HEADLINES
 

STORIES
 

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Sept 04, Islamabad -- President Pervez Musharraf said Pakistan won't initiate an arms race with nuclear neighbor India, but ruled out rolling back or freezing the nation's nuclear weapons program, the military said on Thursday. ``President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has reiterated Pakistan's resolve not to enter into an arms race with anyone, while ensuring consolidation of Pakistan's minimum deterrence needs,' a statement issued by the military said. Musharraf made his comments at a meeting Wednesday of the National Command Authority, which is responsible for Pakistan's nuclear program.

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Sept 04, Kabul -- Taliban guerrillas who recently staged a deadly attack on an Afghan border post retreated to Pakistan and got medical treatment with help from the son of a senior Pakistani provincial minister, a report on state-owned Afghan national television alleged. The Pakistani minister called the report ``propaganda' and said his son was only 9 years old. The report, broadcast late Wednesday on Afghan TV, said Afghan officials at Spinboldak, a border checkpoint in southern Afghanistan, had shown Pakistani officials a trail of blood leading toward Pakistan which they said was proof the attackers had retreated that way after killing four Afghan soldiers.

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Sept 04, Yangon, Myanmar -- An Indian delegation led by navy Adm. Madhavendra Singh arrived in Myanmar on Thursday for talks with the country's military leaders, diplomatic sources said. The four-member team is making the routine visit at the invitation of Singh's Myanmar counterpart, Vice Adm. Kyi Min, an Indian Embassy official said on customary condition of anonymity.

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Sept 04, Singapore -- Police have arrested more than 100 students ahead of a rally against King Gyanendra in the Nepalese capital, Katmandu, BBC reported on its Web site Thursday. The arrests followed an overnight raid on a college. The authorities have given no reasons for the move that took place amid mounting security concerns. The general secretary of the Nepal Students Union, or NSU, Gagan Thapa, said that 150 students had been arrested. The NSU is the student wing of the centrist Nepali Congress which is one of five mainstream parties that have been planning a major rally against the king Thursday.

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Sept 04, Peshawar, Pakistan -- A fleet of Pakistani military helicopters swooped over the tribal belt that borders Afghanistan in a renewed hunt for al-Qaida and Taliban, witnesses said Thursday. Government officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said several of the helicopters carried ``foreign' forces, an apparent reference to U.S. forces. The U.S. military earlier deployed an unknown number of special forces into Pakistan's rugged tribal region, but their whereabouts are secret and they keep a low profile, largely because of the deeply conservative nature of the area..

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Sept 04, Dhaka -- Bangladesh has agreed not to extradite any U.S. soldiers accused of a crime to the International Criminal Court, a top Bangladesh foreign ministry official said Thursday. Instead, soldiers or U.S. military personnel who commit a crime in Bangladesh or are wanted in another country will be handed over to U.S. authorities. Bangladesh and the United States signed the agreement last month in Washington, Foreign Secretary Shamser Mobin Chowdhury told reporters in the capital, Dhaka.

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Sept 04, Karachi, Pakistan -- Pakistan released 269 Indian fishermen after a year in jail Thursday, a senior coast guard official said, in a sign of improving relations between the two countries. The fishermen were arrested on charges of illegally entering Pakistan's territorial waters, said Syed Sibt-e-Hasan, a commander at Pakistan's Maritime Security Agency. The fishermen were handed over to Indian authorities in a ceremony attended by Indian First Secretary R.K. Sharma and Pakistan navy officials.

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Sept 04, Karachi, Pakistan -- A Pakistani businessman who vanished two months ago and whose son is charged in New York with aiding al-Qaida is being held in U.S. custody in the Afghan capital of Kabul, his wife says. Saifullah Paracha, who had not been heard from since his July 5 disappearance, wrote to his wife, Farhat, that ``my health is OK,' and that he was receiving regular visits from the Red Cross, she told The Associated Press on Thursday.

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Sept 04, Colombo -- Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels Thursday said the fate of a shaky 18-month-old cease-fire with the government hinged on how much power they get to administer Tamil-majority areas in the war-torn northeast. The rebels also asked the government to order the Sri Lankan armed forces to return to barracks, so that Tamil civilians can return to their homes and stay without fear in their traditional homeland. In an unsigned statement posted on their Web site and published in their newspaper, the rebels said: ``The future of the CFA (cease-fire agreement) and its survival will depend on the GOSL's (government of Sri Lanka) reply' to their demands for wide-ranging political autonomy.

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Sept 04, Colombo -- The Sri Lankan government said Thursday it wants Tamil Tiger rebels to take part in Japanese-sponsored talks next week to discuss development activities in the Tamil-majority northeast, which has been devastated by a protracted civil war. ``It will be very useful,' to have the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam at the Sept. 12 talks in Colombo, government spokesman Gamini Peiris told reporters. Yasushi Akashi, a Japanese government official involved in past peace efforts, will convene the meeting. But they will not discuss political issues, and will instead focus on how to carry out postwar development in the northeast.

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Sept 04, Newark -- In an unusual move, a federal magistrate judge said today that lawyers for a man charged with trying to sell shoulder-fired missiles to terrorists could question prosecution witnesses at a hearing to determine if the man should be held without bail. The judge scheduled the hearing for Sept. 11. United States Magistrate Judge Ronald J. Hedges made the decision after lawyers for the defendant, Hemant Lakhani, challenged assertions that were made by prosecutors at a hearing in Federal District Court this morning.

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Sept 05 -- Federal prosecutors said yesterday that the suspected arms broker arrested trying to sell a missile to an FBI informant has confessed to the charges, but a judge told them to produce evidence if they want to keep the man in jail. U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald Hedges in Newark ordered the suspect, Hemant Lakhani, held until a hearing Thursday during which an FBI agent is expected to testify against the British businessman.

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Sept 04, Srinagar, India -- After a relatively calm summer, a new wave of violence has spread across Kashmir, the disputed Himalayan province ravaged by a decade-long separatist war. Nearly every day brings a least a few attacks: soldiers ambushed, suspected informers tortured and killed, civilians cut down in gunbattles. Things had seemed promising after Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee launched a peace initiative in April to try to mend relations with Pakistan, which also claims the province. But no date for new talks has been set, and peace suddenly seems less likely than ever.

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Sept 04, Srinagar, India -- Eighteen people including 14 Muslim rebels have been killed in the latest clashes in Indian Kashmir where violence has surged recently, threatening peace moves between India and Pakistan. Police said 16 people were wounded in the clashes across the strife-torn Himalayan region late on Wednesday and on Thursday. In one incident, two militants tried to raid an army camp in Poonch district south of Srinagar, the Muslim-majority region's main city, but were killed. A woman was also killed and four children were wounded.

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Sept 05 -- Former co-workers of Frank Roque described him in court Thursday as a narrow-minded man consumed by hatred toward Middle Eastern immigrants and bent on revenge after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Roque, 44, has admitted gunning down Balbir Singh Sodhi, 49, a Sikh immigrant from India who wore a turban, five days after the attacks. His lawyers say Roque is mentally ill and heard voices telling him to "kill the devil." Robert Holschue, a structural aircraft repairman who formerly worked with Roque at a Boeing repair facility, said Roque "expressed his intense anger toward Middle Easterners of all sorts" after the attacks.

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Sept 05 -- After twice examining Frank Roque, a court-appointed Arizona psychiatrist has concluded that the Mesa machinist was not insane when he shot and killed Balbir Singh Sodhi in retaliation for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Roque's defense attorneys are using a guilty but insane defense in Roque's death-penalty trial, expected to start this week, arguing that the balding 49-year-old defendant is schizophrenic and heard voices from God telling him to kill Arabs.

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Sept 04, Toronto -- The third man among 21 arrested recently in Canada as being suspected terrorists from Pakistan was ordered released on bail Thursday by immigration officials. Canada's Nation Post said the suspect released Thursday was identified as Muhammad Naeem, a Pakistani doctor who went to Canada in November 2001. He was ordered released by immigration adjudicators who questioned the strength of the government's case.

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Sept 03 -- The good times are rolling. Well, unless you have been a casualty of corporate downsizing the economy is rolling. Companies have trimmed their payrolls to make sure their stockholders are satisfied with profits. Our own government has reported unemployment at 6.2% but we all know there are many areas of our great country where the unemployment rate is much higher than that. We all know that manufacturing has been relocated to China, India , and Mexico. Many of our call centers and informational exchange jobs have been outsourced to India.

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Sept 04, Jerusalem -- Following in the footsteps of the 20,000 Israeli backpackers who flock to India every year, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will fly to New Delhi and Bombay next week for the first prime-ministerial visit there since the two countries first established full ties 11 years ago. Israel and India share a common enemy in the war on terrorism: Both face ongoing attacks from Islamic extremists, and both seek American support for their anti-terror campaigns.

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Sept 04 -- In June 2003, Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s self-appointed President and strongman, was summoned to Washington. He returned with two errands from President George Bush. Pakistan must recognize Israel and dispatch its troops to police America’s illegal occupation of Iraq. There was money in it for Pakistani rulers: three billion dollars over the next five years. Still in Washington, Musharraf told Pakistani reporters that he had made no “deal” with the United States. “Whatever we are doing, we are doing in our national interest, and fortunately our national interest coincides with those of the United States, which is the beauty of our relationship.”

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