US NEWS SOURCES -February 22&23, 2003 (Weekend)

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Archives

TOP STORIES
*	Pakistan is 'epicenter of terrorism' - India
	Feb 23, Kuala Lumpur -- Branding Pakistan an epicenter of terrorism, Indian Foreign Minister, Yashwant Sinha on Sunday ruled out talks to improve ties with his archrival and said the United States must exert more pressure on its ally. Speaking on the sidelines of a summit of developing nations in Kuala Lumpur that will be attended by both Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, Sinha said talks with Pakistan were out of the question for now. "Pakistan is and continues to be the epicenter of terrorism," Sinha, a leading figure in India's Hindu-nationalist-led coalition government, told Reuters.
	http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-india-pakistan.html
*	Gunmen kill nine in Pakistan mosque
	Feb 22., Islamabad -- Gunmend fire inside a Shiite mosque in the southern port city of Karachi today, killing at least seven worshipers, according to officials there. In a city long plagued by violence, the incident was the worst since last June, when a car bomb exploded outside the American Consulate. "The sectarian attacks had all stopped, for at least the last six or seven months," said Jameel Yusuf, a prominent Karachi businessman who heads a citizens' anticrime organization. The last large incident of violence between the Sunni Muslim majority and the Shiite minority took place two years ago, he said.
	http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/-pakistan-shooting_xhtm
	http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/054/nation/Nine_are_slain_in_attack_on_Pakistani_mosque+.shtml
	http://www.washtimes.com/world/.htm
	http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~1865~1199330,00.html
	http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/134639734_mosque23.html
	http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/search/sfl-apakistan23feb23.story
	http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/bal-gunmen0222.story
	http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/.htm
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030222_000161,00.html
	http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/sns-ap-pakistan-mosque-killings0223feb22,0,446207.story?coll=ny%2Dnationnews%2Dfeatured
	http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/.xml
	http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/world/1790885
*	Shi'ite mourners attack U.S. food chain in Pakistan
	Karachi, Pakistan -- Hundreds of mourners went on the rampage in the restive Pakistani city of Karachi Sunday after the funeral of Shi'ite Muslims killed in a gun attack, targeting two American fast-food restaurants and smashing vehicles. The violence occurred after funeral prayers attended by more than 5,000 people for two of nine Shi'ite Muslims killed by unidentified gunmen outside a mosque in the city on Saturday. The assailants fled and no group has claimed responsibility for the attack. It appeared, however, to be a fresh outbreak of the Muslim sectarian violence that has dogged Pakistan for the past decade.
	http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-religion-pakistan-killings.html
*	Hindu group in India demands a temple
	Feb 22., New Delhi -- Hard-line Hindus announced today that they would begin a campaign of rallies next week to try to force the Indian government to let them build a temple on a bitterly contested site that is also claimed by Muslims. A 16th-century mosque on the land in the city of Ayodhya was razed by a Hindu mob in 1992, setting off some of India's worst riots in which around 3,000 people were killed. The hard-line Hindus want to build a temple on the site, which they say was the birthplace almost a million years ago of the Hindu god Ram.
	http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/international/asia/23HIND.html
	http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/international/asia/23HIND.html
*	Chartered plane missing in Pakistan
	Karachi, Pakistan -- A small chartered aircraft with seven people on board was missing Monday in southwestern Baluchistan, a control tower official at Karachi Airport said. The Cessna 402 aircraft chartered by Pakistan's largest private welfare organization, Edhi Trust, had left Karachi International Airport at about 8 a.m. (10 p.m. EST), said Mohammed Salim, contacted at the Karachi airport. "We are still trying to locate it," he said. The aircraft was en route from Karachi to Jazak, near the Iranian border in Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan. The aircraft had been chartered from Star Aviation, a private aircraft charter firm in southern Karachi.
	http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apasia_story.asp?category=1104&slug=Pakistan%20Aircraft%20Missing
	http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/nation/5248255.htm
	http://www.austin360.com/shared/news/ap/ap_story.html/Intl/AP.V3321.AP-Pakistan-Aircra.html
*	India: Pressure America to avoid Iraq war
	New Delhi,Feb 22 -- India's prime minister Saturday said that the 114-nation Non-Aligned Movement should pressure the United States to find a solution to the Iraq crisis without a war. "War should be avoided and a solution to the Iraq crisis be found through the United Nations Security Council," Atal Behari Vajpayee told reporters onboard an aircraft on his way from New Delhi to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to attend the NAM summit.
	http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/r.htm
*	Hindu nationalists threaten to surround Indian Parliament
	New Delhi -- Thousands of Hindu nationalists threatened to form a human chain around Parliament Monday to pressure politicians to hand over land near the ruins of a 16th-century mosque whose destruction in 1992 sparked nationwide riots. "Nothing can stop us - not tears, not words, not bullets or armies," Pravin Togadia, general secretary of the World Hindu Council, told thousands of supporters at a rally in the Indian capital Sunday. The planned demonstration comes on the final day of a three-day gathering of Hindu spiritual leaders and activists aimed at pressuring the government to hand over land around the site of the Babri Mosque in northern India.
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030223_000658,00.html
*	Sri Lankan PM determined to move forward in peace process
	Colombo -- Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said the Tamil Tiger rebels should be allowed to join the state police, military and judiciary as part of a final settlement to the island's long-standing ethnic conflict. "The Tigers control a part of the country and they have their own army, police and a judicial system. This is the reality. Our final aim is to establish a common police, army and a judiciary, and the rebels should also be able to join them," he said in a television interview Saturday night. Sri Lanka on Saturday marked the first anniversary of a cease-fire with the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam.
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030223_000015,00.html
*	Bangladeshi shot dead at Indian border; tensions renewed
	Dhaka -- For the second time in one month Indian border guards shot dead a Bangladeshi villager, and Bangladesh put its troops on alert against India's renewed efforts to deport Bengali-speaking Muslims, officials and news reports said Sunday. Tensions along the India-Bangladesh border have been brewing since Jan. 22, following India's attempts to deport 213 Bengali-speaking Muslims it said were illegal immigrants. Bangladesh refused to accept the migrants, saying they were from India's West Bengal state.
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030223_000029,00.html
*	Two-phase vote for Pakistan's Senate begins on Monday
	Islamabad -- A two-phase voting process to elect members of Pakistan's Senate will begin Monday in provincial legislatures around the country, an official said. Lawmakers in Pakistan's four provincial legislatures are to vote Monday to elect 88 of the Senate's 100 members, Mohammed Afzal Khan, a spokesman for the Election Commission, said Sunday. Eight other members of the Senate, the upper house of Congress, will be elected Feb. 27 by members of the national assembly representing Pakistan's semiautonomous tribal regions. The same day, the full national assembly will elect four other senators to represent the capital, Islamabad, Khan said.
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030223_000033,00.html
*	New Delhi tightens security after terror attack warning
	New Delhi -- Authorities beefed up security in the Indian capital after intelligence agencies warned against a possible terrorist attack during the weekend, officials said Sunday. A senior army official told The Associated Press that troops have been called in to patrol areas such as those where most government buildings including the prime minister's office and parliament are located. While the Indian army patrols these areas during night, additional paramilitary troops and police have been deployed to keep vigil during the day, the official said on condition of anonymity.
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030223_000013,00.html
*	Four Islamic rebels killed In India-controlled Kashmir
	Feb 22., Srinagar, India -- Paramilitary soldiers killed four suspected Islamic guerrillas in a 10-hour gun battle Saturday in India's insurgency-ridden Jammu-Kashmir state, and two civilians died in other incidents, police said. The soldiers raided the Dalri Forests late Friday after receiving a tip that Islamic rebels were hiding there, a police statement said. The area is approximately 100 kilometers north of Srinagar, the state's summer capital.
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030222_000070,00.html
*	Tamils protest as Sri Lanka marks first year of cease-fire
	Feb 22., Colombo -- While the Sri Lankan government held countrywide ceremonies to mark the first anniversary of a cease-fire with Tamil Tiger rebels on Saturday, residents of northern Tamil town Jaffna shut themselves in, protesting that the truce hasn't normalized living in the former war zones. Shops were shut and transport came to a standstill as people remained in their homes during the two-hour protest held from 8:00 a.m., said Subramaniam Paramanathan president of the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies which organized the protest. "We wanted to project to the world that the civilian life has not returned to normalcy. Since the cease-fire we have not moved in this direction meaningfully," he said.
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030222_000025,00.html
*	Pakistan's PM says Saddam responsible if Baghdad attacked
	Feb 22., Islamabad -- Pakistan wants a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis, but will hold Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi leadership responsible if a war is launched against it, the state-run news agency quoted Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali as saying. "Pakistan's every effort is aimed at avoiding the war, but if war begins, then the Iraqi leadership will be responsible for it," Associated Press of Pakistan quoted him as saying in a story Saturday. The comments were made Thursday. Pakistan, a key ally of the U.S. in the war on terror, has been calling for a peaceful solution for Iraq. Pakistan also holds one of the 15 Security Council seats in the United Nations.
	http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20030222_000022,00.html