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India News Network Digest    Wed, 9 Mar 94      Volume 2 : Issue 201

Today's News Topics:

   Bus collides with truck in India; 22 killed
   Pakistan said heading to win Kashmir vote
   India welcomes dropping of Kashmir Resolution
   India and China escape censure at UN Rights body
   Death toll in India rises in burning of two airliners
   10 Indian Army men wounded in bomb attack in strike-hit State
   Women's faltering role in decision-making decried
   Kashmiris protest foreign envoys visit
   India asks Japan to invest more
   India's Rao sees more investments than anticipated

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Date: Wed, 09 Mar 1994 15:04:05 -0500
From: chadha@thumper.bellcore.com (Ritu Chadha)
Subject: Bus Collides With Truck in India; 22 Killed

#1  BUS COLLIDES WITH TRUCK IN INDIA; 22 KILLED

           NEW DELHI, India (AP) _ A passenger bus rammed into a truck in a
southeastern state in India, killing 22 people and injuring seven.
           Details of the accident in Orissa state were sketchy, Press
Trust of India reported Wednesday. PTI quoted police officials as
saying 15 of the victims died on the spot Tuesday at Rath Para,
1,115 miles southeast of New Delhi.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 09 Mar 1994 16:33:06 -0500 (EST)
From: "Sukhjinder S Bajwa" <bajwa@asd.enet.dec.com>
Subject: Kashmir resolution in UN Human Rights Commission

#2  PAKISTAN SAID HEADING TO WIN KASHMIR VOTE

    By Robert Evans
     GENEVA, March 8 (Reuter) - Pakistan appears headed to win a vote in
the United Nations Human Rights Commission effectively condemning India for
rights violations in Kashmir and setting up an international inquiry,
diplomats said on Tuesday.
     The force of the vote on a Pakistani resolution, which could come on
Wednesday, is likely to be diminished by the abstention of a majority of
the countries represented on the 53-member body, according to the
diplomats.
     The Pakistani decision to bring the issue before the Commission,
holding its annual six-week session in Geneva, is the latest move in its
47-year squabble with India over the territory, whose population is largely
Moslem.
     Pakistani officials say they have carefully drafted their resolution
to focus on the human rights issue and keep it separate from the overall
dispute -- on which both sides are pledged to seek a peaceful solution.
     The diplomats said many Western members of the Commission, including
the United States, were likely to abstain -- preferring to urge the two
countries to pursue bilateral negotiations over the future of Kashmir.
     They say they expect Moslem states on the body -- including Sudan,
Iraq, Iran and Libya -- to back Pakistan. Non-members Saudi Arabia and the
Moslem-controlled government of Bosnia have agreed to co-sponsor the
Pakistani resolution.
     Indian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Salman Khursheed told
reporters he believed the move reflected "despair" in Pakistan over the
failure of what he called a "terrorist campaign" to wrench control from
India.
     Pakistan's ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Ahmad Kamal, said his
country had moved this year "because the situation in Kashmir has
deteriorated markedly and the oppression by the Indian security forces has
been greatly stepped up."
     The resolution, whose tabling marks the first time in 33 years that
Pakistan has sought such a vote in a U.N. body, expresses "grave concern at
the gross and consistent violations of the human rights of the people of
Jammu and Kashmir."
     If passed as drafted, it would commit the Commission to send a
fact-finding mission to Kashmir to report back to the next session of the
U.N. General Assembly, and to return to the problem at its own next meeting
in early 1995.
     At the current session of the Commission, non-governmental
organisations representing different groups of Kashmiris have swapped
charges over the origins of the recent violence in the region, the focus of
two Indo-Pakistani wars since 1947.
     One United States-based group, the Kashmiri-American Council, accused
India of waging a campaign of "state-sponsored terrorism" including rape
and razing of villages "in order to suppress the popular movement for
self-determination."
     Spokesmen for another U.S.-centred organisation, the Indo-American
Kashmir Forum, have accused Pakistan of training and funding "Islamic
terrorists" to drive some 300,000 Kashmiri Hindus out of the region.
     And both Hindu and Moslem representatives of the Delhi-based All India
Women's Conference have echoed these charges.
     One Moslem doctor from the state capital, Srinagar, told the
Commission 50,000 Kashmiri Moslems who sought to live in peace with Hindus
had been driven out of Kashmir "because of this terror unleashed on us by
Pakistan."

#3  INDIA WELCOMES DROPPING OF KASHMIR RESOLUTION

    NEW DELHI, March 9 (Reuter) - India on Wednesday welcomed Pakistan's
last-minute decision to drop a bid to win United Nations censure of New
Delhi's human rights record in Kashmir.
     Pakistan, bowing to pressure from Iran, China and other countries,
earlier told the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva it was seeking "no
action" on the resolution which would have noted "reports of massive human
rights violations" in the Himalayan region and effectively called on India
to halt them.
     "We are grateful to countries like Iran who have prevailed on Pakistan
to see reason and persuaded it to withdraw the resolution," India's
External Affairs Minister Dinesh Singh said in a statement.
     He said Pakistan should "desist from misleading the international
community over false allegations of violations of human rights in India."
     Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao complimented the Indian delegation
to the meeting for getting the Pakistani resolution withdrawn, the Press
Trust of India (PTI) news agency reported.
     PTI said Rao spoke to Atal Bihari Vajpayee, leader of the Indian team
in Geneva and conveyed his appreciation of their "excellent" work.
     Since 1947 India and Pakistan have fought three wars over Kashmir,
which has a largely Moslem population. India has controlled two thirds of
the region since a ceasefire in 1971.

#4  INDIA AND CHINA ESCAPE CENSURE AT UN RIGHTS BODY

    By Philippe Naughton
     GENEVA, March 9 (Reuter) - The United Nations Human Rights Commission
condemned abuses in countries around the world on Wednesday, but
politically contentious resolutions against China and India fell by the
wayside.
     Wrapping up its 50th annual session, the 53-member body censured among
others Iran, Iraq, Cuba and Sudan. It urged Indonesia to improve the
situation in East Timor and again singled out the Serbs as the worst
offenders in Bosnia.
     But the two hottest issues -- on China's human rights and allged
Indian repression in the Kashmir -- came to nothing.
     The Kashmir resolution, effectively condemning India for rights abuses
in the Moslem-majority Kashmir, was sponsored by Pakistan and had
threatened already fragile relations between Islamabad and New Delhi.
     Iran and China, both keen to increase trading links with India, made
high-level appeals to Pakistan to drop its draft resolution in the interest
of dialogue and other Asian and Islamic states backed the move at the
Geneva meeting.
     Pakistan's Foreign Minister Assef Ahmad Ali told reporters in
Islamabad: "Both these countries are our close friends and we cannot ignore
their request."
     China also avoided censure on a draft resolution introduced by the
European Union expressing concern at rights abuses including alleged cases
of executions, torture and severe limits on basic civil rights.
     The debate came at a crucial time. China has cracked down on
dissidents ahead of a visit to Beijing on Friday by U.S. Secretary of State
Warren Christopher, who has promised to put human rights at the top of his
agenda.
     China introduced a procedural motion not to have a vote, and persuaded
19 other nations including Cuba, India and Libya to support it. Sixteen
member states, including most Western members, Japan and Russia, voted
against China and 17 abstained.
     Other resolutions included ones on Iran, Iraq and Cuba. Those
countries have been condemned by the Commission at past sessions.
     The resolution on Iran expressed concern at the number of executions,
reported cases of torture and discrimination against women.
     Reflecting a wider debate within the United Nations, Iranian
ambassador Sirous Nasseri said Iran and other Islamic nations were not
about to drop Islamic law simply because Western nations did not like it.
     "It is politics pure and simple," Nasseri complained.
     The resolution on Iraq, also seen as a habitual offender by the U.N.
body, was even stronger. The Commission condemned Iraq for "massive
violation of human rights" and said the government of President Saddam
Hussein was directly responsible.
     According to the resolution, Iraqis had to endure "an all-pervasive
order of repression and oppression which is sustained by broad-based
discrimination and widespread terror."
     Violations cited included summary and mass executions, widespread
"systematic torture," and suppression of freedom of thought.
     The resolution against Cuba, pushed through by the United States,
condemned the Caribbean island for allegedly denying its citizens basic
rights such as freedom of expression or assembly.
     But the U.S. found it had less support for its resolution than in
previous years. A total of 24 members of the Commission backed the
resolution, nine voted against and 20 abstained.
     One resolution which normally provokes little debate at the Commission
is its annual condemnation of racism.
     Jewish campaigners were jubilant, however, after the Commission
formally recognised for the first time that anti-Semitism was a form of
racism and asked its special investigator to report on the phenomenon next
year.
     The Commission, dominated by developing nations and with a large
Islamic bloc hostile to Israel, normally focuses on Israeli abuses in the
occupied territories, seized in 1967.
     After weeks of political wrangling and various amendments to the draft
resolution, the Commission finally agreed not just to examine anti-Semitism
-- discrimination against Jews -- but discrimation against blacks, Arabs
and Moslems.
     ""I don't give a damn what else they put in there. The thing they
didn't want to put in was anti-Semitism -- that's taken 50 years," said
veteran Jewish campaigner Morris Abram, a U.S. prosecutor at the post-war
Nuremberg trials of Nazi criminals.
     "For us, this is the final blow against Adolf Hitler."

#5  DEATH TOLL IN INDIA RISES IN BURNING OF TWO AIRLINERS

By NEELAM JAIN
   NEW DELHI, March 9 (UPI) -- Two Russian mechanics died of their injuries
Wednesday, raising the death toll to eight in a fiery crash Tuesday of two
jetliners at New Delhi International Airport, authorities said.
   The incident prompted the federal government to appoint a judicial
inquiry into the crash in which a commercial Indian jetliner on a training
mission caught fire while taking off and crashed into a parked Russian
plane, setting it ablaze.
   The Boeing 737 owned by Sahara Airlines, a new private carrier that
began service in December, caught fire 15 seconds after it took off Tuesday
afternoon.
   The two Russians, who were on the ground servicing the Aeroflot plane,
succumbed to their severe burns Wednesday in a New Delhi hospital.
   Another wounded Indian employee of a catering company is still listed in
critical condition.
   Both aircraft were completely destroyed.
   Transport Minister Jagdish Tytler told lawmakers that the Sahara
Airlines Boeing swerved to the left after takeoff and then came crashing
down, just missing the crowded international terminal building.
   All four on board the Boeing 737 died. They were identified as three
pilots in training and one instructor for Sahara Airlines.
   The other four victims worked for Aeroflot.
   Police said 36 fire trucks took three hours to extinguish the flames
from the two aircraft.
   It was the second plane crash at the New Delhi airport in the last two
years.
   In January 1993, an Uzbek-owned, Soviet-built jetliner, crash-landed in
a thick fog but all 163 people on board survived.
   Sahara Airlines is one of several new private carriers that have begun
operations in India since the government began liberalizing the Indian
economy three years ago and allowed private capital into formerly closed
sectors, including the airline industry.

#6  10 INDIAN ARMY MEN WOUNDED IN BOMB ATTACK IN STRIKE-HIT STATE

   CALCUTTA March 9 (UPI) -- At least 10 soldiers were wounded in a bomb
attack Wednesday in a violence-marred daylong strike that crippled activity
in the Communist-ruled northeastern Indian state of Tripura, police said.
   The state government blamed members of the opposition Congress Party for
the attack.
   The Congress Party, which heads the federal government, had called the
strike to protest the slaying of its youth leader, Dipanker N. Sharma,
allegedly by Marxists.
   Witnesses said a bomb was hurled at a state-owned bus carrying army
personnel. Further details were not available.
   Two unidentified people were wounded in another bomb attack during the
strike, a state police spokesman said.
   The strike shut government offices, banks, educational institutions and
road transportation, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
   Police said they detained 600 Congress Party members for incidents
connected to the strike.
   The Communists swept to victory in state elections last year in Tripura,
which borders Bangladesh and has been wracked by a tribal separatist
insurgency.
   The Communists also govern West Bengal, one of India's most populous
states.

#7  WOMEN'S FALTERING ROLE IN DECISION-MAKING DECRIED

    By Evelyn Leopold
     UNITED NATIONS, March 8 (Reuter) - The United Nations marked
International Women's Day on Tuesday, decrying the faltering role of women
in decision-making forums while paying tribute to women who took to the
streets in protest.
     Both U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and U.S. Ambassador
Madeleine Albright zeroed in on the abuse of women and girls, ranging from
sexual mutilations, forced prostitution, dowry murders and infanticide.
     In Asia and the Pacific, males outnumber females by five in every 100
people, Boutros-Ghali said, adding that 'the missing millions of women are
accounted for by female infanticide and selective abortion and inferior
health care and nutrition given to female babies."
     Albright told the forum: "We are witnessing worldwide barbaric abuses
against women; abuses ranging from forced sterilisations and abortions to
children sold into prostitution, sexual mutilations, dowry murders and
official indifference to violence against women."
     And the Begum Nusrat Bhutto, mother of Pakistan's prime minister,
Benazir Bhutto, lashed out at India for alleged rapes of women in Kashmir.
     "It is time for the world community to demand that India lift the
draconian emergency laws which allow the indian army to commit all forms of
atrocities in Kashmir," she said.
     Among the many protests around the world, the most dramatic was in
Germany, where about a million women staged noisy rallies, closed offices
and participated in about 400 demonstrations under the motto "enough is
enough."
     They rallied against growing unemployment, particularly in the former
East Germany, low-wage jobs, a male-dominated government and parliament and
a 1993 Supreme Court decision overturning a liberal abortion law.
     In Cambodia, women demonstrated against the spread of prostitution and
sexual exploitation. But police threatened prostitutes from Phnom Penh's
220 brothels with arrest if they joined the protests.
     In Turkey, the country's first female prime minister, Tansu Cillar,
visited the tomb of Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey whose reforms for
women were the most progressive in the Islamic world. In Algeria, several
hundred women protested against militants insisting they be veiled.
    At the U.N. forum, former New York Representative Bella Abzug, a chief
organiser of the event, said continual cuts in social services have become
"women's worst nightmare."
     She said the United Nations needed far more accountablility in achieve
gender balance in decision making as well as funding for programmes
affecting women.
     The United Nations secretariat has only 14 percent women in high-level
jobs and 31 percent women in all professional posts.
     But Ireland's president, Mary Robinson, warned that the term "women's
issues" reinforced "sectional" differences "rather than perceptions and
achievements which are a resource for everyone."
     Albright also pointed to the lack of women among U.N. ambassadors,
saying she organised monthly lunches for them.
     "It is a very small lunch," she commented, noting there were only
seven women mission chiefs among 184 countries.
     The other six are Louise Frechette of Canada, Lucille Mathurin Mair of
Jamaica, Claudia Fritsche of Liechtenstein, Akmaral Arystanbekova of
Kazakhstan, Narcisa Escaler of the Philippines and Annette des Iles of
Trinidad and Tobago.

#8  KASHMIRIS PROTEST FOREIGN ENVOYS VISIT

    SRINAGAR, India, March 8 (Reuter) - Violent protests rocked the
northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday as a group of foreign
envoys visited the state at India's invitation to investigate allegations
of human rights abuses.
     Scores of people were injured as security forces prevented marchers
from reaching the envoys' residence. Government offices and shops were
closed in the capital of the Kashmiri portion of the state, Srinagar, as
part of the protest.
     The protest leaders were objecting to India's sponsorship of the
envoys' visit.
     "The Kashmiri people would have appreciated the diplomats visiting the
state independently and not under the Indian government's patronage," a
spokesman for the all-party Hurriyat Conference, spearheading the protest,
said.
     Envoys from 10 countries, including Canada, Mexico, Turkey Indonesia
and Nigeria, are due to investigate alleged human rights violations by
Indian security forces against supporters of seperatist movements demanding
independence for Kashmir.
     Seperatists have been demanding independence for the rich,
mountainous, mainly Moslem region since part of the state was included
within India by the British as they withdrew from the subcontinent in the
1940s.
     The foreign envoys later met the leaders of the Hurriyat Conference to
discuss the charges against Indian troops of committing atrocities.
     According to police and hospital sources, over 16,000 people have been
killed in four years of separatist violence in Kashmir.
     New Delhi accuses neighbouring Islamic Pakistan of aiding the
separatist movement in Kashmir. Pakistan, while denying it provides
material support, says it supports the movement's demands for independence.
     Two-thirds of Kashmir is controlled by India, the remainder by
Pakistan. India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir since they
won independence from Britain.
     An Islamabad-sponsored resolution condemning India for alleged human
rights violations in Kashmir will come to a vote on Wednesday at the
53-member United Nations Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva.
     India denies any human rights violations in Kashmir by security forces
sent to uphold its rule in the state, for which it refuses to contemplate
independence.
     Despite vigorous attempts by India to defeat the vote, diplomats in
Geneva said on Tuesday that Pakistan appeared likely to win the resolution.
     But they said the force of the vote was likely to be diminished by the
abstention of a majority of members in the commission.
     The success of the vote will commit the commission to sending an
independent fact-finding human rights mission to Kashmir to report back to
the U.N. General Assembly.

#9  INDIA ASKS JAPAN TO INVEST MORE

    By Hari Ramachandran
     NEW DELHI, March 8 (Reuter) - India, worried over a sharp fall in
investment from Japan, on Tuesday asked Japanese industry to invest more.
     "There are immense possibilities (of cooperation) in sectors like
electronics, telecommunications, petrochemicals, automobiles, engineering,
plastics and ship-building," a government minister told a high-level
business delegation from Tokyo.
     "With a view to furthering investments in India an Investment Centre
has been set up in the Embassy of India, Tokyo," Krishna Sahi, India's
junior Minister for Industry said.
     Investments from Japanese companies in Indian joint ventures in 1993
fell to 2.6 billion rupees ($83.9 million) from 6.1 billion rupees ($199
million) in 1992. It had increased 10-fold to 527 million ruppes ($17
million) in 1991 from 50 million rupees ($1.6 million) in the previous
year.
     Japan has been cautiously watching India's progress with economic
reforms and believes that any political instability could derail the effort
and discourage foreign investors.
     Since July 1991, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao has pushed through
India's most radical reforms, cutting a deep swathe through an economy
hamstrung by bureaucracy and socialist principles and broadly moving
towards an open market system.
     Companies from India and Japan have collaborated in areas like
automobiles, textiles, chemicals and petrochemicals, rubber, electricals,
domestic appliances, financial services, steel alloys and agriculture.
     The Japanese mission, led by Eme Yamashita, a former vice-minister in
the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, arrived in New Delhi on
Monday to meet senior officials in the Indian government.
     The mission includes executives from Toshiba, Sumitomo, Mitsubishi
Corporation, The Sakura Bank.
     It will assess the progress in India's investment climate and advise
the Japanese business community on the potential for industrial growth.
Members of the mission will also take part in a two-day meeting of the
Japan-India Business Cooperation Committee to be inaugurated by Finance
Minister Manmohan Singh, architect of India's economic reforms programme.
     Yamashita told the meeting on Tuesday that Japanese businessmen were
supportive of India's economic policies.
     He said apart from approvals from the federal government, cooperation
of the state governments were also necessary in implementing investment
programmes.

#10  INDIA'S RAO SEES MORE INVESTMENTS THAN ANTICIPATED

    By Jawed Naqvi
     NEW DELHI, March 8 (Reuter) - Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha
Rao, buoyed by a newfound majority in parliament, promised to consolidate
his economic reforms on Tuesday and said he expected more foreign
investments to flow into the country than earlier anticipated.
     Speaking ahead of a crucial vote he won in the Lok Sabha (lower house
of parliament), Rao said the political climate in India, which suffered a
setback after Hindu-Moslem clashes killed hundreds in December 1992, had
become conducive again to stepping up the country's economic reforms.
     "The situation in the country has stabilised to give a lot of
confidence to foreign and local investors... Economic activity can now
accelerate unimpeded," Rao said.
     "We expect more investment from outside than we had anticipated."
     India's annual Economic Survey for 1993-94 said government approvals
for direct foreign investment increased from $73 million in 1990 to $235
million in 1991, and then from $1.31 billion in 1992 to $2.09 billion
between January and October last year.
     It said the total inflow of investments was expected to increase from
$165 million in the financial 1990-91 (April- March) to $3 billion during
fiscal 1993-94. The latter includes portfolio investment by foreign
financial institutions of $1.2 billion and through Euroequity issues of
about $1.2 billion.
     "There is this optimistic note on which we have to build," Rao
declared.
     He said the government was keen to improve the country's flagging
infrastructure to facilitate investors.
     "Our plan projects our power requirements of 45,000 megawatts but we
have resources for only 30,000 megawatts. The government is trying its best
to get the (remaining) investment from outside."
     Rao's speech was peppered with uncharacteristic jibes at the
opposition, apparently reflecting his newfound confidence after he got a
small majority in parliament last December.
     His Congress Party government did not have a majority when it took
office in June 1991. After defections from smaller parties last December,
it mustered 265 deputies in the 544-member house.
     Rao also has the support of about eight to 10 independent deputies.
     Deputies said Rao, who had in the past experienced a series of close
calls over opposition-led no-confidence votes, appeared to have shed his
usual caution with the opposition.
     "It's gloves off from now," said a Congress deputy gleefully after Rao
drubbed senior opposition leaders when they tried to heckle him.
     "You can't resolve serious issues that I am discussing by clowning,"
he snapped at a centrist Janata Dal party leader.
     "It's not the same dithering prime minister," said a deputy of the
rightwing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party. "He is talking tough."
     The usually soft-spoken Rao also drew loud applause from the
opposition as he raised his voice and warned Pakistan over Indian
allegations it is arming Moslem militants in Kashmir.
     Pakistan has moved a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Conference in
Geneva, demanding a fact-finding team to monitor alleged abuses by Indian
security forces in Kashmir.
     "One fails to understand how Pakistan has become the champion of human
rights, how India with its centuries old tradition has been put in the
dock. What is Pakistan's locus standi (posture) in Kashmir except as an
aggressor?" Rao asked.

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End of India News Network Digest
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