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Winds of change SALAR HILL, AFGHANISTAN, Oct 27: The burial place of Afghanistan’s greatest resistance hero is a desolate, windswept hill deep in the Panjsher valley. .....more Israeli Parliament backs Sharon Gaza pullout plan JERUSALEM, Oct 27: Israel’s Parliament ratified Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Gaza withdrawal plan, a pivotal step towards the first evacuation of .....more Three Japan quake victims rescued after four days NAGAOKA, Japan, Oct 27: A woman and two small children who were trapped for nearly four days after their car was .....more Muslims in Thailand grieve deaths in army custody PATTANI, THAILAND, Oct 27: Grieving relatives in Thailand sought loved ones among the dead today after almost 80 ......more |
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Japan to keep troops in Iraq despite hostage-taking TOKYO, Oct 27: Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi insisted today that Japan would not withdraw its troops from Iraq despite a threat by a .....more Cambodian PM hits back at UN over terrorism fear PHNOM PENH, Oct 27: Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen brushed off today a report from a top UN official that the impoverished .....more Sharon, under pressure, snubs Gaza referendum call JERUSALEM, Oct 27: Israeli leader Ariel Sharon rejected calls from within his divided cabinet today for a referendum on leaving Gaza after winning . ....more Israeli Parliament backs Sharon Gaza pullout plan JERUSALEM, Oct 27: Israel’s Parliament ratified Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Gaza withdrawal plan, a pivotal step towards the first evacuation of settlers ....more |
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Winds of change blow in Afghan resistance heartland SALAR HILL, AFGHANISTAN, Oct 27: The burial place of Afghanistan’s greatest resistance hero is a desolate, windswept hill deep in the Panjsher valley. So windswept, in fact, that the Asian Development Bank is funding a study there into ways of harnessing the force that sweeps through the majestic valley to generate electricity. Tiny windmills spin atop a tall antenna, recording scientific data that is fed into a computer at the base. The instruments note every change in the wind, but political winds are also blowing through the Panjsher — and they don’t necessarily augur well for the future. Though provisional results show hamid karzai easily winning Afghanistan’s first direct Presidential election, voters in the valley rated him virtually the most unpopular man in the country. Nearly 48,000 people voted in the Panjsher in the Oct 9 poll, but just 367 cast their ballot for Karzai, the man Washington chose to lead the country after a US-led coalition toppled the Taliban in punishment for harbouring Osama bin Laden, architect of the Sept 11 attacks. The valley epitomises the ethnic fault lines that traverse the country, following the mountain ranges that created them in the first place. The Panjsher is home to much of Afghanistan’s Tajik community —which makes up around 27 percent of the population — and for centuries the rugged terrain, hostile climate and sometimes belligerent nature of the people have made it the heartland of Afghan resistance to Central authority. More recently, it was here that the Soviet occupation of the 1980s got bogged down — the US-funded Mujahideen, aided by foreign fighters such as Bin Laden, scoring punishing hits in a guerrilla conflict that was to Moscow what the Vietnam war had been to Washington. And it was here that the Taliban, having swept through most of Afghanistan with their fundamentalist brand of Islam, also came unstuck. Unable to finish off a coalition of resistance groups known as the Northern Alliance, the Taliban allowed Bin Laden’s men to assassinate its leader, Ahmad Shah Masood. Masood, who is buried on that windswept hill, was killed two days before Sept 11, 2001. Three years on, the Panjsher valley is still providing resistance, but this time against Karzai and the Pashtuns he represents. "Why vote for Karzai? Karzai is Pashtun and we should vote for Tajik," said Wizened Haji Mohammed Khan, 75, as he limped down a gravel road on a pair of crutches. He lost a leg in a 1993 rocket attack he blamed on Pashtun warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, now a wanted fugitive and Taliban supporter. Karzai was never a Taliban supporter, but he was appointed President without much Mujahideen experience and had to give key Government positions to Tajik leaders with more impeccable Jihad credentials such as powerful Defence Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim. Fahim was also his principal vice-President, but when Karzai dumped him ahead of the elections, the veteran commander shifted his considerable muscle — and that of his community — behind fellow Tajik Yunus Qanuni, who finished runner-up. Not even the attraction of having the brother of hero Masood as his running mate could persuade Panjsheris to vote for Karzai. So now that Karzai has the election won, many in the Panjsher are worried about a backlash. Most of the young men in the valley have drifted to the cities to look for winter work, after their summer toil in the narrow strip of rich agricultural land that straddles the Panjsher river as it courses through steep gorges and ravines from the Hindu Kush mountains. "We need jobs and opportunities here to stop people from leaving," said Haji Moizin Ahmad, 68, at Changram, a town about 250 km north of the capital. "We need schools and hospitals and factories, and the new President should provide this even if we didn’t vote for him." Panjsher isn’t the only place in Afghanistan where the country’s ethnic lines are starkly drawn. Abdul Rashid Dostum won easily in Takhar, home to the Uzbek community, and Mohammad Mohaqiq led the vote in Hazara areas. But even there Karzai still had enough appeal not to be humiliated. But winning 367 votes in Panjsher undermines his hopes of being seen as a President who is national, rather than Pashtun — the traditional rulers of Afghanistan. He also has to shake off the image that he is an American puppet, a view widely held in the Panjsher, where Tajik gratitude to Washington for providing the air power that finally allowed the Northern Alliance to beat the Taliban is now stretched thin. The Tajiks are unhappy that their men, the backbone of the alliance force, are being stripped of weapons and demobilised in a coalition-led programme that seeks to create a new army loyal to the Central Government. They are also worried that the valley is being ignored by international aid agencies who focus their development activities in Pashtun areas, where they need to win over the locals to stop support for the Taliban, rather than in the more self-sufficient Panjsher. Keeping watch at Masood’s tomb is Bazgul Afzali, 33, one of only 12 men remaining from a 140-strong force that once served as bodyguard detail for the "Lion of Panjsher". "Everybody comes to visit here and pay their respects —Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks ... Even foreigners," he told . Even in death Masood commands a loyalty in the Panjsher that Karzai and the Central Government will be hard pressed to match. (AGENCIES) |
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Israeli Parliament backs Sharon Gaza pullout plan JERUSALEM, Oct 27: Israel’s Parliament ratified Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Gaza withdrawal plan, a pivotal step towards the first evacuation of settlers from occupied territory Palestinians want for a state. But Sharon’s hard-fought victory yesterday came at a price: He fired Cabinet Minister Uzi Landau and a deputy minister who voted against the plan and led a mutiny in his right-wing Likud party. His strongest rival in Likud, Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, threatened to resign along with three other cabinet ministers unless Sharon agreed within two weeks to a national referendum on the pullout. The loss of the ministers would further split the party Sharon co-founded and set the scene for a challenge to his leadership or early elections unless he forged a new coalition Government, possibly with Shimon Peres’s Labour party. "(We) have decided to give the Prime Minister two weeks to announce a referendum, and if not, we will not be able to see ourselves as staying in this Government," Netanyahu said in Parliament minutes after the vote. Sharon has in the past refused to hold a referendum, calling it a delaying tactic. After a fierce two-day debate, legislators voted 67-45, with seven abstentions, for the US-backed plan charting the removal of all 21 Jewish settlements in the occupied Gaza Strip and four of the 120 Israel has built in the West Bank. Under the plan, the actual uprooting of settlements, a four-stage process slated for completion in 2005, can begin only after a cabinet vote set for march. Once the settlers’ champion, Sharon told Parliament that "disengagement" from the Palestinians in Gaza would boost Israel’s security and allow it to seal its grip on larger West Bank settlements. Such comments have fuelled Palestinian fears that Sharon’s real aim is to kill off a long-deadlocked peace process and deny them a viable state in the West Bank and Gaza. "We’ve been watching (them) discussing our future, the future of our children, the future of the Palestinians, with one factor — US being absent," said Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat. Besides splintering his Government and stoking a Likud mutiny, Sharon’s landmark proposal has drawn death threats. Settlers who ringed the heavily guarded Parliament held placards calling Sharon a traitor, fiery language last heard in the Israeli political arena before Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by an ultra-nationalist Jew. "We liquidated rabin and we will liquidate Sharon," said a slogan daubed on a wall in Jerusalem. Some 8,000 Israelis live in occupied Gaza in hard-to-defend settlements among 1.3 million Palestinians. Under Sharon’s plan, the settlers will be evacuated in return for hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation per family. Nationalist hardliners believe Israeli withdrawal would be a dangerous prize for Palestinian militants after more than four years of violence and undermine Jewish claims to ancient biblical land. "The approval of the Sharon plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip is a big achievement for the Palestinian people and the resistance, which alone has pushed the Zionist enemy into thinking about leaving," said Mushir-al-Masri, a spokesman for the militant Hamas group. Polls show most Israelis regard Gaza, captured along with the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war, as a liability that Israel should be rid of. If implemented, it would be Israel’s first removal of settlements since 1982, when the Sinai peninsula was returned to Egypt under a 1979 peace treaty. (AGENCIES) |
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Three Japan quake victims rescued after four days NAGAOKA, Japan, Oct 27: A woman and two small children who were trapped for nearly four days after their car was buried in a earthquake-triggered landslide in northern Japan were found today and media said all three were alive. Orange-clad rescue workers partially dug out the car from under huge boulders and rescued a two-year-old boy, TV showed. The boy, a three-year-old girl and their mother were all alive, national broadcaster NHK said. Saturday’s 6.8 magnitude quake killed at least 31 people and injured more than 3,400 in rural Niigata region, 250 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo. It was Japan’s deadliest tremor since a 7.2 magnitude quake killed more than 6,400 in the western city of Kobe in 1995. More than 100,000 survivors of Saturday’s quake, many of them elderly, are still in makeshift shelters, facing another day of stress and fatigue, raising fears that the death toll could rise. News of the rescue came just hours after another powerful earthquake jolted the region. At least one building collapsed in Ojiya, one of the towns hardest hit by Saturday’s big tremor. The latest tremor, which had a magnitude of 6.1, hit at 10.40 am 11:50 hrs ist and was also felt strongly in Tokyo, but there were no reports of damage in the capital. (AGENCIES) |
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Muslims in Thailand grieve deaths in army custody PATTANI, THAILAND, Oct 27: Grieving relatives in Thailand sought loved ones among the dead today after almost 80 Muslims suffocated to death while being transported by trucks to army barracks after a violent demonstration. Only six people were previously believed to have been killed and 20 wounded when troops and police opened fire to quell a riot outside a police station on Monday in the restive, Muslim-majority region. The huge leap in the toll, and the manner of the deaths, are expected to fuel tension in Thailand’s three southernmost provinces where 440 people have now died in a wave of violence since January. The Justice Ministry said 78 people died of suffocation, making it the bloodiest day in the Buddhist kingdom since April 28, when troops and police shot dead 106 machete-wielding militants, also in the south. General Sirichai Thunyasiri, who heads the southern peacekeeping command, said authorities were "deeply sorry". "Many people died and we are ready to provide assistance to their next of kin," Sirichai Thunyasiri told Thai television. A small crowd of Muslims gathered outside the army barracks as darkness fell yesterday, begging soldiers for news of relatives they feared dead. "I don’t know if my husband’s alive or not," wept Piwarat Arwae, 38. "He took our two kids to school and must have dropped by at the protest on the way back. He never came home." Some bodies were later handed over to relatives who held prayers. More bodies were due to be released today. Officials said some of the protesters were under the influence of drugs or were frail because of fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. "This is typical," Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said yesterday when asked about reports of scores dead. "It’s about bodies made weak from fasting. Nobody hurt them." Monday’s victims were among hundreds of Muslim men arrested after a 1,500-strong rally was dispersed outside a police station in neighbouring Narathiwat province. "We have never seen this sort of torture in Thai history before. It is just like gassing them," Ahmad Somboon Bualuang, an Islamic scholar from the Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani province, said yesterday. The deaths appear to have occurred while the detainees, who were stripped semi-naked after their arrest, were being taken by truck to barracks in Pattani, a journey that took five hours. Human rights groups said the deaths in military custody raised alarming questions in a country where they say civil rights are under threat by an increasingly intolerant Government. One of Thailand’s 11 National Human Rights Commissioners appeared less concerned. "These people are rebels, separatists with some help from foreigners. This part of the country has belonged to Thailand since our grandparents. We can’t allow separation," Pradit Charoenthaitawee told . Security officials justifi Monday’s use of force, saying they feared the police compound would be attacked by the crowd, which was demanding the release of six villagers accused of handing over Government-issue shotguns to Islamic militants. Troops and police fired live rounds, as well as water cannon and teargas, to end the six-hour standoff. Shots were also fired from the crowd, officials said. Security outposts have been common targets in the 10-month unrest that looks increasingly like a revived separatist movement in the deep south, home to most of Thailand’s Muslims, who make up 10 percent of the mainly Buddhist nation’s 63 million people. With an election looming, Thaksin is under pressure to resolve the trouble that analysts fear could create a fertile breeding ground for militant networks such as southeast Asia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah. "It’s all building up to the point where we’re in serious danger of what is so far a rather serious law and order issue turning into a broader insurgency," said Steve Wilford of control risks group in Singapore. (AGENCIES) |
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Japan to keep troops in Iraq despite hostage-taking TOKYO, Oct 27: Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi insisted today that Japan would not withdraw its troops from Iraq despite a threat by a militant group to behead a Japanese hostage unless Tokyo pulled them out. The crisis is a political challenge for Koizumi, who decided to send Japanese troops to Iraq despite strong public opposition. "We cannot tolerate terrorism and we will not give in to terrorism," Koizumi told reporters. "We will not withdraw the Self-Defence Force (SDF)," he added, referring to the Japanese military. The hostage taken in Iraq by a group led by Al-Qaeda ally Abu-musab-al-Zarqawi had been identified as Shosei Koda, 24, of Fukuoka in southern Japan, Government officials said. His family said he had been travelling abroad. Al-Qaeda organisation of holy war in Iraq gave the Japanese Government 48 hours to withdraw its troops from Iraq, "or this infidel will meet the same fate as berg ... And the other infidels," the group said, in a reference to American Nick Berg, who was beheaded in May. A video posted on a web site often used by militants showed Koda, with long hair and a thin beard, seated in front of three masked men and a black banner bearing the group’s name. "They want the Japanese Government and Prime Minister Koizumi to withdraw Japanese troops from Iraq or they will cut my head (off)," Koda said in English and then in Japanese. "I am sorry. I want to go back again to Japan," he added in Japanese. As one militant read out a statement, another grabbed Koda by the hair and pulled his head up to face the camera. Zarqawi’s group is blamed for Iraq’s bloodiest suicide bombings and hostage beheadings. Last week the Jordanian militant pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Koda’s family told public broadcaster NHK that Koda had gone abroad in January and started a working holiday in New Zealand in July. They had not been told of his trip to Iraq. "He didn’t tell us. I guess he thought we’d oppose it," Koda’s father told NHK. Media reports said Koda was working at a hotel in Jordan and had told his colleagues that he wanted to go to Iraq. "We are trying all we can to secure his release, through Government channels and through Iraqis," Koizumi later told Parliament. Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura appealed for Koda’s release. "To the members of the group who are taking the Japanese as hostage ... Japan is Iraq’s friend and the people of Japan have both respect and friendship for the people of Iraq," Machimura told a small group of reporters. Japan has deployed about 550 non-combat troops to Samawa, 270 km (168 miles) south of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, for humanitarian and reconstruction work. The troop dispatch has divided the Japanese public and critics say it violates Japan’s Pacifist constitution. With the US Presidential election only a week away, any suggestion that Japan could withdraw from Iraq would be a blow to US President George W Bush, who often cites Koizumi on the campaign trail as an example of a staunch ally. US Ambassador to Japan Howard Baker told the Japanese Government he supported Tokyo’s decision not to pull out its troops, adding that Washington would do what it could to help. A crisis centre was set up at Koizumi’s office and a senior Government official left for Jordan to deal with the situation. Four Japanese — two diplomats and two journalists — have been killed in Iraq since the start of the US-led war. Five civilians were taken hostage in April and militants threatened to kill three of them unless Japan pulled out its troops. The hostage incident was Koizumi’s biggest challenge since he took office in April 2001. But the hostages themselves, who were later released unharmed, were harshly criticised for going to Iraq despite Government warnings about the danger. A poll published by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper on Monday showed that 63 per cent of respondents opposed Japan’s plan to extend the deployment of its forces in Iraq. A decision has to be made by mid-December. The poll also showed that Koizumi’s support rate had dipped to 38 per cent from 45 per cent in September. (AGENCIES) |
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Cambodian PM hits back at UN over terrorism fear PHNOM PENH, Oct 27: Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen brushed off today a report from a top UN official that the impoverished southeast Asia nation could become a "breeding ground for terrorism" unless it tightens up defences. "This is a very bad message for Cambodia’s foreign investors and tourism, which we cannot accept," Hun Sen said on an official visit to a university in the capital, Phnom Penh. "While some countries have been threatened by terrorism and bombs and explosions which have killed a lot of people, history tells US that Cambodia has not suffered such incidents," he said. Heraldo Munoz, Chairman of a United Nations Security Council Committee which monitors Al-Qaeda and related organisations, said last week Cambodia needed international help to erect defences against terrorist networks. Otherwise it could become a safe haven for the likes of Al-Qaeda, said Munoz, who recently returned from an official visit to Cambodia. As evidence, Munoz cited a reported visit to Cambodia by Indonesian preacher Hambali, who authorities believe was Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s point man in southeast Asia. Hambali, who is also thought to have been the mastermind behind the 2002 nightclub bombings on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali, has been in US custody since his arrest in Thailand last year. Cambodia was aware of the need to act but lacked basic resources, such as international lawyers and translators to convert documents into the local language, Munoz said. Hun Sen denied the accusation, saying his Government, which has been holding an Egyptian and two thai Muslims for over a year on suspicion of links to regional militant group Jemaah Islamiah, was geared up to root out insurgents. "The most important information leading to the arrest of Hambali was from Cambodia," said Hun Sen. "Even though we have not yet adopted laws to fight terrorism, we have still been using all means to prevent terrorism. "I would like to send a message to the UN Security Council that they should note that the countries which have laws to fight terrorism have them because they have problems with bombs and explosions," he said. (AGENCIES) |
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Sharon, under pressure, snubs Gaza referendum call JERUSALEM, Oct 27: Israeli leader Ariel Sharon rejected calls from within his divided cabinet today for a referendum on leaving Gaza after winning Parliament’s support to uproot settlements from land claimed by Palestinians. Sharon’s unprecedented plan for giving up Jewish enclaves on territory occupied since the 1967 war has drawn death threats and warnings of civil war while splitting the ruling Likud party and throwing the political landscape into turmoil. In a serious challenge after Parliament passed the US-backed Gaza plan yesterday, Sharon’s chief Likud rival Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and three other ministers vowed to resign in two weeks if no referendum was set. "I will never give in to pressures and threats and not accept any ultimatums," Sharon told Haaretz newspaper. "My position on the referendum is unchanged — I am opposed because it will lead to terrible tensions and a rupture in the public." Sharon fears that a referendum could delay the start of the withdrawal of troops and settlers from Gaza and four of the 120 settlements in the West Bank, slated to begin after another cabinet vote next March. But the loss of Netanyahu and the others could make it hard for Sharon to avoid a leadership challenge or new elections. Netanyahu, a former Prime Minister, is also hailed by markets as the architect of economic reforms. "We still cannot rule a referendum out totally. This is politics," said one Sharon confidant. Another option for Sharon could be to strengthen his shaky coalition by bringing in Centre-left opposition Labour, whose knesset deputies all voted in support of Sharon despite his standing for decades as bogeyman of the left. Embracing labour, though, could mortally wound the Likud that Sharon co-founded and deny him the party’s selection for new elections. While Sharon’s plan cleared Parliament 67-45, the Likud vote was split to 23 for and 17 against. Netanyahu, who voted in favour of the pullout, said Sharon’s choice between calling a referendum and forming a labour alliance was "between a Government which will bring a huge rift among the people or a Likud Government which can be sustained." Polls show that most Israelis support the plan to quit Gaza, seeing the cost in blood and money as too high for keeping 8,000 Jews in fortified settlements alongside 1.3 million Palestinians. But Nationalist hardliners, who once saw Sharon as the settlers’ godfather, now revile him for being ready to give up land they see as a biblical heritage to Palestinians waging a 4-year-old uprising. Security around sharon has been tightened amid an upsurge of fiery language last heard before Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an ultra-nationalist Jew in 1995 for signing accords with the Palestinians. Palestinians welcome a withdrawal from any land, but fear that the pullout from Gaza would be at the expense of a stronger Israeli hold on bigger west bank settlements, effectively denying them the state they seek in both territories. A pillar of Sharon’s plan are assurances from US President George W Bush that Israel would not be expected to give up the whole West Bank under any future peace deal. (AGENCIES) |
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Israeli Parliament backs Sharon Gaza pullout plan JERUSALEM, Oct 27: Israel’s Parliament ratified Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Gaza withdrawal plan, a pivotal step towards the first evacuation of settlers from occupied territory Palestinians want for a state. But Sharon’s hard-fought victory yesterday came at a price: He fired Cabinet Minister Uzi Landau and a deputy Minister who voted against the plan and led a mutiny in his right-wing Likud party. His strongest rival in Likud, Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, threatened to resign along with three other Cabinet Ministers unless Sharon agreed within two weeks to a national referendum on the pullout. The loss of the ministers would further split the party sharon co-founded and set the scene for a challenge to his leadership or early elections unless he forged a new coalition Government, possibly with Shimon Peres’s Labour party. "(We) have decided to give the Prime Minister two weeks to announce a referendum, and if not, we will not be able to see ourselves as staying in this Government," Netanyahu said in Parliament minutes after the vote. Sharon has in the past refused to hold a referendum, calling it a delaying tactic. After a fierce two-day debate, legislators voted 67-45, with seven abstentions, for the US-backed plan charting the removal of all 21 Jewish settlements in the occupied Gaza Strip and four of the 120 Israel has built in the West Bank. Under the plan, the actual uprooting of settlements, a four-stage process slated for completion in 2005, can begin only after a cabinet vote set for March. Once the settlers’ champion, Sharon told Parliament that "disengagement" from the Palestinians in Gaza would boost Israel’s security and allow it to seal its grip on larger West Bank settlements. (AGENCIES) Japan minister appeals for Iraq hostage release TOKYO, Oct 27: Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura appealed today for the release of a Japanese hostage taken in Iraq by a group led by Al-Qaeda ally Abu-musab-al-Zarqawi. The group has threatened to behead the hostage unless Japan withdraws its troops, but Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said he would not do so. "To the members of the group who are taking the Japanese as hostage ... Japan is Iraq’s friend and the people of Japan have both respect and friendship for the people of Iraq," Machimura told a small group of reporters. "The people of Japan are shocked and are hoping for the release of the hostage as soon as possible," he said. "The grief of the family of Mr Koda in particular is indeed profound." Japan’s top Government spokesman said earlier that the hostage had been tentatively identified as Shosei Koda, 24, a resident of Fukuoka in southern Japan. Koda’s family said he had been travelling abroad. (AGENCIES) EU, Iran to meet again on nuclear offer VIENNA, Oct 27: French, British and German officials are due to meet Iranian negotiators today to discuss a European proposal that Tehran scrap its uranium enrichment programme in exchange for nuclear technology. The two sides met to discuss the offer last week, but that meeting ended only with an agreement to continue talks. If Iran rejects the European Union offer, diplomats say most European nations will back US demands that Tehran be reported to the UN Security Council for possible economic sanctions when the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) governing board meets in November. Iran’s top security official, Hassan Rohani, indicated on Monday that Tehran may agree to the first part of the EU trio’s deal — an indefinite freeze on uranium enrichment activities. Once that suspension is in place, the EU trio has pledged to negotiate a full solution, which could include help with Iran’s civilian nuclear technology and a trade deal in return for scrapping nuclear fuel cycle activities for good. But Hossein Mousavian, one of Iran’s top nuclear negotiators, said yesterday: "We will not have any new offer at Wednesday’s meeting but ... We will discuss the European proposal’s ambiguities." One European diplomat said there was concern Iran may agree to freeze enrichment and then drag out talks to buy time and ease political pressure as it did in a similar 2003 deal. Iran last year agreed to temporarily halt all activities linked to uranium enrichment, a process that can produce bomb-grade material, and signed up to snap inspections of its nuclear facilities in a bid to counter US-led charges that it has a covert nuclear arms programme. (AGENCIES) Muslims in Thailand grieve deaths in army custody PATTANI, THAILAND, Oct 27: Grieving relatives in Thailand sought loved ones among the dead today after almost 80 Muslims suffocated to death while being transported by trucks to army barracks after a violent demonstration. Only six people were previously believed to have been killed and 20 wounded when troops and police opened fire to quell a riot outside a police station on monday in the restive, Muslim-majority region. The huge leap in the toll, and the manner of the deaths, are expected to fuel tension in Thailand’s three southernmost provinces where 440 people have now died in a wave of violence since January. The Justice Ministry said 78 people died of suffocation, making it the bloodiest day in the Buddhist kingdom since April 28, when troops and police shot dead 106 machete-wielding militants, also in the south. General Sirichai Thunyasiri, who heads the southern peacekeeping command, said authorities were "deeply sorry". "Many people died and we are ready to provide assistance to their next of kin," Sirichai Thunyasiri told Thai television. A small crowd of Muslims gathered outside the army barracks as darkness fell yesterday, begging soldiers for news of relatives they feared dead. "I don’t know if my husband’s alive or not," wept Piwarat Arwae, 38. "He took our two kids to school and must have dropped by at the protest on the way back. He never came home." Some bodies were later handed over to relatives who held prayers. More bodies were due to be released today. Officials said some of the protesters were under the influence of drugs or were frail because of fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. "This is typical," Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said yesterday when asked about reports of scores dead. "It’s about bodies made weak from fasting. Nobody hurt them." (AGENCIES) Law graduate sets sail for Britain’s Blue Peter LONDON, Oct 27: A recent law graduate and former beauty queen has been selected as the newest presenter of children’s TV show "Blue Peter" after she impressed bosses by doing an interview while bouncing on a trampoline. The BBC said Zoe Salmon — who put her law career on hold to take the job — also had to prove she could work a remote controlled car, handle an exotic animal and make a Christmas card. "It was her total assurance on the trampoline that really impressed us," Blue Peter editor Richard Marson said in a statement. The 24-year-old will be the thirtieth presenter of the long-running show, famous for entertaining generations of Britons with crafts using ordinary household items such as sticky-back plastic, washing-up bottles and toilet rolls. Salmon’s title as miss northern Ireland in 1999 mirrors that of Blue Peter’s first presenter in 1958, Leila Williams, who had been crowned miss Great Britain before her television debut, the BBC said. The children’s show has been a springboard for some presenters into the showbiz world, but not all. Richard bacon was fired in 1998 after admitting he had taken cocaine while 1980s presenter Janet Ellis created controversy when it was revealed she was an unmarried mother. Anthea Turner saw her career sky-rocket after her stint on Blue Peter in the 1990s, but she later fell out of favour with the public when she had an affair with her current husband Grant Bovey. Salmon had no idea which show she was applying for when she replied along with hundreds of others to anonymous adverts in local newspapers across Britain. Filming starts this week and Salmon makes her debut in a Christmas musical on December 23. (AGENCIES) |
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