May 21, 2000
*** A MEETING that is very open, very frank, very flexible,
very practical, very realistic. But it is the Kashmir dispute that we have to
address."
(Chief Executive Gen. Pervez Musharraf offering tete-a-tete to Indian
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee)
*** "I THINK it is high time for the European nations
to forget about their colonial dreams and begin realising that at least with the
government of Cuba, they will have to learn to deal with as as we are, an independent
nation . . . We haven’t died . . . Cuba will continue to be on this planet."
(Cuban official Ricardo Alarcon on the cancellation of Havana’s
high-level visit to the EU angered by EU nations’ backing of a UN censure of human
rights record)
*** "WE ARE and want to be part of Europe. But [we]
are not this partner at any price."
(Austria’s far-right leader Joerg Haider relinquishing the charge
as head of Freedom Party)
*** "I LOVE you."
(Virus camouflage as cyber greeting which affected over one million
computer files worldwide)
*** "HURT IS not the answer . . . I will die. I will
commit suicide before I take a bribe . . . I don’t know what to do. My wife
can’t sleep at night. I hold my daughter all night."
(Indian cricket coach and former captain Kapil Dev breaking down during
a television interview denying match-fixing allegation)
*** "IT IS consumed almost universally and its use
doesn’t rely on economic levels . . . people consume it in equal amounts each
day."
(Member of University of Toronto’s research team Rizwan Yusofali
which has perfected a process to develop an inexpensive ‘super salt’ which could
treat health problems associated with iron deficiency)
***"This means many Indian cows and buffaloes suffer
cruel slaughter only for their skin, making meat a by-product of leather, rahter than the
other way around."
(People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), a US-based group,
threatening India’s leather industry with costly lawsuits for pre-slaughter cruel
treatment of the animals)
*** "BRITAIN WAS not a founder member of the EU, it
isn’t in the euro and its always sniping about Brussels; yet more and more UK
officials are making it into high places."
(French official complaining about the increased number of British
officials in European Commission)
*** "WHO GAVE us the right to overthrow Saddam
Hussein?"
(Former US foreign service official who served as acting US ambassador
speaking at a seminar on US policies toward Iran and Iraq)
*** "NOTHING HAS changed. For them market-led
development is still the answer, and trickle-down growth and privatisation they think will
finally help the poor. This has been proven wrong over and over again."
(Shalmali Guttal of Bangkok-based NGO, Focus on the Global South,
rejecting ADB’s claim that its new poverty reduction strategy has changed its
approach)
*** "NEW TECHNOLOGIES create the potential for
invasions of privacy and rights on a scale that could scarcely have been imagined even 20
years ago."
(Simon Davies, Director-general of a London-based civil liberties group
‘Privacy International’, criticising British government’s $ 39 million
Internet spy centre to snoop on all e-mail messages. Fifteen million of Britain’s 55
million population has access to the Internet)
*** "PUTIN’S GREAT advantage is that he is not
Yeltsin."
(Sergei Kalmykov, deputy director of the Kremlin-connected Politika
Foundation, commenting on the rise of Vladimir Putin as the President of Russia)
*** "THIS IS just the same as London. We thought it
would be different here in Chile."
(Sons of General Augusto Pinochet on Chile’s new centre-left
government’s insistence to try the former dictator for killings and torture during
1973-78)
Edited
by Syed M. Aslam
