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‘Political disagreements, but no change in ties with India’ JERUSALEM, Nov 27: Acknowledging some "political disagreements" with India, deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that he may raise Israeli .....more Guru Nanak’s birth place declared model city ISLAMABAD, Nov 27: Pakistan has declared as a ‘model city’ the huge estate ........more Ethiopian urges Eritrea to accept peace offer ADDIS ABABA, Nov 27: Ethiopia urged Eritrea to accept its offer to end a long-running border dispute, as many ethiopians criticized the offer as an .......more China executes 5 for murder of ex-HK TV executive BEIJING, Nov 27: China executed four men and a woman for killing a former executive of the Hong Kong-based phoenix ...more |
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US deserter Jenkins free, prepares for new life TOKYO, Nov 27: Former US sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins, who deserted to north korea four decades ago, emerged today from nearly a ....more Man
held over BEIJING, Nov 27: Chinese police have arrested a 21-year-old man suspected ......more Have you come to remove LoC, poverty: students ask Indian scribes MUZAFFARABAD, PoK, Nov 27: "Why have we been divided? Why have you ......more Bush backs 388 bln bill but wants new veto powers CRAWFORD, TEXAS, Nov 27: President George W Bush backed the 388 billion dollars price-tag of a bill to Finance Government programs this fiscal ........more |
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‘Political disagreements, but no change in ties with India’ JERUSALEM, Nov 27: Acknowledging some "political disagreements" with India, deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that he may raise Israeli concerns in his meetings with Indian leaders during his forthcoming five-day visit to New Delhi next week to promote bilateral trade. "We have political disagreements with many of our friends... We dont demand from our friends total agreement on everything. We dont hesitate to voice our reservations on certain positions ... This applies equally to India, Olmert told reporters. Olmert is likely to hold talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Minister for Trade and Industry Kamal Nath. "If asked, I will definitely use the opportunity in my meetings with the prime minister and the foreign minister to spell out our point of view and may be they will do the same on some. We listen to them and can disagree, but we listen to them respectfully and I am sure they will listen to us." Downplaying any perceptible change in New Delhis policy to Jerusalem, Olmert said, "we havent felt it yet." "The relations between the two countries were established when the same party was in power in India and the current Prime Minister was then the Finance Minister... This Government also wants to continue relations with us and we do not see any change," said Olmert, who will also extend an invitation to the Indian Prime Minister to visit Israel. (PTI) |
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Guru Nanak’s birth place declared model city ISLAMABAD, Nov 27: Pakistan has declared as a ‘model city’ the huge estate housing the Gurudwara Nankana Sahib, the birth place of Guru Nanak, coinciding with the 535th birth anniversary of Sikhism’s founder, and said it was ready to start a bus service between Lahore and Amritsar. Chief Minister of Pakistan’s Punjab province Pervaiz Elahi declared Nankana Sahib a model city as over 15000 Sikhs from India and abroad congregated at the Gurudwara yesterday to celebrate the auspicious occasion. Elahi announced Pakistan was ready to start a bus service between Lahore and Amritsar if India permits. The new bus service would facilitate the Sikhs to visit their holy places more frequently, he said, promising to take up this matter during his forthcoming visit to Indian Punjab on the invitation of the State Government. At present the bus service runs from Lahore to New Delhi and the passengers can not get down in between. Elahi said the Government would construct a dual carriageway and expressway from Wagha to Nankana Sahib besides providing water and proper sewerage system to the city. He also announced Rs 20 million for the construction of a hospital besides a function hall, restaurant and a motel. The foreign investors would be invited to invest in Nankana Sahib to make it a modern city, he was quoted as saying in the local media here today. He also said Pakistan Government was ready to give any number of visas to Sikh yatrees. He said the birth anniversary was being celebrated at a time when leadership in both the countries was moving in a positive direction to resolve all outstanding issues. The exchange of delegations comprising sportsmen, artists, journalists, educationists and politicians would help promote good relations between the two nations, he said. The Chief Minister praised the Sikhs’ efforts for the promotion of peace among the two nations. He said he was very happy to see that a large number of Sikh pilgrims were visiting their holy places, and congratulated them on the birth anniversary of the founder of Sikh religion. Elahi however said Pakistan considered Kashmir as the core issue between the two countries and needed brave response from both sides, without which the relations between them could not be improved. Already there were strong bonds between the people of both Punjabs, but unless the Kashmir issue was resolved, both the countries could not have good relations despite good effort in this regard. He said the PML Government did not believe in mere slogans, as "I desire that all the development plans, which I have announced about Nankana Sahib, be on ground when the Sikh yatrees visit Pakistan next year." (PTI) |
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Ethiopian urges Eritrea to accept peace offer ADDIS ABABA, Nov 27: Ethiopia urged Eritrea to accept its offer to end a long-running border dispute, as many ethiopians criticized the offer as an affront to victims of the 1998-2000 war over the frontier. Ethiopia’s Parliament voted on Thursday to accept in principle the April 2002 ruling of an independent boundary commission that ceded territory along the 1,000 km border to smaller Eritrea, after a surprise about-face by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. Ethiopian Information Minister Bereket Simon urged Eritrea to accept the peace plan but cautioned it must be accepted in total or not at all. "Eritrea must accept the the peace plan as a package to end the stalemate along the border between the two neighbors," Bereket yesterday told reporters. The plan calls for a dialogue about the root causes of the conflict and how to implement the boundary decision, for Ethiopia to pay its dues to the boundary commission and the appointment of liaisons to help administer the demarcation. Ethiopia’s offer was welcomed by the European Union Foreign Policy chief Javier Solana. "I hope Ethiopia’s decision will lead to a speedy start of the demarcation of the border and thus contribute to breaking the stalemate in the peace process," he said in a statement. (AGENCIES) |
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China executes 5 for murder of ex-HK TV executive BEIJING, Nov 27: China executed four men and a woman for killing a former executive of the Hong Kong-based phoenix television and his family, the Beijing news said today. They were executed yesterday soon after the intermediate people’s court in the southern Boomtown of Shenzhen sentenced them to death, the newspaper said. Zhou Yinan, his wife, their five-year-old daughter, his accountant and a housekeeper were killed in their Shenzhen home in May. The accused had entered the apartment after convincing the housekeeper that they were selling bottled water. They made off with credit cards, cash and jewellery. Executions in China are usually carried out by a single bullet to the back of the head. Overseas human rights groups accuse China of executing more people than the rest of the world combined. Zhou, a Hong Kong resident, had run an advertising company in Shenzhen since leaving the Chinese-language phoenix television in 1999. (AGENCIES) |
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US deserter Jenkins free, prepares for new life TOKYO, Nov 27: Former US sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins, who deserted to north korea four decades ago, emerged today from nearly a month in confinement to prepare for a new life with his family in his Japanese wife’s rural home town. Jenkins was given a dishonourable discharge and sentenced to 30 days in confinement at a court martial earlier this month, bringing to an end one of the cold war’s strangest dramas. He married his wife, Hitomi Soga, in North Korea after she had been abducted in 1978 by Pyongyang agents to teach spies about Japan. Jenkins was taken by helicopter early today to the US Army’s camp Zama base near Tokyo from the US naval base where he had spent time since the November 3 court martial, his sentence reduced by several days for good behaviour. Looking frail, wearing an Army uniform and carrying a duffel bag, the 64-year-old Jenkins, who was demoted to private following his court martial, entered the base accompanied by several soldiers and was taken to his home, where soga and their two North Korean-born daughters were waiting. A US military official declined to give further information, but Soga was quoted by Kyodo news agency as telling japanese officials by phone the two had been reunited and that Jenkins was well. On Monday, Jenkins will begin procedures for his discharge, which the US military official said could take anywhere from a week to a month. Japanese media, however, say this could be completed as early as sometime next week. Following his discharge, the family plans to move to the island of Sado and Soga’s home town of Mano, a sleepy rural community of 7,000 people 300 km northwest of Tokyo where media reports have said Jenkins wants to find a job. The Jenkins saga was a diplomatic headache for the United States and its close ally, Japan, which had sought leniency out of sympathy for Soga. Soga was allowed to return to Japan two years ago along with four other Japanese abducted to North Korea, but had to leave behind Jenkins and their daughters — Mika, 21, and 19-year-old Brinda. The family was reunited in Jakarta before Jenkins was brought to Tokyo for medical treatment in July. He gave himself up in September and returned to active duty. (AGENCIES) |
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Man held over China school deaths BEIJING, Nov 27: Chinese police have arrested a 21-year-old man suspected of stabbing eight teenagers to death as they slept in a school dormitory, the latest in a wave of school attacks in China, state media said today. Yan Yanming was arrested in dirt-poor Ruzhou, central Henan province, yesterday when his mother turned him in to police after he attempted suicide at home, media said. Twelve students were stabbed, eight died and four were wounded, two of them critically, it said. No motive was given for the murders, but the Beijing youth daily said Yan was hostile towards his victims, who were students at an expensive boarding school. Many rural residents are too poor to send their children to senior high school or university because of increasingly expensive tuition and shrinking state subsidies. It was the sixth attack on schoolchildren in just four months, prompting schools in Beijing and other cities to recruit security guards to protect students. China executed on Wednesday a bus driver who stabbed 24 primary school children with a kitchen knife and kidnapped a nine-year-old girl at a primary school in eastern Shandong province in September. The same month, a man armed with a knife and homemade bombs attacked 28 children in a Kindergarten in the city of Suzhou, near Shanghai. None was killed. In August, a Janitor stabbed 17 at a Beijing Kindergarten, killing one child. (AGENCIES) |
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Have you come to remove LoC, poverty: students ask Indian scribes MUZAFFARABAD, PoK, Nov 27: "Why have we been divided? Why have you come here? Have you come to remove the line of control? If yes, we are happy. We also want bus service to start immediately..." Read the letter written by ten-year-old Mansoor Abbasi, a class IV student, which he handed over to the members of the visiting Indian media delegation. Another letter by Jameela, studying in sixth standard, was directed to the South Asian Free Media Association, which has organised the ten-day visit of Indian journalists to Pakistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir. The media team on its way to Chakothi near the LoC was stopped at Hattian Bala, a small hamlet in this district, by the students of a school to welcome them and hand over their letters. "A question to SAFMA from Jameela. We are very poor...Most of the people are poor. Have you come to eliminate poverty from here. If this happens we will be able to go to that side of Kashmir," the letter written in Urdu read. Eleven-year-old Waleed Abbasi’s letter read, "I don’t want Kashmir to be divided. It should be united and given a sovereign status..." Another letter by Jawad Qureshi, a class IV student read "I want to visit the other side of Kashmir. I want to meet my relatives and others on that side. SAFMA should play its role in getting the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service started." But what touched the members of the Indian media delegation the most was when ten-year-old Ayesha said, "Hame Aapse Apne Khandan Walon Ki Khushbu Aati Hai." Children were seen waving till the vehicles carrying the journalists moved ahead and out of their sight on the same route which the proposed bus from Srinagar to Muzaffarabad will take if the road between the two sides of LoC is opened. (UNI) |
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Bush backs 388 bln bill but wants new veto powers CRAWFORD, TEXAS, Nov 27: President George W Bush backed the 388 billion dollars price-tag of a bill to Finance Government programs this fiscal year, despite criticism that it was loaded up with pork-barrel projects. "Obviously, there’s going to be things in these big bills that I don’t particularly care for," Bush yesterday told reporters near his Crawford, Texas Ranch. But he said: "The bill conforms to the budget that I worked out with the Congress ... The size of the bill is a number that we agreed to earlier this year. And I appreciate that because part of making sure we cut the deficit in half is to work together on the overall size of our spending bills." Congress was forced to pass a temporary measure on Wednesday to keep the Government running after an embarrassing clause that would have allowed lawmakers to see individual tax returns was tucked in and held up the 388 billion bill. A final vote is now expected early next month. The huge bill wraps together 9 separate bills financing most Government agencies in the 2005 fiscal year that started October 1. Congress failed to pass those bills before the November 2 election. Democrats complained that the omnibus spending bill contains last-minute, across-the-board cuts to agreed funding levels for their priority programs like education, health care and low-income housing aid. Others accused lawmakers of loading up the bill with special items for their home districts. Bush renewed his call on Congress to give him the power to delete those items on a case-by-case basis. "The only way a president can affect that which is inside the bill, other than vetoing the entire bill, is to be able to pick out parts of a bill and express displeasure about it through a line-item veto. I hope the Congress will give me a line-item veto," Bush said. (AGENCIES) PLO’s Fatah eyes first internal election in 14 years RAMALLAH, WEST BANK, Nov 27: The PLO’s mainstream Fatah faction took a major step towards its first internal election in 14 years, a move that should allow a new generation of Palestinians to join its decision-making process. "It’s time for fatah to set the date for elections and practice democracy," yesterday said Abbas Zaki, a member of the Central Committee. "This will contribute to the unity of the movement as well." The revolutionary council, the second highest institution in the group, appeared set to recommend holding the faction’s 6th conference and Fatah election on Aug 4, 2005. The proposal was expected to be approved at a late-night session. If passed, the decision, against the backdrop of Yasser Arafat’s death on November 11 and a Palestinian Presidential lection slated for January 9, must still be ratified at an as-yet unscheduled session of Fatah’s top-drawer central committee. The Palestine Liberation Organisation’s Fatah last held a factional conference 14 years ago, when members of the revolutionary council and Central committee were elected in exile. Twelve local leaders were appointed to the revolutionary council after Yasser Arafat returned to Gaza under interim peace deals with Israel in the early 1990s, but activists from a generation of Palestinians raised in Israeli-occupied territories have demanded stronger representation. "Setting a date for the conference is a step of utmost importance," said Ahmed Ghneim, a member of the revolutionary council. "It would be the first ever meeting that would bring together all generations of Fatah and it should give a chance to the younger generation to join decision-making bodies," he said. The revolutionary council also proposed holding a legislative election on May 15. Palestinians last elected a President and Parliament in 1996. (AGENCIES) Diana in new tape says suspects lover ‘bumped off’ NEW YORK, Nov 27: NBC television network will broadcast a never-before-seen video tape of Diana, Princess of Wales, next week in which she says she suspects a member of her staff with whom she fell in love was "bumped off." NBC said yesterday the two-part program starting next Monday includes excerpts of interviews Diana recorded with communications consultant Peter Settelen in her living room, discussing her childhood, marriage and struggle with Bulimia. Earlier this year nbc aired audio tapes Diana secretly recorded for a 1992 book that exposed the turmoil of her marriage to Prince Charles, whom she divorced in 1996. The princess was killed in a car crash in paris in 1997. NBC said Diana met Settelen in September 1992, in the aftermath of the book by Andrew Morton, and had engaged him to train her in public speaking, a process that involved an on-camera interview to inspire confidence. Excerpts of the program released in advance include comments by Diana on the lack of sympathy from her mother-in-law Queen Elizabeth when Diana went to her having discovered that Prince Charles was having an affair. NBC said one section of the interview was "on falling in love with a member of her palace staff, presumed to be royal policeman Barry Mannakee, who was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1987." "It was all found out and he was chucked out," Diana is quoted as saying. "And then he was killed. And that was the biggest blow of my life, I must say. And I think he was bumped off. But, um, there we are. I don’t ... We’ll never know, he was the greatest fellow I’ve ever had." The two-hour special, which also features an interview with Settelen, is to be broadcast in two parts, on November 29 and December 6. "This unusual tape, recorded in Diana’s living room, hidden for years after her death, and fought over for months in the British courts, offers a view of the Princess quite different from the formal public face she usually put forth," NBC said. (AGENCIES) UN anti-torture body slams UK, Greece, Argentina GENEVA, Nov 27: A United Nations anti-torture body criticised Britain for the "unsatisfactory" conditions in its prisons, including a "substantial number of deaths in custody", and urged it to act at once to improve them. The UN committee against torture, reviewing British compliance with an international treaty outlawing inhuman and degrading treatment, also expressed concern at parts of an anti-Terrorism Law which allows "potentially indefinite detention" of foreigners without trial. It called on the British Government to study "as a matter of urgency" alternatives to the sweeping powers to imprison any foreigner suspected of involvement in international terrorism given by the 2001 anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act. The committee of 10 experts yesterday said there were reports of "unsatisfactory conditions" in British prisons, including "substantial numbers of deaths in custody, inter-prisoner violence, overcrowding ..." It was the fourth time the Geneva-based committee had focused on Britain as part of its regular scrutiny of the 138 states to have ratified the 1984 treaty. At the November session which ended yesterday, it also took up the cases of Greece and Argentina. Athens was reprimanded for its lack of an "effective, independent system" to handle complaints that allegations of torture had not been investigated properly. The committee also expressed concern that those who brought such complaints were not given adequate protection against the risk of retaliation and intimidation. It also took greece to task for "overcrowding and poor conditions" in its prisons and drew attention to the perceived "reluctance" of the Greek authorities to bring in laws against violence to women, notably in the home. In Argentina, there were "numerous" allegations of torture and cruel treatment, which appeared to be used "habitually" by security and police forces, the committee said in its findings. At the same time there were very few examples of anybody being condemned for such acts, it said. "The disparity between the high number of denunciations for acts of torture and cruel treatment and the very few convictions for such acts ... Contributes to a climate of impunity," it said. (AGENCIES) France arrests man with drugs worth 14 mln euros PARIS, Nov 27: French police have arrested an Argentine man carrying cocaine with a street value of more than 14 million euros (18.25 million dollars) packed into a camper-van, the Finance Ministry said. The capture of almost 360 kg of cocaine was the biggest drugs haul by french customs officials in a roadside check since 1995, it yesterday said in a written statement. The man, who is in his 50s, had raised suspicions when he tried to avoid his vehicle being inspected on a road in the French pyrenees near the border with Spain. The camper-van had Spanish registration plates, the ministry said. (AGENCIES) |
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