STORY:
India Now Claiming First Light of 2000

Tourism officials say Indian island will see dawn of 2000 before anyone else

India is throwing it's preverbal sunglasses into the run by joining the list of countries claiming to be the first place to see the first strands of daylight on January 1 2000. The country's top tourism official that daylight will break first over Katchall, one of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, at 0000 Greenwich Meantime.

"Going by the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the first minute of the new millennium will be on this island -- the millennium will begin in India," Tourism Secretary M.P. Bezbaruah told Reuters.

He said that plans were in hand to mark New Year's Eve on the small and largely uninhabited island in the Andaman Sea, although concerns over protection of the environment meant they would be low key.

In making its claim, India enters an unorganized competition for official recognition of the New Year's starting point with New Zealand and South Pacific islands.

New Zealand has claimed that it will be the first populated place to see the dawn of 2000, when the sun rises over Pitt Island in the Chatham Islands. The south pacific country of Kiribati claims dawn will take place first over their uninhabited Christmas Island. Recently the U.S. Naval Observatory says the first dawn will take place in Antarctica.

Source: Reuters

DATE: 9/20/99

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