AP:Britain OKs Extradition of Pinochet
Gen. Augusto Pinochet is fit to stand trial on charges of genocide and Spain can start extradition proceedings against him, Britain ruled Wednesday, delighting human rights groups and setting the 83-year-old former Chilean dictator up for a long legal battle.
Chile immediately withdrew its ambassador in protest, and already-strained relations with Britain, a longtime ally, fell to a new low.
In announcing his decision, Home Secretary Jack Straw rejected complaints that a judge who cast the key vote in the 3-2 court ruling against Pinochet was biased because he heads the fund-raising arm of the human rights organization Amnesty International.
``The Spanish request for his extradition will now be considered by the courts,'' Straw said.
Since Britain's highest court ruled Nov. 25 that Pinochet has no immunity from arrest under English law, Straw had been bombarded by pleas from governments, lawyers, legislators, widows of victims of Chilean police torture and widows of policemen slain by leftists.
Pinochet, who has not been seen in public since his Oct. 16 arrest while recuperating from back surgery at a London hospital, is scheduled to appear before a London magistrate Friday.
The decision means that Pinochet, under armed guard at a mansion outside London, faces months and possibly years of battles through British courts fighting extradition.
Because of the expected crush of interest, court officials moved Friday's hearing — routine under extradition law — from central London to Belmarsh Magistrate's Court, 10 miles from the center of the capital.
Pinochet's lawyers may apply to a judge Thursday for an emergency review of Straw's decision on the grounds that it is legally flawed.
In Chile, amid the joy of his opponents and anger of supporters, there was concern that the crisis could endanger the democracy, built on compromise since Pinochet stepped down in 1990 after 17 years in power — with guarantees of immunity from prosecution in his native land.
Thus, the Chilean government wants Pinochet freed, although an official Chilean report says 3,197 people were murdered or disappeared at the hands of the secret police after he overthrew an elected Marxist, Salvador Allende, who died during the coup.
Chilean President Eduardo Frei said Wednesday that Chile would appeal Straw's decision.
Frei said he strongly rejected the British decision, but he called on Chileans to remain calm and to support his government's efforts to prevent Pinochet from being extradited.
Chilean Foreign Minister Jose Miguel Insulza, who was with Frei in Brazil at a regional summit, said he did not think the extradition proceedings would undermine Chile's diplomatic relations with England or Spain.
The extradition was instigated by a Spanish magistrate, Baltasar Garzon, who has compiled a detailed dossier against Pinochet. Garzon initially cited 94 Spaniards among the victims as the basis for the extradition, but since has broadened his warrant.
Spain's government has made clear it does not support Garzon's efforts, but Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar says the case should be decided by the courts.
In New Jersey, the father of a woman killed in a bombing linked to Pinochet expressed pleasure with the British ruling.
``What should I say? It's another step in the righting of — how many — a thousand wrongs?'' said Murray Karpen of West Orange, N.J. ``No one should be able to murder with impunity.''
Karpen's daughter, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, died 22 years ago in a Washington, D.C., car bombing that also killed her boss, former Chilean Cabinet official Orlando Letelier, a prominent Pinochet critic.
Rank-and-file legislators in Britain's governing Labor Party hailed Straw's decision. But the opposition Conservative Party accused Prime Minister Tony Blair's government of affronting an ally in a bid to demonstrate left-of-center credentials.
``(Straw) had ample power to put an end to this shameful and damaging episode,'' former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said. ``This was a political decision and it represents a failure of political leadership.''
Chile's departing ambassador, Mario Artaza, also said Straw had political motives.
``There were other factors involved — it was more than just a judicial decision,''' Artaza said before heading to London's Gatwick Airport.
Amnesty International dubbed the British decision ``profoundly uplifting,'' and New York-based Human Rights Watch called it a ``tremendous birthday present'' for Thursday's 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
On Wednesday, police blocked the road leading to Pinochet's mansion at Wentworth, 20 miles west of London. The general was moved there in an ambulance on Dec. 1 after the Grovelands Priory, a north London hospital, said he no longer needed medical attention and should leave.
http://wire.ap.org/?FRONTID=HOME&SITE=MANOR

USADODAY: Iraq's defiance brings familiar U.S. threat
WASHINGTON - The Clinton administration has responded to Iraq's latest defiance of U.N. weapons inspectors with a familiar threat. The White House said Wednesday it is awaiting a report from chief inspector Richard Butler, but reminded Baghdad that "we have the force to respond if it proves necessary." The latest confrontation developed when Iraqi officials blocked a U.N. team from entering an office of President Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath party. "Sometimes what happens is that they refuse the first time and they go back and they get in," Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said.
http://www.usatoday.com/hlead.htm

Skills drought strikes IT future
Australia's information technology (IT) industry says it is short of 30,000 skilled people, and industry leaders warn that the nation could miss the bus on the information superhighway.
Peak industry groups and corporations met government ministers in Canberra yesterday to thrash out solutions to the looming crisis.
The chairman of the Australian Information Industry Association and managing director of the DMR Consulting Group, Mr Alan Baxter, said yesterday that Australia needed to consider liberalising immigration rules and beefing up training programs or face a slowing economy.
Mr Baxter said the 30,000 jobs were concentrated in service areas of the IT industry, with a shortage in areas such as Internet development and Y2K (Year 2000 bug) specialists, but the impact of the shortage would be economy-wide.
"It's affecting users of the IT and T industry, and organisations like banks, government departments, airlines and insurance companies," he said.
Mr Baxter said the shortage would worsen, with American and European companies beginning to poach Australian IT workers.
"We need to get creative, putting in place courses to upgrade the skills of people, employing graduates in other disciplines and putting them on accelerated training programs," he said.
Mr Baxter said the number of students undertaking IT courses in Australia was falling, with many school leavers, especially females, failing to realise what the industry offered in terms of career opportunities and salaries.
The IT sector is growing at a rate of 20 to 30 per cent a year and figures released recently by the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed 1.245 million Australian households had Internet access.
"McGill Books, for example, has recently realised it needs to go online to compete with overseas giants like Amazon Books," he said. "If they can't get the staff to develop their IT strategy they won't be able to meet this competition head on."
Mr Baxter also said Australia's immigration laws were a major obstacle to firms filling positions.
"The Government must look at liberalising immigration laws, as America has recently done, to enable firms to employ skilled people. We also train a lot of foreign students on student visas who are required to go home. Why can't they be given the option of staying?"
A spokesman for the Federal Minister for Communications and the Information Economy, Senator Alston, said yesterday that changing immigration rules was not the answer.
"We have identified the skills shortage as a serious issue and it has the potential to affect all areas of the economy," he said.
"But immigration is a short-term answer and doesn't address the wider issue. We need to look at the long-term picture as well.
"We should be aiming to use the current skills shortage to work towards making Australia an IT training centre and a place where people come to get jobs. We're talking about a situation where we have a shortage of IT professionals in a variety of sectors. It's not just computer firms."
Also present at the talks were the Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs, Dr Kemp, and Minister for Finance and Administration, Mr Fahey.
Further talks dealing with the skills shortage will be held next week between the Federal Government and industry.
http://www.smh.com.au/

RUSSIATODAY: Chechnya Says Hostages Killed in Rescue Bid
Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov said on Wednesday the kidnappers who beheaded four Western hostages in the rebel Russian region had murdered their captives during a failed rescue operation.
The severed heads of the three Britons and one New Zealander were discovered on Tuesday on a deserted highway in Chechnya, a lawless region where kidnappings have become commonplace but foreign captives had not previously been murdered.
"The kidnappers cruelly massacred the hostages during an operation to free the hostages," Maskhadov, fighting back his emotions, said in a statement which he read to reporters in the Chechen capital Grozny.
"It is a new barbaric act against foreign citizens who came to work in the Chechen republic, were guests of the republic, internationalists. It has filled Chechens' souls with hatred towards those who carried out this evil act."
Maskhadov, whose small region fought a war for independence from Russia from 1994-96, gave no details of the rescue operation or who had carried it out.
He offered his condolences to Britain and New Zealand and vowed to find and punish the killers.
Maskhadov, who is under pressure to resign from renegade warlords in Chechnya, blamed the murders on "certain forces" who would benefit from Chechnya's isolation but did not name them.
His statement contradicted the version offered earlier by Chechnya's prosecutor general, who said the criminals had killed the four hostages in panic because they feared they were about to be arrested and wanted no witnesses to the kidnapping.
The British and New Zealand ambassadors to Russia met Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin in Moscow to discuss the murders.
"The purpose was to work together with the authorities in Moscow and Grozny towards finding those guilty and seeing that they are punished," British ambassador Sir Andrew Wood said.
Asked about Maskhadov's statement, he told Reuters: "We are waiting for a full read-out before making any comment at all."
British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook discussed the killings with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on the fringes of a NATO ministerial conference in Brussels.
"I have just had a very somber meeting with the Russian foreign minister. He has asked me to convey the condolences of himself and his government to the families for the tragic loss that they have experienced," Cook said.
"He has also accepted my request to send a message to President Maskhadov of Chechnya urging him to give the fullest cooperation in our efforts to find out what happened and what can now be done to bring to justice those who have committed these horrific murders," he added.
Cook said neither he nor the Russian foreign minister underestimated the difficulties of making progress in "the lawless state of Chechnya."
Cook urged British citizens to stay away from Chechnya, and Foreign Office sources said the employer of the few Britons still in the region had been urged strongly to withdraw them as soon as possible.
The four hostages' heads, found in a sack near the dusty town of Ahkhoi Martan, were taken to a morgue in Grozny but other parts of the bodies were not found.
The four men -- identified by their bodyguard as Britons Darren Hickey, Rudolf Petschi and Peter Kennedy and New Zealander Stanley Shaw -- were captured by unknown gunmen on Oct. 3 when they were installing a mobile phone system.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed shock at the murders and condemned them.
Chechnya has suffered from poverty and lawlessness since fighting the 21-month war of independence from Russia that ended when Moscow withdrew its troops in 1996.
Maskhadov, seen as a relative moderate in Moscow, is opposed by renegade warlords who say they want to set up a stricter Islamic state and maintain a firmer stance toward Russia.
http://www.russiatoday.com/rtoday/news/01.html