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Sri Lankan PM says COLOMBO, Feb 12: Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe today accused President Chandrika Kumaratunga of seriously jeopardising. .....more Khan’s nuke proliferation strory reads like spy thriller WASHINGTON, Feb 12: The details of the clandestine nuclear proliferation to ......more Saudi militants step up battle for sympathy RIYADH, Feb 12: Saudi militants waging a campaign of violence in Islam’s ...more China
to sign new BEIJING, Feb 12: China today said it will sign new agreements with India in the cultural field, including setting up the first cultural centre in each others’ ......more |
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Roadside bomb kills 2 BAGHDAD, Feb 12: Two US soldiers were killed and another wounded by a roadside bomb in western Baghdad, the US military said ......more Explosion near Japan troops’ base in Iraq SAMAWA, IRAQ, Feb 12: An explosion today blew a small hole in a road and smashed windows in a residential area of Samawa in southern Iraq .....more Indonesian Court jails man for hiding Bali bomber BALI, INDONESIA, Feb 12: An Indonesian man was sentenced to six years in jail today for hiding one of the bombers.......more Fresh
tremors jolt JAKARTA, Feb 12: The death toll from last week’s earthquake in Indonesia’s remote Papua region has risen to 37, officials. ....more |
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Sri Lankan PM says President jeopardising peace bid COLOMBO, Feb 12: Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe today accused President Chandrika Kumaratunga of seriously jeopardising the island’s peace process by sacking 39 non-Cabinet Ministers. In a two-page letter to Kumaratunga, the embattled Prime Minister said her action in sacking 39 non-Cabinet Ministers had crippled the Government’s ability to pursue efforts aimed at ending three decades of ethnic bloodshed. The Government will not be able to honour its obligations under the Norwegian-brokered ceasefire agreement following the latest sacking, he said adding Kumarutanga had effectively abolished the rehabilitation ministry and another responsible for Hindu religious affairs in this majority Buddhist country. The sacking of junior ministers prompted a full Cabinet Minister, Milinda Moragoda, to resign yesterday, the Premier said noting that he was a key member of the Government’s team negotiating peace with Tiger rebels. Moragoda had also been the Government’s point man for contacts with India to keep New Delhi informed of the developments in the island’s peace process. Wickremesinghe said Kumaratunga had already taken away the Government’s powers over security forces and the police by her sacking the Ministers of Defence, Interior and Information and assuming their portfolios on November 4. With the Government losing control over security forces and the police, it was only able to honour part of the ceasefire agreement in relation to Confidence Building Measures carried out through the Rehabilitation Ministry, the Premier said. "The abolition of the ministries will create serious difficulty in carrying forward the basic elements of the peace process and continuing the program of assistance and rehabilitation which complement ongoing action on the peace process. "I have to point out that through these actions, you are seriously jeopardising the implementation of the peace process," the Prime Minister said. Kumaratunga sacked the ministers three days ago, but announced the move yesterday, four days after dissolving the legislature controlled by the Prime Minister who is from a rival party. The Government entered into a truce with Tamil Tiger rebels in February 2002. Tamil Tiger rebels have expressed concern over the political turmoil here, but have vowed to uphold the ceasefire. However, Tigers have warned that unless the two leaders of the majority community sink their differences and resume peace negotiations with the Tigers, the minority Tamil community will be forced to secede. (PTI) |
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Khan’s nuke proliferation strory reads like spy thriller WASHINGTON, Feb 12: The details of the clandestine nuclear proliferation to rogue states by top Pakistani scientist A Q Khan, as revealed by US President George W Bush, read like a spy thriller. Declaring that the operation was "motivated by greed and fanaticism or both", Bush said the network was pieced together over years by the US and British agents, who monitored and sometimes penetrated the `Khan network". According to the US President the network provided Iran, Libya and North Korea with designs for Pakistan’s older centrifuges, as well as for more advanced and efficient models. In the details unveiled by him yesterday to mark his new campaign to fight spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Bush said Khan operated his clandestine nuclear network mostly out of Pakistan serving as its director, its leading scientific mind as well as its primary salesman. Though based in Pakistan, the details which have emerged reveal that Khan made frequent trips to consult with clients and to sell his expertise. Clandestinely transferred were blueprints for centrifuges to enrich uranium, nuclear design stolen from Pakistan Government and uranium hexafluroide, the gas that the centrifuges process can transform into enriched uranium for nuclear bombs. Also provided to rogue states were components as well in some cases complete centrifuges. For decades, the details reveal that Khan remained on Pakistan Goovernment payroll, earning a modest salary, yet he and his associates financed lavish lifestyles through the sale of nuclear technologies and equipment to outlaw states. "Our intelligence services gradually uncovered this network’s reach and indentified its key experts, agents and money men," Bush said. Operatives followed its transactions, mapped the extent of its operations and monitored the travel of Khan and senior associates. "They shadowed members of the network around the world. Recorded their conversation. Penetrated their operations and uncovered their secrets. This work involved high risk", the President said. Bush also named Khan’s key deputy in the entire clandestine nuclear network as BSA Tahir running a computer firm in Dubai as a front and also doubling up as the netowrk’s Chief Financial Officer, money launderer and shipping agent. Tahir used a malaysian facility to produce parts based on Pakistan’s nuclear design, ordered their shipment to Dubai and also arranged for parts acquired by other European procurement agents to transit through Dubai. Tahir, the key agent, Bush said was in Malaysia where authorities are investigating his activities, while some of the members of the group are reported to be still at large. The facility has since been closed down, Bush quoted the malaysian authorities as saying. In a speech at the National Defence University, Bush said the penetration of the Khan network had led to identification of shipment of advanced centrifuge parts manufactured at the Malaysian facility. These parts were shipped to Dubai. "We followed and watched as they were transferred to BBC China, a German owned ship". "The ship passed through the Suez Canal bound for Libya, it was stopped by German and Italian authorities. They found several containers, each 40 feet in length listed on the ships manifest as full of used machines" Bush said. "In fact these containers were filled with sophisticated centrifuges". The interception of the ship came even as Libyan, British and American officials were discussing the possibility of Libya ending its WND programmes. Confronted with this evidence by British and American officials about two months ago, the Libyan leader Moammer Ghadafi voluntarily agreed to end his nuclear and chemical weapons programme and permit inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. "We know", Bush said, that Libya was not the only customer in the Khan network, declaring that these regimes and other proliferators like Khan should know "we and our friends are determined to protect our people and the world from proliferation." (PTI) |
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Saudi militants step up battle for sympathy RIYADH, Feb 12: Saudi militants waging a campaign of violence in Islam’s heartland have stepped up efforts to win public support but their media offensive suggests Al-Qaeda is losing sympathy in its war with authorities. In a video released last week, showing preparations for a November suicide bombing in Riyadh, one of the two bombers said they were going after foreigners rather than Saudi targets — even though it was more difficult and dangerous. Days later a statement on a pro-Al-Qaeda web site in the name of Abdulaziz-al-Muqrin, suspected mastermind of the November attack, stressed the same point. "Our battle strategy focuses on the crusaders (westerners) even though fighting and targeting the (Saudi Government) apostates is easier," Muqrin said. Saudi Arabia is battling militant violence blamed on supporters of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network, believed behind the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States that killed nearly 3,000 people. Some 50 people were killed in suicide bombings in Riyadh last year. Muqrin remains on the run nine months after he was named as one of the kingdom’s most wanted militants. The release of the tape and his comments appeared part of a coordinated message. "I think the tape played for the hearts and minds of Saudis. They were saying: If we wanted to kill innocent people we could have just gone out onto the street randomly," said Khaled Batarfi, managing editor of Al-Medinah newspaper. But the Government scorned the video and a former Islamist dissident said it revealed more about the militants’ weakness than their strength. "This is their last breath," said Mohsen Awaji, an Islamist lawyer who was jailed in the 1990s for demanding reforms but now says he is helping persuade militants to surrender themselves. Awaji said public support for the militants had fallen from a silent but substantial majority in the 1990s when bombers struck us military targets in Riyadh and Al-Khobar, to a small minority after the November attack which killed 18 people. The fact that most of the victims of the November attack on an expatriate housing compound in Riyadh were arabs or Muslims —despite the claims of the bombers — outraged many Saudis, even those who sympathised with Al-Qaeda’s stated goal of ridding Islam’s birthplace of "infidels". The release of the tape, and its broadcast by Al-Jazeera television station, provoked official fury. Newly appointed Deputy Intelligence Chief Prince Abdulaziz Bin Bandar said it was an incitement to terrorism. Commentator Dawood Shirian said the tape aimed at showing Saudis that the militants, who have not carried out any major attack since November, were "still there and still alive". But most people were now ‘’in the same trench alongside the Government’’, he said. Batarfi said: "The battle is for the people in the middle. Those who are extremists will most likely find this tape encouraging. Those who are against terror will find it disgusting. For the undecideds, the impact is still unclear." Analysts say the withdrawal of US military forces last year and the end of major hostilities in neighbouring Iraq offered Saudi militants a less promising environment. "The mood now is not boiling like it was during the Iraq war. In this atmosphere the extremists lose ground," Awaji said. Regardless of any fall in support for militants, authorities remain on high alert across the kingdom. Twenty-three of the 26 most wanted suspects named by the Government in December are still at large and two weeks ago security forces found the latest cache of arms in the capital, including a bomb-Laden car and rocket-propelled grenades. "We don’t know what the militants are planning. All we know is their plans are still on a big scale," one diplomat said. (AGENCIES) |
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China to sign new agreements with India on culture: minister BEIJING, Feb 12: China today said it will sign new agreements with India in the cultural field, including setting up the first cultural centre in each others’ capital to give fillip to the all-round development of bilateral relations. "When the condition ripens, China will conclude new agreements with India on the implementation of cultural cooperation and exchange," Minister of Culture, Sun Jiazheng said when asked to comment on the progress made in setting up an Indian cultural centre in Beijing and a Chinese cultural centre in New Delhi. "On the basis of signing the agreement on setting up cultural centres in both countries, the other parts of our cultural cooperation and exchange are also developing very smoothly," Sun told reporters. India and China had singed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the reciprocal establishment of cultural centres in their capitals during Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s landmark visit here in June last year. (PTI) |
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Roadside bomb kills 2 US soldiers in Baghdad BAGHDAD, Feb 12: Two US soldiers were killed and another wounded by a roadside bomb in western Baghdad, the US military said today. The bomb exploded at 9:30 pm yesterday as the soldiers were passing by in their vehicles, the 1st armored division said. The casualties were evacuated to a combat support hospital for treatment where two soldiers later died. A total of 372 American soldiers have been killed in combat since US-led forces invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein last March. (AGENCIES) |
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Explosion near Japan troops’ base in Iraq SAMAWA, IRAQ, Feb 12: An explosion today blew a small hole in a road and smashed windows in a residential area of Samawa in southern Iraq near where Japanese troops are stationed, but there were no reports of injuries, police said. "This explosion was caused by a rocket-propelled bomb launched from the vicinity of the river," Iraqi police officer Ahmad Sahd told . "It’s the first such explosion here in Samawa." The explosion left a hole about 20 cm (eight inches) in diameter, with a cylindrical metal object stuck in it. A Japanese military spokesman in Tokyo said he had no reports of any injuries to Army personnel or damage to equipment. He said he had no further details about the incident. There is much concern in Japan about the safety of Japanese military personnel who are being sent to help rebuild Iraq in Japan’s riskiest military mission since World War 2. Some Japanese believe the dispatch violates Japan’s Pacifist Constitution and that soldiers should not have been sent. The Government chose Samawa as the base for Japanese troops because it was considered to be relatively safe. (AGENCIES) |
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Indonesian Court jails man for hiding Bali bomber BALI, INDONESIA, Feb 12: An Indonesian man was sentenced to six years in jail today for hiding one of the bombers responsible for the blasts that ripped through two Bali nightclubs in October 2002, killing 202 people. Hafidin, also known as Munawar, was found guilty of hiding the convicted Bali bombing mastermind, Imam Samudra, who was sentenced to death for his role in the attacks on the Indonesian holiday island. Most of the victims were foreign tourists. "The defendant has been proven legally and convincingly guilty of carrying out a terror act by hiding the bomber of the Bali bombings, Imam Samudra," presiding Judge Nurul Hasanah told the District Court in Denpasar. "We are therefore sentencing the defendant to six years in jail." Prosecutors said Hafidin Hid Fiery Muslim militant Samudra when he was on the run in Indonesia’s Banten province, where police arrested him in November 2002. The sentence was less than the nine-year jail term prosecutors had wanted. Hafidin did not make any response to the verdict and it was not clear whether he would appeal. More than two dozen men linked to the Bali blasts have been tried and handed down sentences ranging from three-years jail to death. Indonesia has blamed the Bali attack, the worst such incident since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, on Jemaah Islamiah, a shadowy southeast Asian Muslim militant organisation linked to the Al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden. Police in Indonesia are still hunting other suspects, including British-educated Malaysian fugitive Azahari, who they accuse of being the master bomb maker. (AGENCIES) |
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Fresh tremors jolt Indonesia’s Papua, deaths at 37 JAKARTA, Feb 12: The death toll from last week’s earthquake in Indonesia’s remote Papua region has risen to 37, officials said today, as a series of fresh tremors rocked the area. "We suffered a total of five moderate to strong ones yesterday, with the highest registering 5.3 on the richter scale," said Chris, an official at the Nabire quake centre in Papua, 3,000 Km east of the capital, Jakarta. Chris, who like many Indonesians uses a single name, said no new casualties were caused by yesterday’s tremors. The epicentre of last Friday’s earthquake was just a few kilometres from Nabire, a regional centre of 26,000 people and most deaths and injuries were caused by falling buildings. However, with some damage in remote, outlying areas, reports of casualties were trickling in only slowly. "Many live far from the town. Some take four days to walk to get here. As of today’s reporting, casualties have reached 37 dead and more than 500 people injured," he said. Previous reports had put the death toll at 29, with more than 400 injured. Residents had been urged to stay in tents outside their houses because aftershocks were likely to be felt for another week, Chris said. (AGENCIES) |
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US military could store weapons in Australia CANBERRA, Feb 12: The United States could develop an arms and equipment storage facility in Australia as part of plans to change its military presence worldwide to better combat terrorism and other threats, a US official said today. US Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith discussed the possible creation of a storage facility in a meeting with Australia’s Defence Minister Robert Hill. "At this point the discussion about possible weapons storage was at a pretty broad level of generality. It is a possibility," Feith told reporters. The United States had no plans for a military base in Australia, he said. Last month Australia, which sent troops to support US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, agreed to look at a proposal from its close ally to set up a joint military training facility in Australia, with a decision likely later this year. The initiative was part of the US plan to reposition its military away from a defensive cold war stance toward a more agile posture necessary to confront new threats. "Our newer thinking is not about creating new bases, it’s about creating capabilities that we can move forward and do a better job of fulfilling the commitments that we have to allies and friends," Feith said. "That involves being able to operate where we need to around the world as circumstances require." Security ties between Australia and the United States have tightened since the September 11, 2001, airliner attacks in the United States and the Bali nightclub bombings in October, 2002, in which 88 Australians were among the 202 people killed. "It is one the most important and highly valued relationships that the United States has in the world," Feith said. (AGENCIES) China ex-vice-Governor executed for corruption BEIJING, Feb 12: China executed today a disgraced provincial Vice Governor convicted of taking bribes and of failing to account for assets that outstripped his income, state media said. Wang Huaizhong, 57, a former Vice Governor of the central province of Anhui, is one of a string of officials convicted as part of an intensified campaign against corruption. He was put to death by lethal injection after being allowed to meet his family, Xinhua News Agency said. Wang had been convicted of accepting bribes totalling 5.17 million yuan between September 1994 and March 2001, Xinhua said. Wang was unable to account for another 4.8 million yuan in assets seized by the authorities, the agency said, adding that he used much of his ill-gotten wealth to try to bribe investigators into dropping an investigation. China’s leaders have warned in recent years that the Communist party faces self-destruction if it fails to crack down on corruption, a scourge that toppled several imperial dynasties. Last year, China sacked a Vice Governor of the northeastern province of Liaoning for accepting bribes and sentenced a former Vice Mayor of the southern boom town of Shenzhen to 20 years for corruption. The most senior Chinese official to be ensnared in a corruption scandal, Chen Xitong, was sacked as Beijing’s Communist Party boss and lost his seat in the party’s omnipotent politburo in 1995. He was jailed for 16 years. Cheng Kejie, a former vice-Chairman of Parliament, was executed in 2000, the most senior Chinese official to be put to death for corruption. Corruption was virtually wiped out in the years after the puritanical Communists came to power in 1949, but has staged a comeback in the wake of economic reforms introduced in the late 1970s. (AGENCIES) Gunman kills former Colombian soccer player BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, Feb 12: Former Colombia soccer player Albeiro Usuriaga was killed by an unidentified gunman who shot him seven times in front of his apartment, police said. Usuriaga, 37, who played at the 1990 world cup and whose career took him to Argentina, Mexico, Paraguay, Venezuela and Spain, was shot in the southern city of Cali, some 250 Km south of the capital Bogota. The motive was not known, police said. In 1994, Andres Escobar was killed by gunmen on his return home after scoring an own goal playing for Colombia during the 1994 world cup finals in the United States. (AGENCIES) Venezuelan man gets prison in Colombia arms plot MIAMI, Feb 12: A Venezuelan man was sentenced to two years in a US prison for conspiring to smuggle more than 650 assault rifles to Colombian rebels, US officials in Florida said. Romulo Alfredo Martinez pleaded guilty last week to charges he and four others bought the weapons from licensed gun dealers in Florida by falsifying purchase papers, the US homeland security department said in a statement yesterday. The suspects disassembled the weapons and packaged them for delivery by private planes to spots along the Venezuelan border for transportation into neighboring Colombia, the agency said. Colombian authorities have seized more than two dozen assault rifles traced to the group from leftist rebels including members of the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army, Homeland Security said. Both groups are designated as terrorist organizations by the US Government. The Mak 90 assault rifles, legally classified as sporting rifles in the United States, are similar to the AK-47 and can be converted to fire in automatic and semi-automatic modes, homeland security said. Martinez was indicted in Florida last year on charges of conspiracy, violating arms export regulations and lying to federally licensed firearms dealers. Federal agents arrested him in November as he arrived in New Jersey on a flight from Caracas, Venezuela. On Friday, a US District Judge in fort Lauderdale, Florida, sentenced Martinez to two years in prison and ordered him deported to Venezuela when he finishes his sentence. (AGENCIES) |
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