Congress
rubbishes book alleging KGB links
New
Delhi/Patna: The Congress party on Sunday slammed a
book alleging its top leader and former Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi and other leaders were bribed by the soviet secret
services agency during their tenure, nearly 50 years back.
The party has dismissed the allegations as "vague and bald"
made in 'The Mitrokhin Archives II: The KGB and the World'
by a KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhi, excerpts from which
were published in a London daily on Saturday. Mitrokhin
had defected to the United Kingdom in 1992. The explosive
volume claims that Kremlin had major influences on the Government,
primarily because of rampant corruption, and also media
during Gandhi's regime and that India was one of the "most
successfully penetrated" countries by the KGB.
The
book further said that Gandhi was brainwashed by the soviet
spies into distrust for the US so much so that the leader
perceived some American agents to be plotting against her
very life. "These are not officially declassified or released
record under the secrecy rules of either Russia or India.
These are papers stolen or carried away by a former KGB
agent who had photocopied them for many years before he
defected in 1992 to the west. They contain no details to
constitute an allegation. "Most importantly they have vague
and bald statements like. I'll give you a very interesting
example it says in the 50s and 60s all the top 10 Indian
newspapers were in the pocket of the KGB, does it mean that
all the newspapers today should get up and start denying
such a thing. It says that several politicians' elections
campaigns were funded. Who is to deny this? No detail, no
material, 50 years ago the incidents happened and not a
single person is alive to deal with the allegations," Congress
spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said in New Delhi. Allegations
have also been made on the Communist Party of India (CPI)
and Lalit Narain Mishra, the Railway Minister during Gandhi's
tenure that their political campaigns were funded by the
USSR. Both parties have denied the claims.
Lalit's
younger brother Jagannath Mishra, who is a prominent politician
in Bihar, said New Delhi was at that time naturally inclined
to Moscow and nothing more should be read into that. "The
world was divided in two camps at that time. India was inclined
to the USSR as the US was to Pakistan. To say that it was
because of being under pressure of the KGB, it is absolutely
false, it has no basis and I condemn it very severely,"
Mishra told reporters in Patna. India was a strong supporter
of the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, but the
interaction, however, changed since the end of the Cold
War and India's economic reform programme, launched in the
early 1990s, which gave New Delhi access to opportunities
in the West, particularly the United States. The Congress
and its predecessors have increasingly cosied up to Washington
and built strong defence ties with Israel, slowly moving
away from New Delhi's near complete dependence on Moscow
for its arms supplies.
Five
labourers killed in explosion in Gujarat (Go
To Top)
Ahmedabad:
Five people were killed and several others injured in
an explosion in Bhuj area of Kutch district in Gujarat on
Sunday, police officials said. The explosion took place
in a slum colony near a military base in Bhuj, killing two
women and three children of labour family. However, exact
cause of the explosion and other details were not figured
out as yet, and could be known after visiting and inspecting
the place, police said adding that senior police officials
had rushed to the spot to investigate further.
Heavy
rains continue to lash Northern India (Go
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New
Delhi: Heavy rain continued to lash north India for
the third consecutive day, affecting normal life in Punjab,
Haryana and Himachal Pardesh. Incessant rains hampered normal
life in most parts of the region. Karnal, in Haryana received
34.9 mm rainfall, while Panchkula and Kalka received 20
mm and 23mm respectively. Elsewhere, in Punjab, Patiala
received 66.1mm rainfall and Amritsar (4.2). Heavy rain
also disrupted normal life in Himachal Pradesh with Shimla
recording 17.3 mm rainfall. Farmers have also raised concerns
that heavy rain would affect the cotton crop in Punjab and
Haryana. The Meteoroligal department has said that the current
spell of rain in the region was due to an Upper Air Cyclonic
Circulation (UASC) over Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh.
The existence of another UASC over Central Pakistan and
Punjab, and a low-pressure area over south-west Rajasthan
was also the reason for the region witnessing heavy downpour.
The Met department has issued heavy-to-very-heavy rain warning
at isolated places in Himachal with the possibility of heavy
rain at isolated places in Punjab and Haryana over the next
two days.
Kohinoor
shines for the London public, finally (Go
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by Mike Lockey
London:
The original version of the world famous Indian Kohinoor
diamond has recently gone on display in London. This is
the first time that the fabulous stone has been seen as
it should be seen since it was presented to Queen Victoria
in 1850. Until now, a plaster cast of the diamond, made
before Prince Albert had the stone re-cut for the Great
Exhibition in Hyde Park, has been the only representation
of the original diamond able to be seen. Albert considered
the original stone, seen by the British as a symbol of the
conquest of India, to be just a little bit too primitive
to be put on display for the delectation and delight of
the Victorian public. That's why he had it redesigned -
it's the sort of thing that Princes get up to on a quiet
day. Anyway, while the re-cut diamond remains on display
in the Tower of London, the recreation of it in its original
form is now on display in a new exhibition at London's Natural
History Museum in Knightsbridge. This has all been made
possible with the help of mineralogists and an American
called John Nels Hatleburg who have, between them, taken
around five months to faithfully create the original design
from that plaster cast someone was prescient enough to make
more than 150 years ago Hatleberg, who is described as "a
conceptual gem artist", is the world authority on creating
replicas of famous diamonds and was given a grant by The
New York Foundation for the Arts to realise his dream of
working on the Kohinoor. As he said: "Within the world of
diamonds, the Kohinoor, above all other diamonds, should
be regarded as in the realm of the fantastic. For fourteen
years it has been my quest to recreate the original Kohinoor
and I am thrilled that it is now receiving its first showing
at the Diamonds Exhibition in London". Hatleburg made his
dream into a reality by using traditional methods, and incorporating
both real and synthetic materials. He has painstakingly
created all 200 facets of the original stone - most diamonds
have a mere 50 or so - and so the Mountain of Light, which
is what Kohinoor means, lives again in all its glory, in
an exhibition which will run until February next year.
Blair
blasts BBC's Katrina coverage as 'anti-US' (Go
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London:
British Prime Minister Tony Blair's rows with the BBC
are nothing new. Lately, he was caught in one more. While
he was in New Delhi last week, he tuned on to the BBC to
update himself about the latest what's happening in New
Orleans after hurricane Katrina had hit the US. After watching
the BBC's coverage, he was furious at it and described it
as "full of hatred and anti-American". Quoting Rupert Murdoch,
the world's most powerful media baron, The Scotsman reported
that the British PM was so shocked by the BBC's reporting
of hurricane Katrina that he described it as "full of hatred
of America". "The Prime Minister told me that he had been
appalled by what he saw as the BBC's `gloating' at America's
misfortune as it attempted to recover from the catastrophe,"
the paper quoted Murdoch as saying. Murdoch, whose media
company "News International" controls the BBC's rival Sky
News, revealed this at a seminar in New York on Friday evening.
The seminar was held by former US President Bill Clinton,
who also attacked the BBC's coverage. According to the paper,
Clinton said that there was nothing factually inaccurate
but reports were "stacked up" against the government. "It
was designed to be almost exclusively a hit on the federal
response without showing what anybody at any level was doing,"
it quoted Clinton as saying.
10
killed in violence during Afghan polls (Go
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Kabul:
Ten people were killed, including a French commando,
in militant attacks, as polling began for the landmark legislative
polls in Afghanistan today. Around 12.4 million Afghans
were registered to vote at more than 6,000 polling stations,
guarded by some 100,000 Afghan police and soldiers and 30,000
foreign troops. The polls are being seen as the formal step
towards democracy, after US-led coalition forces ousted
the Taliban Militia from power in 2001, following their
refusal to hand over Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in
the wake of the September 11 WTC Twin Tower Attacks. Provisional
results are expected by October 10 and final results by
October 22. In the Presidential elections in October 2005,
Hamid Karzai, nominated as the nation's interim President
after the fall of the Taliban regime, was elected as the
country's President.
