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War inevitable if Pak doesn't stop infiltration, firing: Farooq Poonch, May 30 (ANI): The chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir said on Thursday that war between India and Pakistan was inevitable unless the latter stopped militants from attacking Indian targets and put an end to cross-border firing. "Our enemy is determined to harm innocent people. And this is quite evident from what you have seen yourself and what we have come to see today. It is the ordinary citizens who are being hit. You saw the children who are lying in the hospital. I don't think the General means what he says in his speeches. If he wants peace with India, then he has to stop this. Otherwise there is nothing that will prevent major war," Farooq Abdullah told reporters after visiting frontline areas. Indian and Pakistani forces pounded each other again on Thursday with heavy machinegun and mortar fire. India has demanded that President Pervez Musharraf act on his January pledge to end infiltration across the LoC to defuse a military standoff. Farooq, known for his hawkish views, made the comments as he visited a hospital treating people who Indian defence officials said were injured in Pakistani firing on Wednesday in Poonch town. He was accompanied by his son and junior foreign minister Omar Farooq and security officials. Three civilian were killed and 21 wounded in Poonch, 255 km (160 miles) north of Jammu, in Wednesday's firing, officials said. Dozens of people on both sides of the border have been either killed or wounded in the firing that escalated in mid-May. (ANI) Japanese minister meets Brajesh Mishra
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to top New Delhi, May 30 (ANI): Japan's senior Vice Foreign Minister Seiken Sugiura, who arrived in New Delhi on Thursday after holding talks with senior leaders in Islamabad, met the National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra. Sugiura said Pakistan had assured him of stepping up efforts to curb infiltration into Jammu and Kashmir. On his part, he urged the Indian government to "exhaust all diplomatic efforts towards a de-escalation" of the situation. Islamabad denies New Delhi's charges that it is sponsoring a 13- year-old separatist insurgency in Kashmir by Islamic militants seeking independence or union with Pakistan, and says it only gives moral and political support to Kashmiri "freedom fighters". India has said it is running out of patience over attacks by Islamic militants.(ANI)
Pak firing kills five in Poonch, two cops dead in Jammu attack Go to top Jammu, May 30 (ANI): At least five persons, including two security personnel, were killed and 34 wounded when Pakistani troops resorted to heavy firing on Poonch town. Unconfirmed reports put the toll at 15, seven in Poonch and eight in Malti village located on the town's outskirts. Official sources said that Pakistani forces resorted to unprovoked firing and hurled mortars and shells from across the line of control (LoC) The shelling, which started at around 6.30 p.m. on Wednesday, continued till late into the night, the sources said, adding that Indian soldiers came out with "effective" retaliation. Army officials in New Delhi said the dead included one woman and two labourers. Meanwhile, two policemen were killed when militants attacked a police station here on Wednesday night, the police informed said on Thursday. Two militants also died when the policemen retaliated, they said.(ANI)
UP power engineers on strike, protest "bureaucratisation"
Go to top Lucknow, May 30 (ANI): About 22,000 engineers of the Power Corporation are on a pen and-tool-down strike in protest against the state government's appointment of IAS officers who would supervise work in their the power department. The agitation is also targetted against the government's manner of reducing the staff strength in order to minimise the losses suffered by the corporation. The president of UP Power Corporation Engineers' Union, Shailendra Dubey, said, "We will go for a complete boycott on June 3 and non-cooperation from June 6." The agitation will culminate into a drive for mass resignation on June 12, he added. On April 22, as many as eight senior managers and 10 executive engineers of the corporation were "compulsoraily retired" after corruption charges were allegedly levelled against them. This made the power engineers angry and their union gave the state government one month's time to re-instate the eight engineers. But the government didn't oblige. So a ceasework was the inevitable result. The state government is working on the World Bank's model of power reforms in which loss-making state power corporations are divided into smaller units paving the way for a privatised power regime. Following the norms, the U.P. Power Corporation was recently trifurcated. Now, the state government plans to further divide the corporation into four more units and four IAS officers have been appointed to oversee these units. UP Power Minister Ram Vir Upadhya seems to be reticent over the issue. He said, "the move has not reduced the power of the technocrats. Bureaucrats are there to co-operate with them in tackling the current power crises and managing losses". Only when we are able to control the losses can we buy more power from NTPC", Upadhaya added. He said he hoped that the strike would soon end. (ANI)
Post-January 22, Kolkata cops receive commando training
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top Kolkata, May 30 (ANI): After the terrorist attack on the American Centre here on January 22, the police authorities have now woken up, in that they have decided to make the city cops truly efficient and rid them of their easy-going image. Advanced physical and arms training are being given to police personnel to counter all sorts of terrorist attacks and also fight web crimes. "Prior to the American Centre attack, we did not need this kind of rigorous training so much because we used to deal mostly with the general public and petty criminals," said B.K.D Bhutia, an instructor. "But now this is an imperative," he added. The daily workout begins at six o'clock in the morning. Experts from the elite National Security Guards give commando training to policemen ranging from the lowest ranking constables to the middle-level officers. They are also being trained to tackle modern cyber crimes and bio-terrorism. "We are giving our officers and men an overview of bio-terrorism,"said Jayabrata Chatterjee, an instructor. (ANI)
Four Tripura Rifles jawans killed in ambush
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top Agartala, May 30 (ANI): At least four jawans of Tripura State Rifles were killed and ten injured when insurgents belonging to the banned militant outfit National Liberation Front of Tripura attacked their vehicle while passing through a national highway, police said Thursday. The ambush reportedly occurred at Ghagracherra on the Assam- Agartala national highway in Dhalai district. The jawans were returning to their camp at Saydabari in North Tripura district after admitting a sick colleague at G.B. Hospital. After the rebels attacked the police vehicle, the jawans opened fire. The encounter continued for nearly two hours in which four jawans were killed and ten injured. The injured were admitted to a hospital in Manu township. The condition of four of them jawans was stated to be critical. A police party led by sub-Divisional Police Officer Timir Das arrived on the spot to take stock of the situation.(ANI)
Police trying to keep villagers along LoC in high spirits
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to top Rajouri, May 30 (ANI): Even as international pressure mounted on India and Pakistan to avert a full-blown war, police said they are doing everything to soothe ruffled sentiment in the border areas from where residents are fleeing in order to avoid shelling from across the LOC. The residents of border villages have been braving continuous firing because of their close proximity to the Line of Control. They are now forced to abandon their homes to move into relief camps. However, the police personnel deputed in the region claim that despite growing tensions, they are keeping the morale of the residents high. "We have been in touch with the people living in border areas for the last one year. They have assured us of their support. We are confident that as long as they are with us, we can never fail. We would surely win," S.S.Bajral, Deputy Inspector General of Police the Rajouri-Poonch sector of Jammu and Kashmir, said. A woman was wounded in the firing along the Line of Control, a military boundary dividing the two armies in the disputed Kashmir region on Thursday. A number of civilians on both sides of the border have been killed and wounded since tension soared following a May 14 raid on an Indian army camp that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militants. (ANI)
Five of a Dalit family gunned twon in Bihar village Go to top Patna, May 30 (ANI): At least six people, five of them children, of a lower caste family were gunned down by suspected rebels of the outlawed People's War Associate in a Bihar village late on Wednesday night, police said today. The PWA is a breakaway group of the People's War Group which operates in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Jharkhand besides Bihar. The heavily-armed intruders fired indiscriminately on a family in Lakhnaur village near state capital Patna. "I was alone here and my brothers were sleeping when those people hit them with slippers and then killed them," said Radha Devi, an eyewitness. The PWA has over the years used force to terrorise the state's "Dalits" to gain a hold over the region. Amit Kumar, Rural Superintendent of Police, Patna, said old enmity is believed to be the reason behind the massacre. "It looks as a revenge for the killing of relatives of Sunil Kranti, who was killed by one of the members, Jainandan Yadav, of today's massacred victims of the family," said Kumar. The killings came barely days after five members of a lower caste family were lynched by the PWG in a nearby Masoudi village in Patna. Three Dalits were gunned down in a similar incident about six months ago. Nearly 15 people have become victims of the PWA over the past one year in the state.(ANI)
Pak thinking of shifting troops from Afghan to eastern border Go to top Islamabad, May 30 (ANI): President Pervez Musharraf said on Thursday that he was considering withdrawal of some troops from the Afghan border to the eastern flank in view of the tense situation there. However, no soldiers have so far been moved in that directior "For Pakistan, the first priority is its own security quite clearly and nobody should grudge that. So if our security is endangered, if we are subjected to aggression, then certainly all our resources will confront the area or the points where the security is being threatened and that is where shifting of the forces from the west to the east comes in," Musharraf told a press conference here after he met Afghanistan's interim ruler Hamid Karzai. "We had held them back, actually we had stalled their induction into the interior of the western borders but the movement has not yet started. We are very seriously contemplating moving some elements out of these onto the east if at all the tensions remain as high as they are now," he added. Earlier, a military official said Pakistan had begun withdrawing troops from the Afghan border, where these were deployed thousands in since late last year to help the U.S.-led coalition hunt the fleeing al Qaeda and Taliban militants. Western nations feel that Islamic fundamentalists will try to deflect pressure mounted on them in Pakistan's north-western and eastern regions bordering Afghanistan by provoking India, which has mobilised its troops on Pakistan's eastern frontier, to go to war. "Well, I think all that I can do is to give my own assurance that we will try to avoid conflict. It will be my utmost endeavour to avoid conflict. And I have been saying that all along that conflict will only take place here if it is initiated by India. We will not be the initiators, this is my guarantee," the General announced. Hamid Karzai has said that easing of tension between India and Pakistan is in the interests of stability in this part of the world. "The question of reduction of tension between our neighbours India and Pakistan and eventually the resumption of dialogue is something that we all desire in this region and in the world community. Our desire is, especially mine as an Afghan citizen, as the citizen of a country-that has gone through so many years of war and misery, is clear: it is for peace and cooperation among India and Pakistan and in the region. That is in the interest of all," he elaborated.(ANI)
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