Go to: [irish news]

Capture of Ocalan may have been a Turkish-Greek deal

DIPLOMATS believe the unthinkable may have led to the capture of Turkey's most wanted man — complicity between Ankara and Athens, hitherto implacable enemies.
They can think of no other reason for Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan being allowed to leave the safety of the Greek embassy in Kenya and into the arms of Turkish agents.
Ocalan was whisked away from Nairobi in an executive jet and is now in a military prison near Ankara awaiting to be put on trial for his life.
Greece is desperate to qualify to join the euro by 2001 and the government has ordered all disputes to be put to one side to achieve that aim.
A diplomat pointed out that Greece abandoned plans to place Russian missiles on Cyprus following Turkish pressure
''The last thing Athens wanted was to play permanent host to the man that Turkey would do almost anything to capture,'' he added.
But his supporters will not abandon Ocalan, the man they call Apo, who has led the Kurds 17-year bloody campaign for autonomy in south eastern Turkey at a cost of 37,000 lives.
As Turkey's international manhunt, which began when Ocalan was expelled from Syria last autumn, was brought to a conclusion thousands of Kurds seized control of Greek embassies throughout Europe, taking hostages in many of them.
Turkey's new prime minister, veteran politician Bulent Ecevit, was ecstatic at the capture of Public Enemy Number One. ''We had promised that the state would catch him, we have kept our promise. He will pay the price of his accounts to the independent Turkish courts,'' he said
Ecevit said Ocalan's capture was the result of a 12-day covert operation, but gave no details.
Greek Foreign Minister Theodoros Pangalos said Ocalan arrived in Kenya on February 2 and had been given refuge in the Greek embassy.
He said Ocalan left against the advice of his hosts, heading for Nairobi airport on Monday to fly to the Netherlands, a country that steadfastly refuses to allow him entry.
Pangalos said Greek authorities said they lost track of him after he left the Greek compound.
But Kenyan authorities, who have demanded that Athens withdraws its ambassador, gave a different story.
Foreign Minister Bonaya Godana said the ambassador, George Kostoulas, had violated his diplomatic status by using embassy cover to arrange Ocalan's arrival on February 2 on a private plane from Milan.
Godana also denied any Kenyan role in Ocalan's seizure and hand over to Turkish authorities.
''The only thing we wanted is the man to leave the country,'' Godana told a news conference at Kenya's Foreign Ministry.
Kenyan authorities yesterday asked the Greek embassy to arrange Ocalan's departure from the country, the foreign minister said.
Godana said the request was made after discovering the embassy had falsified the names and nationalities of Ocalan and his associates when it requested clearance for their plane to land at Nairobi's international airport on the outskirts of the capital.
A security guard at the residence said three men were forcibly removed last night by Kenyans who drove up in vehicles bearing official government tags.
The guard could not confirm Ocalan was among the three men seized at 7 p.m. (1600 GMT).
A scuffle broke out when the three men resisted attempts to move them, the guard said. The men were forced into the vehicles parked outside the compound's black-metal gates, he said.
In Rome, Ocalan's Italian lawyers, clearly stunned by his capture, said they did not believe the rebel leader would have left the compound on his own.
Lawyer Giulano Pisapia said he had visited Ocalan in Nairobi on Sunday. ''Ocalan told me that his life was in grave danger,'' he said.
Turkey has maintained an uncompromising stance toward Kurds since 1984 when Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, launched a guerrilla war for autonomy on behalf of Turkey's 12 million Kurds. PKK has recruited around 10,000 guerrillas over the years, mostly from the remote poverty-stricken southeastern Turkey.

Bill leaps on to Hillary for the Senate bandwagon

THE Hillary Clinton for Senator bandwagon continues to gain momentum, with the President leaping onto it, last night.
He said the first lady would make a terrific senator from New York state ... ''but that's a decision that she'll have to make.''
With that comment, President Bill Clinton became the latest member of his administration to pump air into a Hillary Clinton-for-Senate boom.
On Sunday, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose retirement next year will create the vacancy, said New York could use some of Mrs Clinton's magnificent, young, bright, able, Illinois-Arkansas enthusiasm.
''She'd be welcome and she'd win,'' Moynihan said.
The potential candidate has still to be heard from.
About all Mrs Clinton has said about running for the Senate in 2000 is that she hasn't had time to think about it — and she said that through a spokesperson.
What did Mrs Clinton have to say about her husband's early endorsement? ''Nothing,'' said her spokeswoman, Marsha Berry.
President Clinton, in Mexico for a summit, said the same thing.
''I think she would be terrific in the Senate.
"But that's a decision that she'll have to make,'' President Clinton said.
''And for reasons I'm sure you'll understand, she hasn't had anything like adequate time to talk to the people who think she should do this — much less people who think perhaps she shouldn't. She just hasn't had time to deal with this.''
Clinton said he wanted everyone to understand that the idea did not originate with Mrs Clinton.
''I don't think it had ever occurred to her before a lot of people started calling and asking her to do it,'' the President said.
Then he added, in what amounted to an endorsement:
''It's her decision to make. I will support whatever decision she makes enthusiastically.
"She has a lot of other opportunities for public service that will be out there. She and I both would like to continue to be useful in public affairs when we leave office.
"But it's a decision she'll have to make. She'd be great if she did it.''
A few weeks ago, New York Democratic chairwoman Judith Hope said the odds were 50-50 that Mrs Clinton would run.
Mrs Clinton is expected to visit New York City in early March for a women's leadership forum, and some Democrats think she might use that setting to give an indication of her intentions.
New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is a possible Republican candidate for the Moynihan seat.
Residency requirements vary among states.
In New York, a candidate need only have purchased or rented a residence by election day to meet residency requirements for the purpose of running for office, according to Lee Daghlian, spokesman for the state Board of Elections.

Top mediator in Belgrade to put
peace deal pressure on Milosevic

THE top mediator at the Kosovo peace conference, American Christopher Hill, left the talks, yesterday, and flew to Belgrade to put pressure on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright phoned Milosevic, yesterday, and explained that the Albanians appeared ready to sign an American-backed peace deal for the embattled province — but that the Serb side remained the obstacle, according to State Department spokesman James Rubin. ''She explained the importance of moving forward,'' Rubin said.
The United States and five European countries sponsoring the peace conference have set a Saturday deadline for reaching a deal. Albright visited the conference over the weekend and was sharply critical of the Serb side, blaming the slow progress mainly on them. Rubin said Hill, the US ambassador to Macedonia who has been leading the effort to bring the sides together for several months, would brief Milosevic on details of the peace plan.
The spokesman described Albright's conversation with the Yugoslav President as businesslike.
Serbian hopes that Russia would back them in their demand to keep NATO troops out of Kosovo faded, yesterday, with Moscow's acceptance that peace with the ethnic Albanians requires a military component.

Ocalan ... guerrilla chief
who led from back

DESPERATELY seeking a new base for his fight for Kurdish autonomy, rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan finds himself in the country where he least wanted to be — his homeland.
''Abdullah Ocalan, who has been alienated from the whole world, found himself in Turkey's lap,'' Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said, yesterday, after Ocalan was captured in Kenya and brought to Turkey.
Since Ankara successfully forced Ocalan out of his long-time base in Syria in October, Turkey has waged a diplomatic war, which has stretched from Europe to the Middle East to have him extradited.
Turkey wants him tried on capital charges for atrocities it says his guerrillas committed in their 14-year fight for autonomy in the country's southeast.
Ocalan passed briefly through Russia and arrived in Italy in November, where he applied for political asylum.
He left Rome in January, but no one seemed to want him.
He had a hard time even finding a country that would let him refuel his private plane.
With an iron fist, guns and bombs, Ocalan formed one of the world's most ruthless guerrilla movements from a handful of Kurdish insurgents in Turkey's impoverished southeast.
A college dropout and one of seven children from a poor farming family, Ocalan (49) established the Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK, in 1978 to seek independence for the Kurds.
The stocky, mustachioed rebel turned to armed struggle in 1984, recruiting thousands of young Kurdish men and women, driven by nationalism, poverty and anger over the feudal system still prevalent in the south-east.
He said the Kurds had been humiliated for centuries, and needed to regain their self-esteem.
By the late 1980s, he was willing to accept an autonomous solution short of independence.
He ordered his fighters, schooled in Marxism, to kill Turkish teachers so that Kurds would not have to learn Turkish. But Ocalan himself reportedly knows little Kurdish and speaks Turkish. Ocalan himself never fought in the battlefields, reportedly issuing orders from a villa in Syria, while his guerrillas lived on rice, and fought and died in snow-covered mountains.
Turkish reports have portrayed him as a loutish, mentally unstable man who uses his power to seduce female followers.
Ocalan separated from his wife in 1990s.
He is said to have no children.
The Turkish military has learned how to combat guerrilla warfare over the years and claims to now have the upper hand in fighting the Kurdistan Workers Party.
The conflict has cost nearly 37,000 lives.

Texan on trial for
gruesome race murder

PHYSICAL evidence from the crime scene, racist tattoos and detailed written plans for a new hate group will link John William King to the gruesome dragging death of a black man last year, Texas prosecutors told jurors, yesterday.
''Evidence will show Bill King had to do something dramatic in order to gain attention in their warped world,'' Jasper County District Attorney Guy James Gray said in his opening statement in King's capital murder trial. Gray described King as a young man full of hate. Tattoos on his body, he said, ''will reflect and tell you the deep-seated anger and hatred that this man has.''
He said the tattoos include Nazi and Ku Klux Klan symbols, plus ''a little tattoo he's very proud of. It's a tattoo of a black man hanging from a tree.''
A lighter, King's DNA found on a cigarette and less than a drop of the victim's blood on King's shoes all tie the 24-year-old unemployed labourer to a wooded area and county road where James Byrd was beaten last June, then chained to the back of a pick-up truck and dragged for nearly three miles.
The nude body of Byrd (49), an unemployed vacuum cleaner salesman, was shredded on the bumpy asphalt, his head and an arm severed.
Gray also said investigators found handwritten notes in King's flat that included a constitution, bye-laws, a code of ethics and a membership application for a group to be called the Texas Rebel Soldiers of the Confederate Knights of America. King's lawyer, Haden Sonny Cribbs, declined to make an opening statement, yesterday. ''The evidence, it appears overwhelming,'' Cribbs had acknowledged on Monday. ''But you've got to prove the accused has done the offence.''
King, the first of three white men to be tried for Byrd's murder, faces the death penalty if convicted.
The first witness, Sheriff Billy Rowles, told how he originally believed Byrd's death was a hit-and-run accident. But when the dragging marks did not match with tyre tracks, ''I knew it was going to be a murder.''

Italian rescues capsized lone yachtswoman near Antarctica

ITALIAN Giovanni Soldini was hailed as a hero last night after rescuing stricken solo French sailor Isabelle Autissier from rough seas near Antarctica.
Soldini, who battled through strong winds to reach Autissier, spotted the 42-year-old yachtswoman's 60-foot yacht PRB at 14.05pm and minutes later had taken her safely aboard.
Earlier Autissier called her support team in France to indicate that she was about to capsize. After her rescue she faxed a note saying: "Ah, well, I'll do some tourism in Italy ... not unhappy." She added that the yacht had keeled over but quickly righted itself. Her message ended: "I love you all."
Autissier said in her message that an error by the automatic pilot sent her yacht PRB turning over very quickly. "I just had time to close the door," she said.
Team official Eric Coquerel said he assumed the message meant Autissier had shut herself into her yacht's waterproof cabin.
Autissier said she was capsized by moderate winds of 20 knots, which her team in Paris said were normal conditions for that area of the southern Pacific near Antarctica.
On Monday distress beacons from Autissier's yacht put her 1,900 nautical miles southwest of the notorious Cape Horn.
She was on the third leg of the solo Around Alone yacht race which left Auckland 10 days ago bound for Uruguay, via the dangerous Cape Horn, when tragedy struck. Soon after receiving the signals, race officials notified the fleet of the situation and immediately received a satellite phone call from Soldini, who'd been requested to divert for Autissier's position.
"He called here and said, 'I'll go right away,' said race coordinator Pete Dunning. "There was no hesitation."
Soldini was about 200 miles to the northeast at the time. In an e-mail to race headquarters received yesterday morning, Soldini said he had switched on his radar and was monitoring it regularly for any sign of PRB.
"I have a big radar, with a range of 36 nautical miles," he said. "I have hope for the moment I find Isabelle. But I don't see nothing now."
Soldini was hampered by the fact that he arrived at the search area in the early morning hours local time.
"It's dark there right now, there's no question about that," said Dunning. But then the Italian spotted Autissier and quickly got her off her stricken yacht, reporting that she was safe and well. Autissier, who was the race's overall leader when the fleet departed Auckland for Punta del Este on February 6, was holding second place on Monday before the incident occurred.
There have been two southern ocean rescues of competitors by competitors in previous Around Alone races. In 1982-1983, English skipper Richard Broadhead plucked Frenchman Jacques de Roux from his dismasted and holed vessel. While in 1990-1991, South African Bertie Reed took countryman John Martin off his boat after it had been rolled and suffered keel damage. Autissier was rescued in 1994 during a similar race.

Netanyahu's guard kicks
supporter unconscious

ONE of Benjamin Netanyahu's bodyguards attacked a man yesterday who was apparently trying to shake the Israeli premier's hand.
The man, who had come to hear Netanyahu speak during an appearance in Or Yehuda, a small town outside Tel Aviv, was knocked to the ground unconscious by the security guard. Witnesses said the man was kicked repeatedly all over his body by the secret service agent.
The man lay motionless on his back for several minutes as angry Netanyahu supporters shouted and shook their fists at the prime minister's large contingent of secret service agents.
Israel radio reported that the security guard saw the man holding a rolled-up paper and suspected it was concealing a knife.
Witnesses said the man just extended his hand in Netanyahu's direction.
"At the end of my comments, people wanted to shake my hand. I went toward them and then something happened that for a moment wasn't clear and the guards asked me to leave the area," Netanyahu said later.
"Afterward, it became clear that there was a case of mistaken identity. I asked to see the man but he was unconscious and I understood that he was being treated and taken away," Netanyahu said.
Security around Israeli prime leaders was multiplied after a Jewish extremist assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
Netanyahu, who is campaigning for re-election, was reportedly refused a request to his secret service detail to allow him closer contact with the public.
Last month, Netanyahu removed a bulletproof vest during a speech as a show of trust with his audience. The move reportedly angered the secret service.

Watergate recalled as John Ehrlichman, Nixon's domestic
adviser, dies

PRESIDENT Nixon's domestic affairs adviser who was disgraced and imprisoned for his role in the Watergate cover-up that ultimately led to Nixon's resignation, has died.
John D. Ehrlichman died on Sunday of natural causes at his home in Atlanta. He was 73. Ehrlichman and Nixon's chief of staff H.R. Haldeman became known as the Berlin Wall because they shielded Nixon from unwelcome encounters. Ehrlichman coined a phrase that became part of America's political lexicon when he advised Nixon to allow L. Patrick Gray III, then acting director of the FBI, to become the fall guy for Watergate and to leave him "twisting slowly, slowly in the wind".
In April 1973, Ehrlichman and Haldeman were implicated in the attempt to conceal the White House's involvement in the break-in at Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington in June 1972 — and both resigned.
Ehrlichman went to prison in October 1976 and served 18 months of a four to eight year term for obstruction of justice, conspiracy and perjury. His conviction grew in part out of his false testimony to a Senate committee.
On his release he quit politics, wrote political novels, and became a radio commentator.

Balloonists delay attempt at
an epic round-world voyage

TWO British balloonists attempting to become the first to fly non-stop around the world were, last night, making final preparations for the epic journey after putting off a planned launch, yesterday morning.
Andy Elson and Colin Prescot were due to take off from southern Spain, but delayed the launch for a more favourable weather pattern this morning.
Their 191ft balloon and pressurised gondola was due to leave the launch site — the seventh tee of Almeria's La Envia golf course — sometime between midnight and 9 a.m. The pair were using the delay to make last-minute checks on equipment that could keep them airborne for up to a month.
Their daunting task is made more difficult by China's refusal to allow them to cross the country.
The Beijing authorities banished all British teams from Chinese air space after Virgin tycoon Richard Branson's balloon stayed over a restricted flight corridor during his round the world attempt in December. The move has forced Mr Elson and co-pilot Mr Prescot to overhaul the design of their craft, adding an extra three tonnes of fuel.

© Examiner Publications Ltd, 1999