DHAKA: In the first published appeal defending controversial author Taslima Nasreen's right to live in Bangladesh, eminent author Anwara Syed Haq has mounted a strident offensive against the fundamentalists. ``It is my fervent appeal to all of you to see to it that these fundamentalist groups under no circumstances could snatch away the rights and sovereignty of women folk centring Taslima,'' she said in an article in the leading Bengali daily Sangbad.

Nasreen returned to Bangladesh on September 14 following four years of self exile after her novel Lajja (Shame) attracted the ire of fundamentalists on whose pressure the police issued an arrest warrant against the doctor-turned-author. Her whereabouts after return are still not known though Bengali daily Bhorer Kagoj claimed quoting unidentified sources that she was hiding at an apartment in a posh Dhaka locality under round-the-clock security.

LTTE warning to Jaffna residents

COLOMBO: Two weeks after the mayor andtop security officials of the northern Jaffna town were killed in a suspected LTTE bomb attack, the rebels today warned people against cooperating with the army. It asked the civic and government employees of the peninsula to refrain from their duties.

Posters by ``supporters of Tamil liberation struggle'', hitherto an unknown organisation, appearing at several places in Jaffna asked people not to cooperate with the Sri Lankan army and the representatives of the moderate Tamil parties, sources said. The posters also warned people not to go to vulnerable places like army organised functions and criticised the public of Jaffna for not heeding to the warnings and said the movements of the people would be watched closely from now on.

Chinese snub to French Premier

BEIJING:

In what is seen as a snub to French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, China has persuaded him to travel to the countryside to meet President Jiang Zemin, a Hong Kong newspaper reported today. Jospin, who begins a two-day official visitto China on Thursday, has been asked to alter his schedule and go to Hefei, capital of Anhui province, to meet Jiang, who will be inspecting the flood-hit area. Such high-level meetings normally take place in Beijing, the South China Morning Post said. But diplomatic circles see the move as retaliation towards the French socialist party, which was in power when the sale of Mirage fighter jets to Taiwan was organised in 1992, the newspaper said. ``Jospin was then secretary-general of the party. They are forcing him to kow-tow because of the Mirage sales to Taiwan,'' the paper quoted a French analyst as saying.

Bangladesh plan to beat future floods

DHAKA: Bangladesh, recovering from its worst floods this century, has drawn up a 40-million-dollar action plan to protect the country from future disasters, press reports said here on Monday. The plan, with help of foreign donors, was likely to be implemented from October and mainly focus on river dredging after experts reported many waterways were heavilysilted, the Associated Press of Bangladesh said. Under a pilot project, 12 million cubic meters of soil will be dredged from a 21-km stretch of the Goral river connected to the Ganges. Dhaka will provide $20 million, while the rest will come from the Netherlands and Belgium, APB said, adding the World Bank was financing the river dredging study.