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SEOUL: South Korea’s spy chief was under fire from
opposition media Monday for the publicity surrounding his mission to
save the hostages held by Afghanistan’s Taliban. National
Intelligence Service head Kim Man-Bok returned home Sunday with 19
former hostages after staying in Kabul for 11 days to supervise
South Korea’s direct negotiations with the insurgents. On the
plane home, Kim told reporters he decided to travel to Afghanistan
on August 22 to “revive the deadlocked negotiations and speed up
the decision-making process.” Back in Seoul, he said he would go
anytime to “the jaws of death for our people threatened with
death.”
KATHMANDU: Two ethnic groups from
Nepal’s restive southern Terai region claimed responsibility
Monday for bombs that killed two people and injured around 30 in the
country’s capital over the weekend. The three near-simultaneous
blasts Sunday, one in a minibus, one at a bus stand and one outside
Nepal’s Army headquarters, prompted immediate condemnation from
the government, former rebel Maoists and the United Nations.
Officials and local media said Monday that two little-known ethnic
groups from the Terai region—the Terai Army and the Nepal
People’s Army—have claimed responsibility for the blasts.
Contacted by Agence France Presse, a man who claiming to be a
central committee member of the Terai Army said his group carried
out the bombings.
CANBERRA: A man accused of torturing and
murdering a Jewish teenager during World War II will fight his
appeal against extradition to Hungary in Australia’s highest
court, court officials said Monday. Charles Zentai, 84, is accused
of murdering Peter Balazs, 18, in 1944 in Budapest while serving as
a soldier in the army of his native Hungary, then allied with Adolf
Hitler’s Nazi Germany. In a hearing in Canberra on Monday, the
High Court of Australia gave him leave to appeal after an earlier
appeal was thrown out by a lower court in April. The allegations
against Zentai, which he denies, have been brought by the Jewish
human rights organization known for tracking down alleged war
criminals, the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Zentai was living quietly in
the Western Australian city of Perth before the allegations
surfaced, having migrated to Australia after the war ended.
Hungarian authorities want to put him on trial over the wartime
killing.
DHAKA: Police in Bangladesh arrested
former prime minister Khaleda Zia on Monday as part of a major
campaign against corruption launched by the country’s army-backed
government. Zia, 63, and her younger son Arafat Rahman Coco were
taken from their Dhaka home to court and then remanded in custody
pending investigation by the government’s antigraft body,
officials said. “Her lawyer pleaded for bail for Zia and son. But
the court refused the bail and sent her to jail. It also remanded
her son to seven days in police custody,” deputy commissioner
Shahidul Haq Bhuiyan said. “She has been sent to a special jail”
at a parliament building complex close to another special prison
where her bitter rival Sheikh Hasina Wajed, another former prime
minister, is being held, he added. Bangladesh has been ruled under a
state of emergency since January, when elections were cancelled.
ISLAMABAD: Stalled talks on a deal
between Pakistan military ruler Pervez Musharraf and former premier
Benazir Bhutto are expected to resume soon, with the venue moving to
Dubai, ministers said on Monday. Negotiations held in London last
week between the two-time prime minister and president Musharraf’s
top aides ended in deadlock, with Bhutto saying that she would fly
back to the crisis-hit Islamic republic regardless. “Our stand is
that dialogue should continue,” Information Minister Muhammad Ali
Durrani told AFP, despite the failure so far to thrash out a
power-sharing deal between the embattled general and his bitter
rival. The talks ran into trouble after the ruling Pakistan Muslim
League Party opposed Bhutto’s demands that Musharraf should quit
as army chief before being re-elected for another five-year term as
president.
--AFP
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