Return to Bhopal Bhopal: A small, red-painted build-in this centraling in Indian city has become the focus of a grim battle being waged against the after-effects of a poison gas leak that killed 2,500 people last December. In the first weeks after the disaster, the victims were reported to have died as their lungs filled…
New Delhi -Ten months after the army stormed the Sikhs’ holiest shrine, Amritsar’s Golden Temple, Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi has run up against his toughest domestic challenge so far in Punjab state. Gandhi has pledged to give top priority to the Punjab problem Eight leaders of the main Sikh party, the Akali Dal, were…
India, a land where personality cults spring up overnight, is struggling to find a pedestal on which to put its assassinated leader Indira Gandhi. In the year since her murder last Oct. 31, the woman once portrayed by a leading painter as a Goddess has become mainly a face looking out from old election posters. …
US ‘interference’ charges spur soul-searching in Manila MANILA —The recall of a US military diplomat from the Philippines underlines the love-hate ties between the two countries but also points to a new direction in Manila foreign policy, analysts said Wednesday. The US Embassy’s announcement that assistant army attache Lt Col Victor Raphael would depart this…
The troops and the refugees are two knots in a tangle Indira Gandhi’s son and successor, Rajiv Gandhi, must unravel before peace returns to Punjab state. TWO streets from the Sikhs’ holiest shrine, the Golden Temple, a soldier in olive green uniform stands atop a t a tall building, his binoculars trained on the clusters…
The office of Indian politician Arjun Dass, where he was assassinated. AP picture NEW DELHI,— Thurs. Indian security forces rounded. up nearly 300 Sikh extremist suspects today in a race against time to break the back of the extremist movement before elections in Punjab State. Security chiefs, on the defensive after the murder yesterday of…
In New Delhi India, a land where personality cults spring up overnight, is struggling to find a pedestal on which to put its assassinated leader Indira Gandhi. In the year since her murder last October 31, the woman once portrayed by a leading painter as a goddess has become mainly a face looking out from…
Bhopal (Reuter) -Investigators probing the world’s worst industrial disaster have uncovered the steel tank from which poisonous gas leaked last December, killing 2.500 people, police said yesterday. Excavation work began last week and the tank has been freed of its casing of concrete, sand and charcoal, police in this central Indian city said. On December…
New Delhi (Reuter)—Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s peace pact to end three years of sectarian turmoil in Punjab has won wide support but analysts say he still faces obstacles in curbing Sikh unrest. Gandhi, a former airline pilot with five years in politics and eight months in power, confounded critics Wednesday by defusing an explosive…
Uneasy ties with neighbours By Chaitanya Kalbag NEW DELHI, (Reuter): Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s massive victory in the Indian general election has given him new freedom to tackle his country’s un-easy relations with its neighbours, especially Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Rajiv, armed with a huge parliamentary majority, declared immediately after the election that good relations…
by Chaitanya Kalbag Reuter, in Bhopal Hundresds of people stand outside the drab white bungalow, clutching yellow X-ray folders and medical prescriptions in a line stretching down the driveway flanked by dry, leafless bushes. A chorus of dry coughs punctuates the slow progress of emaciated men, ragged children and ghost-like Muslim women covered head-to-toe in…
Thimphu, Bhutan (Reuter) — “Do not give pens, sweets or medicine to villagers,” warns a Bhutanese government guidebook for tourists. The writer has ventured to the secretive Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, where less than 2,000 visitors are permitted to visit each year, to report on the country, its people and its young bachelor king. For…
REUTERS 8 September 1985 The Seattle Times THIMPHU, Bhutan_ “Do not give pens, sweets or medicine to villagers,” warns a Bhutanese government guidebook for tourists and mountaineers. For a country described in official brochures as ‘ ‘perhaps the last of the Shangrilas,” Bhutan is not in a hurry to modernize its tourist image. Called ”Druk…