Don’t go to Zimbabwe, Blair urges England

LONDON, Jan 8: British Prime Minister Tony Blair heaped pressure on cricket authorities on Wednesday to stop the England team playing in Zimbabwe but insisted he had no power to prevent them going.

Ministers will meet officials from the England and Wales Cricket Board (CEB) on Thursday to discuss their dilemma over World Cup matches being staged in Zimbabwe but the government’s wishes are already crystal clear.

“We have expressed our view very clearly that they should not go but as with the decision over the 1980 Olympics, it is not within our power or ability to order people not to go,” Blair told parliament.

“We have made it quite clear to the cricket authorities that we believe that it is wrong that they should go. I hope they take account of that advice.”

Former premier Margaret Thatcher urged British athletes to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Her plea fell largely on deaf ears.

Zimbabwe is scheduled to host six of the 54 matches in the World Cup tournament being staged mainly in South Africa. The Australian government has also raised concerns about playing there.

The ECB has been put under increasing pressure to boycott the match England are due to play in Harare on Feb 13 following President Robert Mugabe’s controversial land reform programme, which opponents blame for the country’s deepening economic crisis and food shortages.

Several England players, including captain Nasser Hussain, and ECB chiefs have said that if the decision to boycott the Zimbabwe game is a political one then it should be taken by the government, not a sporting body.—Reuters

District govt headed by bureaucrat: DATELINE MULTAN

NO district government, except Multan, enjoys the distinction of being headed by a civil servant instead of an elected representative. The top slot of the district government has been filled by the District Coordination Officer. For the last several months, he is officiating as the District Nazim in place of Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi who had resigned to contest the general election of October 10 last.

Initially, Naib Nazim Malik Amer Dogar was given the charge of District Nazim, but soon he was dethroned and DCO Major Azam Suleman Khan (retired) became ‘monitor’ of the house which has a vocal majority of anti-regime councillors.

The appointment of a serving bureaucrat to lead an elected house was not considered a good omen by the elected representatives. But they swallowed it as a bitter pill after an Election Commission announcement that it would be impossible for it to hold by-polls against the offices of local bodies which had fallen vacant after the resignation of their Nazimeen simultaneously with the general election.

However, patience of the District Council wore thin the other day when its members adopted an unanimous resolution seeking permission of the Punjab government to elect a leader of the house. The council has given the government a one-week ultimatum to give its approval failing which the house will elect its leader on its own within the next two weeks.

The speakers criticized the acting District Nazim for not attending even a single council meeting since taking office. They alleged that development work in the district had been halted because of the indifferent attitude of the acting Nazim towards problems of the area.

The District Council sounded an unanimous note of dissent through a resolution against the allocation of development funds to the members of national and provincial assemblies. The council demanded that development activities should be carried out only through the local governments.

SARDAR Yar Muhammad Rind of Balochistan visited Multan last week for the first time after taking charge of the ministry for food, agriculture and livestock. He held a meeting with the scientists and researchers here at the Central Cotton Research Institute.

Surprisingly, he repeatedly used the word ‘tree’ for cotton plant and to the amusement of participants, asked very ordinary questions about cotton and its related issues. Sardar Rind underscored the need for meetings between the growers of Balochistan and Punjab. He has assumed the charge of the Agriculture Ministry at a critical juncture. After two years, the country’s agro-based economy will face the challenge of free market under the WTO regime.

Critics say that Sardar Rind will have to pick up the lessons of modern-day agriculture and its challenges within a short span to prove that it was no mere exigency of the circumstances that one of the important ministries fell into his lap.

A curfew-like situation was clamped in Multan on the eve of new year by the police under the cover of upholding, as one of their press notes claimed, Islamic values and norms.

Hotels and cafes which usually remain open till midnight were forced to shut down at gunpoint by the police as early as 10pm. Extra police were called out to crush any bid by ‘miscreants’ to celebrate the new year. Anybody who came out after the 10pm deadline was roughed up.

And finally the Multan police achieved their goal; a deadly silence reigned when the year 2003 started ticking. However, some club-carrying activists of the youth wing of a religio-political party were seen offering thanksgiving prayers in the wilderness at otherwise busy city squares.