Section B·Page 8
The University Daily Kansan
Wednesday. October 13, 1999
Nation/World
Pakistani troops call overthrow official
Citizens celebrate oust of unpopular leaders
The Associated Press
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—In an apparent coup, Pakistani troops took control of state-run media yesterday, closed airports and announced the democratic-elected government had been removed after the prime minister tried to fire the powerful army chief.
A message that scrolled across the television screen said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government had been ousted. It said army chief of staff Gen. Pervaiz Musharraf, who had been fired hours before by Sharif, would address the nation in a broadcast speech.
Troops cordoned off the prime minister in his residence in Islamabad, took control of the houses of several other top ministers
and seized other gov
and seized other government buildings.
Sharif fired Musharraf while the military leader was on a visit to Sri Lanka.
Musharraf flew back to Pakistan and was met by a large contingent of soldiers at the airport in the southern city of Karachi.
As troops moved through the main cities, many Pakistanis danced in the streets and waved flags, celebrating the apparent ouster of a government that had become increasingly unpopular because of its heavy-handed rule.
Musharraf was in Karachi's seized television building preparing to deliver his speech, the army information office said.
Instability in Pakistan would heighten tensions in South Asia, home of the world's two newest nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, which clashed earlier this year in a dispute about the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir.
Jason Williams/KANSAI
India's army went on a state of high alert
along the border, a senior officer in India's northern command in Kashmir said on condition of anonymity.
Before the army announcement, U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin
said. "If there has been a coup we would obviously seek the earliest possible restoration of democracy in Pakistan."
Asked if the situation in Islamabad had raised concerns about control of nuclear weapons technologies in Pakistan, White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said: "No concern like that has been raised to me."
In New Delhi, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee held a crisis meeting with his top security and foreign policy advisers. The reports from Pakistan are causing grave concern, said Vajpayee's spokesman, Ashok Tandon.
Sharif has become increasingly unpopular as many accused him of trying to consolidate his power by weakening institutions like the judiciary, provincial governments and the opposition.
Sharif also was accused of suppressing opposition protests throughout the country in recent weeks.
Bulgarian U.N. staffer killed in Kosovo on first day there
The Associated Press
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia—A staffer working for the U.N. civilian mission in Kosovo was shot and killed after his first day on the job, apparently when he angered ethnic Albanians by speaking what sounded like Serbian, an international police official said yesterday.
Valentin S. Krumum, 38, was shot Monday evening on the main street of Kosovo's capital, Pristina, on his way to dinner after arriving for duty earlier in the day.
Lt. Col. Dmitry Kapotsev said he was attacked by a mob. "It seems like he was speaking Serbian, maybe Bulgarian," Kapotsev said of Krumov, a Bulgarian national.
Kapotsev said he was taken by a mob and killed.
Maj. Gilles Moreau, a U.N. police official,
said a group of teen-agers had asked Krumov
the time near the Grand Hotel, where many
employees of international organizations
stay while working in Kosovo. Krumov
responded in Serbian.
"One individual proceeded to hit him with his fist, and others kicked him," Moreau told reporters. "A large crowd gathered around the
altercation. All of a sudden a shot was heard."
altercation. All of a sudden a shot was heard." U.N. officials said Krumov had a job in the civilian part of the U.N. mission in Kosovo, not in any military or police operation. He was in civilian clothes when he was killed.
The former head of the officially disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army, Hashim Thaci — considered Kosovo's leader by many if not most ethnic Albanians — called the killing a disgusting assassination — an assassin's blow against the whole process of stabilizing the situation in Kosovo.
"There are few places in Kosovo now where the Serb language can be spoken freely," said Yugoslavia's state-run Tanjug news agency. "Ethnic cleansing, carried out by same methods as those in Nazi Germany, is under way in Kosovo."
Kapotsev said that with emotions running high and gun possession widespread among the Kosovo Albanian population, incidents like the shooting could be repeated anywhere, anytime.
In Sofia, Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov sent a letter to the U.N. mission demanding a full investigation of the killing, the presidential press office said.
The Associated Press
Poet's journal to be published
NEW YORK—One of literature's great underground documents is coming to bookstores; the complete journals of Sylvia Plath.
For decades, readers have obsessed like conspiracy theorists about Plath, the poet and novelist who killed herself in 1963. Biographers continue to analyze everything from her work to her famously difficult marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes. Their relationship has lived on in Plath's posthumously issued poems and letters and in Hughes' "Birthday Poems," published just months before he died in 1998.
The exact nature of their relationship and why she committed suicide is still debated.: The journals may offer clues. An edition published in the 1980s is believed to contain only one-third of the collection. The new book almost will certainly will add hundreds of previously unpublished pages.
"The decision has been made to publish them in their entirety, unedited, so the world can judge for themselves," said Joanna Mackle, publishing director for London-based Faber and Faber, which in April will issue the book in Britain. A U.S. publisher is
expected to be announced shortly.
At the time of her death, Plath had just one book published under her name. But a decade later, she was a feminist martyr, the mourned and beloved author of the "Ariel" poems and the novel "The Bell Jar."
Meanwhile, Hughes was cast as the cold, oppressive villain, the man who stifled Plath in life and censored her in death. Plath fans harassed Hughes at readings and hacked his name off Plath's tombstone, which had been inscribed: "Sylvia Plath Hughes."
While friends of Hughes defended him as a caring husband driven away by his unstable wife, the poet himself said little in public for decades. But privately, he agonized — and wrote. In early 1988, he published the acclaimed *Birthday Letters*, a passionate, mournful and often bitter collection about Plath.
"A reassessment of Ted Hughes' life and work is already under way," said Steve Enniss, curator of literary collections at Emory University, where Hughes' papers are stored. "And the Plath journals will add to that. Any kind of attention given to one inevitably brings attention to the other. They are intertwined."
U.N. welcomes world's 6 billionth living human being
The Associated Press
SARA.JEVO.Bosnia
Herzegovina — In the city where more than 1,600 children died in three years of war, a boy born at 2 minutes past midnight yesterday was welcomed as the six billionth living member of the human race.
U. N. demographers chose yesterday as the day the world's population hit the 6 billion mark, and the first child born here was to be designated by the visiting U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan as the symbolic Baby Six Billion.
"I still don't know what name he will have," she said. "Regardless of whether he's the six billionth baby or not, I'm a happy mother."
"I heard others talking about a six billionth baby, but I found out from the doctors that it's mine," said Fatima Nevic, who gave birth to the 8-pound boy at Saraiego's hospital.
According to the United Nations, the world's population has doubled since 1960. There are more than 1 billion people between the ages of 15 and 24, just entering their reproductive years.
The son of Nevic and her husband — Muslims from the Bosnian town of Visoko — was being welcomed to the planet by Annan. The event was designed to draw attention to the challenges of providing a better future for the children of the next millennium.
Many of the estimated 370,000 infants born yesterday face a life of poverty, illiteracy and premature death.
The U.N. Population Fund estimates that five babies are born every second around the world, many in poor regions of Africa and Asia.
By marking the Day of the Six Billionth Baby, the United Nations hopes to draw attention to the problems of rapidly expanding populations, especially in poor nations unable to provide the resources for a rich and long life.
To mark the arrival of Earth's six billionth living citizen, celebrations and ceremonies were being held in many countries.
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