Posted on 04/26/2002 11:32:33 AM PDT by Dallas
Insider notes from United Press International for April 26 ...
Saudi Arabia's recent pro-Palestinian telethon with some of the $55 million collected going to the families of suicide bombers angered many Westerners, but it may have started a trend. Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh has launched a weeklong fundraiser for the battered Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Saleh set the ball rolling by donating $57,409 to the campaign and a call to his people to support the Palestinians with money and blood. Mosques and banks set up accounts to collect the gifts, which included jewelry donated by Yemeni women.
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The conviction in Greece Friday of 14 British and Dutch nationals on charges of espionage for plane spotting outside a Greek air force base has brought a predictable storm of protest in Britain and the Netherlands. One London tabloid is calling for a boycott of Greek resorts by British tourists. The judges were apparently not impressed by the defense's assurance that in Britain plane spotting -- the hobby of photographing and noting the registration number of aircraft as they land and take off -- is accepted around military bases. The information that plane enthusiasts who don't relish standing in the rain can click on to one of the 67,000 listed Web sites that provide information about NATO weapons, including the Greek air force didn't cut any ice either. What wasn't mentioned, perhaps because none of the accused can read Greek, is that there's also a magazine about Greek military aircraft, called Ptisi, with a circulation of 10,000. The plane spotters -- who received prison sentences of up to three years -- are making legal history of sorts: they are surely the first convicted spies to be allowed to go home to their respective countries pending the appeal.
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From time to time relics of World War II still come to the surface -- sometimes literally. On Friday, Croatian authorities were making arrangements for the recovery of a sunken Italian submarine discovered by an underwater fisherman swimming off the coast of Pola, on the Adriatic coast. The sub was identified as the Medusa, and the Italian authorities said it had been torpedoed by a British submarine in 1943. The Medusa was transporting small arms to Italian forces in Albania. Salvage experts expect to find the remains of its crew of around 50, and the cargo of weapons.
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As Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf campaigns for Tuesday's referendum hoping to extend his presidential mandate, the government is quietly distancing itself from the close embrace of the United States. Briefing reporters Thursday, Foreign Office spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan stressed that cooperation with the Bush administration on its anti-terrorism campaign was strictly on an ad hoc basis and not based on a formal written agreement. Khan used the occasion to criticize U.S. plans to supply advance radars to India. He said it would aggravate an already tense situation because it would increase Indian aggression. Khan also said Pakistan had discussed with China the eventual removal of U.S. troops from Pakistani soil.
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The enforced takeover of the property of white farmers in Zimbabwe has spread to that country's Indian community. Andrew Ndlovu, second-in-command of the National Liberation War Veterans' Association, said the movement had started "Operation Liberation" to seize Asian -- mostly Indian -- business properties. Ndlovu was speaking to The Herald, a state-controlled Daily, which has repeatedly been used by President Robert Mugabe to announce new policies. He called Zimbabwe's 12,000 population of Indian origin "economic looters." He accused them of creating a black market in critically short foreign currencies, refusing to attend Independence Day celebrations and owning vacant property, "which they did not want to share with blacks." Much of the Asian community -- mostly affluent traders and professionals -- is descended from families, who arrived with white settlers late in the 19th century. But despite the Indian minority's low political profile, it has begun to be seen as a target of the ruling ZANU-PF party. The threat from Ndlovu, a former renegade guerrilla who is facing charges of incest and embezzling some 10,000 pounds from his movement, was the most overt attack yet. "Nothing will stop us from reclaiming commercial land from Indians," he said.
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