6A
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2007
>> TERRORISM
Bombs kill 66 in India
Train fire fails to halt countries from continuing peace talks
BY MATTHEW ROSENBERG
ASSOCIATED PRESS
DEWANA, India — Leaders of India and Pakistan pressed ahead Monday with their peace process, hours after twin bombs — apparently intended to disrupt their relations — sparked a fire that killed 66 people aboard a train that links the two rivals.
The fire destroyed two coaches on the Sanjahtua Express, about an hour after the train left New Delhi on its way to the Pakistan border. Officials said the attack was timed ahead of the arrival of Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri, who was expected Tuesday in the Indian capital.
"This is an attempt to derail the improving relationship between India and Pakistan," Railway Minister Laloo Prasad told reporters.
Pakistan quickly decried the attack, and Indian officials took pains to avoid laying any quick blame. Each side appeared to reach out across the border.
Indian Prime Minister Mammohan Singh declared his country's "abhorrence for this heinous terrorist act", and expressed his condolences by telephone to Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, according to Singh's office. Most of the dead were Pakistani.
India will do 'everything possible to ensure that its perpetrators are
punished," the statement said.
Speaking to India's CNN-IBN television, Kasuri called the bombing a "terrible act of terrorism" and said "the peace process must go on with greater vigor and greater determination."
K. M.Chaudarv/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Navtej Sarna, spokesman for India's foreign ministry, read a statement that focused, in large part, on help being offered by India to Pakistani families.
A Pakistani passenger of Pakistan-India bound train gets medical treatment upon her arrival at Lahore Railway Station in Pakistan on Monday. A pair of explosions on a passenger train heading from India to Pakistan killed at least 66 people and many injured.
"The entire process is being carried out in cooperation with Pakistani authorities," he said, adding that Pakistani diplomats were visiting the scene and that visas would be issued quickly for Pakistani relatives of the dead and injured.
India's junior home minister, Sriprakash Jaswal, said the bombs were intended only to start a fire and were timed to explode ahead of Kasuri's Tuesday arrival.
"We will not allow elements which want to sabotage the ongoing peace process and succeed in their nefarious designs," Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf was quoted as saying by state-run Associated Press of Pakistan.
Authorities say two suitcases packed with crude unexploded bombs and bottles of gasoline were found in undamaged train cars;
indicating the fire had been sparked by similar devices.
Witnesses described a horrific scene as the train stopped on an isolated stretch of railway near the village of Dewana, about 50 miles north of New Delhi. The train's
driver apparently didn't realize what was happening in the seconds after the blasts, until the assistant station manager in Dewana saw fire shooting from the cars as they sped past.
heat.
"We couldn't save anyone" said Rajinder Prasad, a laborer who raced with his neighbors to the scene, scooping water from a reservoir and throwing it at flames. "They were screaming inside, but no one could
As on most Indian trains,the
"We will not allow elements which want to sabotage the ongoing peace process and succeed in their nefarious designs."
PERVEZ MUSHARRAF Pakistani President General
windows of many cars are barred for security reasons, sealing in many victims, and officials said at least one door was fused shut by the
get out."
30 passengers were hospitalized, officials said, with a dozen critically injured people brought to New Delhi.
Fire engines arrived about 45 minutes later, but it was another two hours before the flames were extinguished.
Arora put the death toll at 66, with many bodies burned beyond recognition. At least
Iran falls behind in payments to Russia
>> NUCLEAR POWER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MOSCOW — The launch of a Russian-built nuclear power plant in Iran could be delayed because Iran has fallen behind in payments, Russian officials said Monday. Top Iranian officials swiftly denied that payments had been disrupted, in the latest dispute surrounding the deal at the heart of the two countries' nuclear cooperation.
Last year, Russia agreed to ship nuclear fuel to Bushehr
— iran's first nuclear plant — by March 2007 and launch the facility in September, with electricity generation to start by November. Under a separate deal, Iran agreed to return to Russia all spent fuel from the plant in southern Iran for reprocessing — a move intended to assuage global concerns that the fuel could be diverted to make nuclear weapons.
Iran broke the schedule of payments this year under the $1 billion contract, said a Russian official, who asked not be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media. He said the Iranians blamed the delay on the need to switch payments from dollars to euros.
But Mohammad Saeedi, the deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, denied that Iran had been late in making payments.
"The launch schedule definitely could be affected." Sergei Novikov, a spokesman for Russia's nuclear power agency, told The Associated Press.
"Iran has had no delay whatsoever in making payments for the Bushehr nuclear power plant to the Russian ... company", Saeed told the news agency IRNA.
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