Foreign Desk
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
SOUTH ASIA
MOB PROTESTS ATTACK ON OPPOSITION DHAKA, Bangladesh – An angry mob set fire to a passenger train and protesters clashed with police across Bangladesh yesterday, leaving dozens of people injured, as violence spread a day after a grenade attack on an opposition rally killed 19 people and wounded hundreds. The Subarna Express train was attacked as it was entering a station in the town of Bhairab, 50 miles east of its destination of Dhaka, the capital, said Mostafa-e-Jamail, a spokesman for state-run Bangladesh Railways.
About 20 people were injured, most of them passengers trying to flee while protesters angry about Saturday’s attack doused at least 15 of about 25 train cars with gas and ignited them, police said. Police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd.
Clashes also were reported in six other towns in southern Bangladesh, injuring another 30 people, police said. More than 200 protesters were arrested in Chittagong, 140 miles southeast of Dhaka, on charges of violence, according to the private station NTV. The violence came amid anger over Saturday’s attack outside the opposition Awami League party’s headquarters in Dhaka, which allies claimed was an attempt to kill the party’s leader Sheik Hasina.
– Associated Press
MIDDLE EAST
PALESTINIANS DENOUNCE U.S. SILENCE JERUSALEM – Palestinian Arab leaders reacted angrily yesterday to Washington’s apparent readiness to allow construction inside Israeli settlements in the West Bank, warning that it would destroy the peace process. American officials in Israel confirmed that though there has been no formal decision, the American government is not objecting to construction in the main settlement blocs, as long as the settlements themselves are not expanded – while an internal administration debate over the issue continues.
Such a shift would run counter to the American-backed “road map” peace plan, presented by President Bush in June 2003.The plan’s initial stage mandates a complete freeze in construction in the settlements. Prime Minister Qurei refused to accept the possibility that American policy has changed.
“I can’t believe that America is now saying that settlement expansion is all right,” he said. “This will destroy the peace process.” Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a top aide to Palestinian Arab leader Yasser Arafat, called on the White House to “clarify” its position, fearing it would “encourage the Israeli government to continue and escalate its war against the Palestinian people.”
– Associated Press
EASTERN EUROPE
PUTIN VISITS SLAIN PRESIDENT’S GRAVE VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia -President Putin lay flowers at the grave of Chechnya’s assassinated president yesterday during a surprise visit aimed at boosting the Kremlin’s favorite in upcoming elections in the war-torn region.
Mr. Putin’s brief visit followed a night of bloody fighting in the Chechen capital that underlined the violence and chaos that persists ahead of next week’s presidential ballot. Mr. Putin arrived in slain President Kadyrovps home village of Tsentoroi early in the morning and placed red carnations at his grave.
In televised footage, he stood solemnly with Mr. Kadyrov’s powerful son Ramzan and the Chechen interior minister, Alu Alkhanov, who has met with Mr.Putin repeatedly and received lavish coverage in Russia’s state-run press since he emerged as the Kremlin favorite in the August 29 vote. Mr. Putin did not visit the capital, Grozny, where officials said terrorists attacked a police station near a central square as well as police patrols and polling places in three hours of heavy fighting Saturday night.
– Associated Press
EAST AFRICA
DISPUTE THREATENS PEACE EFFORTS NAIROBI, Kenya – Members of Somalia’s new transitional Parliament were sworn in yesterday, a key step toward establishing its first national government since 1991. But a dispute within one of the country’s main clans over its delegates threatened to scuttle the peace process, mediators said. The new Parliament is the product of nearly two years of talks in Kenya among clan leaders, religious leaders, and warlords.
While foreign officials at the ceremony hailed the Parliament’s creation, they pressed for a speedy resolution to one key hurdle – a dispute within the Darod clan over who will choose the clan’s lawmakers. “This is not an easy moment for me, as I stand before you seeing that the light at the end of the tunnel we have been going through is not far from us,” said Kenyan diplomat Bethuel Kiplagat, the chief mediator at the talks, the latest of numerous attempts to bring peace to Somalia.
“If we have gone this far, for God’s sake, let’s finish the race,” Ms. Kiplagat told the Somali clan leaders, warlords, and religious leaders who attended the ceremony at the United Nations’ sprawling campus on the edge of Nairobi.
– Associated Press
WESTERN EUROPE
POPE CONDEMNS CLONING CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy – Pope John II warned in a statement released yesterday that humanity’s speedy progress in science and technology risks overlooking moral values, citing with particular concern experiments in human cloning. The pontiff – in a message written August 6 but released yesterday for the start of a Church-organized meeting on the theme of progress – insisted that advanced research must not become an end in itself.
“The results achieved in various fields of science and technology are considered and defended by many as a priori acceptable,” he said. “In this way, one ends up expecting that what is technically possible is in itself also ethically good.”
The pontiff continued: “There is no one who does not see the dramatic and distressing consequences of such pragmatism, which perceives truth and justice as something modeled around the work of man himself. It is sufficient, as one example among others, to consider man’s attempt to appropriate the sources of life through experiments in human cloning.” Fresh debate over cloning was sparked August 11 when Britain granted its first license for human cloning for stem cell research.
– Associated Press