Eight killed in Indian temple stampede

 

BHOPAL  ( 2008-03-27 10:33:25 ) : 

At least eight people were trampled to death and 10 seriously injured in a stampede at a Hindu temple in central India, officials said.
The stampede happened late on Wednesday, when thousands of villagers were making their way to a temple during an annual fair in remote Karila village, about 260 km (160 miles) from Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh state.
"It was simply an accident as people who attempted to enter the temple by climbing over a railing fell," Geeta Mishra, a senior government official, said on Thursday.
Authorities sealed the temple gates and were investigating the stampede.
In rural India, insufficient security to control crowds often causes stampedes and deaths.
In 2005, about 265 pilgrims were killed at a stampede near a temple in the western state of Maharashtra.

Bush, Hu press North Korea over nuclear arms declaration

 

WASHINGTON  ( 2008-03-27 11:13:44 ) : 

US President George W. Bush and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao pressed North Korea on Wednesday to come clean over its nuclear arms program, as South Korea warned that time and patience were wearing out on Pyongyang.
In a day of intensive diplomacy, the White House said Bush telephoned Hu to help get North Korea to make a full declaration of its nuclear arms program, while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with her South Korean counterpart to keep up the heat on the Stalinist state.
"The two presidents pledged to continue to work closely with the other six-party partners in urging North Korea to deliver a complete and correct declaration of all its nuclear weapons programs, and nuclear proliferation activities and to complete the agreed disablement," a statement said.
"Bush expressed appreciation to President Hu for the important role China has played within" the six-party talks, which it chairs and are aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons drive, added the statement. North Korea has refused to make a "complete and correct" declaration of its nuclear weapons program and alleged proliferation activities as part of an aid-for-disarmament deal agreed to by the six parties -- the United States, China, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia.
"It's time to bring this to a conclusion," Bush's National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley said of the ongoing effort by the parties to get North Korea to come forward with a full declaration. "This has been going on for a while."
The declaration was supposed to havtion to Syria.
"It was time, I think, for the president to signal to Hu Jintao that it's time for all of the parties of the six-party talks, including China, to re-engage with North Korea," Hadley told reporters.
Rice said Pyongyang's reluctance to provide the declaration was holding up the six-party talks, which had to lay the groundwork for North Korea to dismantle its nuclear arsenal -- the final phase of its denuclearization effort which Washington wants concluded before Bush retires in January 2009.
"It is really time now for there to be movement on the declaration so that with that declaration we have, we can move forward on the next phase," Rice told reporters after talks with South Korean foreign minister with Yu Myung-Hwan.
Yu said, "I think time and patience is running out.
"I hope North Korea will submit the declaration as soon as possible so as not to lose good timing," he said.
Rice said the declaration and any associated documents should show the full range of the North Korean nuclear programs and activities "so that there can be an effort to verify and to deal with anything that has happened concerning North Korean programs and proliferation and the like.
"We've been concerned about North Korean proliferation for quite a long time. The six-party framework should be able to deal with this problem or these problems so that we can stay on course to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula," she said.