statements indicated he had been killed by enemy fire when his convoy was ambushed by insurgents.

"Leading his rangers without regard for his own safety, Tillman was shot and killed while focusing his efforts on the elimination of the enemy forces and the protection of his team members," Army Special Operations command said in a statement on April 30 that did not mention the possibility of friendly fire even though investigators already had received sworn statements to that effect.

US Central Command issued a statement on May 29 after the completion of the initial investigation, saying Tillman "died as a probable result of friendly fire while his unit was engaged in combat with enemy forces."

The terms friendly fire and fratricide are used by the military to describe an accidental or mistaken attack on one’s own forces or allies.

The army declined to identify the officer carrying out the investigation, but one official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it is a general familiar with ranger operations and tactics. "he will look at it from top to bottom," the official said.

The new investigation was announced after the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times published stories that questioned official versions of Tillman’s death.

The post cited internal army documents stating Tillman’s death followed a series of botched communications, a misguided order to divide his platoon over the objection of its leader, and undisciplined firing by fellow rangers.

The Los Angeles Times quoted Afghan police, militia commanders and local residents as saying there was no evidence insurgents opened fire in the incident, and that rangers overreacted to an explosion by a land mine or roadside bomb and fired wildly at Tillman and other rangers. (AGENCIES)

Bush, Iraqi leader vow Jan 30 elections

WASHINGTON, Dec 7: President George W Bush and interim Iraqi President Ghazi Al-Yawar vowed to press ahead with January 30 elections in Iraq despite a surge in violence that has killed more than 70 people in recent days.

The meeting also followed an attack on the US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in which 12 people died. Bush linked the attack with the disruption in Iraq, saying it showed that "the terrorists are still on the move".

"They want us to leave Saudi Arabia. They want us to leave Iraq. They want us to grow timid and weary in the face of their willingness to kill randomly, kill innocent people. That’s why these elections in Iraq are very important," Bush said yesterday.

Yawar, seated beside Bush in the Oval office, came to Washington with a message that Iraqis want to vote on Jan 30, and that only "some politicians" want to boycott the elections.

"Right now, we’re faced with the armies of darkness, who have no objective but to undermine the political process and incite civil war in Iraq. But I want to assure the whole world that this will never, ever happen, that we in Iraq are committed to move along," he said.

"After all these sacrifices, there’s no way on earth that we will let it go in vain," Yawar said. "This is very important. Victory is not only possible, it’s a fact. We can see it. It’s there."

The United States is raising the US troop deployment in Iraq by 15,000 to try to provide security for the elections. Insurgents, meanwhile, appear to be able to strike with impunity.

Bush said US commanders, working with US Ambassador John Negroponte and Iraqi security forces, will do everything possible to make election sites secure.

"You can never guarantee 100 percent security. But the Iraqi people have the chance to say to the world, ‘we choose democracy over terrorism,"’ he said.

Voter turnout of 60 percent could be enough to ensure legitimacy for Iraq’s elections, provided those who vote represent Iraqi society, one Iraqi minister said.

"Between 60 to 65 percent turnout should be an acceptable level that would give legitimacy to the country," Public Works Minister Nasreen Berwari told a forum not far from the White House. "The problem is not the percentage the problem is the representation within that percentage ... We hope to achieve comprehensive representation."

Bush is hoping successful Iraqi elections will improve the climate for peace in the west Asia that will allow for resolution of the long-running Palestinian-Israeli issue.

As part of that process, he also met with Jordan’s King Abdullah yesterday. Bush is seeking to advance the process now that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat is dead.

"I intend to work very closely with his majesty to seize that moment for the good of the Palestinian people and for the good of the Israelis, so that we can achieve peace that I know is on your mind," he told Abdullah.

Yawar said it was unfair to call the Iraqi insurgents Sunnis. Saddam Hussein’s minority Sunnis ran the country and it’s Shi’ite majority before he was toppled by the US-led invasion.

"These are not Sunnis," he said. "These are a mix of people who have one thing in common: Hatred to the Iraqi society and hatred to democracy, people who are trying to stop us from having our first elections," he said. (AGENCIES)

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