Jang’s profitable newspapers were the capital base for the satellite station’s launch.. On the tape the senator is clearly heard naming the journalists he wanted fired, and naming three journalists as satisfactory replacements.In Pakistan, where revenue collection is often used as a pretext for attacking enemies of the government, few took the tax charges against Jang seriously, even before the playing of the tape-recording of the meeting.Mr Rehman insists, “It is not about tax dues. Since an unidentified car tried to ram her recently, she is now escorted to and from work by colleagues in a van and two cars.The News does not look like a newspaper which should cause a man as powerful as Mr Sharif to lose much sleep.The page design is fussy, headlines are small and bland. Anyone expecting the strident certainties of today’s British press would find articles which would not look out of place in the Richmond and Twickenham Times – “Exhibition of Traditional Calligraphy”, “Policemen Complain of Working Conditions …”.But beneath its bland exterior and tireless quest for balance, The News has not shrunk from telling the truth about Mr Sharif, his increasingly dictatorial tendencies, and the allegations of financial wrongdoing that have been laid against him.Last month, the confrontation came to the boil when Mr Sharif’s principal enforcer, Senator Rahman, who has been pursuing charges against Benazir Bhutto and her husband, charged the company with massive tax fraud and demanded payment of more than 2bn rupees (pounds 25m) in back taxes.Jang’s proprietor, Mir Shakilur Rehman, went to see the senator to try to persuade him to “stop the victimisation campaign against the press”, in Mr Rehman’s words, and it was at this meeting that the senator gave the proprietor the list of journalists the government required to be sacked.Mr Rehman secretly recorded the meeting and played the tape at a press conference. The editor of The News, Maleeha Lodhi, who was Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington from 1994 to 1997, is tailed by government agents wherever she goes.

It is the company’s attempt to fight back against a government campaign to close down the newspapers that has come to a head in the past three weeks.The head of the government’s Accountability Bureau, Senator Saifur Rahman, has given the proprietor of Jang a list of 16 journalists the government wants sacked, and a list of replacements who would be considered acceptable.But in case Jang fails to take the hint, other forms of pressure are also being applied. Soon Pakistan’s legal system will be run according to Sharia law, and Mr Sharif will be free to do as he pleases.But the battle for the press is not over yet.Today the drama switches to the Supreme Court, as it begins hearing an action brought against the government by Jang, alleging infringement of the freedom of the press. On 1 February they succeeded.
It is not too melodramatic to describe this as practically the last stand of those who cherish freedom and democracy in Pakistan. Already the other organs keeping the power of the Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, in check have been emasculated: the presidency given to a Sharif family friend, an independent-minded army chief forced to resign. NIGHT AFTER night on the streets of Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi, men armed with sticks and iron bars fight for the freedom of Pakistan’s press. The prize: 200 rolls of newsprint, enough to bring out skeletal editions of the Jang group’s newspapers The enemy is the police. The Supreme Court granted the papers this minimal daily ration of paper; but the police, acting on orders, try to seize the lorries delivering it and drive them away.

Faced with the rapid erosion of their support, the Greens will have little choice but to fall in line.. This will strengthen Mr Schroder’s hand in smothering the party, who Social Democrats feel have been trying to play a greater role than their status and share of seats warrants. After little more than 100 days in power, the government is threatened with legislative impotence.Mr Lafontaine said the government would seek to reach “a compromise that everyone can tolerate, so that it cannot be used to whip up anti- foreigner sentiment”.They will have to talk to us now when they want to pass a law,” said Angela Merkel, the Christian Democrat general secretary. Half a million people had protested about the new nationality law, which would have enabled about four million long-term foreign residents to obtain German citizenship.With Hesse lost to the opposition, Mr Schroder’s administration has forfeited its majority in the upper federal chamber, the Bundesrat.

“We must draw the consequences from this,” declared Oskar Lafontaine, the Social Democratic party (SPD) chairman.
Politicians of every hue agreed that the Christian Democrats had defeated Hesse’s red-green coalition by harnessing voters’ fears of foreigners. As Social Democrats and Greens licked their wounds following their shock defeat in Sunday night’s elections in the central Land of Hesse, leading government figures called for an urgent rethink. CHASTENED BY the revolt of Middle Germany, Gerhard Schroder’s government yesterday prepared to water down its plans to ease the integration of millions of long-term immigrants. Some Democrats favour such a vote because it would allow them to signal their condemnation of Mr Clinton’s behaviour. Republicans say that there is no constitutional provision for censure and that it would be “no more than a slap on the wrist”..

The openness argument seemed to be lost when the leader of the Republican majority, Trent Lott, said that he would vote for the debate to remain closed A formal censure, however, was still in contention. He must not be removed from office.”However, Senators were still divided on whether the final debate, when each Senator is expected to speak, should be held in open session or in camera and the proposal for a censure vote. As the White House quietly embraced Mr Clinton’s now inevitable acquittal, Kenneth Starr, the independent prosecutor who started it all, was told by the Justice Department that his handling of the Monica Lewinsky affair is to be investigated.
When the Senate reconveyed yesterday, there was already a pervasive weariness in the Chamber, a sense that the game was over.The prosecutors from the House of Representatives, listed four “misleading” statements by the President in his August grand jury testimony which, they said, constituted perjury.For the President, the White House chief counsel, Charles Ruff, ended with the coda that became his trademark through the trial: “William Jefferson Clinton is not guilty of the charges that have been brought against him He did not commit perjury He did not commit obstruction of justice. THE IMPEACHMENT trial of President Clinton, and with it the year- long White House sex scandal, entered its final stage yesterday with the presentation of closing arguments by both sides and a swift conclusion forecast by all concerned. But the Albanians want no less than Nato’s signature on a peace deal.. ‘

IRAQI PRESIDENT Saddam Hussein was hurt during a recent assassination attempt, the United Arab Emirates newspaper, al-Ittihad, reported yesterday There was no further confirmation of the report..