Friday, December 2 2005 17:07 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Vancouver: Former Ontario premier Bob Rae appointed to lead a new public inquiry into the deadly 1985 Air India bombing disaster has until March 31, 2007 to submit his report.

Also, in one of its final acts before being defeated in Parliament, Canada's Liberal government approved a cabinet order to appoint Rae as an "independent counsellor to the Prime Minister."

It gave Rae until March 31, 2007 to submit his report on the Kanishka bombing in which 329 people were killed off the Irish Coast.

Rae's appointment announced last week by Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan came seven months after two British Columbia men were acquitted of murder charges in a 60-million dollar court case.

The Court had found Ripudaman Singh Malik, a Vancouver-based millionaire businessman and a millworker Ajaib Singh Bagri not guilty of murder and conspiracy charges, triggering a wave of protests from relatives of the victims, who termed the verdict a "second tragedy" and demanded a public inquiry.

Rae said that the date of March 31, 2007, is an "outside date," adding he hopes to finish the assignment in 2006, a media report said.

The inquiry's budget is being worked on now, he told 'The Globe and Mail' newspaper. The cabinet order, released yesterday, sets out areas for the Rae inquiry. Was the response by Canadian agencies sufficiently co-ordinated, and if not, have the problems been fixed? Are the laws on financing terrorist activities Adequate?

The other issues which Rae would look into include east the surveillance of terrorist suspects and the investigation of the bombings affected by problems in the relationship between Canada's spy agency, CSIS, and the police RCMP? If any problems have not been rectified, what changes are necessary?

How should the government deal with difficulties arising from keeping security intelligence separate from evidence in a criminal trial?, the cabinet order said. Rae has been specifically instructed to refrain from expressing any conclusion or recommendation about the misconduct of anyone, or about civil or criminal liability of any person or organization, the cabinet order said.

A practising lawyer in Toronto, Rae will receive remuneration of 1,100 to 1,300 dollars a day to conduct the inquiry into the disaster, the paper said.

He is authorized to set his own procedures, which may include public or private hearings, conferences and consultations with experts.

His budget includes provisions to pay for "the appropriate participation" of families of the 329 victims killed by a bomb explosion off the Irish Coast.

The cabinet order does not indicate whether families of two victims of a bomb explosion at Tokyo's Narita airport will also receive financial support to participate in the inquiry.

The announcement of Rae's appointment on Nov 24 came after the independent investigator, appointed to review the Kanishka bombing trial in April by McLellan, delivered a report recommending a "focused, policy-based inquiry" to answer lingering questions about the Kanishka bombing. In his review report, Rae had said the 1985 disaster "was mass murder."