KABUL - Afghan security forces clashed with a group of suspected Taleban militants holed up in a house close to Kabul's old city on Wednesday, witnesses and police said. The clash erupted after Afghan forces surrounded a house on Tuesday night where the suspected militants were hiding in the area of Gozargah...
... in the foothills leading up to the old city walls, said a police official who declined to be named.
Two officers of National Directorate of Security (NDS), the state security and intelligence service, were killed in the fighting, one of the police officials said.
'A group of Taleban have hidden themselves in a house they rented a long time ago,' he said. 'Afghan intelligence officers found out about them and went there at midnight last night. At 2 a.m., sporadic fighting started and two officers were killed.'
The crack of small arms fire and occasional explosion from a rocket-propelled grenade could still be heard mid-morning. The road linking the area with the centre of the capital was blocked by police and reporters were kept well back from the scene.
NDS forces were leading the assault on the house, backed by the Afghan army and police, but the group of insurgents were well armed and had plenty of ammunition, the police officer said.
The clash comes just days after a group of Taleban gunmen opened fire with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades at a state parade sending President Hamid Karzai, his cabinet and the military top brass diving for cover.
One member of parliament, the head of a minority group and 10-year-old boy were killed in Sunday's attack before police killed three Taleban gunmen.
Taleban fighters fled Kabul in late 2001 in the face of a U.S.-led aerial onslaught and a ground assault by Afghan militia.
In the years immediately after 2001, the Taleban regrouped and two years ago relaunched their insurgency with guerrilla attacks on Afghan and international troops mainly in the south and east, backed by suicide bombs right across the country.
The hardline Islamist militants last year moved into areas immediately south of Kabul and have launched sporadic suicide bomb attacks in the city, but have not before been detected in any numbers in the capital before.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
No Pakistan troop reduction in border region: Haqqani
NEW YORK : Pakistan has no plans to diminish its military presence in the Pak-Afghan border region, Pakistani Ambassador-designate to the U.S. said in a bid to allay Washington’s “increasing alarm” over the deal Islamabad is negotiating with tribal leaders.
“The security requirements will not be abandoned or ignored,” Ambassador Husain Haqqani was quoted as saying in The New York Times, which said in its Tuesday edition that the deal could lead to the withdrawal of 120,000 Pakistani troops, thus unraveling security in the border region.
“Negotiations with tribesmen are aimed at supplementing military efforts with political ones,” Haqqani explained.
The Times said Pakistani counterinsurgency operations in the tribal areas had dropped sharply during the talks while cross-border attacks into Afghanistan by militants doubled in March.
“Indeed, Washington and Islamabad seem to be on dueling timetables, with the Bush administration trying to cripple Al Qaeda’s safe havens before leaving office, and the new Pakistani government seeking to establish credibility with its public by distancing itself from the American-backed policies of President Pervez Musharraf.” the front-page dispatch said.
Citing American officials, the dispatch said that Washington’s options now are even more limited, in part because Musharraf is no longer calling the shots, and that the situation in the tribal areas is unlikely to significantly improve before President George W. Bush leaves office.
“The problems confronting the administration reflect what critics say is a failure over the past several years to pay sufficient attention to the growing numbers of Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters drawn to safe havens in the tribal area,” the report said. “Even under Musharraf, the administration’s main ally in Pakistan, the United States failed to develop a government-wide plan to combat the militancy in the turbulent borderlands,” it said, citing critics.
The Times’ added: “The leaders of Pakistan’s new government, Asif Ali Zardari of the Pakistan People’s Party and Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, have vowed to honour their campaign pledges to break with Musharraf’s emphasis on using military force in the tribal areas, a practice critics say has been heavy-handed and has undercut the government’s goals.
“The government has begun a negotiating strategy that officials hope will win over those in the tribal areas who in recent years have been caught up in a wave of anti-American sentiment and, in some cases, who are actively helping Al Qaeda.”
Pakistani leadership can bring far-reaching reforms through political will
WASHINGTON: The Pakistani leadership can enact far-reaching democratic reforms through demonstration of political will as February 18 polls have produced a unique opportunity for such a transformation, US experts returning from a just-concluded visit to the country said.
The experts, who belong to various Washington think tanks, interacted with a cross-section of the Pakistani society and found a widespread desire for democratic progress and reforms at this defining moment for the nation.
Mostly, the participants sharing their “Impressions from post-election Pakistan” at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies also saw recognition of the urgency to address a staggering stock of the country’s problems on part of the new coalition leadership.
Ambassador Teresita Schaffer, who had several diplomatic assignments in South Asia in her career, sparked the discussion with observation that Pakistan is in a “moment of transition” and that by virtue of staying power of the new government, there may be “greater potential for remedying institutional problems.”
So the window of opportunity, she said, is being viewed as something that should not be missed. Glenn Cowan, co-founder and CEO of Democracy International, pointed out the need for a “lot of work to be done for electoral reforms” and stressed it would require demonstration of political will on part of leaders. He particularly underlined the importance of introducing greater democracy within the parties.
Rick Barton, who specializes in International Security Programme at the CSIS, said he found the Pakistanis oozing confidence about the fact that they see a real turning point in the current moment.
“The Pakistani leaders want to do things, they feel since the public is backing them, they can deliver—the public leaders are now having a higher degree of responsibility, some are even performing beyond expectations,” he said, citing the new government leaders getting down to business in various fields.
Barton referred to the government’s paying immediate attention to put the economic house in order and Awami National Party’s launch of negotiations with militants for a way out of extremist violence and said the new leaders have taken up a raft of tough issues quickly.
“The capacity is there - the advantage of a big country is there, a lot of talent, a real recognition of its problems, and willingness to take responsibility.” Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at American Progress, felt while balance of power, restoration of superior court judges and reforms are paramount issues in the year ahead, if not resolved basic issues like food shortages, inflation and poverty could affect the political course and overtake other priorities.
Gerald Hyman, president of the CSIS’s Hills Programme on Governance concluded from his wide-ranging interactions that “support for democracy is quite deep among Pakistanis and there is a broad support for going back to 1973 Constitution.”
Discussing governance issues, he said the government will have to address a sense of injustice as well as security and rule of law questions.
On the fight against terrorism, the American experts sensed an “overall push” to move beyond the war on terror to ownership of security issues. The Pakistanis say they have suffered a lot on account of counterterrorism actions.
Karin Von Hippel, a senior fellow at the CSIS, said as stated by Pakistanis, the objective behind the pacts approach is to isolate foreign terrorist elements. She noted there is skepticism about the outcome of peace deals with militants in the United States because of the past experiences. However, she said, Washington should work cooperatively with Pakistan and help develop greater expertise of the South Asian country in curbing terrorism.
Speaking on the issue, Katulis remarked that US assistance $ 750 million assistance for development of the federally administered tribal areas may be a grand strategy but hardly seemed enough in the face of enormity of the challenge.
In the context of Pakistan’s foreign relations with regional and world powers, Ambassador Schaffer said Pakistan-India problems have not completely disappeared and added Islamabad’s apprehensions with Afghanistan are very much connected with India.
The US, she said, has mostly realized the shift of power in Pakistan. For the US, she stated, anti-terrorism remains a major concern in the region.
“The rule of law is a high priority in Pakistan - it should be a high priority with the outsiders as well,” she said.
Senior journalist, wife shot dead
Gilani arrives in Muzaffarabad
MUZAFFARABAD : Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani arrived here Wednesday to address the joint sitting of AJK Legislative Assembly and AJK Council.
He was received at the helipad by Azad Jammu and Kashmir President Raja Zulqarnain Khan and AJK Prime Minister Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan.
The Prime Minister is accompanied by Minister for Kashmir Affairs Qamar Zaman Kaira.
4 killed in Khyber Agency shooting
Sweden to make more contribution to ADB’s Poverty and Environment Fund
ISLAMABAD : The Government of Sweden has approved an additional contribution of 15 million kroner ($2.5 million) to the Poverty and Environment Fund administered by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
The Fund, which was established in July 2003 with initial contributions from the governments of Norway and Sweden, is a multi-donor umbrella facility focusing on small-scale environment-related interventions that promote poverty reduction.
Sweden’s new contribution will be issued in three equal installments between 2008 and 2010, said an ADB press release received here on Wednesday.
The Fund finances technical assistance projects and other activities in three main areas: protection, conservation, and sustainable use of natural resources and ecosystem services; reduction of air and water pollution; and disaster prevention and reduction of vulnerability to natural hazards.
“Sweden’s latest contribution continues support for ADB’s regional technical assistance on Mainstreaming Environment for Poverty Reduction,” said Werner Liepach, ADB’s Principal Director of the Office of Cofinancing Operations.
“This contribution will help finance efforts to identify, pilot-test, and demonstrate potentially replicable approaches that reduce poverty and improve the capacity of poor people to contribute to environmental management.”
The fund also finances research and studies that can form the basis of policy dialogue, raising awareness, and building capacity on poverty-environment links.
It also supports dissemination of lessons learned and compilation of good practices for addressing the environmental dimensions of poverty, the press release added.
Member states urged to help spread message about UN’s work
UNITED NATIONS : Member States must actively participate in explaining the work and role of the world body to the general public, the top UN communications official told the opening of the annual session of the Committee on Information on Tuesday.
Kiyo Akasaka, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, told the meeting that the Organization needed the cooperation of Member States to help ensure, “We can make a difference for a better world.”
He urged delegations to consider ways of how their governments and civil society organizations could partner with the UN Department of Public Information (DPI) and other offices of the broader UN family to enhance the public understanding about the world body.
“Telling the United Nations story and building broad public support for the Organization and its aims cannot be achieved by DPI alone,” he said.
Akasaka said the mission of DPI was inseparable from the overall objectives and aims of the UN, especially given that the world body has to deal with more and more issues of global significance - and rising expectations that it can or should deliver solutions.
The Under-Secretary-General also detailed a wide range of information efforts undertaken by the Department over the past year, explaining that he has focused on a strategic approach, improved coordination, new and expanded partnerships, multilingualism and evaluation.
In his address, the Committee’s chairperson, Andreas Baum of Switzerland, said the body was meeting at a crucial time in the history of the UN, with the sixtieth anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the midpoint of the implementation of the series of eight internationally agreed anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Increasingly, people looked to the UN to better peace and security, improve development, guarantee human rights and tackle such complex challenges as climate change and food security.
Strong blast near Italian embassy in Sanaa
SANAA -- A strong blast rocked the Yemeni capital Sanaa early Wednesday, in the administrative and residential district where the Italian embassy is located, witnesses said.
Security forces immediately cordoned off the sector round the site of the blast in the Al-Safia district, where the finance ministry and customs also have buildings.
The blast happened shortly before offices were due to open.
Afghan security forces exchange fire with gunmen in Kabul
Afghan security forces traded gun and rocket fire with suspected militants holed up in a Kabul house on Wednesday, officials said. Casualties were reported.
A spokesman for the intelligence service, Saeed Ansari, said the troops wanted to capture the suspects alive, but gave no details on who was targeted.
Interior Ministry spokesman Zemerai Bashary described the suspects as "terrorists."
An Associated Press reporter at the scene said the two sides were trading rocket-propelled grenade and automatic gunfire.
Two intelligence agents were killed and two others were wounded during the exchange, two intelligence officials said. One of the officials said an unidentified woman also died in the clash. Both officials requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
}
Bashary could not confirm the information.
The gunmen appeared to be holed up inside a house in a densely populated area of western Kabul near a popular park, Babur's Garden. Families were evacuating the area as explosions reverberated and gunfire pierced the air.
Ahmad Fahim, a journalist for Radio Kalid, said he saw intelligence agents take away three suspects in vehicles.
The clash followed an attempt by the Taliban on Sunday to assassinate President Hamid Karzai during a military parade. Karzai survived the attack. Three people, including a lawmaker, were killed. Three Taliban assailants also died.
The chief of the intelligence service, Amrullah Saleh, acknowledged Tuesday that his agency knew about the plot to kill the president but failed to locate the assailants in time.
CSI co-star Gary Dourdan arrested for drugs
LOS ANGELES - "CSI" co-star Gary Dourdan was arrested Monday for possession of narcotics and dangerous drugs, police said. The 41-year-old actor was found asleep in his car by the Palm Springs Police Department, authorities said.
An officer saw Dourdan's car parked on the wrong side of the street with the interior light on and someone sleeping in the driver's seat at approximately 5:12 a.m. Monday, according to Palm Springs police Sgt. Mitch Spike.
The officer described Dourdan as disoriented and possibly under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The officer arrested Dourdan after locating suspected cocaine, heroin, Ecstacy, miscellaneous prescription drugs and paraphernalia. Dourdan was released on $5,000 bail at 10:30 a.m. Monday. A court date was not immediately scheduled.
Dourdan has played crime scene investigator Warrick Brown on CBS' "CSI" since 2000. Several celebrities were in town for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in nearby Indio, Calif. It was not immediately clear whether Dourdan attended the event.
Representatives for Dourdan did not immediately return phone calls Tuesday.
An officer saw Dourdan's car parked on the wrong side of the street with the interior light on and someone sleeping in the driver's seat at approximately 5:12 a.m. Monday, according to Palm Springs police Sgt. Mitch Spike.
The officer described Dourdan as disoriented and possibly under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The officer arrested Dourdan after locating suspected cocaine, heroin, Ecstacy, miscellaneous prescription drugs and paraphernalia. Dourdan was released on $5,000 bail at 10:30 a.m. Monday. A court date was not immediately scheduled.
Dourdan has played crime scene investigator Warrick Brown on CBS' "CSI" since 2000. Several celebrities were in town for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in nearby Indio, Calif. It was not immediately clear whether Dourdan attended the event.
Representatives for Dourdan did not immediately return phone calls Tuesday.
Concentration camp doc in top 10 wanted Nazis
BADEN-BADEN, Germany - Karl Lotter, a prisoner who worked in the hospital at Mauthausen concentration camp, had no trouble remembering the first time he watched SS doctor Aribert Heim kill a man.
It was 1941, and an 18-year-old Jew had been sent to the clinic with a foot inflammation. Heim asked him about himself and why he was so fit. The young man said he had been a soccer player and swimmer.
Then, instead of treating the prisoner's foot, Heim anesthetized him, cut him open, castrated him, took apart one kidney and removed the second, Lotter said. The victim's head was removed and the flesh boiled off so that Heim could keep it on display.
"He needed the head because of its perfect teeth," Lotter, a non-Jewish political prisoner, recalled in testimony eight years later that was included in an Austrian warrant for Heim's arrest uncovered by The Associated Press. "Of all the camp doctors in Mauthausen, Dr. Heim was the most horrible."
But Heim managed to avoid prosecution, his American-held file in Germany mysteriously omitting his time at Mauthausen, and today he is the most-wanted suspected Nazi war criminal on a list of hundreds who the Simon Wiesenthal Center estimates are still free.
Heim would be 93 today and "we have good reason to believe he is still alive," said Efraim Zuroff, the Simon Wiesenthal Center's top Nazi hunter. He spoke in a telephone interview from Jerusalem ahead of the center's plans to release a most-wanted list Wednesday, and to open a media campaign in South America this summer highlighting the $485,000 reward for Heim's arrest posted by the center along with Germany and Austria.
According to an advance copy of the list obtained by the AP, the most wanted, after Heim, are: John Demjanjuk, fighting deportation from the U.S., which says he was a guard at several death and forced labor camps; Sandor Kepiro, a Hungarian accused of involvement in the wartime killings of than 1,000 civilians in Serbia; Milivoj Asner, a wartime Croatian police chief now living in Austria and suspected of an active role in deporting hundreds of Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies to their death; and Soeren Kam, a former member of the SS wanted by Denmark for the assassination of a journalist in 1943. His extradition from Germany was blocked in 2007 by a Bavarian court that found insufficient evidence for murder charges.
The hunt for Heim has taken investigators from the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg all around the world. Besides his home country of Austria and neighboring Germany where he settled after the war, tips have come from Uruguay in 1998, Spain, Switzerland and Chile in 2005, and Brazil in 2006, said Heinz Heister, presiding judge of the Baden-Baden state court, where Heim was indicted in absentia on hundreds of counts of murder in 1979.
Thousands of German war criminals were prosecuted in West Germany after World War II. In the 1970s Western democracies began a hunt in earnest for Eastern European collaborators who had fled West claiming to be refugees from communism, and the end of the Cold War gave access to a trove of communist files in the 1990s.
"All of a sudden there was pressure on countries like Latvia and Estonia to put these people on trial," Zuroff said. "So two times in the past 30 years we've been given a tremendous infusion of new energy and new possibilities."
The Wiesenthal Center's previous annual survey counted 1,019 investigations under way worldwide. The number is lower this year and inexact because not all countries responded, but new investigations were up from 63 to 202, Zuroff said.
Still, a lack of political will in many countries, and what Zuroff called the "misplaced-sympathy syndrome" — reluctance to pursue aging suspects — has meant that few people have been brought to trial and convicted.
Lotter, the witness to Heim's atrocity, was in Mauthausen because he fought with the communists in the Spanish Civil War. His statement from the 1950 arrest warrant was viewed by the AP at the National Archives in College Park, Md.
Now that the necessary evidence is in place, numerous witness statements have been taken and Heim has been indicted, all that's left is to find him.
Born June 28, 1914 in Radkersburg, Austria, Heim joined the local Nazi party in 1935, three years before Austria was bloodlessly annexed by Germany.
He later joined the Waffen SS and was assigned to Mauthausen, a concentration camp near Linz, Austria, as a camp doctor in October and November 1941.
While there, witnesses told investigators, he worked closely with SS pharmacist Erich Wasicky on such gruesome experiments as injecting various solutions into Jewish prisoners' hearts to see which killed them the fastest.
But while Wasicky was brought to trial by an American Military Tribunal in 1946 and sentenced to death, along with other camp medical personnel and commanders, Heim, who was a POW in American custody, was not among them.
Heim's file in the Berlin Document Center, the then-U.S.-run depot for Nazi-era papers, was apparently altered to obliterate any mention of Mauthausen, according to his 1979 German indictment, obtained by the AP. Instead, for the period he was known to be at the concentration camp, he was listed as having a different SS assignment.
This "cannot be correct," the indictment says. "It is possible that through data manipulation the short assignment at the same time to the (concentration camp) was concealed."
There is no indication who might have been responsible.
The U.S. Army Intelligence file on Heim could shed light on his wartime and postwar activities, and is among hundreds of thousands transferred to the U.S. National Archives. But the Army's electronic format is such that staff have so far only been able to access about half of them, and these don't include the file requested by the AP.
Heim was relatively well-known, however, having been a national hockey player in Austria before the war, and there were plenty of witnesses from his time at Mauthausen.
Austrian authorities sent the 1950 arrest warrant to American authorities in Germany who initially agreed to turn him over, then told the Austrians, in a Dec. 21, 1950 letter obtained by the AP, that they couldn't trace him.
What happened next is unclear, but in 1958 Heim apparently felt comfortable enough to buy a 42-unit apartment block in Berlin, listing it in his own name with a home address in Mannheim, according to purchase documents obtained by the AP. He then moved to the nearby resort town of Baden-Baden and opened a gynecological clinic — also under his own name, Heister said.
In 1961 German authorities were alerted and began an investigation, but when they finally went to arrest him in September 1962, they just missed him — he apparently had been tipped off.
Heim continued to live off the rents collected from the Berlin apartments until 1979 when the building was confiscated by German authorities.
Proof that he is alive may lie in the fact that no one has claimed his estate. Heim has two sons in Germany and a daughter who lived in Chile but whose current whereabouts are unknown.
In Frankfurt, Heim's lawyer said he still officially represents the fugitive, but has not heard from him for 20 years and has "no clue" to his whereabouts.
Asked in a telephone interview if Heim was dead, Fritz Steinacker said only: "I don't know."
Ruediger Heim, one of the sons, would not comment when telephoned at his Baden-Baden villa.
"All I can say is that it has been implied that I am in contact with my father, and that is absolutely false," he said. "The rest is speculation, and I can't enter into that."
It was 1941, and an 18-year-old Jew had been sent to the clinic with a foot inflammation. Heim asked him about himself and why he was so fit. The young man said he had been a soccer player and swimmer.
Then, instead of treating the prisoner's foot, Heim anesthetized him, cut him open, castrated him, took apart one kidney and removed the second, Lotter said. The victim's head was removed and the flesh boiled off so that Heim could keep it on display.
"He needed the head because of its perfect teeth," Lotter, a non-Jewish political prisoner, recalled in testimony eight years later that was included in an Austrian warrant for Heim's arrest uncovered by The Associated Press. "Of all the camp doctors in Mauthausen, Dr. Heim was the most horrible."
But Heim managed to avoid prosecution, his American-held file in Germany mysteriously omitting his time at Mauthausen, and today he is the most-wanted suspected Nazi war criminal on a list of hundreds who the Simon Wiesenthal Center estimates are still free.
Heim would be 93 today and "we have good reason to believe he is still alive," said Efraim Zuroff, the Simon Wiesenthal Center's top Nazi hunter. He spoke in a telephone interview from Jerusalem ahead of the center's plans to release a most-wanted list Wednesday, and to open a media campaign in South America this summer highlighting the $485,000 reward for Heim's arrest posted by the center along with Germany and Austria.
According to an advance copy of the list obtained by the AP, the most wanted, after Heim, are: John Demjanjuk, fighting deportation from the U.S., which says he was a guard at several death and forced labor camps; Sandor Kepiro, a Hungarian accused of involvement in the wartime killings of than 1,000 civilians in Serbia; Milivoj Asner, a wartime Croatian police chief now living in Austria and suspected of an active role in deporting hundreds of Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies to their death; and Soeren Kam, a former member of the SS wanted by Denmark for the assassination of a journalist in 1943. His extradition from Germany was blocked in 2007 by a Bavarian court that found insufficient evidence for murder charges.
The hunt for Heim has taken investigators from the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg all around the world. Besides his home country of Austria and neighboring Germany where he settled after the war, tips have come from Uruguay in 1998, Spain, Switzerland and Chile in 2005, and Brazil in 2006, said Heinz Heister, presiding judge of the Baden-Baden state court, where Heim was indicted in absentia on hundreds of counts of murder in 1979.
Thousands of German war criminals were prosecuted in West Germany after World War II. In the 1970s Western democracies began a hunt in earnest for Eastern European collaborators who had fled West claiming to be refugees from communism, and the end of the Cold War gave access to a trove of communist files in the 1990s.
"All of a sudden there was pressure on countries like Latvia and Estonia to put these people on trial," Zuroff said. "So two times in the past 30 years we've been given a tremendous infusion of new energy and new possibilities."
The Wiesenthal Center's previous annual survey counted 1,019 investigations under way worldwide. The number is lower this year and inexact because not all countries responded, but new investigations were up from 63 to 202, Zuroff said.
Still, a lack of political will in many countries, and what Zuroff called the "misplaced-sympathy syndrome" — reluctance to pursue aging suspects — has meant that few people have been brought to trial and convicted.
Lotter, the witness to Heim's atrocity, was in Mauthausen because he fought with the communists in the Spanish Civil War. His statement from the 1950 arrest warrant was viewed by the AP at the National Archives in College Park, Md.
Now that the necessary evidence is in place, numerous witness statements have been taken and Heim has been indicted, all that's left is to find him.
Born June 28, 1914 in Radkersburg, Austria, Heim joined the local Nazi party in 1935, three years before Austria was bloodlessly annexed by Germany.
He later joined the Waffen SS and was assigned to Mauthausen, a concentration camp near Linz, Austria, as a camp doctor in October and November 1941.
While there, witnesses told investigators, he worked closely with SS pharmacist Erich Wasicky on such gruesome experiments as injecting various solutions into Jewish prisoners' hearts to see which killed them the fastest.
But while Wasicky was brought to trial by an American Military Tribunal in 1946 and sentenced to death, along with other camp medical personnel and commanders, Heim, who was a POW in American custody, was not among them.
Heim's file in the Berlin Document Center, the then-U.S.-run depot for Nazi-era papers, was apparently altered to obliterate any mention of Mauthausen, according to his 1979 German indictment, obtained by the AP. Instead, for the period he was known to be at the concentration camp, he was listed as having a different SS assignment.
This "cannot be correct," the indictment says. "It is possible that through data manipulation the short assignment at the same time to the (concentration camp) was concealed."
There is no indication who might have been responsible.
The U.S. Army Intelligence file on Heim could shed light on his wartime and postwar activities, and is among hundreds of thousands transferred to the U.S. National Archives. But the Army's electronic format is such that staff have so far only been able to access about half of them, and these don't include the file requested by the AP.
Heim was relatively well-known, however, having been a national hockey player in Austria before the war, and there were plenty of witnesses from his time at Mauthausen.
Austrian authorities sent the 1950 arrest warrant to American authorities in Germany who initially agreed to turn him over, then told the Austrians, in a Dec. 21, 1950 letter obtained by the AP, that they couldn't trace him.
What happened next is unclear, but in 1958 Heim apparently felt comfortable enough to buy a 42-unit apartment block in Berlin, listing it in his own name with a home address in Mannheim, according to purchase documents obtained by the AP. He then moved to the nearby resort town of Baden-Baden and opened a gynecological clinic — also under his own name, Heister said.
In 1961 German authorities were alerted and began an investigation, but when they finally went to arrest him in September 1962, they just missed him — he apparently had been tipped off.
Heim continued to live off the rents collected from the Berlin apartments until 1979 when the building was confiscated by German authorities.
Proof that he is alive may lie in the fact that no one has claimed his estate. Heim has two sons in Germany and a daughter who lived in Chile but whose current whereabouts are unknown.
In Frankfurt, Heim's lawyer said he still officially represents the fugitive, but has not heard from him for 20 years and has "no clue" to his whereabouts.
Asked in a telephone interview if Heim was dead, Fritz Steinacker said only: "I don't know."
Ruediger Heim, one of the sons, would not comment when telephoned at his Baden-Baden villa.
"All I can say is that it has been implied that I am in contact with my father, and that is absolutely false," he said. "The rest is speculation, and I can't enter into that."
Uma Thurman's parents testify at stalking trial
NEW YORK - The former mental patient accused of stalking Uma Thurman appeared at her front door repeatedly at odd hours, and he left her a frightening letter, according to testimony Tuesday by two of the actress' employees.
Thurman's housekeeper Dorota Janas testified on the second day of Jack Jordan's trial that he rang the bell at the actress' Greenwich Village town house at least twice a day for at least 10 days last summer.
Jordan, 37, is on trial in Manhattan's state Supreme Court charged with stalking and aggravated harassment. He was arrested in October 2007 after following and trying to contact Thurman from early 2005 until about a month before his arrest. He faces up to a year in jail if convicted.
His lawyer, George Vomvolakis, says Jordan is a former mental patient who has been diagnosed as schizophrenic and bipolar and should be in psychiatric treatment, not in jail.
Janas, testifying through a Polish interpreter, said she saw Jordan sitting on the front stoop a few days before another employee called police. Some time later, she retrieved a letter Jordan had left for Thurman on the stoop.
Samara Koffler, a film producer who was Thurman's former personal assistant, testified that she returned from the Bahamas in August 2007 and saw the letter Janas had found. She read part of it in court.
"Dear Uma," Koffler read, "I love you completely. Unless rousted, I'll spend the night in front of (Thurman's address)."
At another point, she read: "Ask your assistant to let me wait inside until you return. I feel afraid that if I see you with another man I'll kill myself."
Koffler said she told Thurman about the letter and called 911 and told police "an unstable man" was hanging around the house.
The 38-year-old Thurman — who has starred in "Pulp Fiction," "Kill Bill," "The Producers," and "My Super Ex-Girlfriend," among other films — hired a private detective and allowed installation of surveillance cameras around the house, where she lives with her two children.
Earlier in the day, Thurman's parents testified.
Her father, Robert Thurman, said his reaction after reading e-mails from Jordan was to try to remember the FBI's telephone number. He said in court Tuesday he was seeing Jordan for the first time.
Her mother, Birgitte "Nena" Thurman, testified that she believed Jordan "was someone who would benefit from medical attention." She said the first time she spoke to the defendant was in 2005 when he called her home in Woodstock, N.Y., and told her that he "and my daughter had a predestination to be together." She said he asked her to relay that message.
"I tried to assure him in no uncertain terms that this was just a fantasy and he was projecting," Thurman said, and that her daughter had no interest in him.
Thurman's housekeeper Dorota Janas testified on the second day of Jack Jordan's trial that he rang the bell at the actress' Greenwich Village town house at least twice a day for at least 10 days last summer.
Jordan, 37, is on trial in Manhattan's state Supreme Court charged with stalking and aggravated harassment. He was arrested in October 2007 after following and trying to contact Thurman from early 2005 until about a month before his arrest. He faces up to a year in jail if convicted.
His lawyer, George Vomvolakis, says Jordan is a former mental patient who has been diagnosed as schizophrenic and bipolar and should be in psychiatric treatment, not in jail.
Janas, testifying through a Polish interpreter, said she saw Jordan sitting on the front stoop a few days before another employee called police. Some time later, she retrieved a letter Jordan had left for Thurman on the stoop.
Samara Koffler, a film producer who was Thurman's former personal assistant, testified that she returned from the Bahamas in August 2007 and saw the letter Janas had found. She read part of it in court.
"Dear Uma," Koffler read, "I love you completely. Unless rousted, I'll spend the night in front of (Thurman's address)."
At another point, she read: "Ask your assistant to let me wait inside until you return. I feel afraid that if I see you with another man I'll kill myself."
Koffler said she told Thurman about the letter and called 911 and told police "an unstable man" was hanging around the house.
The 38-year-old Thurman — who has starred in "Pulp Fiction," "Kill Bill," "The Producers," and "My Super Ex-Girlfriend," among other films — hired a private detective and allowed installation of surveillance cameras around the house, where she lives with her two children.
Earlier in the day, Thurman's parents testified.
Her father, Robert Thurman, said his reaction after reading e-mails from Jordan was to try to remember the FBI's telephone number. He said in court Tuesday he was seeing Jordan for the first time.
Her mother, Birgitte "Nena" Thurman, testified that she believed Jordan "was someone who would benefit from medical attention." She said the first time she spoke to the defendant was in 2005 when he called her home in Woodstock, N.Y., and told her that he "and my daughter had a predestination to be together." She said he asked her to relay that message.
"I tried to assure him in no uncertain terms that this was just a fantasy and he was projecting," Thurman said, and that her daughter had no interest in him.
Colossal squid examined at NZ
WELLINGTON - A colossal squid caught from deep Antarctic waters was defrosted on Wednesday by New Zealand scientists keen to discover more about the little-known giant predator.
The 8 meter long (26 feet) colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni), which weighs about 495 kg (1,089 pounds) is the largest and best preserved adult colossal squid to be caught.
It has been on ice for over a year after being caught by a deep-sea fishing boat.
The squid has hundreds of sharp hooks on its arms as well as a large and powerful beak which could easily snap the backbone of a fish up to two meters long, said Dr Steve O'Shea, a scientist from the Auckland University of Technology.
"It's endowed with a killer arsenal: the hooks, the beak, everything about it," O'Shea said.
Judging by the size of squid beaks found in the stomachs of sperm whales relative to the size of the specimen caught, colossal squids could grow up to 12 meters (36 feet) and weigh 750 kilograms (1,650 pounds), O'Shea said.
The specimen has eyes that are 27 centimeters (10.6 inches) in diameter, the first time intact eyes have been recovered on a colossal squid.
The squid will be examined, measured and tested before being preserved for display at New Zealand's national museum, Te Papa, later this year.
O'Shea is hopeful the examination will teach them a lot more about the species, which lives at a depth of about 2,000 meters between Antarctica and as far north as the coast of New Zealand.
The squid was caught in February 2007 by long-line fisherman near in the Ross Sea near Antarctica, and was frozen on the ship before being donated to the museum.
The scientists will have about 6-8 hours to examine the squid before it begins to decay. It will be preserved in formalin, and stored in a purpose-built tank for display.
The 8 meter long (26 feet) colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni), which weighs about 495 kg (1,089 pounds) is the largest and best preserved adult colossal squid to be caught.
It has been on ice for over a year after being caught by a deep-sea fishing boat.
The squid has hundreds of sharp hooks on its arms as well as a large and powerful beak which could easily snap the backbone of a fish up to two meters long, said Dr Steve O'Shea, a scientist from the Auckland University of Technology.
"It's endowed with a killer arsenal: the hooks, the beak, everything about it," O'Shea said.
Judging by the size of squid beaks found in the stomachs of sperm whales relative to the size of the specimen caught, colossal squids could grow up to 12 meters (36 feet) and weigh 750 kilograms (1,650 pounds), O'Shea said.
The specimen has eyes that are 27 centimeters (10.6 inches) in diameter, the first time intact eyes have been recovered on a colossal squid.
The squid will be examined, measured and tested before being preserved for display at New Zealand's national museum, Te Papa, later this year.
O'Shea is hopeful the examination will teach them a lot more about the species, which lives at a depth of about 2,000 meters between Antarctica and as far north as the coast of New Zealand.
The squid was caught in February 2007 by long-line fisherman near in the Ross Sea near Antarctica, and was frozen on the ship before being donated to the museum.
The scientists will have about 6-8 hours to examine the squid before it begins to decay. It will be preserved in formalin, and stored in a purpose-built tank for display.
Scientists seek clues as earthquakes rock Reno
RENO, Nev. - Scientists at the University of Nevada, Reno are scrutinizing seismic readings and studying damage at residents' homes to try to figure out what's happening beneath the earth's surface under a northwest Reno neighborhood rocked by a seemingly endless string of earthquakes.
What they can't say is whether the hundreds of temblors that have rattled the area for two months — the largest a magnitude 4.7 Friday night — are subsiding or a prelude to bigger things to come.
"You're not going to get an earthquake prediction today," John Anderson, director of Seismology Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno, said Tuesday during a briefing with Gov. Jim Gibbons and emergency managers on the seismic activity.
Scientists are calling the swarm of temblors that began Feb. 28 the "Mogul earthquake sequence", in reference to the neighborhood where hundreds of mostly minor earthquakes have occurred.
But the shaking is unusual, seismologists say, because the intensity of the quakes has increased over the past few weeks. Generally, earthquakes tend to occur and are followed by smaller aftershocks.
In this case, the earth's rumblings have continued unabated, with barely negligible bumps occurring often minutes apart, followed by occasional larger shakers.
It's impossible to know if the temblors are foreshocks of a bigger quake to come, or aftershocks of what has been, experts said.
Up until April 15, sizable quakes that could be felt were occurring about once every third day.
Then, the rate increased, with about three, 2.0 or larger incidents occurring daily.
On April 24, when the first 4.2 quake was registered, "all of a sudden we were seeing 20 (of the magnitude) 2s and larger per day," said state geologist Jon Price.
"This is an exceptionally vigorous sequence of earthquakes," Price said.
During the past week alone, more than 500 occurrences have been recorded.
Most recently, two measuring 3.1 and 3.2 in magnitude occurred around 11 p.m. Monday. Another 3.1 was recorded at 9:15 a.m. Tuesday.
The largest so far was a 4.7 quake that was registered at 11:40 p.m. Friday. It was preceded 11 seconds earlier by a 3.3 quake, and followed 3 minutes later by one registering 3.4.
The temblors sent goods flying off shelves, cracked walls, broke glass and collapsed part of a water flume west of Reno. There were no injuries.
They are mostly shallow, occurring just beneath the surface to within a mile or two.
"Shallow makes us believe this is absolutely not volcanic," Price said.
Mapping of the quakes shows they are clustered around the Mogul and Somersett neighborhoods in northwest Reno, in an area about 2.5 miles long and 1/3 of a mile wide.
Craig dePolo with the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, said he understands the anxiety of residents who have lived with the persistent shaking.
"What's going on is extraordinary," he agreed. "People are being needled by little earthquakes ... for months."
"And the best we can say is we don't know what going to happen."
DePolo, who said he's been through many earthquakes, acknowledged that he, too, is "a little nervous."
The governor and emergency managers urged residents to be prepared by strapping down water heaters or any heavy items that could fall and injure people and to have first aid and food provisions on hand.
Frank Siracusa, head of the Nevada Division of Emergency Management, said state, regional and local agencies train constantly for disasters and have been in daily contact.
"I'd like to say we're prepared, but we can never be too prepared," he said.
The governor said he's "very concerned about the safety of the public," and stressed that residents need to be prepared to minimize risk in the event of a disaster.
Gibbons, himself a geologist, said the earth's movement is what makes the mountains and Nevada landscape so special.
"I find it fascinating about our earth and how it continually evolves over time," he said.
But with Nevada being the second most seismically active state in the continental U.S., he echoed the advice of experts who said large earthquakes are inevitable.
"At some point ... we are going to have a magnitude 6 or 7," Gibbons said.
Earthquake magnitudes are calculated according to ground motion recorded on seismographs. An increase in one full number — from 5.5 to 6.5, for example — means the quake's magnitude is 10 times as great.
A quake with a magnitude of 6 can cause severe damage, while one with a magnitude of 7 can cause widespread, heavy damage.
What they can't say is whether the hundreds of temblors that have rattled the area for two months — the largest a magnitude 4.7 Friday night — are subsiding or a prelude to bigger things to come.
"You're not going to get an earthquake prediction today," John Anderson, director of Seismology Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno, said Tuesday during a briefing with Gov. Jim Gibbons and emergency managers on the seismic activity.
Scientists are calling the swarm of temblors that began Feb. 28 the "Mogul earthquake sequence", in reference to the neighborhood where hundreds of mostly minor earthquakes have occurred.
But the shaking is unusual, seismologists say, because the intensity of the quakes has increased over the past few weeks. Generally, earthquakes tend to occur and are followed by smaller aftershocks.
In this case, the earth's rumblings have continued unabated, with barely negligible bumps occurring often minutes apart, followed by occasional larger shakers.
It's impossible to know if the temblors are foreshocks of a bigger quake to come, or aftershocks of what has been, experts said.
Up until April 15, sizable quakes that could be felt were occurring about once every third day.
Then, the rate increased, with about three, 2.0 or larger incidents occurring daily.
On April 24, when the first 4.2 quake was registered, "all of a sudden we were seeing 20 (of the magnitude) 2s and larger per day," said state geologist Jon Price.
"This is an exceptionally vigorous sequence of earthquakes," Price said.
During the past week alone, more than 500 occurrences have been recorded.
Most recently, two measuring 3.1 and 3.2 in magnitude occurred around 11 p.m. Monday. Another 3.1 was recorded at 9:15 a.m. Tuesday.
The largest so far was a 4.7 quake that was registered at 11:40 p.m. Friday. It was preceded 11 seconds earlier by a 3.3 quake, and followed 3 minutes later by one registering 3.4.
The temblors sent goods flying off shelves, cracked walls, broke glass and collapsed part of a water flume west of Reno. There were no injuries.
They are mostly shallow, occurring just beneath the surface to within a mile or two.
"Shallow makes us believe this is absolutely not volcanic," Price said.
Mapping of the quakes shows they are clustered around the Mogul and Somersett neighborhoods in northwest Reno, in an area about 2.5 miles long and 1/3 of a mile wide.
Craig dePolo with the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, said he understands the anxiety of residents who have lived with the persistent shaking.
"What's going on is extraordinary," he agreed. "People are being needled by little earthquakes ... for months."
"And the best we can say is we don't know what going to happen."
DePolo, who said he's been through many earthquakes, acknowledged that he, too, is "a little nervous."
The governor and emergency managers urged residents to be prepared by strapping down water heaters or any heavy items that could fall and injure people and to have first aid and food provisions on hand.
Frank Siracusa, head of the Nevada Division of Emergency Management, said state, regional and local agencies train constantly for disasters and have been in daily contact.
"I'd like to say we're prepared, but we can never be too prepared," he said.
The governor said he's "very concerned about the safety of the public," and stressed that residents need to be prepared to minimize risk in the event of a disaster.
Gibbons, himself a geologist, said the earth's movement is what makes the mountains and Nevada landscape so special.
"I find it fascinating about our earth and how it continually evolves over time," he said.
But with Nevada being the second most seismically active state in the continental U.S., he echoed the advice of experts who said large earthquakes are inevitable.
"At some point ... we are going to have a magnitude 6 or 7," Gibbons said.
Earthquake magnitudes are calculated according to ground motion recorded on seismographs. An increase in one full number — from 5.5 to 6.5, for example — means the quake's magnitude is 10 times as great.
A quake with a magnitude of 6 can cause severe damage, while one with a magnitude of 7 can cause widespread, heavy damage.
Chinese policeman killed in Tibetan unrest
BEIJING - A Chinese policeman was shot dead while pursuing "an alleged riot leader" in an ethnically Tibetan part of western China, state media said on Wednesday, in a sign of continuing tension despite a crackdown.
The man, named as ethnic Tibetan officer Lama Cedain, died of his wounds on Monday morning, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing the public security authorities in the remote province of Qinghai, which borders Tibet.
It added that there had been a riot in Qinghai's Dari County incited by "a handful of people alleged to be insurgents seeking 'Tibetan independence,"' following anti-Chinese protests in Lhasa in March.
"After a month-long investigation, the police moved on Monday to arrest the suspected leader. The suspect resisted arrest and gunfire broke out," the report said.
"The officer was killed in the gun battle ... and other officers returned fire, killing the suspect," it added.
China has blamed Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and his government-in-exile for plotting the unrest, in which at least 18 "innocent civilians," according to Beijing, were killed by Tibetan mobs in the regional capital, Lhasa.
The Dalai Lama denies the charges, and insists he does not want independence.
The unrest had led to protests at and disruption of the global torch relay for the Beijing Summer Olympics, most notably in London, Paris and San Francisco.
On Tuesday, China announced that it had jailed 30 people for terms ranging from three years to life for their roles in the Tibet protests.
Human Rights Watch said it was concerned these people had not received fair trials.
"Guilty or innocent, these Tibetans (and any other defendant in China), are entitled to a fair trial," Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, wrote in an emailed statement.
"Instead, they were tried on secret evidence behind closed doors and without the benefit of a meaningful defense by lawyers they'd chosen."
But China defended the judicial process, saying the trial was open and had been attended by more than 200 people, including monks.
"If you break the law, you will be punished an accordance with it. It's the same in China as in any other country," Foreign Ministry spokesman Jiang Yu said.
She added that the government had dealt with the riots in a "restrained, lenient and magnanimous way."
The man, named as ethnic Tibetan officer Lama Cedain, died of his wounds on Monday morning, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing the public security authorities in the remote province of Qinghai, which borders Tibet.
It added that there had been a riot in Qinghai's Dari County incited by "a handful of people alleged to be insurgents seeking 'Tibetan independence,"' following anti-Chinese protests in Lhasa in March.
"After a month-long investigation, the police moved on Monday to arrest the suspected leader. The suspect resisted arrest and gunfire broke out," the report said.
"The officer was killed in the gun battle ... and other officers returned fire, killing the suspect," it added.
China has blamed Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and his government-in-exile for plotting the unrest, in which at least 18 "innocent civilians," according to Beijing, were killed by Tibetan mobs in the regional capital, Lhasa.
The Dalai Lama denies the charges, and insists he does not want independence.
The unrest had led to protests at and disruption of the global torch relay for the Beijing Summer Olympics, most notably in London, Paris and San Francisco.
On Tuesday, China announced that it had jailed 30 people for terms ranging from three years to life for their roles in the Tibet protests.
Human Rights Watch said it was concerned these people had not received fair trials.
"Guilty or innocent, these Tibetans (and any other defendant in China), are entitled to a fair trial," Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, wrote in an emailed statement.
"Instead, they were tried on secret evidence behind closed doors and without the benefit of a meaningful defense by lawyers they'd chosen."
But China defended the judicial process, saying the trial was open and had been attended by more than 200 people, including monks.
"If you break the law, you will be punished an accordance with it. It's the same in China as in any other country," Foreign Ministry spokesman Jiang Yu said.
She added that the government had dealt with the riots in a "restrained, lenient and magnanimous way."
Chinese policeman killed in Tibetan unrest
BEIJING - A Chinese policeman was shot dead while pursuing "an alleged riot leader" in an ethnically Tibetan part of western China, state media said on Wednesday, in a sign of continuing tension despite a crackdown.
The man, named as ethnic Tibetan officer Lama Cedain, died of his wounds on Monday morning, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing the public security authorities in the remote province of Qinghai, which borders Tibet.
It added that there had been a riot in Qinghai's Dari County incited by "a handful of people alleged to be insurgents seeking 'Tibetan independence,"' following anti-Chinese protests in Lhasa in March.
"After a month-long investigation, the police moved on Monday to arrest the suspected leader. The suspect resisted arrest and gunfire broke out," the report said.
"The officer was killed in the gun battle ... and other officers returned fire, killing the suspect," it added.
China has blamed Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and his government-in-exile for plotting the unrest, in which at least 18 "innocent civilians," according to Beijing, were killed by Tibetan mobs in the regional capital, Lhasa.
The Dalai Lama denies the charges, and insists he does not want independence.
The unrest had led to protests at and disruption of the global torch relay for the Beijing Summer Olympics, most notably in London, Paris and San Francisco.
On Tuesday, China announced that it had jailed 30 people for terms ranging from three years to life for their roles in the Tibet protests.
Human Rights Watch said it was concerned these people had not received fair trials.
"Guilty or innocent, these Tibetans (and any other defendant in China), are entitled to a fair trial," Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, wrote in an emailed statement.
"Instead, they were tried on secret evidence behind closed doors and without the benefit of a meaningful defense by lawyers they'd chosen."
But China defended the judicial process, saying the trial was open and had been attended by more than 200 people, including monks.
"If you break the law, you will be punished an accordance with it. It's the same in China as in any other country," Foreign Ministry spokesman Jiang Yu said.
She added that the government had dealt with the riots in a "restrained, lenient and magnanimous way."
The man, named as ethnic Tibetan officer Lama Cedain, died of his wounds on Monday morning, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing the public security authorities in the remote province of Qinghai, which borders Tibet.
It added that there had been a riot in Qinghai's Dari County incited by "a handful of people alleged to be insurgents seeking 'Tibetan independence,"' following anti-Chinese protests in Lhasa in March.
"After a month-long investigation, the police moved on Monday to arrest the suspected leader. The suspect resisted arrest and gunfire broke out," the report said.
"The officer was killed in the gun battle ... and other officers returned fire, killing the suspect," it added.
China has blamed Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and his government-in-exile for plotting the unrest, in which at least 18 "innocent civilians," according to Beijing, were killed by Tibetan mobs in the regional capital, Lhasa.
The Dalai Lama denies the charges, and insists he does not want independence.
The unrest had led to protests at and disruption of the global torch relay for the Beijing Summer Olympics, most notably in London, Paris and San Francisco.
On Tuesday, China announced that it had jailed 30 people for terms ranging from three years to life for their roles in the Tibet protests.
Human Rights Watch said it was concerned these people had not received fair trials.
"Guilty or innocent, these Tibetans (and any other defendant in China), are entitled to a fair trial," Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, wrote in an emailed statement.
"Instead, they were tried on secret evidence behind closed doors and without the benefit of a meaningful defense by lawyers they'd chosen."
But China defended the judicial process, saying the trial was open and had been attended by more than 200 people, including monks.
"If you break the law, you will be punished an accordance with it. It's the same in China as in any other country," Foreign Ministry spokesman Jiang Yu said.
She added that the government had dealt with the riots in a "restrained, lenient and magnanimous way."
US Medicare, drifting towards disaster
WASHINGTON - Medicare is lurching toward disaster and it is too late for the Bush Administration and Congress to do anything about it, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said on Tuesday.
He said the next administration will have to act to stop rising costs and get control of the $400 billion federal health insurance plan for the elderly, which now covers 44 million people.
"Higher and higher costs are being borne by fewer and fewer people. Sooner or later, this formula implodes," Leavitt said in a speech to the right-leaning Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute think-tanks.
"There is serious danger here," he added. "Medicare is drifting towards disaster."
Leavitt's speech echoes repeated warnings from other federal government officials who have noted that Medicare spending is projected to be 3.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2009.
A separate report released on Tuesday from the National Cancer Institute estimated that Medicare spent $21 billion on cancer alone between 1999 and 2003.
"The disaster is not inevitable. If we act now, we can change the outcome. In health care, the core problem is that costs are rising significantly faster than costs in the economy as a whole," Leavitt said.
But the administration of President George W. Bush and the current Congress are out of time, Leavitt said.
"So, given the strong possibility this won't get fixed in the next 266 days, I would like to add some general advice on the creation of a political construct for action and a general strategy to solve the problem," Leavitt said, saying he was speaking as a Medicare Trustee and not as a government official.
Leavitt said paying for each medical action separately is wasteful and "it often results in bad referral decisions, sloppy hand-offs, duplications, fraud, and poor quality of care. The result is inappropriate care and unnecessary cost."
Last week the Government Accountability Office blamed HHS in part for this, saying the agency had not used its powers to force hospitals to provide better care and less waste.
"It troubles me that this matter is not receiving more attention in the presidential candidates' discussions. The next president will have to deal with this in significant part," he said.
He said the next administration will have to act to stop rising costs and get control of the $400 billion federal health insurance plan for the elderly, which now covers 44 million people.
"Higher and higher costs are being borne by fewer and fewer people. Sooner or later, this formula implodes," Leavitt said in a speech to the right-leaning Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute think-tanks.
"There is serious danger here," he added. "Medicare is drifting towards disaster."
Leavitt's speech echoes repeated warnings from other federal government officials who have noted that Medicare spending is projected to be 3.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2009.
A separate report released on Tuesday from the National Cancer Institute estimated that Medicare spent $21 billion on cancer alone between 1999 and 2003.
"The disaster is not inevitable. If we act now, we can change the outcome. In health care, the core problem is that costs are rising significantly faster than costs in the economy as a whole," Leavitt said.
But the administration of President George W. Bush and the current Congress are out of time, Leavitt said.
"So, given the strong possibility this won't get fixed in the next 266 days, I would like to add some general advice on the creation of a political construct for action and a general strategy to solve the problem," Leavitt said, saying he was speaking as a Medicare Trustee and not as a government official.
Leavitt said paying for each medical action separately is wasteful and "it often results in bad referral decisions, sloppy hand-offs, duplications, fraud, and poor quality of care. The result is inappropriate care and unnecessary cost."
Last week the Government Accountability Office blamed HHS in part for this, saying the agency had not used its powers to force hospitals to provide better care and less waste.
"It troubles me that this matter is not receiving more attention in the presidential candidates' discussions. The next president will have to deal with this in significant part," he said.
No magic wand to lower fuel prices: Bush
WASHINGTON - U.S. President George W. Bush said on Tuesday there was no "magic wand" to bring down record-high fuel prices but would consider a proposal to suspend federal gasoline taxes this summer -- an idea that has divided the 2008 presidential candidates.
Trying to calm anxious Americans facing $3.60 a gallon gasoline and soaring grocery bills, Bush again prodded Congress to open an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling and allow construction of more nuclear and coal plants.
"I firmly believe that, you know, if there was a magic wand to wave, I'd be waving it, of course," he said during a news conference. "I've repeatedly submitted proposals to help address these problems, yet time after time Congress chose to block them."
Crude oil prices have surged more than five-fold since 2002, heaping more pressure on a waning U.S. economy besieged by dropping home values and rising food prices.
Oil prices are up nearly 25 percent since the start of 2008, logging a record near $119.93 a barrel on Monday, and gasoline prices are above the key $4 a gallon mark in some U.S. cities like San Francisco.
Giant U.S. oil company Exxon Mobil Corp will report its quarterly profits this week, after ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell and BP all reported quarterly profit increases from a year ago.
Presumed Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton have both endorsed suspending an 18.4 cent per gallon federal gasoline tax this summer, but fellow Democratic hopeful Barack Obama has argued that it would make little difference.
Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady, has used the gas tax issue to differentiate herself from Obama, an Illinois senator, as they fight ahead of the nominating contests in Indiana and North Carolina next week.
In Indiana, Clinton argued McCain's plan for the gasoline tax holiday did not cover the costs to the federal government and said she would do that by taxing oil company profits.
"That money would then go in to replenish the highway trust fund," she said.
The McCain campaign disputed her charge, saying his legislation now pending in Congress would cover the money for the trust fund via general revenue.
Obama said the tax holiday plan would only save drivers a total of $25-$30 and may not reduce prices.
"This isn't an idea designed to get you through the summer, it's an idea designed to get them through an election," he told a town hall-style meeting in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Bush said he was willing to consider suspending gasoline taxes.
"We'll let the candidates argue out their ideas," Bush said. "If it's a good idea, we embrace it. If not, we're analyzing the different ideas coming forward."
However, Bush again rebuffed calls from U.S. lawmakers to suspend filling the nation's emergency oil stockpile to boost supplies -- saying that U.S. reserve shipments amount to one-tenth of 1 percent of global oil demand.
Senate Democrats are pursuing legislation that would bar the federal government from socking away oil until prices fall, and 16 Republican senators on Tuesday said oil shipments should stop. All three presidential hopefuls support such a move.
Instead, Bush has repeatedly called on OPEC -- source of about a third of global oil supplies -- to boost production to tame record prices, but so far cartel members have rejected output hikes.
Bush declined to say whether he will pressure Saudi Arabia -- OPEC's top exporter -- to boost output when he visits the kingdom next month.
"To your question on the Saudis, look, I have made the case that, you know, the high price of oil injures economies," Bush said. "But I think we better understand that there's not a lot of excess capacity in this world right now."
Trying to calm anxious Americans facing $3.60 a gallon gasoline and soaring grocery bills, Bush again prodded Congress to open an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling and allow construction of more nuclear and coal plants.
"I firmly believe that, you know, if there was a magic wand to wave, I'd be waving it, of course," he said during a news conference. "I've repeatedly submitted proposals to help address these problems, yet time after time Congress chose to block them."
Crude oil prices have surged more than five-fold since 2002, heaping more pressure on a waning U.S. economy besieged by dropping home values and rising food prices.
Oil prices are up nearly 25 percent since the start of 2008, logging a record near $119.93 a barrel on Monday, and gasoline prices are above the key $4 a gallon mark in some U.S. cities like San Francisco.
Giant U.S. oil company Exxon Mobil Corp will report its quarterly profits this week, after ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell and BP all reported quarterly profit increases from a year ago.
Presumed Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton have both endorsed suspending an 18.4 cent per gallon federal gasoline tax this summer, but fellow Democratic hopeful Barack Obama has argued that it would make little difference.
Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady, has used the gas tax issue to differentiate herself from Obama, an Illinois senator, as they fight ahead of the nominating contests in Indiana and North Carolina next week.
In Indiana, Clinton argued McCain's plan for the gasoline tax holiday did not cover the costs to the federal government and said she would do that by taxing oil company profits.
"That money would then go in to replenish the highway trust fund," she said.
The McCain campaign disputed her charge, saying his legislation now pending in Congress would cover the money for the trust fund via general revenue.
Obama said the tax holiday plan would only save drivers a total of $25-$30 and may not reduce prices.
"This isn't an idea designed to get you through the summer, it's an idea designed to get them through an election," he told a town hall-style meeting in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Bush said he was willing to consider suspending gasoline taxes.
"We'll let the candidates argue out their ideas," Bush said. "If it's a good idea, we embrace it. If not, we're analyzing the different ideas coming forward."
However, Bush again rebuffed calls from U.S. lawmakers to suspend filling the nation's emergency oil stockpile to boost supplies -- saying that U.S. reserve shipments amount to one-tenth of 1 percent of global oil demand.
Senate Democrats are pursuing legislation that would bar the federal government from socking away oil until prices fall, and 16 Republican senators on Tuesday said oil shipments should stop. All three presidential hopefuls support such a move.
Instead, Bush has repeatedly called on OPEC -- source of about a third of global oil supplies -- to boost production to tame record prices, but so far cartel members have rejected output hikes.
Bush declined to say whether he will pressure Saudi Arabia -- OPEC's top exporter -- to boost output when he visits the kingdom next month.
"To your question on the Saudis, look, I have made the case that, you know, the high price of oil injures economies," Bush said. "But I think we better understand that there's not a lot of excess capacity in this world right now."
Cost issues, war sap US military readiness
WASHINGTON - A top Democratic lawmaker on Tuesday called for urgent improvement of the U.S. military's readiness, saying the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and cost overruns in weapons programs had sapped its ability to respond quickly to a crisis elsewhere.
Rep. Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat who heads the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, said military officials had finally begun to acknowledge these problems after years of questioning by Congress.
"Should a major unexpected contingency occur today, it could not be answered in a timely fashion and this worries me to death," Skelton told a group of defense writers.
"We are in dire need of upgrading our readiness," he said, citing concerns about military training, the strain of repeated deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and difficulties ensuring troops had the equipment they needed.
Noting it has been five years since the Iraq war began, Skelton said the average time between major conflicts over the past decades had been about five years.
Skelton said he hoped to include language in the fiscal 2009 defense spending bill to improve military readiness, increase the focus on Afghanistan, and underscore the need for more help from the State Department and other federal agencies. The legislation will be drafted by his committee next month.
Cost growth in nearly every U.S. weapons program was compounding the issue, he said.
Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, on Tuesday held a hearing on Pentagon weapons programs, calling them "one of the biggest sources of wasteful spending in the federal budget."
Waxman noted a recent Government Accountability Office study put cost overruns in weapons programs at nearly $300 billion and cited average delays of nearly two years.
Waxman took aim at one program, a $1.2 billion Marine Corps amphibious tank that was being developed by General Dynamics Corp. He said the company received more than $60 million in bonuses for the program even though its tanks flunked their tests. Now the Pentagon planned to spend nearly $1 billion more to redo the development efforts.
"There seems to be absolutely no accountability," he said. "The contractors keep getting rich, senior Pentagon officials keep receiving lucrative job offers, and the taxpayer keeps getting stuck with the check."
Skelton said the Pentagon needed to focus more on winning the current wars, especially in Afghanistan, than spending billions on weapons for possible future conflicts.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently said the Air Force needed to produce more unmanned airplanes for use in Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than focusing on its stealth F-22 fighter jet that is geared for combat against another military force.
The Air Force wants to buy 381 Lockheed Martin Corp F-22 fighters, but says it can only afford 183.
Skelton also said the Navy's goal of expanding to a 313-ship fleet was becoming "pretty illusory," given cost growth in the ships under construction. He said he supported the addition of more ships to the Navy's 2009 budget, but it was not clear exactly how many it could afford to buy.
Skelton defended moves by lawmakers to add spending for certain weapons projects not included in the Pentagon's budget request, including billions of dollars in recent years for additional C-17 transport plane built by Boeing Co.
He said Congress sometimes had a longer-range vision than the Pentagon, but occasionally lawmakers also needed to take a "hard look and not fund some of the pet projects of the services. It's our job sometimes to pick and choose."
Rep. Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat who heads the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, said military officials had finally begun to acknowledge these problems after years of questioning by Congress.
"Should a major unexpected contingency occur today, it could not be answered in a timely fashion and this worries me to death," Skelton told a group of defense writers.
"We are in dire need of upgrading our readiness," he said, citing concerns about military training, the strain of repeated deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and difficulties ensuring troops had the equipment they needed.
Noting it has been five years since the Iraq war began, Skelton said the average time between major conflicts over the past decades had been about five years.
Skelton said he hoped to include language in the fiscal 2009 defense spending bill to improve military readiness, increase the focus on Afghanistan, and underscore the need for more help from the State Department and other federal agencies. The legislation will be drafted by his committee next month.
Cost growth in nearly every U.S. weapons program was compounding the issue, he said.
Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, on Tuesday held a hearing on Pentagon weapons programs, calling them "one of the biggest sources of wasteful spending in the federal budget."
Waxman noted a recent Government Accountability Office study put cost overruns in weapons programs at nearly $300 billion and cited average delays of nearly two years.
Waxman took aim at one program, a $1.2 billion Marine Corps amphibious tank that was being developed by General Dynamics Corp. He said the company received more than $60 million in bonuses for the program even though its tanks flunked their tests. Now the Pentagon planned to spend nearly $1 billion more to redo the development efforts.
"There seems to be absolutely no accountability," he said. "The contractors keep getting rich, senior Pentagon officials keep receiving lucrative job offers, and the taxpayer keeps getting stuck with the check."
Skelton said the Pentagon needed to focus more on winning the current wars, especially in Afghanistan, than spending billions on weapons for possible future conflicts.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently said the Air Force needed to produce more unmanned airplanes for use in Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than focusing on its stealth F-22 fighter jet that is geared for combat against another military force.
The Air Force wants to buy 381 Lockheed Martin Corp F-22 fighters, but says it can only afford 183.
Skelton also said the Navy's goal of expanding to a 313-ship fleet was becoming "pretty illusory," given cost growth in the ships under construction. He said he supported the addition of more ships to the Navy's 2009 budget, but it was not clear exactly how many it could afford to buy.
Skelton defended moves by lawmakers to add spending for certain weapons projects not included in the Pentagon's budget request, including billions of dollars in recent years for additional C-17 transport plane built by Boeing Co.
He said Congress sometimes had a longer-range vision than the Pentagon, but occasionally lawmakers also needed to take a "hard look and not fund some of the pet projects of the services. It's our job sometimes to pick and choose."
Captive family in Austria reunited
AMSTETTEN, Austria - In an "astonishing" scene, members of an Austrian family terrorized by decades of incest and imprisonment met for the first time at a clinic where psychiatrists are helping them recover, authorities said Tuesday.
Details of the emotional gathering emerged as police said DNA tests confirmed Josef Fritzl is the biological father of his daughter's six children.
The retired electrician confessed Monday to imprisoning his daughter Elisabeth for 24 years in a warren of soundproofed cellar rooms, sexually abusing her, fathering seven children with her and discarding the body of an one, who died in infancy, in a furnace.
Three of the children were locked in the underground labyrinth with their mother for years and had never met their other siblings or grandmother, who lived upstairs.
Hospital officials said Elisabeth, five of the children and Fritzl's wife Rosemarie spent their first moments together Sunday.
"It is astonishing how easy it worked that the children came together, and also it was astonishing how easy it happened that the grandmother and the mother came together," clinic director Berthold Kepplinger said.
Now 42, Elisabeth was 18 when she was imprisoned in the secret annex her father built beneath his apartment in Amstetten, a working-class town 75 miles west of Vienna.
Under the circumstances, she and the children were doing "quite well" in the care of a team of specialists, Kepplinger said.
One of the children, a 19-year-old girl, was in critical condition and undergoing dialysis at another hospital, and was not part of the reunion, hospital officials said.
Forensics experts carted boxes of belongings Tuesday out of the Fritzl home and investigators said they were combing through his other properties but had found no other hidden rooms.
Fritzl, 73, led his wife to believe that Elisabeth had run away to join a religious cult when she disappeared and authorities said there was no evidence the suspect's wife knew what was going on or was involved.
Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs, said Rosemarie's other children told authorities they noticed "absolutely" nothing about their father's double life.
Fritzl faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted on rape charges, the most grave of his alleged offenses. However, prosecutors said Tuesday they were investigating whether he can be charged with "murder through failure to act" in connection with the infant's death, which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Fritzl's lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said his client was under psychiatric care. Asked whether he showed any remorse, Mayer said: "I cannot say at this point."
Fritzl "is really hit by this. He is very serious, but he is emotionally broken," Mayer told The Associated Press.
However, prosecutor Gerhard Sedlacek said Fritzl was "calm, completely without emotion" when he was placed in pretrial detention Tuesday.
Residents of Amstetten questioned how the abuse could go undetected for so long.
Town authorities authorized the construction of a basement addition to the gray stone apartment building Fritzl owned and lived in, in 1978, city spokesman Hermann Gruber told the Austria Press Agency. He said inspectors examined the project in 1983 — the year before Elisabeth was imprisoned — and found nothing suspicious.
Officials said three of the children — the hospitalized 19-year-old, and two boys, aged 18 and 5, — "never saw sunlight" until they were freed from the basement on Saturday.
The other three children lived with Fritzl and his wife. The couple registered those children with authorities, saying they found them outside their home in 1993, 1994 and 1997, at least one with a note from Elisabeth saying she could not care for the child.
Kepplinger said the 18-year-old could read and write in a "reduced form."
He said Elisabeth has spoken "quite a lot" about what she went through in captivity, but he declined to provide details. "It was definitely dreadful for her and for her children," Kepplinger said.
Leopold Etz, a regional police official, told the Austrian Press Agency that Fritzl apparently chose which children would live upstairs with him and his wife according to whether they were "crybabies."
Etz said he could not confirm Austrian media reports that Fritzl took several "men's vacations" to Thailand with unidentified German friends in the 1990s.
Fritzl was a dues-paying member of Amstetten's fishing club, and club official Reinhard Kern said "there was never a problem with him."
"Whether he actually went fishing or not, how am I to know? Maybe it was an alibi," Kern said.
The case started unfolding on April 19 when the imprisoned 19-year-old woman was found unconscious and was taken to a hospital. After receiving a tip, police picked up Elisabeth and her father on Saturday. Fritzl freed the captive children the same day, Polzer said.
Amstetten Mayor Herbert Katzengrueber told the AP in an interview that Fritzl was personable and well-liked, and that the town had honored the suspect and his wife on their 50th wedding anniversary in 2006.
Katzengrueber said he was at a loss to explain how such an atrocity could happen.
"No one can really explain it," he said. "I am appalled and saddened that such a thing could happen in my hometown. ... These have been awful and sad days."
About 200 people, many holding candles, gathered for a vigil in Amstetten's main square late Tuesday. In steady rain, they sang hymns and prayed for the victims.
"This is tragic," said 19-year-old Jaqueline Vogel, as tears trickled down her face.
Austria is still scandalized by a 2006 case involving Natascha Kampusch, who was kidnapped at age 10 and imprisoned in a basement outside Vienna for more than eight years.
In an interview with Puls4 private television, Kampusch, now 20, expressed empathy for the Fritzl family's ordeal and offered to help them financially.
But she also questioned the wisdom of moving the victims to a clinic for care.
"Those are the surroundings that they are used to. Just to rip them out of there without a transition cannot be good," she said.
Details of the emotional gathering emerged as police said DNA tests confirmed Josef Fritzl is the biological father of his daughter's six children.
The retired electrician confessed Monday to imprisoning his daughter Elisabeth for 24 years in a warren of soundproofed cellar rooms, sexually abusing her, fathering seven children with her and discarding the body of an one, who died in infancy, in a furnace.
Three of the children were locked in the underground labyrinth with their mother for years and had never met their other siblings or grandmother, who lived upstairs.
Hospital officials said Elisabeth, five of the children and Fritzl's wife Rosemarie spent their first moments together Sunday.
"It is astonishing how easy it worked that the children came together, and also it was astonishing how easy it happened that the grandmother and the mother came together," clinic director Berthold Kepplinger said.
Now 42, Elisabeth was 18 when she was imprisoned in the secret annex her father built beneath his apartment in Amstetten, a working-class town 75 miles west of Vienna.
Under the circumstances, she and the children were doing "quite well" in the care of a team of specialists, Kepplinger said.
One of the children, a 19-year-old girl, was in critical condition and undergoing dialysis at another hospital, and was not part of the reunion, hospital officials said.
Forensics experts carted boxes of belongings Tuesday out of the Fritzl home and investigators said they were combing through his other properties but had found no other hidden rooms.
Fritzl, 73, led his wife to believe that Elisabeth had run away to join a religious cult when she disappeared and authorities said there was no evidence the suspect's wife knew what was going on or was involved.
Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs, said Rosemarie's other children told authorities they noticed "absolutely" nothing about their father's double life.
Fritzl faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted on rape charges, the most grave of his alleged offenses. However, prosecutors said Tuesday they were investigating whether he can be charged with "murder through failure to act" in connection with the infant's death, which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Fritzl's lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said his client was under psychiatric care. Asked whether he showed any remorse, Mayer said: "I cannot say at this point."
Fritzl "is really hit by this. He is very serious, but he is emotionally broken," Mayer told The Associated Press.
However, prosecutor Gerhard Sedlacek said Fritzl was "calm, completely without emotion" when he was placed in pretrial detention Tuesday.
Residents of Amstetten questioned how the abuse could go undetected for so long.
Town authorities authorized the construction of a basement addition to the gray stone apartment building Fritzl owned and lived in, in 1978, city spokesman Hermann Gruber told the Austria Press Agency. He said inspectors examined the project in 1983 — the year before Elisabeth was imprisoned — and found nothing suspicious.
Officials said three of the children — the hospitalized 19-year-old, and two boys, aged 18 and 5, — "never saw sunlight" until they were freed from the basement on Saturday.
The other three children lived with Fritzl and his wife. The couple registered those children with authorities, saying they found them outside their home in 1993, 1994 and 1997, at least one with a note from Elisabeth saying she could not care for the child.
Kepplinger said the 18-year-old could read and write in a "reduced form."
He said Elisabeth has spoken "quite a lot" about what she went through in captivity, but he declined to provide details. "It was definitely dreadful for her and for her children," Kepplinger said.
Leopold Etz, a regional police official, told the Austrian Press Agency that Fritzl apparently chose which children would live upstairs with him and his wife according to whether they were "crybabies."
Etz said he could not confirm Austrian media reports that Fritzl took several "men's vacations" to Thailand with unidentified German friends in the 1990s.
Fritzl was a dues-paying member of Amstetten's fishing club, and club official Reinhard Kern said "there was never a problem with him."
"Whether he actually went fishing or not, how am I to know? Maybe it was an alibi," Kern said.
The case started unfolding on April 19 when the imprisoned 19-year-old woman was found unconscious and was taken to a hospital. After receiving a tip, police picked up Elisabeth and her father on Saturday. Fritzl freed the captive children the same day, Polzer said.
Amstetten Mayor Herbert Katzengrueber told the AP in an interview that Fritzl was personable and well-liked, and that the town had honored the suspect and his wife on their 50th wedding anniversary in 2006.
Katzengrueber said he was at a loss to explain how such an atrocity could happen.
"No one can really explain it," he said. "I am appalled and saddened that such a thing could happen in my hometown. ... These have been awful and sad days."
About 200 people, many holding candles, gathered for a vigil in Amstetten's main square late Tuesday. In steady rain, they sang hymns and prayed for the victims.
"This is tragic," said 19-year-old Jaqueline Vogel, as tears trickled down her face.
Austria is still scandalized by a 2006 case involving Natascha Kampusch, who was kidnapped at age 10 and imprisoned in a basement outside Vienna for more than eight years.
In an interview with Puls4 private television, Kampusch, now 20, expressed empathy for the Fritzl family's ordeal and offered to help them financially.
But she also questioned the wisdom of moving the victims to a clinic for care.
"Those are the surroundings that they are used to. Just to rip them out of there without a transition cannot be good," she said.
Silvio's Italy most rightwing country in Europe?
Shortly after Silvio Berlusconi was elected as Italy's next prime minister, the Guardian received a letter from a reader in the area round Venice, a stronghold of Berlusconi's allies in the anti-immigrant Northern League. The reader said his wife was an immigrant and doctor.
That day, a patient, whom she had apparently warned to take care of his health, had appeared in her surgery. “From now, dottoressa,” he told her, “you're the one who's going to have to take care.”
The success of the League (it won 28per cent of the votes in that part of the country) is one reason for thinking Italy has just become Europe's most rightwing country.
Ever since he entered politics, Berlusconi and his friends have been pushing back the boundaries of the say-able. Before the election, one of his candidates declared he had “never repudiated fascism”. Berlusconi did not drop him and the candidate was elected. Berlusconi himself was restrained in the campaign (well, apart from calling his middle-aged women followers ‘the menopause section’ and advising a young woman looking for a job to marry his millionaire son instead). But his victory two weeks ago has freed him to speak his mind.
It is expected that, in the next European Commission, Italy will lose the justice portfolio (which includes minority rights) but get the transport job instead. The prime minister-elect commented that, “It's much better for us to be concerned with infrastructure than homosexuality.”
His first move after the vote was to invite his old friend Vladimir Putin to his villa on Sardinia where he laid on a show with scantily clad dancing girls. At a press conference the next day, a Russian reporter rashly asked her president about his alleged relationship with a young gymnast. As Putin scowlingly complained of journalists with “snotty noses and erotic fantasies” invading his privacy, his chum drove home the message by pretending to fire a sub-machine gun at the questioner. It reduced her to tears.
The next Berlusconi government will be further to the right than the last one because, unlike his 2001-6 administration, it will not have the relative moderating influence of his former allies in the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats. Berlusconi's own loyalists aside, his new party, the Freedom Folk, was formed by drawing in former neo-fascists. They are led by Gianfranco Fini, who has recently been helping one of his followers to campaign to be Rome's next mayor. His most high-profile contribution? A ‘walkabout’, surrounded by camera crews, demanding to see immigrants' residence permits.
That day, a patient, whom she had apparently warned to take care of his health, had appeared in her surgery. “From now, dottoressa,” he told her, “you're the one who's going to have to take care.”
The success of the League (it won 28per cent of the votes in that part of the country) is one reason for thinking Italy has just become Europe's most rightwing country.
Ever since he entered politics, Berlusconi and his friends have been pushing back the boundaries of the say-able. Before the election, one of his candidates declared he had “never repudiated fascism”. Berlusconi did not drop him and the candidate was elected. Berlusconi himself was restrained in the campaign (well, apart from calling his middle-aged women followers ‘the menopause section’ and advising a young woman looking for a job to marry his millionaire son instead). But his victory two weeks ago has freed him to speak his mind.
It is expected that, in the next European Commission, Italy will lose the justice portfolio (which includes minority rights) but get the transport job instead. The prime minister-elect commented that, “It's much better for us to be concerned with infrastructure than homosexuality.”
His first move after the vote was to invite his old friend Vladimir Putin to his villa on Sardinia where he laid on a show with scantily clad dancing girls. At a press conference the next day, a Russian reporter rashly asked her president about his alleged relationship with a young gymnast. As Putin scowlingly complained of journalists with “snotty noses and erotic fantasies” invading his privacy, his chum drove home the message by pretending to fire a sub-machine gun at the questioner. It reduced her to tears.
The next Berlusconi government will be further to the right than the last one because, unlike his 2001-6 administration, it will not have the relative moderating influence of his former allies in the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats. Berlusconi's own loyalists aside, his new party, the Freedom Folk, was formed by drawing in former neo-fascists. They are led by Gianfranco Fini, who has recently been helping one of his followers to campaign to be Rome's next mayor. His most high-profile contribution? A ‘walkabout’, surrounded by camera crews, demanding to see immigrants' residence permits.
The war for virtual control
It is not called the world wide web for nothing. The internet has become a universal resource with a vital role in education - and search engines are now most people's way of accessing it. Given that level of influence, it is obviously unhealthy for too much potential power to be vested in a single search engine.
So, as Google gets ever stronger, it becomes harder for it to live up to its slogan, “Don't be evil”, which initially set it apart from other companies. If nothing else, Microsoft's unwelcome bid to buy Yahoo in an attempt to combat Google's power provides an opportunity to reflect on the importance of web search and to ask whether it should be dominated by a single company.
This story has so far been a corporate drama; on April 28 market-watchers were talking about an extended period of trench warfare for the IT giants. But it is also important to establish where the consumer interest lies. Google's dominance has been built up organically, rather than with the strong-arm tactics Microsoft used to maintain its 90 per cent monopoly of PC operating systems and associated software such as Word and Excel. If Google continues its recent rate of growth, however, it will not be long before it could command 80 per cent of the search market. The proposed merger has been about how other players could combat Google's increasing arm lock on search and the El Dorado of advertising that goes with it.
A scenario in which Microsoft takes over Yahoo, an erstwhile hero of the dot.com boom, would mean that competition in search would be reduced from three big players to two. In the short run this could provide stronger competition for Google (even though a combined Microsoft/Yahoo would still have barely 16per cent of the search market) but at the expense of fewer strong players in the field. There is also no guarantee that a merged Microsoft/Yahoo would make a stronger competitor. It is a matter of record that most mergers fail and the marriage of cultures as diverse as Microsoft and Yahoo would surely have less chance that most others, especially in the charged aftermath of a hostile bid. The best outcome would be to leave the three giants to battle it out, a scenario some of Microsoft's own senior managers are said to prefer. Microsoft could concentrate on fighting Google organically in the areas Microsoft is weakest - search and the trend to host services on the web, rather than on a home computer.
Quite simply, three giants are better than two. Yahoo and Microsoft, or an as yet unknown start-up, are capable of challenging Google. The company's dominance, though a cause for concern, is not structurally embedded. Google's engine pops up on many desktops as the default but it is still possible to change the setting. There is no reason why Google's power could decline in a short period of time, as Altavista's once supreme search engine did a few years ago. This could happen if one of dozens of rival engines finds a better way to search reflecting, say, users' personal interests rather than the number and quality of links that each page attracts (Google's strong point). Some search engines, including Yahoo's, are already difficult to tell apart from Google in a blind tasting. In mobile search - using phones and handheld devices - Yahoo is ahead. It is not a small company needing help: it has an estimated 120bn page views a month.
If fresh competition does not emerge and Google starts operating against the public interest, then strong action may be necessary - but not yet. A worrying aspect of all this is that there is no international institution to exercise a global judgment. The main players may be American but their activities are international. If, for instance, the US were to approve a Yahoo/Microsoft merger but the EU turned it down while Japan and the rest of Asia wanted something else, then chaos could ensue. We have arrived at the global village but have yet to find a village bobby.
Sharif to meet Zardari in Dubai to break deadlock
DUBAI — Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz Group (PML-N) leader, Nawaz Sharif, is to meet Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Co-chairman, Asif Zardari, here today as a last ditch effort to resolve the differences between the two coalition partners on the modalities of restoring the judges in Pakistan.
Nawaz was scheduled to arrive in Dubai late last night. His visit has raised hopes that deadlock in the talks would be removed.
Earlier on Monday, the leaders of PPP and PML-N concluded their first round of talks on the restoration of judges in Pakistan.
The meeting, which lasted for more than 3 hours, was held at the residence of Asif Zardari, Co-Chairman of PPP, in Dubai. Later, the participants had dinner at the Grosvenor House hotel where the talks are understood to have continued, but remained inconclusive.
Sources said that during the talks the PPP side was led by Zardari and attended by Rahman Malik, Advisor on Interior Affairs, and Farooq Naek, Federal Law Minister.
The PML-N side was led by its President Shehbaz Sharif, along with Khawaja Asif, Federal Petroleum Minister, Choudhary Nisar Ali Khan, Senior Federal Minister, and Khawaja Haris, Advocate-General of Punjab.
Shehbaz told reporters that he had come to Dubai with a ‘one-point agenda’ to discuss the restoration of the judges by April 30 with Zardari,” adding that the PML-N was hopeful of the outcome.
Nawaz was scheduled to arrive in Dubai late last night. His visit has raised hopes that deadlock in the talks would be removed.
Earlier on Monday, the leaders of PPP and PML-N concluded their first round of talks on the restoration of judges in Pakistan.
The meeting, which lasted for more than 3 hours, was held at the residence of Asif Zardari, Co-Chairman of PPP, in Dubai. Later, the participants had dinner at the Grosvenor House hotel where the talks are understood to have continued, but remained inconclusive.
Sources said that during the talks the PPP side was led by Zardari and attended by Rahman Malik, Advisor on Interior Affairs, and Farooq Naek, Federal Law Minister.
The PML-N side was led by its President Shehbaz Sharif, along with Khawaja Asif, Federal Petroleum Minister, Choudhary Nisar Ali Khan, Senior Federal Minister, and Khawaja Haris, Advocate-General of Punjab.
Shehbaz told reporters that he had come to Dubai with a ‘one-point agenda’ to discuss the restoration of the judges by April 30 with Zardari,” adding that the PML-N was hopeful of the outcome.
Call for fresh polls in Kashmir
LAHORE — Former Azad Kashmir prime minister Barrister Sultan Mehmud Chaudhry demanded yesterday fresh elections in Pakistan-administered Kashmir as the present government was the product of what he called rigged polls.
At a news conference at the Lahore Press Club, he said the government in the Indian-administered Kashmir was also the product of rigged elections and thus the situation on the both sides of the Line of Control was similar.
Barrister Sultan advised Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani not to visit and address the AJK Legislative Assembly today.
He said since the assembly had not come into being as a result of free and fair elections, there was no justification for Gilani to address it.
He said free and fair elections should be held to bring to power a government that was genuinely representative of the people. For free and fail polls, he said, September was the ideal time. He said observers from European countries should also be invited to monitor the polls. About the solution of the Kashmir dispute, he said tripartite talks should be held to find a solution.
At a news conference at the Lahore Press Club, he said the government in the Indian-administered Kashmir was also the product of rigged elections and thus the situation on the both sides of the Line of Control was similar.
Barrister Sultan advised Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani not to visit and address the AJK Legislative Assembly today.
He said since the assembly had not come into being as a result of free and fair elections, there was no justification for Gilani to address it.
He said free and fair elections should be held to bring to power a government that was genuinely representative of the people. For free and fail polls, he said, September was the ideal time. He said observers from European countries should also be invited to monitor the polls. About the solution of the Kashmir dispute, he said tripartite talks should be held to find a solution.
PML-Q govt ‘misused World Bank funds’
LAHORE — Federal Education Minister Ahsan Iqbal has alleged that the Pakistan Muslim Leaque-Quaid (PML-Q) government had spent World Bank money on advertising its literacy programme “Parha Likha Punjab Programme,” saying criminal cases should be registered against those responsible for it.
The minister was speaking at a reception given in his honour at the Punjab University’s Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology here.
Ahsan vowed to establish a uniform education system, from primary schools to university level, in the country. He said the decision to restore student unions would be implemented but a proper code of conduct will be prepared and implemented.
Ahsan said that a strong government educational system had to be built for implementation of a uniform system of education. He said there was a need to reform the service structure of teachers so that they will also get promotions on the basis of their performance.
He said there was an urgent need to establishing a value chain system from pre-school and nursery level to the higher education level in the education system and every stakeholder in this chain should play his or her part with responsibility and commitment.
The minister was speaking at a reception given in his honour at the Punjab University’s Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology here.
Ahsan vowed to establish a uniform education system, from primary schools to university level, in the country. He said the decision to restore student unions would be implemented but a proper code of conduct will be prepared and implemented.
Ahsan said that a strong government educational system had to be built for implementation of a uniform system of education. He said there was a need to reform the service structure of teachers so that they will also get promotions on the basis of their performance.
He said there was an urgent need to establishing a value chain system from pre-school and nursery level to the higher education level in the education system and every stakeholder in this chain should play his or her part with responsibility and commitment.
Framework problems in holding free elections
Farhatullah Babar
The prime minister in his first address pledged to undertake election reforms and ensure free and fair elections and the Chief Election Commissioner has reportedly set up a committee for electoral reforms. Around the same time, the European Union made public its report on the Feb 18 elections, according to which there are "enduring problems with the framework and conditions for elections in Pakistan." It spoke of "suspicious results, implausibly high turnouts and questionable margins of victory" in a number of constituencies. There are several "framework problems" that inhibit free and fair elections but the one that stands out above every other is the role of the intelligence agencies. "Enduring problems" and "suspicious results" will continue to haunt our elections until the intelligence agencies are restrained from playing politics. That they have been manipulating elections and denying the people their mandate is now common knowledge. On Feb 24 The News published a report under the caption "The man who rigged '02 polls admits it all, blames Musharraf." It was based on a talk of the newspaper's correspondent with a former major general and number two in the ISI, who revealed how the agency had manipulated the 2002 general elections by using the NAB and other instruments. Although the former officer issued a clarification the next day, it actually appeared to confirm what he was quoted to have said in the report. The clarification, sent to a news agency and not to The News or its correspondent, claimed that the ISI did nothing on Election Day, but admitted that the agency played a role in "political management prior to the election." It claimed that the agency had been involved in such political management since 1975 under the directions of the government. The former Agency officer also bemoaned that his personal views had been played up by The News as if it was a confessional statement of wrong doing. He may have been right in complaining, as he did, that his personal views had been played up, by The News, but that did not alter the reality that the agency had been engaged in what he called political management before the polls, which is nothing but election rigging. Former Democratic majority leader in the US Senate, Tom Daschle, visited Pakistan in October last year at the head of an international delegation. Addressing a press conference on Oct 21 he said that the delegation had reasons to believe that attempts were made by the ISI and other security forces to manipulate the electoral process. These attempts, he said, included, "efforts to influence local officials responsible for elections administration and to convince certain individuals not to seek their parties' nomination or to switch allegiances." Isn't it "political management prior to the elections"? Daschle raised the matter with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, but nothing came out of it. A former head of the same agency has publicly stated how he helped bring together some political parties on one platform and carved out the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) in 1988 to prevent the PPP from forming a government on its own. When asked about the agency's role in the elections he admitted in an interview with a Karachi-based monthly magazine that "only conditions were created that were favourable to certain results (in the elections)." If this is not election manipulation and rigging, what else it is? For a long time he insisted that he did no wrong. To his credit, however, he recently admitted that what he did was a mistake. Yet another former head of the same agency submitted a sworn affidavit that he distributed 140 million rupees taken from a private banker among politicians and political parties. That affidavit is on the record of the Supreme Court, where the case is pending since 1997. No one knows who authorised the executive to draw from the bank's public money and donate it to the agency. The Army chief at the time later claimed that he had directed the agency to ensure proper audit and disbursement of the amount placed at its disposal. Surprisingly, he did not ask the agency as to who authorised collection of the funds and for what purpose it had been given to the agency. When political parties are cheated and the people's mandate is stolen by the intelligence agencies, when the manipulators in these agencies themselves confess to stealing the mandate and when independent foreign observes question the "faulty framework" of elections, it is time that reforms are undertaken and the agencies are stopped from meddling in politics and elections. Indeed, without the reformation of the agencies no election reforms would be meaningful. For the reformation of the agencies the political wing of the ISI should be disbanded. It has been claimed that the wing was set up through an executive order in the mid-Seventies. If that indeed is true, it would take no more than another executive order to disband it. The MI, ISI and IB should be barred from meddling in elections and putting together political parties. Such meddling should be made a criminal offence by a civil court for any military official or intelligence official found so involved. The chain of command of the intelligence agencies should be clearly defined and enforced. The position taken by the government before the Supreme Court in the missing persons' case on April 27 last year that in their operations the ISI was not under the control of the defence or Interior Ministries is absurd. Those who have any interest in fair and free elections must demand that the covert and overt involvement of our agencies in manipulating elections must be exposed and finally terminated. Select Committees of the parliament must be allowed to question the agencies. This attitude that patriotism and safeguarding national interest is the sole prerogative of the agencies and that criticising them gives comfort to the enemy is most hypocritical and has only undermined the security of the country. Elected representatives in the parliamentary committees are no less patriotic and no less guardians of national interest. The explanation generally offered, that the agencies allowed themselves to be involved in political activities because the government of the day asked them to do so, is spurious and most naïve. Every member of the armed forces is under oath not to engage in any political activity. To say that they violated their oath on the instructions of the government is a poor reflection on the officers too readily agreeing to violate their solemn oath and cannot be accepted. The writer is a former PPP senator and served on the Senate's human rights committee. Email: drkhshan@isb.comsats.net.pk
Musharraf assures Gilani of support
ISLAMABAD: President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Tuesday, stressing on cooperation on national issues, urged the need to avoid clashes that could weaken the foundations of democratic institutions.The president and the prime minister during their interaction discussed a host of issues, including the present political scenario, security situation, cooperation of the new government, flour, power crisis and other matters in detail at the Aiwan-e-Sadr on Tuesday.The president stressed the need to run the affairs of the country in a smooth manner, adding clashes could lead to the weakening of the foundation of democratic institutions, which will not be good for the country.The president assured the prime minister that he was fulfilling his constitutional duties in the best-possible way, stressing that he will continue supporting the new government according to the Constitution.He hoped that the new government, akin to the past government, would complete its full five-year term and play a positive role in strengthening the democratic institutions.The president said the country was passing through a challenging situation. “We don’t want politics of confrontation,” he said.The president further said he knew flour and power crisis were further augmenting miseries of the masses, stressing the need to take realistic decisions.Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said the government would fulfill the promises made to the masses, adding all-out efforts shall be made to overcome flour and power crises at the earliest.He said they wanted to continue the unfinished mission of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto, adding the government was taking gigantic steps to end the rising incidents of terrorism.Both the leaders reiterated to end the current wave of terrorism and extremism, urging that no compromise shall be made on the national security of the country.Terming the meeting between the president and the prime minister a consultative interaction, Presidential Spokesman Maj-Gen (retd) Rashid Qureshi said the issue of the judges did not come under discussion at all.However, well-placed sources revealed that the president had informed the prime minister about his stance on the judges’ restoration.While talking to media, Rashid Qureshi said Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani had informed President Pervez Musharraf about the overall law and order situation, internal security issues, including the government polices to tackle terrorism.He said he did not attend the meeting, and also ruled out the impression that President Pervez Musharraf was not happy with the government’s initiative of holding negotiations with the local Taliban.
PPP-PML-N coalition pushed to verge of collapse
ISLAMABAD: The PPP-PML-N coalition has been pushed to the brink of collapse in the wake of a serious standoff in their talks on the reinstatement of the deposed judges, with the PML-N left with no option but to quit the federal cabinet.“We have been pushed to the wall where we have no alternative but walk out of the cabinet,” a PML-N minister told The News on condition of anonymity.Nawaz Sharif has departed for Dubai to make another last-ditch effort to save the coalition after his representatives failed to convince PPP Co-chairman Asif Zardari to agree to the reinstatement of the deposed judges. However, his mission has few chances of meeting with success. He is going to finally convey to Zardari that it would be impossible for him to keep his nominees in the cabinet if the dismissed judges did not return as committed by both the parties in the Murree Accord. He will dilate on the massive loss of face for reneging on the pledge.However, the PML-N is unlikely to sever cooperation with the PPP at all levels. It will assure the PPP that despite walking out from the cabinet, the PML-N would continue to support its federal government so that it might not cave in.But the PML-N’s decision will herald problems for it as well, as the governments in Sindh, the NWFP and Balochistan in which the PML-N has no share will snub any violent movement of the lawyers’ community to protest the non-restoration of the deposed judges by the appointed deadline of April 30.What the PML-N’s policy and attitude of its administration in the Punjab to any such agitation will be is the question in many minds. If the PML-N government chooses to be a silent spectator to any such agitation, it will run into trouble for failing to maintain law and order. As per its policy and public commitment, the PML-N is required to be part of the lawyers’ movement. But naturally it would be extremely difficult and implausible for it to do so because it will have to behave as a government does.“We will decide whether or not our ministers in the PML-N-led Punjab cabinet would continue if the PML-N shows extreme reaction,” a PPP leader said.Already, the PPP ministers in the Punjab have amassed a bundle of complaints, saying that they were not being accommodated by the PML-N, particularly in transfers and postings of senior police and other officials in districts.The PML-N is thoroughly disgusted and anguished over Zardari’s stiff stand against the reinstatement of the deposed justices. Its plan to get even with President Pervez Musharraf through the restored judges, by opening up the qualification case, etc against his eligibility to contest the presidential election, has failed.The PML-N is disheartened that instead Musharraf has become stronger and has been strengthened because of the deadlock with the PPP on the question of the dismissed judges. The fact is that the total split, followed by confrontation between the PPP and the PML-N, will make the president stronger.
ججوں کی بحالی،فیصلہ کن مذاکرات کیلئے نواز شریف دبئی پہنچ گئے
دبئی: ججوں کی بحالی کے فیصلہ کن مذاکرات کیلئے نواز شریف دبئی پہنچ گئے، دبئی روانگی سے قبل ن لیگ کے سربراہ نواز شریف نے کہا کہ پیپلز پارٹی سے اتحاد ججوں کی بحالی کے ون پوائنٹ ایجنڈے پر ہی کیا تھا،ہم اتحاد نہیں ڈکٹیٹر شپ کا خاتمہ چاہتے ہیں،اعلان مری پر من و عن عمل کرنا ہو گا،جبکہ گذشتہ مذاکرات میں شہباز شریف اور ن لیگ کے دیگر رہنما آصف زرداری کو قائل کرنے میں کامیاب نہ ہو سکے، لیکن نواز شریف کی آصف زرداری سے ملاقات کے بعد آج ڈیڈ لاک ختم ہونے کا امکان ہے،ذرائع کے مطابق ججوں کی بحالی میں ڈیڈ لائن 15روز تک بڑھائی جا سکتی ہے، پاکستان مسلم لیگ (ن) کے قائد میاں محمد نواز شریف اور پیپلز پارٹی کے شریک چیئرمین آصف علی زرداری کے مابین ججوں کی بحالی کے ایشو پر انتہائی اہم مذاکرات دبئی چلے گئے۔ اس ضمن میں نواز شریف کا دورہٴ دبئی ہنگامی بنیادوں پرطے کیا گیا۔ ذرائع نے کہا ہے کہ دونوں رہنما ججوں کی بحالی کیلئے پیپلز پارٹی اور مسلم لیگ (ن) کے درمیان دبئی مذاکرات میں پیدا شدہ ڈیڈلاک ختم کرنے کی بھرپور کوشش کریں گے۔ پاکستان مسلم لیگ (ن) کی اعلیٰ سطحی ٹیم اور پیپلز پارٹی کی اعلیٰ قیادت کے درمیان ججز کی بحالی پر مذاکرات تاحال نتیجہ خیز ثابت نہیں ہو سکے جس کے بعد محمد نواز شریف ڈیڈلاک کو ختم کرنے کے لئے دبئی گئے۔ اطلاعات کے مطابق مسلم لیگ (ن) کی طرف سے پارٹی کے صدر میاں شہباز شریف، سینئر وفاقی وزیر چوہدری نثار علی خان اور وزیر پٹرولیم خواجہ آصف جبکہ پیپلز پارٹی کی طرف سے آصف علی زرداری، وفاقی وزیر قانون فاروق ایچ نائیک اور وزیراعظم کے مشیر داخلہ رحمان ملک ان مذاکرات میں شریک ہوئے، تاہم مذاکرات کے دو روز جاری رہنے کے بعد دونوں پارٹیاں کسی نتیجہ تک نہیں پہنچ سکیں۔ اطلاعات ملی تھیں کہ مسلم لیگ (ن) کے رہنما واپس وطن روانہ ہو رہے ہیں۔ تاہم بعدازاں نواز شریف خود مذاکرات میں شرکت کیلئے دبئی پہنچ گئے ہیں۔روانگی سے قبل انہوں نے میڈیا سے گفتگو کرتے ہوئے کہا کہ ہم اتحاد قائم رکھنا چاہتے ہیں، ڈکٹیٹر شپ کا خاتمہ ہم جلد چاہتے ہیں۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ ججز کا بحال نہ ہونا ملک کیلئے بڑی بدقسمتی ہو گی، ہم اعلان مری پر عملدرآمد کے پابندہیں اس پر من و عن عمل کرنا ہو گا، اگر ایسا نہ ہوا تو ہم غلامی کی زنجیروں سے نہیں نکل سکیں گے، ہم پاکستان کے معاملات پاکستان کے اندر حل کرناچاہتے ہیں، یہ ہماری مجبوری ہے کہ ہمیں مذاکرات کیلئے باہر جانا پڑ رہا ہے۔ انہوں نے کہا میں چاہتا ہوں کہ یہ اتحاد قائم رہے، ججوں کو گرفتار کرنے والے، عدلیہ کو توڑنے والے ملک کے دشمن ہیں، قوم نے تبدیلی کیلئے ووٹ دیا، عوام مشرف سے نجات چاہتے ہیں، قوم مشرف کو معاف نہیں کریگی، انہوں نے آٹا مہنگا کیا، عوام کو غربت اور بیروزگاری دی، میرا کوئی ذاتی ایجنڈا نہیں ہے، پیپلز پارٹی سے اتحاد ون پوائنٹ ایجنڈے صرف ججوں کی بحالی کیلئے کیا ہے، ہم ملک کی ترقی و سلامتی چاہتے ہیں، میں دبئی اپنا قومی و اخلاقی فرض ادا کرنے جا رہا ہوں، ایک شخص نے ادارے توڑے، قوم ایسے شخص کو معاف نہیں کریگی، ہم ڈکٹیٹر شپ کا ہمیشہ کیلئے خاتمہ چاہتے ہیں، بہت ساری ایسی طاقتیں ہیں جو جمہوریت کے خلاف سازشیں کر رہی ہیں، ججوں کو معطل کرنا ملک کے ساتھ بہت بڑا ظلم ہے، اگر ان اقدامات کو تسلیم کر لیا گیا تو ہم سر اٹھا کر نہیں چل سکیں گے یہ پاکستان کی بقاء اور سلامتی کا معاملہ ہے، اگر ججز بحال نہ ہوئے تو یہ ملک کیلئے تباہ کن صورتحال ہوگی، میثاق جمہوریت اور اعلان مری کے بعد اب اعلان دبئی ہو گا، اعلان مری میں ججوں کی بحالی تیس دنوں کے اندر اور قرارداد کے ذریعے کرنے پر اتفاق رائے کیا گیا تھا اس پر عمل ہونا چاہئے، ہم نے لندن میٹنگ کی بھی لندن میں انعقاد کی مخالفت کی تھی، اسے پاکستان کے اندر منعقد ہونا چاہئے تھا، اتحاد کا حامی ہوں یہ جمہوریت کیلئے لازم ہے، ہم اتحاد ٹوٹتا نہیں دیکھنا چاہتے۔ ایک سوال کے جواب میں جب ان سے پوچھا گیا کہ اتحاد زیادہ ضروری ہے یاججوں کی بحالی زیادہ ضروری ہے اس پر انہوں نے کہا کہ ججز بحال نہ ہوئے تو پاکستان اور جمہوریت کا فروغ خواب بن کر رہ جائیگا، ججوں کی بات پاکستان کی بات ہے، اتحاد صرف ججوں کی بحالی کیلئے ہے ذاتیات کیلئے نہیں کیا ہے اس مسئلہ کو قوم کی امنگوں کے مطابق حل ہونا چاہئے۔ مسلم لیگ (ن) کے مذاکرات میں ذرائع نے میڈیا کو بتایا کہ ہم نے کافی حد تک اپنے موقف پر پیپلز پارٹی کے قائدین کو قائل کرنے کی کوشش کی لیکن وہ نہ ہو سکے۔ ذرائع نے بتایا کہ پیپلز پارٹی کے رہنماؤں کا کہنا ہے کہ آپ کچھ دیر فیصلے کو روکیں تو اس پر نواز شریف کے رہنماؤں نے کہا کہ آپ کتنے دن چاہتے ہیں؟ تو اس پر بھی بات طے نہیں ہو سکی۔ مسلم لیگ (ن) کے رہنما چوہدری نثار علی خان نے دبئی میں ایک انٹرویو میں کہا ہے کہ حکمران اتحاد کی جانب سے ججز کی بحالی کے معاملے پر ڈیڈلائن آج ختم ہو رہی ہے۔ ہماری کوشش ہے کہ ججز کی بحالی کی ڈیڈلائن ختم ہونے سے پہلے قوم کو اچھا تحفہ دیں۔ جیو نے ذرائع کے حوالے سے بتایا ہے کہ پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی کے شریک چیئرمین آصف علی زرداری کی ججز کی بحالی سے متعلق ڈیڈ لائن میں 15 دن کی توسیع کے لئے پاکستان مسلم لیگ (ن) کے قائد میاں نواز شریف تیار ہوگئے ہیں۔
پیٹرول کی4 اور ڈیزل کی قیمت میں8 روپے فی لٹر اضافے کی تجویز،اوگرا نے سمری وزارت خزانہ اور پیٹرولیم کو بھیج دی
اسلام آباد: آئل اینڈ گیس ریگولیٹری اتھارٹی (اوگرا) نے پٹرول کی قیمت میں یکم مئی سے 4 روپے فی لٹر اور ڈیزل کی قیمت میں 8 روپے فی لٹر اضافے کی سمری وزارت خزانہ اور پیٹرولیم کو بھجوا دی ہے۔ سمری میں تجویز کیا گیا ہے کہ یہ اضافے یکم مئی سے 15 مئی تک کیلئے کیا جائے۔ ان پندرہ روز میں عالمی مارکیٹ میں قیمتوں کا جائزہ لے کر آئندہ مدت کیلئے فیصلہ کیا جائے گا۔ واضح رہے کہ وفاقی وزیر خزانہ واقتصادی امور محمد اسحاق ڈار واضح کرچکے ہیں کہ بجٹ خسارہ کم رکھنے اور آئندہ مالی سال میں ترقیاتی منصوبہ مرتب کرنے کیلئے پٹرولیم مصنوعات کی قیمتوں میں اضافہ ناگزیر ہو چکا ہے۔ امریکی مارکیٹ میں خام تیل کی قیمت 120 ڈالر فی بیرل تک پہنچ چکی ہے جو ایک تاریخی ریکارڈ ہے۔
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
