WANA, PAKISTAN, Mar 16 (Reuters) Pakistani Paramilitary Forces attacked tribal fighters sheltering Al Qaeda militants near the rugged Afghan border today and at least nine people were killed in clashes that raged through the day, officials said.
Heavy exchanges of gunfire erupted at dawn.
The tribesman put up stiff resistance and later launched hit-and-run raids on their attackers, a security official and a witness said.
The fighting came a day before US secretary of state Colin Powell was due to visit Pakistan.
Speaking as he flew to India yesterday, Powell urged Pakistan to ramp up its military activities near the Afghan border.
“The situation is very serious, very intense.
There have been casualties,” said a resident of the town of Wana, near the scene of the fighting, 360 km Southwest of Islamabad.
Pakistan’s remote tribal lands have been semi-autonomous for decades.
Many of the area’s ethnic Pashtun tribesmen support Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban militia, many of whom are also Pashtun.
The Pakistani push came as US forces mounted a spring offensive in Southern and Eastern Afghanistan, across the border from the tribal areas, aimed at crushing Taliban and Al Qaeda rebels and catching their leaders, including Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden is also thought to be in hiding somewhere along the frontier, and the US military hopes to trap him and others in a `hammer and anvil’ operation with Pakistani forces.
A Pakistani security official said six paramilitary men had been killed, two of them in an ambush.
At least three tribal fighters were killed and several wounded.
Ambulances had taken men away from the fighting near Kaloosha village, a witness said.
A group of paramilitary frontier corps men was seen coming under rocket and machinegun fire but it was not known if there had been any casualties in that firing, he added.
Gunmen on a motorcycle attacked a frontier corps convoy while at least one government vehicle was blown up, a resident in the area said.
“It’s a fluid situation.
There are casualties on both sides, said military spokesman major-general Shaukat Sultan.
One of the three dead militants was believed to be a foreigner, he said.
Another security official said the dead militant was believed to be a Chechen.
The man was found with a grenade in his hand and landmines strapped to his body, the official said.
The offensive in the South Waziristan tribal agency had been launched because there were `miscreants’ in the area, Sultan said.
President Pervez Musharraf said on the eve of the assault up to 600 foreign Muslim militants were hiding in the region and he called on tribal leaders to hand them over.
Musharraf, speaking to the elders in Peshawar near the Afghan border, said some of the militants responsible for attacks in Pakistan, including attempts on his life in December, were hiding in tribal lands.
He blamed a Libyan al Qaeda suspect for the assassination bids, saying he hired a Pakistani to recruit people who went on to carry out the attacks.
The mastermind of the attacks was in the tribal area, he said, although it was not clear if he was referring to the Libyan.
Many tribal forces support the government’s move to clear the area of foreign fighters but some have defied orders to hand them over.
Powell, who will also visit Afghanistan, said he wanted to see `greater action’ by Pakistan on their side of the border as US forces make their push on the Afghan side.
“Pakistan has undertaken a number of operations recently along the border ...
And we just want to see them do more of that,” Powell told reporters.
Musharraf said foreign militants who laid down their arms and surrendered would not be handed over to another country.
Journalists can be singled out for preferential treatment: SC NEW DELHI, Mar 16 (UNI) Holding that journalists could be singled out for preferential treatment, the Supreme Court has upheld the constitutional validity of a provision in the employees’ provident fund scheme which extends to all newspaper employees the PF benefits, available only to weaker sections of employees in other sectors.
“The employees of newspaper industry have always been treated as a class apart,” the apex court said, adding if the legislature embarked upon a legislation for ameliorating their conditions of service, there was nothing discriminatory about it.
Ruling that Article 14 did not forbid reasonable classification, a Division Bench comprising Justice YK Sabharwal and Justice D M Dharmadhikari said to provide social welfare legislation and to grant benefit, a beginning had to be made somewhere without embarking on similar legislation in relation to other industries.
The provision Section 80(2) of the scheme was challenged by Express Publications (Madurai) Ltd on the ground that it offended the right to equality apart from imposing a heavy financial burden on newspaper establishments.
Submitting that employees in other establishments were not entitled to the benefit of the scheme if their monthly salary exceeded Rs 6,500, the newspaper contended that by not subjecting newspaper employees to income ceiling, the government had imposed a financial liability which affected its fundamental right to disseminate news freely.
The centre, however, said the welfare legislation, which came into force in December 1956, was in furtherance of the freedom of press.
“Journalists and other newspaper employees form as much integral part of freedom of press as the establishment itself.” The appellant’s contention that the print media had witnessed a financial crisis in recent times as revenue from advertisements had been diverted to the electronic media, was rejected by the apex court as unsatisfactory explanation for the 45-year-delay.
The court further noted that in view of the changed picture of the press as a profit making industry, the press commission had recommended that if a newspaper was unable to pay the minimum wage to its employees to enable them to live `decently with dignity’, that newspaper had no business to exist.
Congress leaders have close shave in chopper crash near Silvasa KHANVEL, SILVASA, Mar 16 (UNI) Senior Congress leaders Ahmed Patel, Prithviraj Chouhan and Shailaja Kumari had a narrow escape when their helicopter crash-landed here this afternoon.
However, another helicopter carrying congress president Sonia Gandhi landed safely minutes before the chopper ferrying the party leaders tailspined and broke into two.
Gandhi was a witness to the accident.
The visibly upset Congress president later made her way to the crash site and enquired about the leaders.
Patel is Gandhi’s political secretary and Chouhan, AICC member in-charge of Gujarat.
Chouhan was injured on the head and leg while the others sustained minor wounds.
Television footage showed the chopper spining of control.
It managed to touch ground, before the mainframe broke with the rotor blades still functioning.
As people rushed to their rescue, Patel and Kumari jumped out of the chopper.
Hundreds of people, who had gathered to welcome the Congress delegation, witnessed the incident.
The pilot and co-pilot of the helicopter were also injured.
Gandhi and her entourage were scheduled to arrive here at 1330 hrs for the two-day Congress roadshow covering an area of over 350 km in five tribal-dominated Lok Sabha constituencies of South Gujarat and the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli.
Gandhi arrived an hour behind schedule and was interacting with some local people at the helipad when the chopper crash-landed.
The party leaders were rushed in an ambulance to hospital in Silvasa.
Gandhi went to the hospital to enquire about the injured Congress leaders.
BWA merges with PDP SRINAGAR, Mar 17 (UNI) Ahead of Lok Sabha polls, the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) received a shot in the arm when the Balti Welfare Association (BWA) merge with the party today.
“My supporters and I are joining the party to strengthen the hands of chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed,” BWA president Mohammad Ali Khan said at a function held here in presence of PDP general secretary Bilal Lodhi and chief spokesman Syed Basharat Bukhari.
It was under the leadership of Sayeed that the state has made progress in all fields, he said.
“The chief minister deserves credit for the centre-Hurriyat talks and all right thinking people should extend full support to the PDP-led coalition government,” he added.
Bukari said the Pakhtoon Welfare Association office bearers and members have also joined the PDP.
Powell meets Vajpayee NEW DELHI, Mar 16 (UNI) US secretary of state Colin Powell called on prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee here this evening and discussed bilateral ties as well international issues, particularly the situation in South Asia.
According to official sources, both Vajpayee and Powell were assisted by their senior officials at the 30-minute meeting.
Powell earlier met finance minister Jaswant Singh and national security adviser Brajesh Mishra.
He had held delegation-level talks with external afairs minister Yashwant Sinha in the afternoon.
Army act can’t override Juvenile Justice Act: HC NEW DELHI, Mar 16 (UNI) In an important decision, Delhi High Court has rejected the army’s argument that the Juvenile Justice (care and protection of children) act will have no applicability on a person governed by the army act.
A division bench comprising Justices Vijender Jain and HR Malhotra held that there was no force in arguments of the defence ministry that the army act would apply to a person recruited in the army, even though a juvenile, and would override the provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act.
“The mere fact that the age (of majority) has been enhanced to 18 years, irrespective of a boy or a girl and the army act is of the year 1950, it cannot be said that the legislature wanted to keep persons who are under the army act amenable to that act although they were juvenile under the Juvenile Justice Act,” the judges said.
In that case a special exception would have been made under the Juvenile Justice Act present act, they added.
The court also ruled that the reliance placed by the army authorities on the Article 33 of the constitution was also misplaced.
The Article 33 only authorises parliament, in relation to the armed forces, to determine to what extent any of the Fundamental Rights could be restricted to ensure proper discharge of their duties and maintenance of discipline among them.
The “Article 33 cannot be read to oust the applicability of the Juvenile Justice Act, which was also an act of parliament and absence of any exception provided in the said act with regard to its applicability.
The court was dealing with a case of an armyman below the age of 18 years who had been sentenced to seven years Rigorous Imprisonment by the general court matial for committing theft.
The court quashed the court matial proceedings and ordered release of the armyman, hailing from Ferozabad (Uttar Pradesh).
Two of the six charges against the man were also quashed because they related to the period when he was a juvenile.
However, the army was given the liberty to pursue the matter, if it wanted, on the other charges but would have to keep in mind that the petitioner had already undergone 17 months incarceration without the authority of law.
The Juvenile Justice Act is replete with the method and manner of custody, bail, inquiry and order which has to be passed by a Juvenile Board, notwithstanding anything contained in any other law.
Talking to illiterates about human rights? Speak mother tongue NEW DELHI, Mar 16 (UNI) With India home to three of every ten illiterates in the world, educating people about their rights should be through their mother tongues, says National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) chairperson Justice AS Anand.
Most often people are not aware of their rights and they need to be informed about them, Justice Anand said.
But in educating the people, the important of their mother tongues should not be undermined, he told a national workshop on the importance of language in the protection and promotion of human rights.
Reeling out statistics to emphasise his point, the former chief justice of the Supreme Court said out of every ten illiterate persons in the country seven were women.
It is a fact that women are more likely to face human rights violations.
To understand their problems one has to talk to them in their own language, he said.
He, however, cautioned against the too technical or sanskritized use of languages saying it would keep the uneducated or less educated people away defeating the very purpose of using vernacular languages.
Justice Anand rejected the claim that the idea of human rights came to India from the West.
India was well aware of human rights even before the drafting of the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights.
Human rights was highlighted by Lokmanya Tilak almost 110 years ago in his call for ‘Swaraj’ and human rights also figure in the Constitution of India.
Reiterating the importance of respecting human rights, the NHRC chairperson said, “ human rights belong to every individual and every individual’s rights should be protected.” Chhatrapal Singh’s resignation from Union cabinet accepted NEW DELHI, Mar 16 (UNI) President APJ Abdul Kalam today accepted the resignation of Union Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilizers Chhatrapal Singh from the Council of Ministers.
A Rashtrapati Bhawan spokesperson said here that the resignation has been accepted on the prime minister’s recommendation with immediate effect.
Singh resigned from the Union Cabinet this morning after he was denied a ticket by the Bharatiya Janata Party for the coming Lok Sabha elections.
Talking to UNI, Singh, a sitting BJP MP from Bulandshahr, clarified that he had resigned on moral grounds as there was no justification for him to continue in the post for another two months.
Singh said he had volunteered to vacate his Bulandshahr seat for senior party leader Kalyan Singh.
“Therefore, there is no question of protest, whatsoever,” he added.
Singh said he handed over his resignation to prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at 1130 hrs only after consulting BJP president M Venkaiah Naidu.
He would continue to work for the party and participate in the campaigning.
Yesterday, Minister of State for Shipping Dilip Gandhi also resigned from the Union Council of Ministers over denial of ticket by the BJP.
After handing over his resignation to the prime minister, Gandhi, who represents the Ahmednagar constituency, said “I cannot go to the people as a minister after having been denied the ticket by the party.” Gandhi’s seat was allotted to senior state party leader NS Pharande.
Earlier, Minister of State for Water Resorces Bijoya Chakravorty, a sitting MP from Guwahati, had resigned from the Union Cabinet after the BJP decided to field noted singer, composer and writer Bhupen Hazarika from the constituency.
Maharashtra governor urges free trade between India and Pakistan MUMBAI, Mar 16 (UNI) Maharashtra governor Mohammed Fazal said that he was, and continues to be, in favour of free trade and travel between India and Pakistan.
Fazal expressed his views on extending welcome to the 23-member delegation of rice exporters from Pakistan which is on a ten-day visit to India.
Fazal also assured that he would convey the sentiments expressed by the delegation to prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and foreign minister Yashwant Sinha.
The govenor said that he would be the “happiest person if the people of the two countries could visit one another without any visa.” The delegation comprising top businessmen and exporters in basmati and non-basmati rice and cereals from Pakistan is visiting India and interacting with businessmen and rice exporters from India with a view to promote bilateral trade relations between the two countries.
Leader of the group Abdul Rahim Janoo told the governor that the Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan (REAP) was the second largest association in Pakistan and he said that the export of rice from Pakistan all over the world was of the order of 600-million.
Janoo said that there is tremendous potential for growth of trade and business relations between Pakistan and India.
He also observed that in addition to trade, tourism in India will benefit immensely if the visa procedures were simplified, since a large number of people from Pakistan want to visit India.
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