U.S. set to make fresh push for Indian troops for Iraq *(IANS)
	The U.S. is making fresh efforts to persuade India to send troops to aid the American-led forces in Iraq, but experts here believe even a U.N. cover may not be enough in view of the deteriorating conditions in Iraq. With Gen. Richard B Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, set to visit India, President George W. Bush is working to persuade more countries to help in Iraq, where Saddam Hussein loyalists have killed 152 American soldiers. This is more than the 147 American fatalities during the Gulf war of 1991, and 38 of the American troops died since Washington announced an end to major combat operations in Iraq on May 1. Reports from Iraq indicate growing fatigue among U.S. troops, who are facing guerrilla attacks almost every day, the weapons being roadside bombs and booby traps.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030722/43/268e4.html
	$300,000 U.S. grant for Tamil Nadu *(IANS
	The U.S. has given a $300,000 grant to improve water and sanitation infrastructure in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The grant comes from the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) fund for technical assistance to improve water and sanitation infrastructure projects. An agreement to this effect was signed by Richard Haynes, consul general for south India, on behalf of the U.S. government and Krishnaswamy Rajivan, managing director, Tamil Nadu Urban Infrastructure Financial Services Ltd (Tnuifsl). According to a press release, the successful results of the Tamil Nadu projects could provide a positive incentive for municipal infrastructure planners in other countries.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030722/43/268bd.html
	18 congressmen take up Bhopal gas tragedy *(IANS)
	Eighteen U.S. congressmen led by Rep. Frank Pallone have taken up the case of Bhopal gas tragedy survivors with Dow Chemical that acquired the fatal Union Carbide plant in Bhopal. Pallone and his colleagues say Dow Chemical, which acquired Union Carbide Corporation in February 2001, has not yet addressed the liabilities it inherited and should immediately take steps towards reparations in Bhopal. In a letter, Pallone, who is the founder member of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, asked Dow Chemical to finally address the extreme environmental and health problems created almost 20 years ago when the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, leaked lethal gas. Tonnes of lethal methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas came out from the Union Carbide pesticide plant on the night of December 2, 1984, killing some 1,750 people instantly and maiming thousands for life.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030722/43/268bc.html
	Pulling American chestnuts out of the Afghan fire *(IANS)
	Neocons in the U.S. administration are getting increasingly concerned over Pakistan's failure to control the jehadi elements operating out of that country in Afghanistan. This has prompted Washington to take a closer look at its existing policy of relying exclusively on Islamabad to rein in the residual Taliban and Al Qaida elements, Indian and American experts who took part in a two-day closed-door discussion said Tuesday. The role of Pakistan in Afghanistan, once described by President George W. Bush as a "stalwart ally" in the fight against terror, is now being critically examined by Washington -- "whether it is a plus or minus" and whether the U.S. would be better advised to include India as the strategic partner in Afghanistan. A four-member U.S. team to the talks was led by Elie D. Krakowski, a senior fellow of the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) and an authority on Afghanistan, Central Asian security and low intensity conflict and terrorism.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030722/43/26873.html
	Indian team to visit U.S. for oilseed import talks *(Reuters/Yahoo News)
	An Indian delegation will visit the United States and Canada this month to explore possibilities of importing sunflower and canola seeds to India, industry officials said on Tuesday. "The visit is aimed at enhancing the possibilities of importing oilseeds to partly bridge the big gap in demand and supply of edible oils in India," Bipin V Patel, leader of the delegation, told Reuters. There was a lot of commercial sensibility in importing high oil-yielding seeds such as sunflower and canola, said Patel, who is also the president of Solvent Extractor's Association of India (SEAI). "Indians are ready to import now." India, the world's largest edible oil importer, buys nearly half of its annual oil needs of more than 10 million tonnes from countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil and Argentina.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030722/137/268ak.html
	FBI calls Pakistanis' murder as hate crime *(ANI)
	The Federal Bureau of Investigation has decided to probe the murder of two Pakistanis near Washington last week as a hate crime, while the Maryland police have called it a street robbery. Sair Saeed Butt, 26, and Hammad Chaudhry, 23, both from Lahore, were shot in Prince George's Country, Maryland, last Monday. P.G. County's homicide detective Kerry Jernigan told Dawn the police were treating the murders as street robbery. Meanwhile, the FBI called the CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) office in Bethesda, Maryland, and informed them that they "are pursuing this investigation as a hate crime because so far they have found no indication of robbery."
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030722/139/268jc.html
	Indian lobby behind U.S. restrictions on aid: Pak spokesman *(ANI)
	A disappointed Pakistan has squarely blamed the Indian lobby in the United States for pushing for an amended legislation that makes it mandatory for the U.S. president to clear promised aid to Islamabad. "It is the Indian lobby responsible for this, as some in the Congress listen to them. We regret that India is in a position to block Pakistan's interests. India should act in a more mature manner," The News quoted Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan as saying. "The U.S. Congress should also take notice of the Indian "atrocities" in Kashmir," he added. The latest U.S. decision demands that President George Bush has to certify that Pakistan is abiding by three 'conditions' set on it by Washington before parts of the promised financial package of about three billion dollars is released to it every year.
	http://in.news.yahoo.com/030722/139/268gz.html

HEADLINES
 

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The death penalty trial of a Mesa man who has admitted to a post-Sept. 11, 2001, hate crime murder will be under way during the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks. A court delay Friday also means the widow of Balbir Singh Sodhi may not be able to attend Frank Roque's death penalty trial because her visa extension will have expired.Jury selection in the killing of Sodhi, 49, a Sihk gas station owner, was scheduled for Monday, but Judge Mark Aceto of Maricopa County Superior Court appointed Dr. Jack Potts, a psychiatrist, on Friday to examine Roque and act as a court expert during the trial.Aceto said he is required to order the psychiatric exam because Roque's defense attorneys are using a defense of guilty but insane.

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July 22, Jammu, Ianid -- Two grenade blasts by suspected Islamic guerrillas yesterday killed seven pilgrims and wounded 25 others on their way to one of the most revered Hindu shrines in Indian-controlled Kashmir, police said. The explosions occurred at a community kitchen as thousands of people were making the steep climb to the mountaintop shrine of Vaishno Devi. ''This is the work of militants,'' said Inspector General P.L. Gupta, the head of police forces in the Jammu region. Swami Chinmayananda, India's junior interior minister, blamed Pakistan for the blasts. India frequently blames its South Asian rival for militant attacks. There was no immediate comment from Islamabad.

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July 21, Islamabad -- Pakistan said Monday it was getting mixed signals from its nuclear-armed rival and neighbor India, despite recent moves to improve ties. ``We still want to hold technical-level talks, the problem is we get conflicting signals from India,' Foreign Ministry spokesman Massood Khan told reporters at a weekly news briefing. ``India should come of age and not block developments that benefit Pakistan.' He was referring to allegations in Pakistan that Indian lobbyists in the United States convinced American legislators to attach several conditions to a recent multibillion dollar aid package for Pakistan.

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July 22, Jammu, India -- Two suspected Islamic guerrillas stormed an army camp in India-held Kashmir on Tuesday, killing at least seven soldiers and wounding six others before being slain themselves, police said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the assault, which police described as a ``suicide attack'' and blamed on Pakistan-based rebel groups fighting for Kashmir's independence. Throwing hand grenades and firing wildly, the gunmen burst into the camp at Tanda, near the cease-fire line that divides the region between India and Pakistan, a police officer said on condition of anonymity.

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July 21, Alexandria, Va -- The final three of 11 defendants accused of conspiring to join a Muslim extremist terror group fighting in the disputed Kashmir territory of India and Pakistan are in U.S. custody. The three men, who had been in Saudi custody for nearly a month, made an initial appearance Monday in federal court. The men are accused of obtaining AK-47-style assault weapons and ammunition, training in military tactics and visiting terrorist camps in Pakistan linked to the Lashkar-e-Taiba group dedicated to driving India out of Kashmir. The group has been blamed for thousands of deaths in the region.

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July 22 -- The latest three of 11 men accused of plotting holy war in Virginia will be held in U.S. custody pending a bail hearing Thursday, a federal magistrate in Alexandria said yesterday. The three, captured recently in Saudi Arabia, are named in a 41-count federal indictment accusing them of conspiring to "prepare for and engage in violent jihad" against foreign targets in Kashmir, the Philippines and Chechnya. The men also are charged with illegal weapons possession and violations of the Neutrality Act, a federal law banning U.S. citizens from leaving the country to attack other countries with which the United States is at peace. Eight others were named in the indictment, which was handed up last month by a federal grand jury in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. Three of them have been released on bond and five remain in custody. All await trial in the fall.

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July 22, Colombo -- Two European monitors overseeing the government's truce with Tamil Tiger rebels were attacked by a mob during a protest by the rebels' backers, but the Europeans were not injured, a spokeswoman for the monitors said Tuesday. The mob attacked the vehicle carrying the two monitors, from Sweden and Finland, on Monday in Tamil-majority Batticaloa in eastern Sri Lanka, Agnes Bragadottir said. ``They stopped the vehicle and then started throwing things, smashing two window panes and a rear view glass,' Bragadottir said. The monitors suffered no injuries, she said.

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July 22, Colombo -- Nordic monitors overseeing Sri Lanka's truce were attacked by a mob in the island's east during a protest said to be backed by Tamil Tiger rebels, the monitors' spokeswoman said Tuesday. Agnes Bragadottir said the windows of the monitors' vehicle had been smashed, but the two monitors inside had been unharmed in the attack, near the eastern city of Batticaloa late on Monday. ``They were asked to come and monitor the hartal (general strike) and when they got there a mob came and attacked them,'' said Bragadottir. The Nordic-led monitoring mission oversees a truce signed in February last year that called a halt to 20 years of civil war and led to peace talks to solve the conflict over Tiger demands for a separate Tamil state in the north and east.

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July 22, Madras, India -- India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is heading for a confrontation with its ideological driving force over Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's new conciliatory tone in border disputes with Pakistan and China. The right-wing BJP heads a coalition government in New Delhi comprising more than a dozen disparate national and regional parties, forcing it to take a moderate line on various issues. The BJP has its ideological roots in the Hindu nationalist movement Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), but in the recent past it has been slowly moving away from the RSS's hard line. In a resolution on international affairs adopted by its national executive meeting earlier this month, the RSS warned the federal government against accepting the India-Pakistan Line of Control and the India-China Line of Actual Control as international borders.

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July 21, New Bedford -- "Go back to Iraq!" the young men shouted as they beat and kicked the pizza delivery man in the face, breaking his jaw in three places. They bound his thin body with rope, stuffed a sock in his mouth to muffle his screams for help and used the back of his neck as an ashtray. They stuffed him into the trunk of a car, where he managed to set himself free -- only to be stabbed. But the victim of this Massachusetts attack was neither a Muslim nor an Iraqi but a Hindu from the central Indian city of Indore. He tried to make this clear to his assailants but his entreaties fell on ignorant ears.

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July 22, Islamabad -- A radical Islamic group on Tuesday accused a top Pakistani Muslim cleric of doing politics on the ``blood of martyrs' to gain popularity during a trip to rival India. The cleric, Maulana Fazl-ur Rahman, who was candidate for prime minister last year and is a key figure in a pro-Taliban alliance in Pakistan's parliament, has been meeting with Indian leaders, including Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He has stirred some controversy at home by saying that Pakistan's Islamic clerics want a peaceful, political solution to the two countries' bitter dispute over the Muslim-majority Kashmir region.

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The state's first survey of bias crimes, which found that police received more complaints of abuse against Jews than against any other group in 2001, is raising concerns among anti-discrimination activists that public officials are not yet fully employing New York's fledgling hate crimes law. That law, approved in 2000, allows harsher punishment for anyone who commits a crime out of hostility toward a particular race, national origin, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age or disability. The law required an annual survey, the first of which covers 2001 but was only completed by Gov. George Pataki's administration last month. Out of 975 hate crimes complaints police received, 262 alleged anti-Semitism, the report said. Another 355 charged racial bias, including 155 against blacks, 48 against Hispanics and 39 against whites. The report said 143 incidents involved the victim's ethnicity or national origin, and 112 concerned sexual orientation. The study said that 81 complaints involved a religion other than Judaism.

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July 22 -- No single piece of information could have prevented the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, not even an FBI informant who became acquainted with two of the hijackers, a congressional report says. The unidentified informant was with Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi in San Diego during the summer of 2000 but never suspected they were terrorists, the report said. Almihdhar and Alhazmi recently had been linked by U.S. intelligence officials to possible terrorist activity, but that information apparently had not been shared with the FBI, the report said. Nothing the two men said or did in the presence of the informant aroused suspicion. Almihdhar and Alhazmi were aboard American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. The informant also may have been introduced to Hani Hanjour, who U.S. officials believe piloted that hijacked plane. Before the attacks, Almihdhar and Alhazmi were boarders in the home of Abdussattar Shaikh, a native of India and retired educator known as a devout Muslim who regularly invited young students to stay at his home.

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July 22, Colombo -- The British High Commission in Colombo said all visa applicants in Sri Lanka will have to be fingerprinted from Wednesday to combat abuse of Britain's asylum system. The fingerprints will help officials identify and return failed asylum seekers from Sri Lanka who destroy their documents. The plan is being introduced in Sri Lanka on a trial basis and if successful, it's expected to be expanded to other countries, the high commission said in a statement published in Sri Lankan newspapers Tuesday. The data will be destroyed after 10 years, the statement added.

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July 22, Multan, Pakistan -- Pakistani police said Tuesday they have arrested dozens of tribesmen for a range of offenses, including five people suspected of involvement in recent attacks on the state-owned gas pipeline in southern Pakistan. The arrests were made in Kandhkot tribal region, 400 kilometers (240 miles) west of the central city of Multan, during a weeklong operation, regional deputy police chief Ghulam Shabir said. The hunt by about 4,000 paramilitary rangers and police began last week because of a tip that suspected highway robbers and tribesmen involved in ``criminal activities and terrorist attacks' were hiding in the region, he said.

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July 22, New Delhi -- Indian and Iranian foreign ministers will meet in December, while a committee studying the proposed sale of Iranian natural gas to India will convene soon, the Indian government has announced. The two ministers would discuss Afghanistan and Iraq, India's foreign ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said late Monday. He spoke after a meeting in New Delhi between Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Mohsen Aminzadeh and Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal. Sarna said the joint committee on the gas sale will examine the status of feasibility studies, said the spokesman.

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July 22, Ahmadabad, India -- An Indian Buddhist group said Tuesday it plans to conduct a mass conversion of lower-caste Hindus into Buddhism in Gujarat state, where many such people took part in anti-Muslim riots that killed hundreds last year. The World Buddhist Council, which has conducted such ceremonies elsewhere in India, says lower-caste people improve their lives by leaving Hinduism, because they lose the status that binds them to certain jobs and causes people to shun them. The Buddhist Council said Tuesday that lower-caste members in Gujarat were misled into attacking Muslims last year, when 1,000 people died in riots that began with a Muslim mob attack on a train carrying Hindu nationalist activists.

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July 22 -- Karl Meyer has followed up his "Tournament of Shadows," a book that explored the Great Game — a term he now eschews — played between England and Russia in the 19th century. The Russians were intent on expanding their empire eastward to the Pacific and beyond, and the British were equally intent on protecting India. They both succeeded in their time, although the Russian empire is much diminished and Britain's vanished. In "The Dust of Empire," the author picks up a number of themes, the largest one being the fate of empires, suggesting that Americans might well pay heed to their rise, decline and fall. The rest of the book, however, is something different. Mr. Meyer, a seasoned journalist turned academic who has an eye for exotic detail, offers opinions on various matters, like the reason Wakhan corridor, the finger of Afghan territory that joins China, was created. It was formed, he writes, so that Russia and British India would never touch. (Later the corridor would come in handy as a funnel for Chinese arms to Afghanistan'santi-Soviet rebels.) As such, "The Dust of Empire" serves as an introduction to the vast Eurasian heartland. There is a particularly good chapter on Pakistan, which dwells in detail on the breakup of the subcontinent. In part, the author also rescues the reputation of Pakistan's founding father Mohammed Ali Jinnah but has fewer good things to say about Mohandas Gandhi, and even fewer about his much-acclaimed film biography for which, of course, Gandhi bears no responsibility.

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July 21 -- When I want to see a technical professional turn pale, I quote Neal Stephenson's vision of a world in which "we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries," as described in his 1992 novel "Snow Crash." In a near future when knowledge, capital and even natural resources have become increasingly mobile across national boundaries, Stephenson's narrator observes that "the Invisible Hand has taken historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani bricklayer would call prosperity." For those who hope for something more, either personally or on behalf of the companies they manage, it's crucial to develop a home-court advantage that's not vulnerable to a lower offshore bid. Critical IT tasks still

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              --- South Asian News, July 22, 2003 ---

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