U.S. should transform partnership with India into alliance: columnist * (IANS/Yahoo)
	The U.S. should transform its growing partnership with India into an alliance comparable to the one it has with Japan, a leading U.S. foreign policy commentator has said. "It's about time. The divide between our two countries -- the world's two largest democracies -- has never made sense," Daniel Sneider, foreign affairs columnist of the Mercury News published from San Jose, California, said in an article titled "India: America's New Partner" after a visit to India. While Indians should bear some responsibility for this gap because of their "knee-jerk anti-Westernism," it is even harder to understand the way the U.S. has "systematically ignored democratic India, a nation of one billion people, while tilting towards military regimes in Pakistan and pursuing the favours of communist China", he said.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030725/43/26dtu.html
	U.S. lawmakers call for greater peace efforts on Kashmir *(IANS/Yahoo)
	Two prominent U.S. lawmakers have expressed concern at violence in Jammu and Kashmir and urged India and Pakistan to step up peace efforts to resolve the conflict. Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat, and Congressman Joseph Pitts, a Republican, were addressing an "international conference" on Kashmir organised here Thursday by the Association of Humanitarian Lawyers and the pro-Pakistan Kashmiri American Council "to explore the varying perspectives on Kashmir" in the light of recent developments. Indian Ambassador Lalit Mansingh did not accept an invitation to address the conference as the objectives of the conference was to advance Pakistan's Kashmir agenda, according to Indian diplomatic sources.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030725/43/26drd.html

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WITH Lake Michigan sparkling in the distance and long beards flapping in the evening breeze, they clutched their turbans or ties and vowed to unite behind Chirinjeev Singh Kathuria. An assembly of Sikhs and Hindus and even a token Muslim set aside their differences and turned out on July 22nd on the roof of a posh downtown high-rise to endorse the first American from the Indian subcontinent ever to run for the Senate. It is not going to be easy for Mr Kathuria, a millionaire Sikh businessman and a Republican. He remembers the insults he faced in airliners and on street corners after the terrorist attacks of 2001, when his Sikh turban and beard got him mistaken for a Muslim. He still carefully keeps an American flag pinned to his lapel. There is also the fact that he is a Republican. Grover Norquist, a Republican anti-tax campaigner with influential friends in the White House, claims that “Indian-Americans are natural Republicans and natural conservatives.” They are on the whole well-educated and well-to-do; they respect family values, and like working for themselves. Bobby Jindal, a young Indian-American, is the leading Republican candidate for the governorship of Louisiana. Still, about 70% of them voted Democrat in the 2000 election.

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The Pentagon's plan for defeating insurgents in Iraq relies heavily on applying "a full-court press" to persuade more countries to send troops to relieve overstretched U.S. forces, senior defense officials said Thursday. In separate appearances at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the United States is negotiating with Pakistan, India and Turkey to supply tens of thousands of troops. Without them, Myers told the Senate Armed Services Committee, the U.S. will not be able to reduce its heavy military presence in Iraq for months, and possibly years, to come.

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July 25, Washington -- In separate appearances at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the United States is negotiating with Pakistan, India and Turkey to supply tens of thousands of troops to help in Iraq. Without them, Myers told the Senate Armed Services Committee, the United States will not be able to reduce its heavy military presence in Iraq for months, possibly years. Referring to the roughly 30,000 troops other countries have promised, Myers said: "It needs to be higher than that."

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July 25, Jammu, India -- Indian and Pakistani troops have exchanged heavy artillery fire in the disputed region of Kashmir, shattering a lull of recent months, Indian police said Friday. There were no reports of damage or casualties on the Indian side of the border, and no immediate comment from Pakistan. In a separate incident, Indian forces shot to death five people, apparently Bangladeshi civilians, who were crossing the border at Kanachak, 30 kilometers (18 miles) west of Jammu, the winter capital of India's Jammu-Kashmir state.

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July 24, Islamabad -- Newsweek magazine is standing by a story about new interpretations of the Quran that Pakistan authorities have banned for allegedly being offensive to Islam. Pakistan's Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said this week that customs authorities have been ordered to seize copies of the magazine's latest edition. ``The article is insulting to the Quran,' the minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, told The Associated Press. He said officials fear the article could incite violence in a nation wracked by feuding between militant members of the Sunni and Shiite sects of Islam.

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July 24, Columbus, Ohio -- A federal judge delayed sentencing of an Ohio trucker who pleaded guilty to helping the al-Qaida terrorist network, granting a defense request for an evaluation to determine his mental competency. Iyman Faris has been placed on a suicide watch and is taking an anti-depressant, his attorney Fred Sinclair said in a court filing. Faris, 34, had been scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 1 in federal court in Virginia on two counts of providing aid to al-Qaida. Faris, a U.S. citizen from Pakistan who now lives in Ohio, faces up to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty in May to providing sleeping bags, cell phones and cash to al-Qaida. The government alleges he also scouted U.S. sites for possible terrorist attacks, including a plan to topple the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City.

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July 24, New Delhi -- India asked Pakistan on Thursday to help fight Islamic militant groups it said were bent on derailing a tentative peace process between the nuclear rivals. Pakistan responded by urging for an early resumption of peace talks between the nuclear-armed neighbors and said a dialogue was essential to maintain the momentum of the peace process. Islamabad also formally proposed the resumption of train links between the two countries, seen as a part of measures to lay the ground for talks, dates for which are yet to be set.

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July 24, Islamabad -- Pakistan has offered to hold talks with India about restoring train service between the rival neighbors, the government said Thursday, less than two weeks after the two countries resumed a bus service amid a diplomatic thaw. The two shut down all road, rail and air links after a Dec. 13, 2001 attack on India's Parliament by suspected Islamic militants. New Delhi blamed the attack on two Pakistan-based militant groups and Pakistan's spy agency. Islamabad denied involvement. Both sides have been working in recent weeks to improve relations, under pressure from the international community amid fears that sustained tension could lead to an all out conflict between the two nuclear-armed countries.

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With thousands of different social castes and 18 major languages in India, plus the cultural and regional differences of a country of more than 1 billion people, Rev. Saji Lukos knows that pulling together his fellow Indian-Americans is difficult at best. Add the different branches of Christianity to which many Indian-Americans belong and the task Lukos has set for his organization, Reaching Indians Ministries International, to achieve at a conference in Deerfield this weekend only gets harder. "I'd like to see people come together and get to know each other and to understand what God is doing in India," said Lukos, 43, of Round Lake Beach. "My real burden is the second generation [of Indian-Americans]. They have no idea what God is doing in India and what needs to be done." During sessions Friday through Sunday, people at the United to Serve convention at Trinity International University Chapel will hear preaching, listen to music and learn about missions that Lukos' organization supports in India. Rev. K.C. John from Kerala will be the featured speaker. But Lukos' goal of using Christianity to bring together disparate groups of Indian-Americans will be the focus.

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July 24, Batticaloa, Sri Lanka -- Nalini has five children, but when she wakes up in the morning she remembers that only three are safe in their beds. The other two are training to be soldiers. Her son, now 17, was abducted by Sri Lanka's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam four years ago. They came back for her 13-year-old daughter a few months ago, despite a February 2002 cease-fire to end 20 years of war and statements by the rebels saying they are against child recruitment. Nalini says although she is fearful of harassment from the rebel group famous for its suicide bomb attacks, she wants to tell her story, but she asks that her real name not be used and her East Coast village not be identified.

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July 25 -- Nestled in the rugged Himalayas, the little known mountain kingdom of Nepal could not seem to be more removed from current geopolitical concerns. Yet on its frozen mountains a revolutionary battle rages. For seven years, Maoist rebels have sought to establish a second totalitarian state in central Asia, at the price of thousands killed and an entire nation left ravaged by its violence. Beginning in February 1996, Marxist-Leninist-Maoists led by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) -- CPN(M) -- and its leader “Comrade Prachanda” (his real name is Pushpan Kamal Dahal) launched an ongoing effort to overthrow the Kingdom of Nepal’s constitutional monarchy and replace it with “a doctrinaire Communist dictatorship.” Various news sources confirm that as a result of the ensuing violence almost 8,000 people have died to date. To make matters worse, the guerrillas recently initiated new attacks yet the government remains committed to a January ceasefire agreement and an ineffectual and misguided “peace process.” (Sound familiar?)

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July 25 -- In this summer of sequels, think of this one as, "Trade Wars: Back to the Future," the scariest installment yet. Just as "Terminator 3," "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" and "The Matrix Reloaded" have bombarded movie screens this year, a new round of trade friction is shaking up Washington and state capitals across America as U.S. workers see more and more jobs shipped abroad. Japan bashing in 1980s and H. Ross Perot's famous "giant sucking sound" of U.S. jobs going to Mexico in the early 1990s were the prequels to today's new round of anxiety focused on the sourcing of work by U.S. firms and governments to China, India, eastern Europe and other low-cost havens. Some things never change, like big U.S. companies with high-cost labor at home seeking to buy labor-intensive parts or products from the lowest-cost third-world producer that can do the job: China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Morocco, you name it.

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In the early 1990s, I lived and worked in Japan, and my wife and I occasionally traveled in the region. However, we refused to go to mainland China because we were still fuming over the spectacle of Chinese troops massacring Chinese students in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989. So what happened when we ceased being expatriates and came home for good? We tried not to buy products made in China but found that nearly everything we needed or wanted was made, and made well at reasonable prices, in China. So much for our efforts to make a political statement with our U.S. passports. "Made in China" has become so much a part of the American economic scene that I sometimes think that if the Chinese ever warred with us again, given the sorry state of our shoe and textile industries, we might have to go to them for boots for our soldiers. China now makes nearly 80% of the shoes purchased in the U.S.

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              --- South Asian News, July 25, 2003 ---

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