August 31, 2002 News

Pressure grows on US and Iraq amid fear of strike
Cairo, Egypt |Reuters | Gulf News, 30-08-2002

Muslim and European states kept up pressure on Washington yesterday to avert an attack on Iraq but U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney brushed aside their concerns and hammered home the case for preemptive action.

Islamic countries said an attack, which Washington says is justified by President Saddam Hussein's development of weapons of mass destruction and links with terrorism, could unleash fresh turmoil by widening a gulf between Muslims and the West.

European countries put the emphasis on resuming U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq ordered after the 1991 Gulf War, but, in a subtle shift led by Belgium, they reminded Iraq to abide by U.N. resolutions or risk the consequences.

Some analysts say U.S. allies in Europe, which have long expressed concerns over possible U.S. action, may now be turning to the United Nations to get political cover for eventually falling in behind an American war on Iraq.

French President Jacques Chirac warned strongly against a U.S. go-it-alone attack, but sources close to him said concerns that Baghdad might build weapons of mass destruction meant the U.N. Security Council might ultimately agree to use force.

Iraq joined the debate Thursday by saying there was no point in allowing U.N. weapons inspectors back into the country, because an "insane, criminal" U.S. administration was determined to attack and oust Saddam Hussein.

Cheney, speaking to Korean War veterans in San Antonio, Texas, repeated charges from Monday that the Iraqi leader posed a "mortal danger" to the United States.

"The elected leaders of the country have a responsibility to consider all available options and we are doing so," he said. "We must not simply look away, hope for the best and leave the matter for some future administration to resolve."

Cheney said weapons inspections, interrupted four years ago, could not guarantee Iraqi compliance with U.N. disarmament resolutions.

A U.S. official said Wednesday Washington would seek "regime change" whether or not inspections were resumed, which Iraq has anyway said it will not accept.

While Saddam sent ministers to Damascus, Beirut and Beijing seeking support, ordinary Iraqis went about business as usual, seeming to accept whatever comes with fatalistic calm.

"We are not scared any more by American bombs," said one Baghdad shopkeeper. "If they start bombing, let them do so."

The Iraqi opposition will hold a conference in Europe in a month to elect a government-in-exile backed by the United States, opposition sources told Reuters.

EU leaders urge restraint over Iraq
By a Staff Writer, Arab News

ELSINORE, Denmark, 31 August — EU leaders yesterday called for cool heads to resolve the mounting crisis over Iraq, amid stiffening global opposition to a unilateral US strike on the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "I think we should all have a cool look at what’s happening," said EU external relations commissioner Chris Patten arriving at the Danish town of Elsinore, north of Copenhagen, for two days of informal talks.

"We all recognize what a threat to regional stability Saddam Hussein is, but it’s going to take some cool heads to plot the right way forward," he added. Across the globe, from Asia to Europe, Washington’s friends and foes alike have raised a chorus of concern that US President George W. Bush will seek to go it alone against Saddam, accused of developing weapons of mass destruction. The mounting concern has prompted Washington to pledge that it will consult with its allies before it takes any decision on military action. One possible way forward being considered by long-term US ally Britain is setting a deadline for Saddam to resume UN inspections of Baghdad’s alleged biochemical weapons program halted in 1998.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana yesterday urged the UN chief to intervene to resolve the standoff over the UN weapons inspections and avert possible war. "We (the Europeans) have all confidence in the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to prevent the conflict in Iraq and we support wholeheartedly the work done by Kofi Annan," he said. "The UN must continue its work and put pressure on Iraq in order to bring back the inspectors to this country," Solana told a conference in the southern Swedish port of Helsingborg.

Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan also warned Washington it will not be as easy to replace Saddam as it was to get rid of the Taleban in Afghanistan, and dismissed as irrelevant Iraqi opposition groups. "Iraq is not Afghanistan, and I believe the American administration itself knows that," Ramadan told reporters in Beirut.

He rejected Bush’s charges that Baghdad has been developing chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons, and could end up supplying them to terror groups. "My country no longer possesses weapons of mass destruction and has no links with terrorism," he said several times.

Several retired US generals, in a departure from tradition, have begun speaking out publicly urging caution over the idea of unilateral US military action to topple Saddam Hussein. The dovish views have come from retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former head of the US Central Command; former Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, who led Operation Desert Storm against Iraq in 1991; and Wesley Clark, former NATO commander in the campaign in Kosovo in 1999.

Even as Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney sound increasingly hawkish, these military leaders are urging caution. Zinni, who is also the president’s special envoy to the Mideast, said in a recent speech to the Economic Club of Florida that Washington had other priorities besides removing Saddam.

Clark, writing in The Times of London this week, said war should be the "last resort" in Iraq, and urged that any such action be taken as part of a global consensus. Schwarzkopf earlier this month told NBC that an invasion of Iraq "would not be a cakewalk" without allies and could undermine the US-led war on terrorism.

Denmark seeks ME ‘road map’ for Palestine state
By Phil Reeves, Arab News

GAZA/ELSINORE, Denmark, 31 August — EU President Denmark yesterday called for a "realistic road map" toward Palestinian statehood to be drawn up quickly and said this would bolster the bloc’s so-far hapless drive for a Middle East peace conference. In a paper seen by Reuters, Denmark proposed three phases with obligations on both Israel and the Palestinians leading up to the establishment of a Palestinian state in June 2005.

The target date was set by US President George W. Bush in a Middle East policy speech two months ago. But the four-page document, which was distributed to EU foreign ministers at a meeting in the Danish town of Elsinore, was not a plan in itself. Rather it was a "summary and synthesis" of proposals already put forward by France, Germany, the Arab League and the International Crisis Group.

EU diplomats said the document should help prepare a common EU position for a meeting of the peace-broking "Quartet" in New York in mid-September. It will also build on the stronger role the EU has at last found for itself in Middle East diplomacy through the Quartet, which also includes the United States, the UN and Russia. Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, whose country holds the EU presidency until the end of 2002, will visit Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel and the Palestinian territories early next week to discuss the timetable for statehood.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian interior minister said in an interview published yesterday that activists must halt bombings against Israelis or face "isolation" by Palestinian society. "Stop the suicide bombings, stop the murders for no reason," Abdel Razzak Al-Yahya said in remarks to an Israeli newspaper.

Senior Hamas official Abdel-Aziz Rantissi dismissed Yahya’s appeal. "He should have called on the Zionists to end their occupation and massacres. That is enough reason for pursuing the resistance and the martyrdom operations," Rantissi said.

Raising the specter of conflict on a second front, Israel demanded Syria and Lebanon restrain Hezbollah resistance fighters or face retaliation after an attack on the northern border on Thursday that wounded three soldiers and drew Israeli airstrikes.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat called the Israeli Army’s strike on Thursday in the Gaza coastal village of Sheikh Ijleen, which killed a 55-year-old mother, two sons aged 23 and 17 and a 20-year-old cousin, a "deliberate crime". (The Independent)

Greek Muslims seek more mosques, Islamic centers
By Mohannad Sharawi, Special to Arab News

JEDDAH, 30 August — Islam is not a new craze in Greece. It was in existence there when the Ottomans ruled Greece around 200 years ago. Long ago Salonica was famous as the Islamic city of minarets and is still one of the outstanding reminders of the early Muslims in Greece. There are around one million Muslims in Greece. Approximately 400,000 of Greek Muslims are located in the north, and the rest of them are of different nationalities chiefly located in Athens.

Nowadays Muslim communities in Athens as well as the Greek Muslims in north are being ignored by the Greek government. The 600,000 Muslims who live in Athens, like many who live in European countries, face difficulties in practicing their religion. However, Muslims in Athens have a very serious problem. Up until now, they have neither a spacious mosque nor Islamic centers. Muslims living in other European countries, however, do have mosques and Islamic centers.

Most of the Muslims of Greek nationality have been isolated in the north to avoid any Islamic impact in the main cities. Muslims in the north belong to several ethnic groups, including Greek, Albanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Turkish. During the centuries-long Ottoman khilafat (Islamic caliphate), most people learned to speak Turkish simply because it was the official language. Later, under Greek rule, all Turkish speakers were lumped together as "Turks." Most of them were deported and those who remained were subjected to religious and social persecution. The expulsions and persecution continue to this day.

In their time, Muslims in Greece erected 3,771 Islamic structures, including 2,336 mosques, hundreds of which have now been demolished. Only a few score remain and many of those are in a serious state of disrepair. The biggest concern is the conditions of Muslims in Athens who come from different countries such as Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. Only a few people of this huge number of Muslims can attend Friday and Eid prayers because they don’t have mosque big enough for them.

On my last visit to Athens recently I found only two apartments, which are not considered mosques, in the city of Athens. One of them is about a small flat located near Omonia Square and the more spacious one is a basement apartment enough for only 150 worshipers near Kifisias Street. The last one is called the Arabian Culture Center.

"We are not allowed to build any mosque here, it is just a cultural center and we are performing only the Isha (evening) prayer here every night, because it is the most appropriate time for the workers and employees to attend prayers after a long day of work", said Wael Muhammad Khaleel, the center director. Any Muslim visitor to Athens would probably find a real difficulty to get to those two mosques or let’s say two prayer areas which are lost in the big city.

The only bright hope for Muslims in Athens to have their own mosque is the next Olympic Games 2004. The Greek government is discussing the feasibility of building a mosque for Muslims by the beginning of the Olympics. However, the problem will remain still outstanding as the location of the mosque will be around 160 kilometers from Athens which will make it very difficult for the Muslims to attend the five prayers there or even Friday prayer.

The Greek government became more alert and concerned with the Muslim community and its issues after joining the European Union which suggests the religious freedom. The Saudi and Kuwaiti embassies are trying their best along with some other Islamic international organizations to own a convenient land to build the future mosque, said Ibraheem Mansour, the Kuwaiti ambassador. Greeks seem to be very reluctant to accept the concept of building a mosque for Muslims in Athens.

There is no any free Islamic school until now. There are only two private schools, the Lebanese and the Libyan. The high fees of those two schools are only affordable by a few Muslims who have to fork out tuitions of their children, said Sheikh Khalid Al-Maghrabi, a Moroccan Friday prayer leader (imam) at the Islamic center.

"Moreover, books on Islam are very rare and not available in most of the main book stores and public libraries of Athens. So that Greeks knowledge about Islam is very poor," an Egyptian Muslims bookstore keeper said. "We hope that countries such as Saudi Arabia would send some prominent and well-educated Islamic scholars to activate the Daawa work here, " Ezzuldein Ahmad, a Sudanese Muslim who works as a clerk at the Saudi Embassy in Athens, said. "Most of the Friday sermons are neither very inspiring nor informative because of the orators’ lack of Islamic knowledge and experience," he added.

Bhutto supporters stage rally against govt

Khaleej Times, 8/31/02)

RATTO DERO - More than 200 activists from the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) took to the streets of this small town on Saturday to protest the government's rejection of former premier Benazir Bhutto's nomination for October polls.

Wearing black armbands and chanting slogans against President Pervez Musharraf, the marchers blocked a road leading to the main commercial centre of Ratto Dero -- Bhutto's ancestoral village in southern Sindh province -- in what witnesses said was a peaceful protest. "This is our token protest. We are waiting for instructions from the party leadership for any future course of action," local PPP secretary general Musa Abro said. "If asked we will go for a complete strike."

Local election officer Akhlaq Hussain Ladak on Friday declared Bhutto ineligible to contest October elections after scrutiny of her nomination papers filed by the PPP on behalf of its self-exiled leader. "She has been convicted by the anti-graft court (of absconding), therefore she is not qualified to contest the elections," Ladak told a courtroom at Ratto Dero, about 1,200 kilometres southwest of Islamabad.

Bhutto went into exile shortly before she was convicted in a corruption case in 1998. The conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court which ordered a re-trial. But the twice elected and twice dismissed prime minister who lives in London and Dubai has been convicted twice this year of absconding after failing to return from exile to appear in graft trials in May and July.

Abro said PPP workers and supporters plan to proceed to the nearby district of Larkana in a large procession on Sunday, when election officials will decide the fate of her nomination for candidacy in another constituency in the Bhutto clan's stronghold. - AFP

Earth Summit turned into bunker as protestors gather
Khaleej Times, 8/31/02)

JOHANNESBURG - Heavily armed police and troops turned the venue of the Earth Summit into a bunker on Saturday as thousands of demonstrators mustered for a protest to demand action on poverty and the environment. Militants were gathering in the impoverished township of Alexandra, nine kilometers from the Sandton Conference Centre, under the eye of hundreds of police in riot gear who deployed armoured cars fitted with machine-guns.

Their march was to take them past the sprawling conference venue, ringed by coils of razor-wire and a concrete and steel perimeter fence, patrolled by hundreds of armed police, troops and guards, with dogs, water cannon, teargas and stun grenades and bomb disposal experts in reserve. The first of the marches -- about 50 members of the Hare Krishna sect -- arrived to find scores of riot police deployed at all 12 entrances to the convention centre. The police, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, were armed with pistols and rifles. Two water cannon trucks stood by, and a police helicopter buzzed overhead.

As many as 20,000 people including land right activists, debt-reduction campaigners, pro-Palestinian lobbyists, South African trade unionists and members of South African President Thabo Mbeki's African National Congress (ANC) were due to take part in later marches. Inside, negotiators continued horse-trading on sticking points in the 71-page "plan of implementation" ahead of the arrival of 109 heads of state and government. They were deadlocked on key points pitting haves against have-nots and the United States against the European Union.

Early drumbeats in a looming transatlantic trade war did nothing to help any mood for a compromise. The World Trade Organisation on Friday gave the European Union the go-ahead to slap the United States with a record four billion dollars in sanctions for the tax breaks that Washington gives to major exporters. - AFP

Summit impasse over key issues
Khaleej Times, 8/31/02)

JOHANNESBURG - Negotiators at the Earth Summit were deadlocked yesterday on a blueprint to empower the desperately poor of the world and reduce mankind's ravages of the planet as thousands of militants prepared to march in Johannesburg to demand action.

The splits on 14 key issues in the 71-page 'Plan for Implementation' pit rich countries against poor and the United States against Europe, delegates said.

US President George W. Bush is snubbing the summit, but 109 other heads of state and government will start arriving tomorrow in a bid to break the impasse.

"If we fail here, things would unravel on a scale that we have not seen before in international negotiations," British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott told the Independent newspaper of London in an interview published yesterday.

"That would be tragic for the whole world and most of all for those who are in poverty and despair." "World leaders are in danger of sleepwalking right into an environmental catastrophe," warned the conservation group WWF, saying the summit "seems to be moving backwards." Danish Environment Minister Hans Christian Schmidt, whose country currently chairs the European Union, warned: "The process slowed down. We must be dedicated to results... especially on time-bound targets like sanitation, renewable energy."

Other deadlocks include human rights, which the Europeans say are non-negotiable, but on which the United States is siding with the Third World in seeking flexibility, globalisation, greater market access for developing countries; and the "precautionary principle" adopted at the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and under which no new technologies should be introduced if scientists are unsure about any harmful side-effects.

Mr Schmidt said targets and timetables for alleviating poverty were important for the EU, as was boosting renewable energy sources. The Europeans are pushing for a target of halving the number of people without access to decent sanitation by 2015 and to increase use of renewable energy sources such as windmills and solar power to 15 per cent of the total by 2010 - goals the United States is resisting. "I cannot understand how countries can disagree - 2.2 million people die every year because of poor sanitation," said Mr Schmidt in a transparent reference to the Americans.

Developing countries are split on these targets, fearing they might be obliged to spend huge sums on improving sanitation, even if donors help, and members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) do not want to see oil replaced by other energy sources.

Improving the access of developing countries to the markets of industrialised nations and the question of the huge subsidies paid to American and European farmers are such explosive subjects that they will be left for the heads of state and government to deal with, diplomats said.

Evidence is meanwhile growing of a link between global warming and the floods and droughts that devastated parts of Asia and Europe this year, the head of the United Nations' body on climate change said. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said there was undeniable proof that the Earth was warming. - AFP

19 dead in Brazil air taxi crash

Khaleej Times, 8/31/02)

RIO BRANCO - A twin-engine turboprop air taxi crashed in northwest Brazil amid heavy rains on Friday, killing at least 19 people, including a congressman. The plane carrying 28 passengers and three crew crashed at about 7 p.m./2400 GMT in a field near the Rio Branco airport in the state of Acre, police said.

Earlier, police said as many as 24 people may have died, but only 17 bodies have been recovered from the crash site. Two survivors later died in the hospital and rescue workers are still searching for five people, who they believe were killed in the crash. Police said heavy rains made access to the crash site especially difficult. "Some bodies were hurled more than 200 metres from where the airplane crashed," a fire squad chief told the local Estado news agency.

It was the third incident in Brazil on Friday involving passenger planes. Two mid-sized TAM airways airplanes made emergency landings in the state of Sao Paulo, but no one was seriously injured in those accidents. In Acre, the Brasilia-model plane, manufactured by Brazil's Embraer, departed from the city of Cruzeiro do Sul, near the border with Peru, and made a stop in the city of Tarauaca before the crash. It belonged to the Rico Linhas Aereas air taxi service.

Seventeen bodies were transported to the Rio Branco morgue and nine survivors were sent to a local hospital, the morgue said. Two of the survivors, including Congressman Ildefonso Cordeiro of the centrist Brazilian Social Democratic Party, later died. - Reuters

Muslims still feeling backlash of Sept. 11

Khaleej Times, 8/31/02)

LONDON - "September 11 changed a lot of things - life is not the same for us," says the Muslim man who, holding his young son by the hand, has arrived for midday prayers at Tooting mosque in south London.

Almost a year after hijacked airliners ploughed into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington - attacks blamed on Islamic militants - Britain's 1.8 million Muslims are still feeling the backlash.

They say they are the victims of prejudice, ignorance and fear. In the days following the American suicide strikes, vandals smashed in windows at the Tooting mosque and Islamic Centre.

In the high street nearby, an attacker tore a Muslim woman's hijab, or scarf, off her head. "You feared people might attack you, attack your children, attack Muslim women. You had to be vigilant all the time", says Abdul Razak Osman, a member of the Tooting mosque's committee.

As a muezzin calls worshippers to prayer, Osman adds: "You still have to be on your guard, although it's calmed down, thank God. But you never know when something might happen.

"When people look at Islam they think terrorism. But we are ordinary people." As the imam cries "Allah Akbar" (God is Greatest) 100 or so men in the mosque kneel and touch the floor with their foreheads.

Some have white beards and are dressed in flowing robes, while a number of younger men are in jeans and, outside the mosque, are indistinguishable from the crowds on the streets of south London.

"The word Islam means peace," insists Iqbal Sacranie, chairman of the Tooting mosque's board of trustees, who is also secretary general of the Muslim Council of Great Britain, an umbrella group for 380 organisations.

His brand of Islam is a far cry from the firebrand rhetoric of radical Muslim groups in Britain such as Al-Muhajiroun, whose leaders this month warned the United States and Britain that they faced the threat of September 11-style attacks should they launch a military campaign against Iraq.

Sacranie dismisses such talk. "There are clearly people that will say the most outrageous things in the name of Islam ... for example that it's legitimate to kill non-believers."

Statements like that result in "prejudice, animosity and hatred" towards Muslims, and cause them to feel uneasy in their workplaces and in schools, according to Sacranie.

An ICM survey for the Guardian daily earlier this summer found deteriorating relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in Britain since September 11.

One in three Muslims had experienced hostility because of their religion, while 69 percent felt excluded from British life, the poll found.

"Over the last 12 months there has been quite a considerable increase in the number of hostilities and violence against Muslims," says Sacranie.

"A taxi driver was stabbed and very seriously injured. Women have suffered verbal abuse, grafitti have been daubed on mosques." The British government has been at pains to publicly stress that Islam is a peaceful religion and that the US-led war in Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks was directed at "terrorists", not against Muslims.

"But on the ground some of the actions taken in Britain, particularly by the security forces arresting people under the Terrorism Act ... have left ordinary Muslims with elements of fear," Sacranie says. "After two or three weeks you often find these people (arrested under the Terrorism Act) have been released, but the damage has been caused," according to Sacranie. Last December the government introduced an emergency law allowing foreign terror suspects to be held without charge or trial. - AFP

Putin says no to headscarves

Khaleej Times, 8/31/02)

KAZAN (Russia) - Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected an appeal yesterday from Muslim women of the central republic of Tatarstan to let them wear the traditional Islamic headscarf on identity photographs.

Putin told a World Tatar Conference that he agreed with a local court decision that barred women from wearing headscarves for their passport photos.

"We have to follow a single national and social standard," Mr Putin told the forum in this Volga river city. "For instance, if a woman takes a photograph with her headscarf on and then she goes travelling abroad and takes it off - then they won't let her in. Immediately, there is a problem," Mr Putin remarked.

At the same time Mr Putin pledged to defend religious tolerance in Russia. "Good relations between our various nationalities have existed for centuries, and this wealth must be preserved," he said.

The Muslim women of Tatarstan have been up in arms since April 2 when a local court ruled that the headscarf could not be worn on photographs in official documents. The issue arose after three women from the Tatar village of Nizhnekamsk took legal action to oppose the local interior ministry's refusal to accept photographs on identity documents.

The president of the Union of Muslim Women of Tatarstan, Elmira Adyatullina, said on the eve of Mr Putin's arrival to Kazan that she would hand the Russian president a resolution calling on him to intervene. "Only he can restore justice," she told AFP.

She noted that in Soviet-era passports, Muslim scholars were allowed to appear with their religious headwear. The headscarf is not widely worn in Tatarstan, a semi-autonomous republic whose 5.5 million inhabitants comprised of around 51 per cent Muslims and 43 per cent ethnic Russians who are of the Russian Orthodox faith or tradition.

Russia is home to around 20 million Muslims. Like other religions, Islam saw a surge in membership after the fall of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991.

Moscow is concerned by a rise in radical Islam in its southern regions, notably Chechnya and Dagestan, and in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. - AFP

US soldiers in the firing line at Earth Summit
Khaleej Times, 8/31/02)

JOHANNESBURG - US troops are under fire at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg, accused of ravaging the environment and causing great human tragedies at bases in South Korea, Japan and Italy.

Greens are demanding that they quit those bases, calling them an ecological menace. Lee Yujin, an activist with the Green Korea United organisation, which claims 15,000 members, said the US presence was a major threat in her country.

"There are currently 37,000 US troops stationed at 93 bases in Korea, covering a total of 60,700 acres (24,280 hectares). During the time of the posting of the US troops in 1945 to the present, environmental pollution has been constant." She said studies conducted at a US bombing range showed the soil was contaminated with an arsenic level of 5.37 milligrams per kilogram, 13 times the national average.

"Cadmium was found to be 37 times higher than average and copper was 13 times higher," she said. Lee charged that the US military was also guilty of widespread environmental damage with a series of oil leakage accidents from US bases.

Japanese activist Kaori Sunagawa, a researcher with the Okinawa Environmental Network, said the group of islands making up Japan's southernmost prefecture of Okinawa housed 25,000 of the total 52,000 US troops in Japan.

"The military bases occupy 11 percent of the prefectural land," she said, adding that "noise pollution, destruction of forests, forest fires from military exercises, soil erosion from bombings" were common. Experts say Okinawa has an estimated 2,600 tonnes of unexploded ordnance dating from World War II.

Sunagawa said the US forces were also guilty of chemical pollution, pointing out that PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl) contamination was discovered at a former military communications site in the Onna region in 1996.

But she said the biggest threat of all was the planned construction of a US heliport to be built at the town of Naha, amounting to a virtual relocation of the sprawling Futenma US Marine air station nearby. She said this would ring the death knell for Okinawa's dugongs -- gentle marine mammals believed to be the reality behind the mermaid myth -- and generally found around the area.

Spottings have already become rare. "The heliport and runway will be built on a reclaimed site over coral reefs, there will be a 2,500-metre-(one-and-a-half-mile) -long runway... this will exterminate dugongs by destroying the sea grass beds, their feeding grounds. Italian activist Roberto Stefani said: "Italy lost the war, like Japan, and we also have some souvenirs including 13,000 soldiers over 25 bases partly NATO and partly US."

A lot of the anger stems from accidents and human tragedies blamed on the US troops. Sunagawa said: "There have been about 4,790 criminal charges brought against US military personnel since Okinawa reverted to Japan in 1972. Among the worst cases are 12 murders, 355 thefts and 111 rapes."

Korean activists highlighted the death of two girls in an accident involving US military vehicles. And Stefani spoke of a 1998 accident when a US airplane cut the wire of a funicular train carrying 20 people. Sueng Kook Choi, a Korean, said: "This summit is about reducing the dangers to the world. That is why we have brought this up here. The Americans must go."

US officials here were not immediately available for comment. - AFP

Indochina floods kill 43, leave many homeless
Khaleej Times, 8/31/02)

LVEAR EM (Cambodia) - Floodwaters along the lower stretches of the Mekong have wreaked havoc in Indochina, claiming at least 43 lives and leaving thousands homeless across the region, government and aid officials said yesterday.

Despite improved defences built after the disastrous floods of 2000 in which hundreds perished, heavy seasonal rains from China in the north to the Mekong delta in the south have ruined crops, homes and lives in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.

"Over the last two weeks, it has been difficult. First, rice planting was damaged by drought, and a week later the rest of the rice has been destroyed by floods," Choung Sivvuth, governor of Cambodia's Prey Veng province, told Reuters.

The southeastern region was the last in Cambodia to suffer flooding, as waters flowed down from China and Laos, through the low-lying heartlands of Cambodia, and on to neighbouring Vietnam.

Officials and aid agencies have taken heart at a recent easing of river levels, but the death toll in Cambodia alone stands at 18. Most of the victims are children, swept away by the swollen torrents. Across five provinces some 16,300 families - around 120,000 people - were in special evacuee centres on higher ground, according to government figures. With more rain and floods forecast, they could be homeless for some time.

"We have been worried by reports from Laos that they are expecting a surge in the floodwaters in the next two to three weeks," said Antony Spalton of the International Federation of the Red Cross. "These people could be marooned for much longer than expected, and then we really are facing a question of food and health," Mr Spalton said.

Meanwhile in Vietnam, which suffered badly from floods two years ago, officials have warned that the torrential rains and flash floods of mid-August suggest a similar disaster could be around the corner.

At least 25 people have died so far in three central provinces as waters have submerged homes, crops and roads. The monsoon rains which roll across the region from July to November have eased in recent days but flooding looks set to continue for some time. - Reuters

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