India refuses U.S. request to send troops to Iraq * (Reuters)
	India said on Monday it would not send peacekeeping troops to Iraq without a United Nations mandate, rejecting a request from Washington for help in the war-torn nation. The decision came after Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Hindu nationalist coalition government failed to build a domestic consensus in support of sending troops to Iraq, an old friend of India. New Delhi had earlier opposed the U.S.-led war against Iraq. "Were there to be an explicit U.N. mandate for the purpose, the government of India could consider the deployment of our troops in Iraq," foreign minister Yashwant Sinha told reporters after a two-hour meeting of the cabinet's security committee. "Our longer-term national interest, our concern for the people of Iraq, our longstanding ties with the Gulf region, as well as our growing dialogue and strengthened ties with the U.S. have been key elements in this consideration," Sinha said. He said India was, however, ready to contribute to the rebuilding of infrastructure, health care, educational, communications and other civilians needs of the Iraqis.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030714/137/25zop.html
	Indian statement on not sending troops to Iraq *(IANS)
	Following is the statement made by External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha after the Cabinet Committee on Security met here to discuss the issue of sending troops to Iraq: The government of India has given careful thought to the question of sending Indian troops to Iraq. Our longer term national interest, our concern for the people of Iraq, our long-standing ties with the Gulf region as a whole, as well as our growing dialogue and strengthened ties with the U.S. have been key elements in this consideration. India remains ready to respond to the urgent needs of the Iraqi people for stability, security, political progress and economic reconstruction. Were there to be an explicit U.N. mandate for the purpose, the government of India could consider the deployment of our troops in Iraq. In the meanwhile, government of India is ready to contribute to the restoration of infrastructure, medical, health, educational, communications and other civilian needs of the Iraqi people. As a concrete gesture of our support to the Iraqi people, we are already planning to set up, jointly with Jordan, a hospital in Najaf in Iraq.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030714/43/25zof.html

HEADLINES
 

STORIES
 

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July 14, Bhubaneshwar, India -- The much-delayed trial of 14 men accused of burning to death an Australian missionary and his two children more than three years ago was pushed back again this week because of a visit to town by India's prime minister. A mob set fire to a vehicle in which Graham Staines and his sons, Timothy, 8, and Philip, 10, were sleeping on Jan. 23, 1999 after a Bible study at a church in Manoharpur village in eastern India's Orissa state. They were burned to death in one of scores of attacks on Christians, churches and missionaries across India.

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July 14, Colombo -- In a setback to Sri Lanka's peace process, a powerful Muslim political party said Monday it will not agree to an interim administration dominated by Tamil Tiger rebels in the island's northeast. "We are not going to allow any such set-up where we — the Muslims — don't have equal status," Hashan Ali, secretary general of Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, told The Associated Press after talks with the government. The issue of Muslim representation in the proposed interim council is the latest snag facing the Sri Lankan government in its attempts to restart stalled peace talks with the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam.

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July 14, Colombo -- Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who fled to neighboring India to escape a brutal civil war are returning to the island on their own in small batches, a news report said Monday. Twenty-one refugees returned Sunday to northern Jaffna Peninsula, the traditional home of most of Sri Lanka's 3.2 million Tamils. Thirteen others returned Friday, the TamilNet Web site reported. ``They are natives of Jaffna district and fled to south India due to military operations by Sri Lankan security forces,' said TamilNet, which reports on Tamil affairs. ``More Sri Lankan Tamil refugees ... are getting ready to return to Jaffna district in the coming days.'

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July 14, Srinagar, India -- A gunman shot to death a paramilitary soldier Monday in the summer capital of India's insurgency-wracked Jammu-Kashmir state while he was buying cigarettes from a downtown street vendor, police said. The unidentified assailant escaped after shooting the Central Reserve Police Force member in Srinagar city at point-blank range, a police officer said on condition of anonymity. The vendor was also wounded when a bullet grazed his arm. About a dozen Islamic militant groups have been fighting to merge the Himalayan state with Pakistan or make it independent. More than 63,000 people have died since the insurgency began in 1989.

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July 14, Srinagar, India -- Indian security forces killed three suspected Islamic guerrillas in a gunfight Monday in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir. Three soldiers of the Border Security Force were wounded in the battle at the village of Putalipora, said Tirath Acharya, a spokesman for the paramilitary force. Putalipora is about 35 kilometers (22 miles) southwest of Srinagar, capital of India's Jammu-Kashmir state, where more than a dozen Islamic guerrilla groups have been waging a separatist fight since 1989.

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July 14, Fremont -- Terrorism expert B. Raman, who has spoken before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, said during a weekend talk in Fremont that the United States needs to target Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in its war on terrorism. "Until we stop fund-collection and sanctuaries of terroristic organizations, we will never be able to deal with terrorism effectively," Raman said Saturday. His hour-long talk, "Terrorism Worldwide: Who Funds It?", was sponsored by Friends of India Society International, at the Hindu Temple Children's Center in Fremont.

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July 14 -- One of Al Qaeda's first assignments for Iyman Faris, the Ohio truck driver named last month in a terrorist plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, was to visit a travel agency while he was in Pakistan in late 2001 to have some old airline tickets reissued, federal investigators say. Because the tickets were not in his name, Mr. Faris needed an explanation to validate his request. Investigators say he used one that other Qaeda recruits have relied on to disguise their intentions: he pretended to be a member of Tablighi Jamaat, a fraternity of traveling Muslim preachers that is well known in Pakistan and other Muslim countries.

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July 14, Shahpura, India -- Born into the Brahmin caste, Sunil Sharma occupies the highest rung of India's ancient social hierarchy. But as he sat the other day in his tiny one-room apartment, with its single barred window and a portable gas stove in the corner that serves as the kitchen, it was hard to see quite where the advantage lay. The illiterate son of an illiterate milkman, Sharma, 35, is a truck driver who supports a wife and 10-year-old son on a salary of about $15 a week. They have no running water and often have to borrow money from neighbors to make ends meet. "We've lost all the clout we used to have centuries ago," said Sharma, a stooped, doleful-looking man whose dark hair tumbles past his shoulders. "The social standing, that is gone."

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July 14, El Sobrante -- Bay Area Sikhs on Sunday mourned a violent death that led to another half a world away. There was a memorial service at the El Sobrante Sikh temple for Gurpreet Singh, 23, of Hercules, who was shot to death in Richmond July 2 at the wheel of his taxi, and for his wife-to-be, Amandeep Kaur, who shot herself the following day in the Punjab state of India. On July 3, "she took her morning bath, said her morning prayers, and asked her parents-in-law if there was anything they wanted to tell Gurpreet," explained temple president Harpreet S. Sandhu.

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The government in the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh has begun a probe into the stoning death of a 30-year-old HIV-positive widow after expressions of outrage from AIDS rights campaigners worldwide. According to Women's Initiatives (WINS), a private organization working with AIDS victims and prostitutes, Munnuswamy Pavanamma was stoned to death by her relatives and neighbors on July 3 in the village of Kuppam. "Some neighbors, including her relatives, tried to take Pavanamma out of their colony by carrying away the bench on which she was lying in front of her mud house. When she tried to run away from the scene, the people pelted her with stones," said Setlur Varadadesikan Sreeram, a senior executive with WINS. "She was hit on the head, started bleeding from her injury and collapsed to death instantly."

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July 14 -- The September 11 terrorist attack taught the United States government a painful lesson — it must be alert to emerging threats, including terrorism against its military assets, citizens and allies. Some of these emerging threats, combined with the actions of terrorist Jihadi organizations, such as al Qaeda, may also generate political instability in key geographic areas and threaten pro-American regimes, such as in Central Asia. U.S. government should be taking a close look at Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Party of Liberation). A clandestine, cadre-operated, global radical Sunni political organization that operates in 40 countries around the world, with headquarters apparently in London, Hizb was in the headlines recently, when Germany banned its activities and Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested 55 alleged members and over 60 "supporters."

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              --- South Asian News, July 14, 2003 ---

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