E paper pdf (25 11 2015) isb

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wednesday, 25 november, 2015 i safar 12, 1437 i rs 17.00 i Vol Vi no 146 i 16 Pages i islamabad edition MOScOw/ANKArA AGeNcIeS President vladimir Putin called Turkey ’s downing of a russian fighter jet a stab in the back administered by “the accomplices of terrorists” but Turkey maintains that it shot down the warplane after repeated warnings that it had violated Turkish airspace.

Speaking in the russian black Sea resort of Sochi on Tuesday before a meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah, Putin said the downed plane had been attacked inside Syria when it was one kilometre from the Turkish border and had come down four kilometres inside Syria. That contradicted Turkey’s assertion that the aircraft had been warned multiple times that it was straying into Turkish airspace before it was shot down.

“Today’s loss is a stab in the back delivered to us by accomplices of terrorists. I cannot qualify what happened today as anything else,” said a visibly furious Putin. “Our plane was shot down on Syrian territory by an air-to-air missile from an F-16. It fell on Syrian territory four kilometres from the Turkish border. It was flying at 6,000 metres, one kilometre from Turkish territory when it was attacked,” said President Putin he added that the russian pilots and planes had in no way threatened Turkey, but had merely been carrying out their duty to fight the militant Islamic State (IS) group’s militants inside Syria. “we established a long time ago that large quantities of oil and oil products from territory captured by IS have been arriving on Turkish territory,” he said, adding that was how militants had been funding themselves.

Putin out for blood after Turkey shoots down warplane russian president says ‘today’s loss is a stab in the back delivered to us by accomplices of terrorists’ Says downed plane had been attacked inside Syria when it was one kilometre from the Turkish border and had come down four kilometres inside Syria Turkish military says russian plane was warned 10 times within the space of five minutes

CONTINUED ON PAGE 05

PM SAyS DevelOPMeNT AND PrOSPerITy OF Gb TOP PrIOrITy Assuring that the development and prosperity of Gilgit-baltistan is a priority for his government, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif Tuesday announced the construction of the GilgitSkardu expressway at a cost of rs 50 billion, adding that work on the expressway would start soon.

STORY ON PAGE 04

PAF loses FemAle Pilot As trAiner jet crAshes neAr miAnwAli

NucleAr club MAKeS ‘quIeT’ New PuSh TO INDucT INDIA

Pakistan Air Force (PAF) Flying Officer Marium Mukhtiar became the first female pilot to have died on a mission when a PAF trainer jet crashed near Kundian, Mianwali on Tuesday. The jet was on routine operational training mission when it encountered an inflight emergency during the final stages of the mission.

The chairman of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) has visited New Delhi recently to meet Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj as part of a diplomatic “outreach” that seeks to build a consensus to admit India at its annual meeting next June.

STORY ON PAGE 02

ZArDArI wAlKS Free IN SGS-cOTecNA cOrruPTION cASe Accountability court says NAb failed to provide solid evidence against PPP top leader who was accused of receiving kickbacks from award of contract.

STORY ON PAGE 04

GOvT MAy INcreASe TAxeS, DuTIeS ON 350 PrODucTS FrOM DeceMber 1 The move is aimed at meeting revenue shortfall which increased to rs 40b during first quarter of 2015.

STORY ON PAGE 10

STORY ON PAGE 03

02 NEWS

Wednesday, 25 November, 2015

PAF loses FemAle Pilot As trAiner jet crAshes neAr miAnwAli RAWALPINDI

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STAFF REPORT

AKISTAN Air Force (PAF) Flying Officer Marium Mukhtiar became the first female pilot to have died on a mission when a PAF trainer jet crashed near Kundian, Mianwali on Tuesday.

A PAF FT-7PG flown by Squadron Leader Saqib Abbasi and co-pilot Flying Officer Marium Mukhtiar was on a routine operational training mission when it encountered an in-flight emergency during the final stages of the mission, said a PAF statement.

“Both pilots handled the emergency with professionalism and courage and tried to save the aircraft till the last minute, ensuring safety of property and the civilian population on the ground,” read the statement.

They ejected from the aircraft and sustained injuries. They were being

treated at a nearby military hospital, where Flying Officer Marium Mukhtiar succumbed to her injuries.

Mukhtiar was 24 years old and hailed from Karachi.

In an interview with BBC early last

Trains cancelled amidst drivers’ protest for engines replacement QUETTA: Pakistan Railways drivers are protesting against ministry’s slackness to replace debilitated engines into third day leading to cancellation of two trains on Tuesday. Railways Quetta division has been affected by the ongoing protest and drivers’ boycott. The station administration has cancelled Karachi-bound Bolan and Chamanbound passenger expresses. Adding to train boarders’ woes, besides protest, passengers are irked over the cancellation of expresses every other day. Passengers have demanded Pakistan Railways to provide healthy engines.

Drivers have vowed to continue the protest until the government agrees to replace the engines. They further criticised the ministry for conveniently leaving the responsibility of all accidents with ill-fated drivers. Earlier on November 17, Jaffar Express had derailed near Balochistan’s Bolan claiming as many as 17 lives, and injuring at least 148. Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique had said that the accident was a result of the driver’s inability to control the engine after applying brakes. Rafique had chaired a meeting of the Standing Committee of Senate on Railways on November 23. The federal minister told media after meeting that the accident occurred in the Aab-e-Gum area of Balochistan, and was due to the negligence of the driver. The driver was over speeding and could not control the train. Saad Rafique said that initial report of the accident has been prepared and would be made public within the next few days. The minister refused to comment further on the issue before the report goes public. STAFF REPORT

year, Mukhtiar talked about the challenges of being a female pilot in a maledominated environment. Mukhtiar said she joined the air force because she was inspired by the “pomp” and wanted to do “something different”.

She also said her mother had been concerned about her decision to join the force but had supported her throughout.

Pakistan is a highly traditional, patriarchal society where opportunities for women are limited.

But in 2006 seven women broke into one of the country’s most exclusive male clubs to graduate as fighter pilots – perhaps the most prestigious job in the powerful military and for six decades closed to them. It is unclear how many women have joined the air force as fighter pilots since then. A New York Times report in June put the figure at 21.

The crash is the latest deadly accident to hit Pakistan’s military. In May, a military helicopter carrying diplomats to inspect a tourism project crashed, killing seven people, including the ambassadors of Norway and Philippines.

In August, another military helicopter being used as an air ambulance crashed near the northern district of Mansehra, killing 12 people.

Elements in Pakistan, Afghanistan major sources of terrorist financing: US report WASHINGTON AGENCIES

Unidentified elements in Pakistan and Afghanistan are major sources of terrorist financing, says a report by the US Treasury Department.

“There is evidence that recently some funding via donations has been diverted from Afghanistan and Pakistan to terrorist groups operating in Syria,” claims a similar report by the British government. Terrorist financing was the focus of discussions at a White House meeting last week between US security officials and Pakistani defence team headed by Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif.

The report — “Terrorist Financing Risk Assessment, 2015, — notes that the Haqqani Network generates funds by a wide range of sources including businesses and proceeds derived from criminal activities such as smuggling, extortion, and kidnapping for ransom in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The report claims that Lashkar-e-Taiba receives the majority of its funds from within Pakistan, including by using its charitable front organisations, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD) and Falah-i-Insaniyat Founda-

tion (FIF), to solicit donations.

LeT generates additional funds from private donations and commercial ventures. The report notes that the group’s two largest financial hauls come from private donations during Ramzan and profits associated with the collection and sale of animal hides during the Eidul Azha, each of which nets the group millions of dollars. The report also points out that Faisal Shahzad, who tried to blow New York’s Times Square on May 1, 2010, received about $4,900 in cash from a TTP supporter in Pakistan in February 2010. He picked the money from a gas station attendant, Aftab Ali Khan, in Massachusetts.

The report identifies Khan as an unlicensed money transmitter. Six weeks later, Shahzad received another $7,000 in cash, sent by the same source in Pakistan, in Ronkonkoma, New York, from a Pakistani businessman named Mohammed Younis who was also acting as an unlicensed money transmitter.

The report names another Pakistani national, Saifullah Anjum Ranjha, who pleaded guilty to laundering money and to concealing terrorist financing. He ran an unlicensed money

remitter business in the District of Columbia. Over the course of four years, a cooperating witness gave Ranjha and his associates a total of $2,208,000 to transfer abroad, explaining that the funds were the proceeds of, and related to, his involvement in international drug trafficking, international smuggling of counterfeit cigarettes and weapons.

Ranjha conducted 21 transactions in amounts ranging from $13,000 to $300,000. He arranged with his associates for the equivalent amount of money, minus commissions, to be delivered to the cooperating witness, his third party designee, or a specified bank account in Canada, England, Spain, Pakistan, Japan and Australia.

Another defendant, not named in the report, is accused of manufacturing heroin in clandestine laboratories along the Afghan border and of leading one of the largest heroin trafficking organisations in the world. The defendant sent the drug to more than 20 countries, including the United States. “Proceeds from his heroin trafficking were then used to support high-level members of the Taliban in furtherance of their insurgency in Afghanistan,” the report claims.

PTI moving court against returning officers LAHORE STAFF REPORT

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar announced on Tuesday to move courts against the returning officers who, he said, had changed the results in favour of PML-N during the second phase of local government elections in Punjab.

Addressing a press conference on Tuesday, he said the only aim of PML-N was to find innovative ways of rigging elections. “It is the 21st century. Please stop rigging elections,” Sarwar said to the rulers. “The returning officers in Gujranwala, Sheikhupura and Hafizabad changed the results on the whims of PML-N,” he alleged. He criticised the registration of cases against PTI workers under the charges of terrorism.

“It looks like charges of terrorism have become a tool for government to use against its political opponents,” he said.

He was that the time and energies the government was spending on rigging elections might have been invested in solving the problems of the country. He said that it was beyond any doubt that 18,000 votes were transferred out of NA122 and 22,000 were brought into the constituency before the by-polls. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had record of only 812 votes out of the total transferred votes; he said adding that the government had used this tactic time and again to win by-elections. He alleged that the ROs had been changing results in different districts of Punjab in union councils where PTI candidates were winning with a lead of 50 votes.

He expressed dissatisfaction over performance of ECP and said it would lose its credibility if it did not resolve the issues of transfer and shifting of voters in NA122. He called the PTI candidates heroes as they had faced PML-N in local government elections.

Deputy Organizer Punjab Omar Sarfraz Cheema said the government was influencing ROs in Hafizabad to change results of the election in which Saira Afzal Tarar’s father lost to PTI’s candidate Mamoon Jafar Tarar. He condemned the actions of the government.

ChildrEn oUt in thE Cold AftEr qUAkE roCkS EdUCAtion UP north PESHAWAR AGENCIES

Ishtiaq Khalid is having a snow day, forced to stay home from his school in Shangla due to inclement weather ─ but unlike most 12-year-olds, he is not happy about it.

Last month a powerful earthquake destroyed 200 schools and damaged hundreds more in the northwest region, including Ishtiaq’s, leaving thousands of shivering children to study without shelter under wintry skies.

It is a massive setback in an area that has not yet been able to rebuild the schools destroyed in an even more devastating quake a decade ago, and where more than a quarter of primary school age children already do not attend classes.

Engineers have declared the damaged schools too dangerous to study in, saying any aftershocks or further tremors could be “disastrous”.

Another 5.9 magnitude quake shook the region late Sunday, and while no major damage was reported, it under-

scored the point. “We have been warned because of the fear of aftershocks,” said Ishtiaq, who is in the fifth grade at his school in Lelonai village in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s (KP) Shangla district.

Parts of his school were reduced to rubble in the 7.5 magnitude quake that ripped across Afghanistan and Pakistan on October 26, killing nearly 400 people.

Authorities reopened the school five days after the tremor ─ but students were not allowed inside, forced to study under the open sky in a courtyard.

Just days later, rain and snow saw officials cancel classes once more.

“We were happy with the reopening despite attending the classes under open sky and sitting on ground,” Ishtiaq told AFP. But now, he says, it is getting colder, and the government has only issued one tent for his entire school. The teachers can fit inside, he said, but the students cannot.

“It’s very hard to sit without a roof in this cold... the number of students is continuously dropping.”

ClosEd for winTEr: KP officials said last month’s quake completely de-

stroyed 200 schools and damaged some 2,000 more, with preliminary assessments suggesting that up to 8,000 children could be affected.

And with cold weather settling in, they may have to close the schools entirely days before the official start of the winter break.

“The situation is not good,” Qaisar Alam, a senior education official in the area, admitted nearly a month after the tremor. “We are not using the school buildings even with partial damage... Vacation may be announced a week earlier.”

The holiday will last until February as usual, but it is not clear whether the damaged schools can be rebuilt by then.

Most of them were in the mountainous districts of Shangla, upper and lower Dir and Swat, where schools destroyed during the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan’s brief 2007-2009 rule are also being rebuilt. Some schools were in far-flung villages on remote hilltops where mules are the primary form of transport, making reconstruction especially difficult.

Authorities said the recent earthquake

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had compounded their fears for education in the province where they are still struggling to reconstruct 760 schools destroyed in the 2005 disaster, which killed more than 75,000 people and displaced some 3.5 million.”We were planning a phase-wise arrangements to re-rebuild those 760 buildings... but the recent quake completely destroyed 200 more,”

Alam told AFP. The slow progress does not bode well for the future of Ishtiaq’s education.

A decade on, thousands of students are still making an arduous commute to schools in other villages or studying in rented buildings, while some have been provided with big tents in which to hold classes, Alam said.

Wednesday, 25 November, 2015

NEWS

03

nucleAr club mAkes quiet new Push to induct indiA AnAlysTs sAy move could escAlATe IndIA’s sTrAIned relATIonshIP wITh rIvAl PAkIsTAn NEW DELHI

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AGENCIES

IPLOMATS have quietly launched a new push to induct India into a club of nuclear trading nations, but rather than increasing stability in South Asia, the move could escalate strains with rival Pakistan.

The chairman of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) visited New Delhi recently to meet Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj as part of a diplomatic “outreach” that seeks to build a consensus to admit India at its annual meeting next June.

Membership of the 48-nation club would bring India into the nuclear fold 41 years after it tested its first nuclear bomb,

Brazil army chief hails Pak army’s achievements in meeting with Gen raheel BRASILIA

and give the nation of 1.25 billion a vested interest in curbing the world’s most dangerous regional arms race.

“It’s a very delicate process, but I think there is less and less justification for the impasse,” Rafael Grossi, the Argentinian ambassador to Vienna who heads the NSG, told Reuters in an interview.

Yet there are doubts. For one, India has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, which seeks to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

And Pakistan, an ally of China, also aspires to join the NSG. With a history as a proliferator, Pakistan’s accession would be a tough sell. Because the NSG operates by consensus, admitting India alone would mean it could then bar its western neighbour from the club, potentially pushing Pakistan further to the fringes.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has been testing missiles that can reach all of India, and very short-range missiles that it insists could be used only if Indian troops cross onto Pakistani soil. A seat at the NSG would strengthen India’s geopolitical clout and help it capitalise on nuclear trade and technology transfer opportunities, while

also raising concern in Pakistan.

“India has a nuclear deal with the US, with France, it will soon have deals with Australia and Japan. So all this will of course complement its effort to get into NSG,” said a senior Pakistani security official with knowledge of nuclear issues.

“But people don’t understand that India will use all this additional fuel (through civil nuclear deals) to make energy and have a lot more left over to use to make weapons. “So at the end of it, the need for even more deterrence from our side will grow, not decrease.”

UppEr hAnd: Pakistan sees a nuclear lead as vital insurance against possible aggression by its larger neighbour, and it appears to be gaining the upper hand over India in the nuclear contest.

Analysts Toby Dalton and Michael Krepon estimate Pakistan is producing 20 nuclear warheads a year to India’s five.

Yet defending that lead is a “losing proposition” that imposes huge costs on Pakistan’s economy and strains its social fabric, they said.

In a report for the Carnegie and Stimson think tanks, Dalton and Krepon ar-

gued Pakistan should abandon its goal of “full-spectrum” deterrence against India and satisfy itself with “strategic” deterrence, or the ability to launch an effective counter-strike in the event of an attack.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence and partition in 1947, two over Kashmir. Their disputed frontier is one of the world’s most heavily militarised regions. Border clashes and incursions pose a constant risk of escalation.

The US State Department declined to comment on specific discussions over Pakistan, but an official said Washington had not entered into talks on a civil nuclear pact with it. Nor was it seeking a waiver for Pakistan to trade with the NSG. The United States was continuing to integrate India into the “global nonproliferation mainstream”, this official also said, adding that Washington supported India’s membership in the four multilateral export control regimes. One of those is the NSG. ComforT lEvEl: India’s long road to nuclear legitimacy began with a bilateral deal with the United States in 2005 that, three years later, yielded an exemp-

China, Pakistan to adopt zero tolerance policy against corruption in CPEC ISLAMABAD MIAN ABRAR

APP

Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) Gen Raheel Sharif on Monday met Chief of the Joint Staff of the Armed Forces of Brazil Gen José Carlos de Nardi, who hailed the Pakistan Army’s professionalism and operational achievements especially in ongoing counter-terrorism operations. According to a series of tweets posted by DirectorGeneral Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Lt-Gen Asim Bajwa, Gen Raheel was presented a guard of honour and a 19gun salute on his arrival at the Brazil Army headquarters. In his meeting with Gen Nardi, the army chief discussed matters concerning regional security and the emerging challenges faced by the region. Tactical Reconnaissance Group (TRG) exchanges were also discussed. At the Brazilian army headquarters, Gen Raheel discussed with the Brazil Army Command matters of mutual professional interest and military-to-military relations, said the ISPR spokesman.

Govt claims 91pc drop in polio refusal cases in Balochistan QUETTA STAFF REPORT

The Emergency Operation Cell (EOC) Balochistan, established to eradicate the crippling virus, claimed to have reduced the number of polio vaccination refusals by more than 91 per cent in the province during the recent anti-polio campaign. Dr. Aftab Kakar, an officer at the EOC, informed that parents of 12,607 children below the age of five years were convinced by polio volunteers, religious scholars and officials to administer polio drops to these kids. The provincial health department launched three-day anti polio drive in Quetta and other parts of Balochistan from November 10 to 12 in the province. Dr. Syed Saif ur Rehman, the chief of EOC informed media that more than 2.4 million children were administered polio drops during the campaign. Dr Kakar, claimed that during the recent immunisation campaign, 448 families refused to vaccinate their children in Quetta block.

The official, however, had no information about the number of kids in these families.

He further said that the number of families refusing to vaccinate their children was 5,015 while 4,567 families were successfully convinced during the recent campaign. The Balochistan health department formed committees to convince the parents and bring an end to refusals in the province.

tion allowing it to trade in sensitive nuclear technology with NSG nations.

New Delhi expressed its interest in 2010 in formally joining the nuclear club.

But India’s lobbying has met with scepticism from European countries like Austria and Switzerland, who have questioned its refusal to sign the NPT and give up nuclear weapons.

Indian negotiators now detect a change of tone, and are focusing on winning over European sceptics. That, in turn, could bring round China, they calculate. “We are optimistic; there is a desire within the NSG to bring this process to a conclusion sooner rather than later,” one Indian diplomat told Reuters. “People are comfortable with India.”

Despite two summit meetings between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Beijing has yet to signal its assent and may not agree, analysts caution. Despite those concerns, India is upbeat: “France joined the NSG before ratifying the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” said the Indian diplomat.

“It’s not about arms controls. It’s about export controls.”

China on Wednesday made public its intention to bring under strict scrutiny all projects being implemented vis-àvis the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) with China’s Anti-corruption watchdog Vice Minister Liu Jianchao saying that strict vigilance would be applied in execution of all the projects of CPEC. “Corruption is not only a threat to a nation but it is a global hazard which might hamper regional and global peace and development. It is also a peril for national and global financial order which has capacity to take any nation down,” the vice minister told a group of media personnel in an informal exclusive briefing on Tuesday.

Jianchao, who is spearheading a strong anti-graft drive across China as vice minister of the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention, said that no irregularities would be tolerated in the strategic One Road, One Belt project.

He said that China was cooperating with Pakistan to fight corruption and that the two countries may jointly investigate and interrogate if anyone is found involved in malpractices in the CPEC and other economic projects.

“We are going to sign an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to ensure transparency and good governance in China-Pakistan economic cooperation. We have almost finalised the draft and it would be signed this year,” said the minister.

file photo

“Since CPEC is the pilot project of the road & belt scheme, China wants to ensure transparency and good governance in the project’s execution. We want to keep CPEC transparent. This is why President Xi Jinping and his team have adopted zero-tolerance policy against corruption. We have brought the most influential people to justice irrespective of their office and influence,” the vice minister said.

“Pakistan is my second home and this is my third visit here this year. I was happy to see smooth implementation of the CPEC. Making CPEC a success is important for China as its success would help implement the One Belt, One Road initiative,” he said.

He said the initiative was aimed at uniting and bridging all the countries besides introducing development, progress and prosperity for the people

of the entire region. He said that China had investigated around 230,000 government officials, who were all members of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) and almost 95 per cent of those investigated were punished.

“Out of those punished, there were around 150 influential people who were either vice governors or vice ministers.

We also took action against those who fled the country. Over 600 people who had fled have been brought back through effective pursuance via Interpol and other anti-crime bodies operating worldwide. We have also launched Skynet 2015 which helped track the fugitive criminals. Still, we have 100 people on Red Notice. Next year, we will launch Skynet 2016 and we will keep working till all corrupt have been tracked down,” he added.

Asked why the US and Canada

Pak booted from hrC because of poor lobbying, minister tells nA ISLAMABAD ONLINE

Minister for SAFRON Abdul Qadir Baloch said Pakistan failed to get membership of the Human Rights Council in Geneva due to strong opposition from some powerful countries.

Responding to a call attention notice moved by Dr. Shireen Mazari and others regarding Pakistan failing to get the membership, he said the missions have been directed to increase their efforts so that Pakistan may not face such defeat in future.

He also stated that Pakistan has been a member of the Council three times, adding that directives have been issued to missions abroad for stronger lobbying. In the meantime, the Na-

tional Assembly has been informed that uninterrupted gas supply is being provided to domestic consumers and there was no curtailment in this regard.

Replying to a call attention notice

by Haji Muhammad Akram Ansari and others, Parliamentary Secretary for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahzadi Umarzadi Tiwana said that a mechanism could be evolved to facilitate the industry through LNG. Speaking on a point of order, Parliamentary Secretary for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahzadi Umerzadi Tiwana said that a countrywide campaign would begin from tomorrow to create awareness to eliminate violence against women.

On points of order Sahibzada Tariqullah, Mahmood Khan Achakzai,

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Ali Muhammad Khan, Moeen Wattoo, Mian Abdul Mannan, Shireen Mazari and Chaudhry Muhammad Ashraf condemned the executions of opposition political leaders in Bangladesh. They urged the government to highlight the matter at the international level.

They also demanded that the matter be taken to the International Court of Justice. Haji Ghulam Ahmed Bilour, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, Abid Sher Ali and Moeen Wattoo paid homage to late Makhdoom Amin Fahim and lauded his services for the country and democracy. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs, Sheikh Aftab Ahmed told the House that a new package for deceased government employees’ has been prepared and will be implemented soon after the approval of

were not cooperating with China to hand over the fugitive officials of China, Jianchao said the major hurdle was that China had no legal assistance agreement with the US and Canada.

“Despite the fact that we don’t have legal assistance agreement with US or Canada, we are pursuing for the handing over of our fugitives and both the governments are cooperating. We hope to settle the matter amicably,” said the minister.

The minister said that the anti-graft drive had helped establish the writ of law and most of the fugitives were surrendering to the government. He said that his ministry’s most important task was to ensure discipline and transparency in the ruling party – the CPC. “As director-general of the department of international cooperation for the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the CPC, my most important job is to ensure transparency in the ruling party. We have introduced guidelines for punishment in the CPC and law enforcement has been strengthened.

Now there is a stronger cooperation and coordination between the various state institutions to bring the culprits to justice,” he added.

He said that inspectors were now paying visits at the provincial and municipality levels and all state institutions - from schools to hospitals – are being monitored on a regular basis.

He said that wherever the inspectors had visited, they had found problems, but that they were committed to punishing all those found involved in corrupt practices.

prime minister. He said enhanced financial assistance has been proposed in the package and employment to one of the children of the deceased employee has been recommended.

The House adopted resolutions urging the government to take immediate steps for implementation of deceased employees’ package, construction of new water reservoirs, establishing a women university in Buner and immediate action against the sale of counterfeit drugs and medicines in the federal capital. Different private members bills were introduced in the National Assembly on Tuesday. These included “The code of Civil Procedure (Amendment) Bill, 2015”, “The Constitution (Amendment) Bill, 2015” and “Amendment of Article 175”.

“The Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Bill, 2015”, “The Constitution (Amendment) Bill, 2015 Insertion of Article 198” and “The Pakistan Baitul Mal Amendment Bill, 2015” were also introduced in the House. The chair referred these Bills to the Standing Committees concerned.

04 NEWS

Wednesday, 25 November, 2015

Zardari walks Free in sGsCoteCna Corruption Case ACCOUNTABILITY COURT SAYS NAB FAILED TO PROVIDE SOLID EVIDENCE AGAINST PPP TOP LEADER WHO WAS ACCUSED OF RECEIVING KICKBACKS FROM AWARD OF CONTRACT ISLAMABAD

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STAFF REPORT

ORMER president and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari was acquitted by an accountability court in the SGS-Cotecna references against him Tuesday. SGS-Cotecna reference pertains to the award of pre-shipment contracts in which the accused had allegedly received six per cent kickback.

The court said the former Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) chairman AR Siddiqui had already been acquitted in the case and questioned prolonging the case against co-accused Asif Zardari.

The NAB court said the accountability body was unable to provide solid evidence and that the docu-

Bilawal smells a little rigging in Punjabi LB polls KARACHI: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said on Tuesday that the results of the first and second phase of the local bodies election in Punjab were being changed in the name of re-counting by the ruling Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PMLN) He said that the party was influencing LB elections results in Punjab. Bilawal was talking to PPP Punjab President Manzoor Watoo, who called on him at Bilawal House on Tuesday. Vice President PPPP Senator Sherry Rehman was also present on the occasion. President PPP Punjab Mian Manzoor Watoo apprised the chairman about rigging by the ruling party during the first and second phase of LB elections in Punjab. He also complained that Nawaz League was exerting pressure to change results, especially in Mandi Bahauddin. Wattoo invited Bilawal to participate as a guest of honour in the mass wedding ceremony of fifty deserving couples by Ameer Begum Welfare Trust. The event will be held in Lahore in the second week of January 2016.

Bilawal assured him that he would attend. The PPP chairman said that he would visit Punjab after LB elections to meet with party workers and will re-energise and strengthen the party on the ground. He said that party preparations for the upcoming general elections would start from Punjab with new vigour, fervour, and strength. He said that PPP is fighting for the rights of common and bare-footed peoples of Pakistan. He reiterated that this commitment would remain forever. STAFF REPORT

MONITORING DESK Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party Chairman Mahmood Khan Achakzai has reiterated his support for democracy in any confrontation between national institutions. Talking to Pakistan Today Editor Arif Nizami in his talk show DNA on Channel 24, Achakzai said that Pakistan’s problems and situation was not unique in the world, nor was this the only country in the world which had an army. However, he said the human beings’ collective wisdom had reached the conclusion that democracy and not dictatorship was the only way for a society to progress. He said that only civilian leadership reflecting the will of the people could lead the way to progress and prosperity for its citizens.

“Civil and military bureaucracy as well as the judiciary have run the country into the ground and we, as the citizens, have paid for it dearly,” he said and added

mentation presented in court was incomplete and in the form of photocopies rather than original documents. Speaking to journalists after the verdict was announced, the PPP leader’s counsel Farooq H. Naek said his client had been falsely implicated in the “politically motivated” cases. He maintained there was no documentation implicating his client, adding that Zardari had to spend eight years in jail while his wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was forced into exile, which affected their family life.

During the Nov 11 hearing of the SGS-Cotecna reference, Additional Deputy Prosecutor General (ADPG) NAB Chaudhry Riaz said the bureau had submitted the relevant record before the court, and that the original record had gone missing from the custody of the Ehtesab bench. Riaz had said the NAB also

produced witnesses to authenticate the evidence and it was up to the court to decide the fate of these documents. There is, however, one reference still pending against Zardari in the Rawalpindi accountability court.

Asif Zardari had filed applications with the accountability court Islamabad seeking acquittal in the SGS and Cotecna corruption cases in Feb 2015. In the applications, the former president’s counsel had stated there was no incriminating evidence against his client.

He also argued that the cases were constituted on a political basis. On Dec 22, 2014, the accountability court had dismissed Zardari’s applications for acquittal in the SGS and Cotecna cases.

The same court on Dec 12, 2014, had accepted his application in the Ursus tractors and import of gold corruption cases. Later, NAB filed appeals with the Islamabad High Court against the acquittal of Zardari. On May 28, 2014, the accountability court had also acquitted Zardari from the polo ground corruption reference.

The counsel for the former president filed applications in the five cases in 2013 out of which three were already accepted while the SGS and Cotecna cases were left under trial with the Islamabad accountability court.

PM SAYS DEVELOPMENT AND PROSPERITY OF GB TOP PRIORITY GILGIT APP

Assuring that the development and prosperity of Gilgit-Baltistan is a priority for his government, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif Tuesday announced the construction of the Gilgit-Skardu Expressway at a cost of Rs 50 billion.

He was addressing the cheque distribution ceremony for earthquake affectees in Gilgit on Tuesday. He said that work on the Gilgit-Skardu expressway would start soon. He said the Attabad tunnel has been completed in Rs 27 billion, while the Lowari tunnel project will be completed next year.

He said the Khunjrab-Sust-Gilgit road would go up to Havelian.

He said that the expressway would be connected with the ChinaPakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to create economic activities in the area. Nawaz Sharif said that an airport would be constructed for jet services in Gilgit. Nawaz said that Raikot and Havelian would be connected with a smooth road. Lowari project, a tunnel road that connects Dir to Chitral Valley, would be completed in 2016. He

said the economic zone would make Gilgit-Baltistan more advanced than Karachi and Lahore and provide jobs to locals. The PM said that the government is aware of the bundle of issues that people face and the GB government cannot handle them alone. Nawaz said that distances in the hearts of the people are cut when roads are able to provide easy journeys. He wished the previous governments had taken the issues of people of Gilgit-Baltistan into account and taken necessary steps to resolve them.

The prime minister said the federal government is spending billions of rupees in the areas for better communication facilities and other welfare oriented development projects. He said these steps would promote tourism in the area and bring a major change in the lives of the people.

Nawaz said efforts are being made to strengthen democracy in GilgitBaltistan and a committee has been formed to work out political reforms in the area. The prime minister said that work on various power projects, including Bhasha Dam is in progress to tackle the energy crisis. He directed

for early payment of compensation money to people affected by the earthquake. He said work is also in hand for the Bunji and Dasu dams, and when these projects are completed hydel power generation would increase by 15,000 MW. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif distributed cheques among the quake-affected people of Ghizr and Diamir. He was briefed that 14 people had died due to the earthquake, the next of kin of each deceased has been given Rs 600,000, and Rs 100,000 have been given to those injured. 89 houses were destroyed while 603 were partially damaged. Owners of totally destroyed houses would be given Rs 200,000 each, and owners of partially damaged houses will receive Rs 100,000. In addition, the affected people have been provided food and other relief items.

Earlier, in his address Governor GB Mir Ghazanfar Ali said development oriented projects will be given priority for the welfare of people. He said Gilgit-Baltistan offers vast opportunities for the promotion of tourism and both the government and private sector should pay attention to the sector.

CGPA notes poor implementation of RTI law in KP PESHAWAR APP

The Centre for Governance and Public Accountability (CGPA) on Tuesday noted the poor implementation of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Right to Information (RTI) Law by provincial government departments. The centre filed 152 information requests to 32 provincial departments and 120 to district level health, education, public health engineering, district courts and police departments. The information requests were about the utilisation of development funds in fiscal year 2014-15 and revealed that Chitral and Upper Dir districts are worst performers, said a press release. The centre, a non-governmental body, demanded affirmative action on part of the KP public bodies and RTI Commission for implementation of RTI law in the province. It also demanded all administrative heads of public bodies at the districts and provincial level to fulfil their constitutional and legal responsibility to implement the RTI law in letter and spirit. Public bodies should proactively disclose all information of public importance so that citizens could positively engage themselves in improving public service delivery, it concluded. The centre revealing the information as requested, said that Nowshera and DI Khan turned out to be the best performers in implementation of KP Right to Information (RTI) Laws. It said that at the provincial level, finance, food, information and public relations, and tourism departments are the best performers in implementation of the RTI law, while health, labour, law, mineral development, and Planning and Development (P&D) departments are the worst performers.

District courts and district education departments lie at the bottom of the district level departments’ ranking of five selected departments’ comparative performance, it said. It observed that since Chitral and Upper Dir falls in Provincially Administered Trial Areas (PATA) and RTI law is yet to be extended there, the performance of the two districts was poor in responding to public queries.

It further said that among the settled districts, Abbottabad ranked the lowest with very poor response to RTI. The Centre said the findings identify an emphatic necessity of affirmative action on part of the executive and change in mindset of the public bodies, adding that under the KP’s Right to Information law, every public body shall provide the requested information within 10 working days. It said that out of 152 information requests, only 62 departments responded within 20 working days and 90 complaints were filed with the RTI commission. Those 90 complaints should have been resolved within 60 days as per KP RTI law but only 50 could be resolved. 40 complaints are yet not resolved despite the lapse of 60 days, it added.

Achakzai reaffirms support for civilian leadership that judiciary had turned over a new leaf with strong support from the civil society which was a very welcome development.

“The role of democracy and civilians is of key importance in governing the country, tackling the existential threats it faces and making it a respected member of the comity of nations,” Achakzai said.

Sidestepping a question of whether there were any forces in or out of the parliament that wanted to sabotage the democratic process, Achakzai said that an unambiguous message had to be sent to the general public that there would be no countervailing of justice at any level for the people of the country.

“We have to make people believe that no one will persecute a fellow citizen, no sect or creed will oppress another, that no

interest will try to dominate the other,” he said. Achakzai decried the lack of justice in the country and resentment among the smaller provinces.

“You have to tell the Baloch people that they are entitled to resources produced in their own province,” he said and added that the situation had improved from what it was a few years ago but there was still a long way to go.

So long as there is injustice and outside groups occupy resources in your community, there will be resentment among the masses, he said.

Talking about the PML-N government’s policies to address unrest and dissatisfaction in the people, he said that while the policies had been a step in the right direction, even Nawaz Sharif did not

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have the full support of his PML-N colleagues, most of which had simply acquiesced under the weight of Nawaz Sharif’s will. Asked if Sharif really was to the left of most of his party, he said that that was not the case.

“Sharif has simply learned through experience that the country’s continued survival depends on the existence of a transparent parliamentary system to address the concerns of its various people including Sindhis, Balochis and Pashtuns.” Achakzai stressed the need for good governance and indiscriminate dispensation of justice in all matters. He also called for a policy of non-intervention and peaceful co-existence with the neighbouring countries. Achakzai welcomed the statement of the chief justice that all

state institutions should operate within the constitutionally mandated limits.

He said that the army was overstepping the constitutional limits and pointed to the country’s foreign policy which he said had become the sole purview of the army leadership. “The origin of power must be the elected parliament of Pakistan,” he asserted.

“What is our policy in Afghanistan, or in India, or in Iran? All these matters should be debated in the parliament,” he said and asked how it was possible that the entire nation was in indolent slumber as a war raged on in the country.

He said that the army was already stretched thin fighting in the tribal areas, Karachi and Balochistan and called for a change in direction through deliberations among all stakeholders including the civil society, parliament, judiciary and army so that the country could be brought back from the brink of anarchy.

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IndIa opposes deal to phase out fossIl fuels by 2100 at clImate summIt NEW DELHI

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To keep warming in check, some countries want the Paris agreement to include a commitment to decarbonise — to reduce and ultimately phase out the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas that is blamed for climate change — this century. India, the world’s third largest carbon emitter, is dependent on coal for most of its energy needs, and despite a pledge to expand solar and wind power has said its economy is too small and its people too poor to end use of the fossil fuel anytime soon.

“It’s problematic for us to make that commitment at this point in time. It’s certainly a stumbling block (to a deal),” Ajay Mathur, a senior member of India’s

AGENCIES

NDIA would reject a deal to combat climate change that includes a pledge for the world to wean itself off fossil fuels this century, a senior official said, underlying the difficulties countries face in agreeing how to slow global warming. Almost 200 nations will meet in the French capital on Nov 30 to try and seal a deal to prevent the planet from warming more than the 2 degrees Celsius that scientists say is vital if the world is to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change.

At least 11 dead in attack on Tunisia military bus

negotiating team for Paris, told Reuters in an interview this week. “The entire prosperity of the world has been built on cheap energy. And suddenly we are being forced into higher cost energy.

That’s grossly unfair,” he said.

Mathur said India, whose position at climate talks is seen by some in the West as intransigent, was committed to the 2 degrees ceiling as a long-term goal and was confident a deal would be reached.

But he said Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government wanted an agreement that required countries like India to do more over time as they become wealthier, rather than an “ideology-driven process” committing everyone to ending carbon

Turkey downs Russian jet

TUNIS AGENCIES

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 01

At least 11 people were killed on Tuesday after an explosion hit a bus carrying Tunisian presidential guards along a major street in the centre of the capital Tunis. Security and presidential sources said the explosion was an attack, adding it was not immediately clear whether it was a bomb or an explosive fired at the bus as it travelled along Mohamed V Avenue. Ambulances rushed from the scene and security forces quickly sealed off the area. Tunisia has suffered two major attacks this year targeting its tourism industry. A gunman killed 38 foreigners at a beach hotel in June and in March, gunmen killed 21 tourists in an attack at the Bardo Museum in Tunis. Islamic State claimed both attacks. The army has also been fighting against another Islamist militant group in the mountains near the Algerian border. Militants have hit checkpoints and patrols in rural areas in the past.

“And now we get stabbed in our back and our planes, which are fighting terrorism, are struck. This despite the fact that we signed an agreement with our American partners to warn each other about air-to-air incidents and Turkey announced it was allegedly fighting against terrorism as part of the US coalition. If Islamic State militants earned hundreds of millions of dollars from trading oil and enjoyed the protection of the armed forces “of entire governments” no wonder, said Putin, they behaved so boldly.

“We will of course analyse everything that happened and today’s tragic events will have serious consequences for Russo-Turkish relations,” he said.

Putin expressed anger at Turkey’s decision to convene a meeting of NATO to discuss the incident, suggesting Ankara should instead have swiftly tried to contact Moscow. “It’s as if we shot down a Turkish plane rather than them shooting down one of ours.

What do they want? To put NATO at Islamic State’s disposal? We will never tolerate such crimes like the one committed today.”

Car bomb kills four at hotel housing election judges in Egypt’s Sinai

usage. India also wants to see rich nations’ pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions subjected to tougher reviews than those of developing nations, and Mathur warned against an “external penal regime that will only turn people back”. India, whose 1.2 billion people produce far lower emissions per capita than the world average, in October committed to slow the rate of growth in its carbon output by a third over the next 15 years. While the pledge was welcomed by some environmentalists, others worry that India’s huge population and rapid industrialisation mean heavy future use of carbon will tip the balance in the global fight against climate change.

Turkey is one of the most popular holiday destinations for Russians, and the two countries enjoy active diplomatic relations.

TURKEY CONFIRMS DOWNING JET: Meanwhile, Turkey confirmed that it shot down a Russian warplane, claiming it had violated Turkish airspace and ignored repeated warnings.A Turkish military statement said the plane entered Turkish airspace over town of Yaylidag, in Hatay province. It said the plane was warned 10 times within the space of five minutes. The ministry said the pilots parachuted but added that Moscow had no further contact with them. One of the pilots of the warplane was in the hands of Turk forces in Syria who were searching for the other pilot, broadcaster CNN Turk reported, citing local sources.

Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the warplane crashed in the Turkmen Mountains region in the coastal province of Latakia. The Turkomen Mountains region has been subjected to a government offensive in recent days under the cover of Russian airstrikes. Last

month, Turkish jets shot down an unidentified drone that it said had violated Turkey’s airspace Footage from private broadcaster Haberturk TV showed a warplane going down in flames in a woodland area, a long plume of smoke trailing behind it. The plane went down in area known by Turks as “Turkmen Mountain” in northern Syria near the Turkish border, Haberturk said. Separate footage from Turkey’s Anadolu Agency showed two pilots parachuting out of the jet before it crashed.

Russia has repeatedly carried out air strikes in Syria in defence of President Bashar al-Assad. Russia’s defence ministry was not immediately available for comment.

Turkey called this week for a UN Security Council meeting to discuss attacks on Turkmens in neighbouring Syria, and last week Ankara summoned the Russian ambassador to protest the bombing of their villages. Ankara has traditionally expressed solidarity with Syrian Turkmens, who are Syrians of Turkish descent. President Tayyip Erdogan has been briefed by the head of the military and will talk to Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the sources said.

Taliban capture 13 Afghan soldiers after helicopter crash KABUL AGENCIES

Taliban insurgents captured 13 Afghan government soldiers on Tuesday after their helicopter crashed in territory under the militants’ control, police said. Three soldiers were killed in the crash. Sayed Aqa Saqeb, police chief for the northern province of Faryab where the transport helicopter went down, said it was not clear why it crashed. “Now we’re thinking of ways to rescue those captured by the Taliban,” Saqeb said. An army spokesman in northern Afghanistan said he had no information about a helicopter crash. The Taliban, fighting to expel foreign forces and bring down the US-backed government, have made gains over the past year outside their southern and eastern heartlands and into northern areas including Faryab.

BlaSTS IN KaBUl KIll SIx: Elsewhere in the country, a provincial director from Afghanistan’s national tax office was killed by Taliban insurgents in the eastern Ghazni province, said Mohammad Ali Ahmedi, Ghazni’s deputy governor. He said that insurgents stopped the director’s vehicle, dragged him out and shot him dead as he was on his way to his office. Meanwhile in two separate blasts in the capital Kabul, six civilians were killed and six others were wounded, said Sediq Sediqqi, spokesman for the Interior Ministry. “The first explosion happened when a pressure cooker full of explosives detonated in western part of the city, killing three civilians,” he said, adding that three other civilians were killed and six wounded in a bombing elsewhere in the city. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks. Bombings and especially roadside bombs are a major threat to both Afghan security forces and civilians across the country. In October two British Royal Air Force (RAF) personnel and three others died when their helicopter crashed while landing at the headquarters of the Resolute Support international Nato coalition in the Afghan capital Kabul. While in August, at least 17 people, including 12 Afghan army soldiers, were killed in a helicopter crash in Shinkay, a district relatively free of militant activity in the otherwise volatile province of Zabul. The Taliban claimed to have shot down the chopper with a rocket launcher, but Shinkay district chief Mohammad Qasim Khan had attributed the crash to a technical fault.

CAIRO AGENCIES

A car bomb exploded outside a hotel housing election judges in Egypt’s North Sinai on Tuesday, killing at least four policemen and injuring 12 people, security and medical sources said. The blasts in the provincial capital of al-Arish came a day after the second round of a parliamentary election closed. Egyptian state television also reported the incident. A suicide bomber tried to drive a car bomb into the hotel before security forces opened fire on him, causing the car to explode, security sources said. At least two judges were among the injured, authorities added. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Islamic State’s Egypt affiliate, Sinai Province, has carried out similar attacks in the region as part of its bid to topple the Cairo government. State television and security sources first said a car bomb exploded then a second blast hit the area about ten minutes later. Ambulances rushed to the scene, which was sealed off by soldiers and police, said the security sources.

Violence flares as Kerry arrives in Israel JERUSALEM AGENCIES

A Palestinian motorist rammed his vehicle into a group of Israeli soldiers at a West Bank checkpoint on Tuesday, wounding three, the military said, as US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived for his first visit in more than a year on a mission to try and calm two months of deadly violence.

Kerry touched down amid a new rash of deadly attacks that have dampened any lingering hopes of renewed peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians during the Obama administration’s final year. Kerry conceded his visit had none of the ambitious agendas of past trips and was primarily focused on stemming the violence. The

violence erupted in mid-September over tensions surrounding a sensitive Jerusalem holy site and quickly spread across Israel and into the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Over this period, 19 Israelis have been killed, mostly in stabbings, while 89 Palestinians have been killed

by Israeli fire. Of them, 57 are said by Israel to be attackers and the rest were killed in clashes.

The past week has been the deadliest thus far. A Palestinian fatally stabbed an Israeli soldier at a West Bank gas station Monday before being killed along with two other Palestinian attackers. Five people were killed in stabbing and shooting attacks last Thursday, including Ezra Schwartz, an 18-year-old American from Kerry’s home state of Massachusetts.

Kerry lamented Schwartz’s death as “an-

Refugees sew lips together in border protest GREECE/MACEDONIA BORDER AGENCIES

Refugees stranded at the Greece-Macedonia border have stripped down and sewn their lips together to protest against the restrictions placed on their movement. A group of Moroccans, Iranians and Pakistanis, stranded by a policy em-

ployed by Balkan states to filter the flow of people passing through the region, blocked rail traffic and demanded passage to western Europe on Monday.

Last week, Slovenia, a member of Europe’s Schengen area of passportfree travel, declared it would only grant passage to those fleeing conflict in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and that all

others deemed “economic migrants” would be sent back.

That left leaving a growing number of refugees stranded in tents and around camp fires with winter approaching.

Rights groups have questioned the policy, warning asylum should be granted on merit, not on the basis of nationality.

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other young life cut short.” “It happens almost every day over there and it’s terrible, and too many Israelis have been killed and stabbed, and too many Palestinians,” he told reporters traveling with him in the Middle East on Monday.

“And there’s no excuse for any of the violence. There’s just no rationale.” Amid so much violence, Kerry said “there’s no highfalutin, grandiose, hidden agenda here.” He said he sought steps “that could calm things down a little bit so people aren’t living in absolute, daily terror that they might be stabbed or driven into or shot trying to walk around their city.” The attacks renewed Tuesday as Kerry landed in Israel.

The Israeli military said a Palestinian motorist rammed the soldiers at a West Bank checkpoint, lightly wound-

ing three of them. It said the attacker was shot and wounded at the scene.

Kerry will meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials before traveling to the West Bank for discussions with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The script is well-trodden, with Kerry likely to ask both sides to avoid provocative actions.

For the Israelis, that means holding off on construction of new settlements in lands the Palestinians seek for their future state. For the Palestinians, it means ending incitement to violence. Kerry has visited Israel and the Palestinian territories only once since the collapse in April 2014 of a nine-month peace process he led. He traveled back three months later during warfare between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

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Students injured due to one-wheeling in Rawalpindi RAWALPINDI STAFF REPORT

At least three students sustained severe wounds when motorcyclists rammed into them while one-wheeling in Rawalpindi on Tuesday. The incident took place when three girls, identified as Alisha Fareed, Aneela and Zainab, were going to Government Girls High School and collided with bikers who were one-wheeling near Liaquat Bagh. The schoolgirls were taken to the district headquarter hospital for medical assistance where the doctors stated that the victims were out of danger.

CDA plans to give public playgrounds on lease to private companies ISLAMABAD ONLINE

CDA has planned to lease out 3 public play grounds to private companies. Sources said CDA sports wing has sought report in this respect from legal wing as to how private partners can be included in the process of progress and development of sports grounds in federal capital. Sources said that it has been stated in the summary sent to CDA board that it has become difficult for CDA to complete the incomplete grounds and arrange for coaching of young players.

Several play grounds are lying incomplete for want of funds. Therefore CDA should let the private partners to join hands with it in the development of these grounds.

Sources said that 3 major cricket, football and hockey grounds will be leased out to private companies following the approval of the plan by concerned quarters.

NA committee seeks record from CDA on allotment, cancellation of kiosks ISLAMABAD ONLINE

National Assembly (NA) body on kiosks reprimanded the Capital Development Authority (CDA) officials and directed them to furnish record about the reasons for allotment and cancellation of kiosks after one day. Committee met under its Chairman Dr Ibad Ullah here in parliament house on Tuesday. Capt (R) Shahbaz Tahir, director municipal administration CDA, while briefing the body said that 236 licenses were issued against 700 monthly charges in 1986 and after issuing 249 more license in 2009 the total number soared to 485 but their license were cancelled under the directions of Chairman CDA for security and other reasons in Nov 2013. Director Disaster management Authority (DMA) said all the kiosks stand cancelled legally.

Committee has called Khokha Association today to present their stance.

Leopard kills minor in Abbottabad ABBOTTABAD STAFF REPORT

A wild leopard attacked a 10-year-old boy Azhar, killing him in the forest area of Makol Bala in Abbottabad. According to details, the incident took place when Azhar was playing outside the house and a wild leopard attacked him claiming his life on the spot. The relatives rushed out of the house after hearing screams but were unable to chase the beast. The corpse of the deceased was taken to a hospital for post mortem after which the doctors handed over the body to the family. The incident has created fear among the locals. The boy’s uncle and teachers visited forest ministry office and demanded to capture the leopard as early as possible. The bereaved family also pressed the officials to take precautionary measures to protect the lives of villagers. According to natives, more than three people have been attacked by leopards in Makol Bala Valley over the past few months.

RAWALPINDI: Absence of fence on Lai nullah near Pir Wadhai More may result in a mishap. online

Army, rAngers to secure IslAmAbAd lg polls, ecp decIdes ISLAMABAD

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APP

He election Commission of Pakistan (eCP) on Tuesday decided to deploy armed forces personnel and Rangers for security during local government elections in the federal capital on Nov 30.

The decision was made at an important meeting chaired by Chief election Commissioner Justice (R) Sardar Raza Khan at the eCP Headquarters. The meeting was held to review arrangements, logistics, security issues and printing of ballot papers with regards to the conduct of Local Government elections in Islamabad. Members of the eCP, secretary interior, IG Police, chief commissioner, MD PCP, DRO Islamabad

and senior officers of the eCP were present. Agreeing to a proposal from the Islamabad IGP to deploy rangers at every polling station, the CeC said that under Article 218(3) of the Constitution, it is the duty of the eCP to conduct Local Government elections in ICT in a free, fair and transparent manner by providing a level playing field to all the contesting candidates and political parties.

The district returning officer (DRO) briefed the eCP about the structure of the Local Government in the ICT, printing of ballot papers and other arrangements made so far in this regard.

The IGP briefed the commission about the security plan while the CeC highlighted initiatives and preventive measure taken for the implementation of the Code of Conduct issued by the eCP and additional measures adopted for en-

suring just, honest and credible elections in Islamabad. The eCP praised the steps taken by DRO, IG Police and Islamabad Administration after thorough deliberations and considering the proposals of all the participants.

The Commission, in view of the proposals, decided to send a requisition for the deployment of Army Personnel on 62 buildings considered to be highly sensitive and agreed to the security plan presented by the IG police including the deployment of Rangers at each polling station. It was agreed that the DRO Islamabad shall decide all the complaints about change of polling stations by November 26 and no change should be made thereafter. The eCP decided that the DRO will issue instructions to all the returning officers (ROs) to re-check the printed ballot papers before receiving, to

Rs 1b development package expected for Islamabad as polls approach

avoid any mistakes, missing names and symbols. The DRO was also asked to ensure that polling at all 640 polling stations is started on time at 7 am.

Five Rangers personnel injured in road accident ISLAMABAD ONLINE

ISLAMABAD ONLINE

O n the occasion of first-ever Local Government (LG) elections in Islamabad the announcement of Rs.1 billion is expected as a development package by the existing PML-N government for the residents of the capital. Sources told Online that PM has asked party leaders including Raja Zafar-ul-Haq, Dr. Tariq Fazal Chaudhry and others to submit a detailed report regarding development projects in Islamabad so that legal and constitutional horse trading could be done to purchase the votes before LG elections.

According to the PML-N’s sources, PM was briefed about shortage of clean and hygienic drinking water, poor sewerage system, maintenance of roads, problems faced by the commuters of slums, repair of old buildings and other problems of federal capital and these problems could be solved with the total allocation of Rs. 1.5 billion, however, government has arranged the package of adequate amount, which would be sanctioned to the residents of two constituencies NA-48 and NA-49 respec-

tively. “A public rally would be held by the government in which residents of both constituencies are invited. Marryam Nawaz, daughter of PM has been selected to address this public rally”, party sources added. On the desire of federal minister of state for CAAD Dr. Tariq Fazal Cahudhry, Marryam Nawaz has been selected to address this rally and preparation have been started to hold this rally successful. Meanwhile, administrations in the twin cities have started impounding papers of public transport to utilize the vehicles during election duty for the transportation of election staff and polling material.

According to reports, the local administration would require thousands of vehicles for LB elections duty to transport polling staff and material to different polling stations in the twin cities. As a precautionary measure the administrations of the twin cities have forcibly confiscating the registration papers of the vehicles so as to force them to be available for duty on the election day. Protesting over the attitude of the administrations, United Transport Federation Islamabad has threatened that it would not provide the transport. Chairman of the Federation Raja Riaz said Islamabad administration has started policy of taking over the vehicles forcibly which is not tolerable. He said if this trend continued, they would not provide transport on election day.

He demanded that the administration should decide the compensation for the use of transport first and then they would cooperate. He said a delegation of the federation has met the Secretary, RTC and sought details about the compensation and it has been told that a decision would be conveyed in the next couple of days.

At least five ranger’s personnel were injured in a road accident in the jurisdiction of I-9 Police Station. Subedar Taj Muhammad lodged a complaint with local Police Station that their vehicle was hit by a speedy car in H-9 Sector while they were on their routine duty. The Rangers vehicle overturned and five personnel were injured who were shifted to Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS). Police have arrested driver of the car identified as Nauman Sadique.

Man killed on road ISLAMABAD ONLINE

A man was killed in a traffic accident in jurisdiction of Shahzad Town Police Station. A speeding tractor hit the man while he was crossing the road in Mouza Pabbi. He sustained serious injuries and was shifted to hospital. He succumbed to his injuries. The deceased was identified as Gul Muhammad. The driver of the tractor fled the scene leaving the man in injured condition. Police have registered a case against the driver of the tractor

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NAB summons former PM Pervez Ashraf in Rs 140b mega scam

RAWALPINDI: People buying nuts and dried fruits from roadside vendors near Pir Wadhai More. online

ISLAMABAD ONLINE

National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Tuesday finally tightened its noose around former Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, in a mega scam of Rs 140 billion.

According to details, due to the approval of International Clearing policy (ICP) by the former PM the national kitty had to suffer a heavy loss of Rs 140 billion since Nov 2012 to Feb. Supreme Court had declared this policy null and void in February this year and Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) also termed it illegal. Sources told Online that NAB had summoned Pervez Ashraf during last year to record his statement but he did not appear before NAB. Summons has now b been sent by NAB on Asharf’s address. He can be arrested if he fails to appear or he does not furnish written reply to the questionnaire.

Mohsin murder: Accused remanded to police custody RAWALPINDI ONLINE

Anti Terrorism Court (ATC) Rawalpindi has handed over the persons accused in case of kidnapping and killing a child Mohsin for ransom to police on 7 days physical remand. Sadiq Abad police on Tuesday presented in the court Waheed Ahmad and Zeeshan Ahmad accused in kidnapping and killing for ransom a child Mohsin resident of Dhok Kala Khan. Police requested the court to grant physical remand of the accused for investigation. The court accepted the plea and remanded them to police custody for seven days. The hearing of the case was adjourned till 1 December.

More arrests made in Rawalpindi rape case RAWALPINDI STAFF REPORT

Investigation officers on Tuesday apprehended three more criminals involved in gang rape case of a 22-yearold girl in Rawalpindi while they had failed to present the key suspect in the court despite passage of four days. The probe into the matter is being delayed as the suspect Umair under medical treatment in a hospital. Umair sustained wounds while throwing the girl off the building after molestation. The officers have also claimed to have launched interrogation on the owner of the flat. earlier, law enforcers obtained fingerprints from crime site in 22-yearold girl’s rape and killing case. The agencies have sent towels, perfumes and medicines seized from plaza number 58’s apartment to laboratory for forensic tests.

Investigation team is also deliberating over whether the ill-fated girl was pushed off the roof or apartment’s window.

mInorItIes snubbed for lg poll seAts In cApItAl ISLAMABAD HAMEED KHAN WAZIR

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He upcoming LG polls will not see many people from minority groups stepping up to the plate as both Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N) did not consider them for any top slot tickets.

The two major political parties of the country ignored Christians, Hindus and other minorities as potential candidates. Neither the ruling PML-N nor PTI have non-Muslims candidates on their tickets for the slots of chairman and vice-chairman.

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is taking the lead and has awarded tickets to minorities for the slot of chairman and vice-chairmen.

Ironically, Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), which is considered far more conservative than PTI and PML-N, is running one non-Muslim candidate i.e. Jamil Khokhar for the slot of vice-chairman from G-7/2.

Khokhar is also the president of the party’s Islamabad minority wing. Talking to Pakistan Today, PPP senior leader Faisal Sakhi Butt said that PPP was the only party, which awarded tickets to minorities for all positions, including chairman and vice-chairman.

He said that minorities contested on PPP’s tickets from G-8 both on chairman and vice-chairman seats, whereas another minority candidate was vying for the slot of vice-chairman from I-9.

Faisal said that PPP is the only party, which has always held nonMuslims in high esteem and given them their due and deserving status.

PML-N senior leader Anjum Aqeel, whose party did not award a ticket to anyone from a minority for the top slots, said that the PML-N awarded tickets to deserving candidates after through consultation.

He said that non-Muslims were not given tickets for the position of chairman and vice-chairman because these were responsible

posts, and only well-educated candidates were fielded.

Christian Progressive Movement leader Naila Dayal said that the party did not field any candidate in the LG polls in the federal capital due to their bitter experience of the past.

Naila said that though they were staunch nationalists they had a serious identity crisis because they were being treated like second-class citizens.

Lashing out at the selection criteria, she suggested that nonMuslims should be given the right to elect their representatives. She said that often selfish and greedy sycophants are selected, who are least concerned about the problems being faced by their communities.

It is pertinent to mention here that ten seats in the 50 UCs have been reserved for non-Muslim minorities with another 11 reserved for women. Of the 50 UCs in the federal capital, 23 lie within the confines of NA-48, while 27 are located in NA-49.

KP health minister wants province polio-free by 2016 PESHAWAR STAFF REPORT

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Senior Minister for Health, Shahram Khan Tarakai has directed all the District Health Officers (DHOs) to take result-oriented steps to ensure the eradication of polio virus from the province by the year 2016 adding that special attention should be focused on the areas of the province where results of anti-polio campaigns have been unsatisfactory during the past campaigns.

He has warned that stern action will be initiated against the concerned DHO if results of anti-polio drives were found unsatisfactory in

any district. Shahram Khan Tarakai was chairing a meeting regarding eradication of polio virus on Tuesday. Besides Secretary Health, Dr.Jamal Yousaf, Director General Health Services, Dr. Pervez Kamal and Provincial Coordinator Polio emergency Operation Centre Muhammad Akbar Khan, the meeting was attended by all DHOs and representatives of WHO and other partner organizations. The meeting besides reviewing the outcomes of the last two anti-polio campaigns carried out across the province, discussed in detail matters related to ensure 100 per cent targets of the upcoming campaigns and various important decisions were taken to

this effect.

The chair further directed the DHOs to specially focus on the localities where refusal cases were being reported frequently and suggested to involve the local Ulemas and elected local body members to get the parents convinced. Urging upon the need of reviewing the microplans of polio campaigns, he directed the concerned quarters to revisit the plans and realign it according to the ground realities instead of sticking to the traditional way so that it could yield maximum results. The provincial minister also stressed the need of putting in place an effec-

tive system of monitoring the polio teams and better coordination with the partner organization to ensure immunization of each and every child against polio virus. “eradication of polio virus from the province by next year is one of the top priorities of the present provincial government and in this regard our province is in the spot light but above that it is a matter of the future of our next generation which could not be compromised at any cost”. Shahram Khan reiterated and urged upon all concerned quarters including the DHOs to play their part well to make this dream come true.

NA speaker tells Sindh IG to explain murder bid on Hindu MNA ISLAMABAD: Speaker National Assembly Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, has taken notice regarding a murder attempt on the PMLN leader Dr. Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, and in this regard, asked the IG Sindh to submit the report within 48 hours.

This was stated by Dr. Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, who was addressing a press conference outside the parliament house on Tuesday. The Speaker has shown extreme anger while watching the video clip of the attack, Dr. Ramesh told, while adding that the issue was referred to the National Assembly Standing Committee on Rules of Procedure and Privileges (NASCRPP) “The Speaker termed the attack as failure of the Sindh government and questioned why the attackers are able to move freely, when their faces could be easily identified in the video footage,” he further said. Dr. Ramesh, who also heads Pakistan Hindu Council, said that Sindh is the land of saints and peace, and it is totally unacceptable to hand over it on the mercy of PPP “Jiyalas”. The Chairman of NASCRPP Asad ur Rehman Ramday has been summoned to the Chief Secretary Sindh, IG, SP, DSP, AC, DC, SHO, and other officers to appear before the committee on 2 December at parliament house, he said. On the occasion, Dr. Ramesh Vankwani also shared the FIR copies and video clips, with the journalists and vowed to continue his struggle against the injustice and hooligans, to punish the culprits. STAFF REPORT

08 COMMENT

Wednesday, 25 November, 2015

Starting with baby steps Thawing of ice between Afghanistan and Pakistan

Nationalists with myopic vision are a threat to secular India

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he initiation of dialogue between Pakistan and Afghanistan, irrespective of how scant the results are, is welcome in view of the tensions prevailing between the two sides. Nawaz Sharif had complained of conspiracies hatched by elements in Afghanistan opposed to a political settlement with the Taliban. The arrival of Afghan Finance Minister eklil Ahmad hakimi indicates that the conspirators have failed to keep the dialogue stalled between the neighbours.

Offers by the Prime Minister for help in Afghan reconciliation, the suggestion by him to take bilateral trade to $5b by 2018 and the promise to help Afghanistan stand on its feet can bear fruit only if Kabul is willing to reciprocate.

The positives which emerged in the talks between hakimi and Finance Minister Dar comprise two MoUs. Kabul has offered help to Pakistan to import power from Central Asia. Both sides have also discussed the road link between Gwadar and helmand that connects Afghanistan with the China-Pakistan economic Corridor. Differences between the two countries remain as Pakistan declines to give Afghan trucks access to New Delhi and to allow these trucks to transport goods while returning from Wagah to Torkham. The Afghans have made it clear that if denied entry into South Asia through Pakistan, the latter will not be allowed to access Central Asia through Afghanistan.

The talks constitute a first tentative step on a long and tortuous route covered with booby traps. Peace in Afghanistan is crucial for the consolidation of gains made by Pakistan Army in the tribal areas, particularly North Waziristan and Khyber Agency. The appointment of a pro-talks Taliban leader as head of the Taliban office in Qatar indicates that the Taliban too have decided to hold talks. With the US and China keen on promoting a settlement between the Afghan government and the Taliban, those opposed to talks in Kabul would be left with no viable alternative. This is the time for all the stakeholders, particularly the Afghan government, to snatch the hour.

India’s advance air defence missile And another South Asian arms race?

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AVING first gone on a diplomatic offensive, then ignited the LoC and working boundary, India has now raised the stakes in the conventional arms race. Its indigenous ‘supersonic interceptor missile’, as is self-explanatory, is designed to ‘intercept hostile ballistic missiles’. The step is rightly being interpreted as a signal to both Pakistan and China; more the former, of course. And anyone with the simplest understanding of South Asian strategic deterrence dynamics will understand that this move risks triggering another arms race in the region.

The Modi government is clearly going all out to push and provoke Pakistan. The missile launch is a gambit, of course, upgrading its own capability and forcing Islamabad to choose between restraint and parity. The forces will naturally be inclined to balance the equation, while there will be loud calls, local and foreign, to act more prudently. hopefully influential voices always calling on Pakistan to tone down its reaction will also pressure India this time around. It’s posturing is now over-aggressive. And neither the region, nor India’s own diverse polity, will be too comfortable with this arrangement for too long.

Pakistan has always been able to maintain deterrence with regard to India. And most concerns were put to permanent rest by the full spectrum of the nuclear deterrent. While the capability of the armed forces must never be compromised, the leadership must still be careful while choosing from its list of options. The military has done a good job of routing the terrorist sanctuary in the badlands, and politicians have stuck to the fight for democracy – which has had its highs and lows. The most important thing now is institution building, something successive governments have been putting on the backburner owing to more pressing concerns. Pakistan knows well how wasteful arms races can be. Fortunately, so does India. It would help, therefore, if concerned Indians and their friends internationally can impress upon New Delhi the folly of its own aggressive policy.

Dedicated to the legacy of the late Hameed Nizami

Arif Nizami Editor

Aziz-ud-Din Ahmad Joint Editor Lahore – Ph: 042-36375963, 042-36375965

Imagining identity in Hindu India

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Eye on history BAShArAt huSSAin QizilBASh

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FTer winning independence in 1947, one of the biggest challenges faced by the nascent Indian state was to conceive a political system that could ensure social harmony among its diverse population.

After due consideration and deliberations, its founding fathers decided to adopt secularism as the ‘official’ national ideology.

Why did they adopt this ideology when an absolute majority of Indians were hindus; there was an atmosphere of heightened communal passions let loose by partition; and in next door Pakistan efforts were being made to make it a religious state. Almost all the founding fathers were hindus from the Congress Party and had they wanted to make India a purely hindu state, nobody could have stopped them. It was a test of political statesmanship: having secured independence from the colonial masters was one thing but to make the liberated land to function as a viable modern state offering equal citizenship and due space for sustenance to every individual was an equally herculean challenge. how the founding fathers envisioned the Indian polity is what India was made to look like and function as a state in the decades after independence.

To one of the founding fathers, Jawaharlal Nehru, India was the embodiment of a culture and a civilization which had the ability to absorb foreign influences and reach a kind of synthesis in which not only all types of beliefs and customs could co-exist but were also acknowledged and encouraged. Such a vision of India could be best sustained by adopting the secular path, by making secularism the guiding principle of the state’s constitution that looked upon all of its citizens

speaking different languages and practising diverse faiths as a ‘national family’ without allowing any particular group to dominate the state at the expense of others. In other words, citizenship was determined by birth or naturalization and not on the basis of religion; in fact, the state was to act as a ‘neutral umpire’ among adherents of different faiths. Under Nehru’s ideal of secular India, one did not necessarily have to be a hindu to be an Indian and that is why his list of heroes of Indian civilization included several nonhindu figures such as the Buddhist Ashoka, the Sikh Guru Nanak and Kabir, Amir Khusro and emperor Akbar, who were all Muslims.

The sense of religiosity of another founding father, Mohandas Gandhi, who was also a hindu, was based on the appreciation and respect of Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Jainism. Contrary to the centrality of hinduism in the scheme of hindu nationalists, Gandhi said, “If the hindus believe that India should be peopled only by hindus, they are living in a dreamland. The hindus, the Muslims, the Parsis and the Christians who have made India their country are fellow countrymen… Do people become enemies because they change their religion? Moreover, there are deadly proverbs between the followers of Shiva and those of Vishnu, yet nobody suggests that these two do not belong to the same nation.” Gandhi’s belief in unity in diversity, tolerance of and coexistence with non-hindus, particularly the Muslims was so much hated by the hindu nationalists that one of them actually gunned down the father of the nation in cold blood in the aftermath of partition.

Today, the hindu nationalists are ruling India and it is time we try to understand as to how do they construct the identity of the land and people of India. To them, India is not ‘India’ but ‘hindustan’, inhabited by people, a big majority of which are followers of the hindu religion. They claim that all the land between river Indus and the himalayas along with the adjacent waters is ‘hindustan’ since the time of Mahabharata about 2500 years ago. They hold this geography sacred because it contains their holy rivers such as the Ganga, the Jumna and the Cauveri as well as almost all the sacred places such as Benaras, hardiwar, Badrinath, Ayodhya, etc. They also insist that ‘hindustan’ is the only land in the world which the hindus can call their own because it is also the birthplace of hindu religion notwithstanding the fact that India is also the birthplace of some other religions as well such as Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism while the hindu identity constructed by the hindu nationalists today is only two to three

Humanity clouded by hypocrisy Minorities in Pakistan: a case of marginalisation

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Ali AfzAl SAhi

he white crescent and star bordered by the green in the Pakistani flag has waned over time and rightly so; have our actions ever been in alignment to the pledge made to the people of the crescent and star (the minorities)? Sadly, the answer to this vexed question is a blunt no. While we are staunch believers of our principles of morality, what we fail to understand is that this morality is somewhat a product of our distorted sense of righteousness. however, beneath the veneer of our self-proclaimed righteousness is a reality inescapable: the hypocrisy of our society. Just how two-faced we are is vividly apparent in the way we treat our minority community. The minorities have always borne the brunt of sectarian violence and discrimination and during the entire course of events we have not been able to choose for ourselves the right sentiment about peace and freedom. We do vouch for being a patriotic, patient and peace-loving nation; however, we have never been able to live up to the true meaning of these notions. When Pakistan was created, we

Karachi – Ph: 021-35381208-9 Fax: 021-35381208

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pledged to confer upon the minorities’ equal treatment as that of the Muslims; we vowed to protect and shelter them. Sadly, the reality is far from these flowery promises made at the time of need. however, our history is laden with bloody instances of honour killings and sectarian violence, enough to swiftly set back any positive development that we might be proud of. Pakistan has long been stigmatised of the menace of stereotyping religious communities and marginalising them in the name of majority’s interpretation of religion. In addition, the recent perilous trend of “mob justice” is really worrisome and should be dealt with priority.

While reading the newspaper yesterday, I came across the news “mob sets Jhelum factory ablaze over blasphemy allegations”. Not to my surprise, the factory owner was an Ahmadi. Without delving into the religious aspect of these debates, one must, at the very least, condemn the atrocity. As per the reports, several people were in the building while it was set on fire. It seems as if history is repeating itself; the acceptance of the Ahmadi community is still a hazy dream we all wish would come true.

The 1970s witnessed the worst examples of sectarian violence in Pakistan that led to the widespread violence against Shia and Ahmadi communities in the country. Children were butchered, graves destroyed, women raped and killed and men slaughtered in the most inhumane ways imaginable. The unlettered and benighted constituted a major faction of those who supported and perpetrated this savagery towards the minorities. The elites and the liberals chose to raise their voices in favour of protecting these communities in order to uphold the very promises Pakistan was established on. however, no action was taken to actually stop the violence.

The situation might have decreased by a notch in the physical sense of violence; however, the verbal abuses and attacks are ever increasing, with emphasis on hurting the sentiments of the minori-

Islamabad – Ph: 051-2204545

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Web: www.pakistantoday.com.pk

centuries old because before that there were different hindu sects but no unified hindu identity.

While the hindu identity is just a few centuries old; followers of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam had made India as their permanent abode for well over a millennium.

So what is the status of the non-hindus in the eyes of the hindu nationalists? The hindu nationalists argue that only those who fit into the definition of ‘hindu’ as enunciated by V D Savarkar, the father of hindu nationalism in his classic text ‘hindutva’ can be called hindus and those who don’t, do not belong to ‘hindustan.’ To Savarkar “A hindu means a person who regards this land [hindustan]… from the Indus to the Seas as his fatherland (pitribhumi) as well as his holyland (punyabhumi).” The hindu nationalists aver that of all the non-hindu communities, only the Sikhs, the Jains and the Buddhists can be considered Indian because their religions were born in India but under no circumstances can the Christians, Jews, Parsis and Muslims be considered Indian because the origins of their respective religions were outside India in the foreign lands of Arabia and Palestine. Thus, even if the adherents of these “foreign faiths” have been born in India or have adopted India as their permanent home for many centuries, hindustan can never become their “holyland” as their mythology, ideas and heroes are not the offspring of the Indian soil. This is the standpoint of the hindu hardliners whereas the relatively moderate hindu nationalists state that they can consider the Muslims a part of the Indian nation only if the Muslims agree to fully assimilate in the society by giving up their distinct identity. This means that not only the Muslims must accept the key hindu religious and historic figures such as ram as their heroes but must also repent the actions such as the destruction of temples by the Muslim rulers of India in the past. In the heat of hatred towards the Muslims, the hindu nationalists want to change even the Muslim names of some of the Indian cities. For example, they intend to rename Aligarh as harigarh, Lucknow as Lakshmanpur, etc. So much bigoted are the hindu nationalists that they are not willing to include even the tolerant Muslim Mughal emperor Akbar in their assorted list of Indian heroes.

Such a myopic vision of life of the hindu nationalists is a grave threat to the idea of a peaceful and prosperous secular India as envisioned by its founding fathers. When a hindu nationalist assassinated Gandhi, the Indians rejected this brand of mad politics for decades, however, over time, history has come full circle in India today, as the hindu nationalists are ruling the roost under Narendra Modi. Where is India heading to?

ties on every occasion possible. Is this really the dream we set out to achieve in order to stand strong as one united front, as one nation, Pakistan?

What are the requirements that a minority should fulfill to escape the social tyranny at the hands of incognizant people? We have seen countless examples of Christian and Shia communities bribing their way into protecting their lives.

In certain instances, minorities have also been forced to forge their names in order to camouflage themselves with the majority populations so that they may be treated with equality and given opportunities as other people of their caliber.however, it should have been our responsibility to prevent the situation from escalating to such an unprecedented mess. even if we consider them to be wrong in their practice of religion and social life, these acts cannot be warranted under the guise of religion. Just like we expect the West and our “hostile neighbour” to safeguard the interests and sanctity of life and property of the Muslims, others expecting the same attitude from us towards our minorities, is fully justified. Failing to meet such expectations just indicates our deep-rooted hypocrisy.

As strange as it may sound, Ahmadis have never been a part of any notorious plan of exacting revenge for the persecution that they have suffered at the hands of bigots, yet we, the majority, have always tainted this community with allegations of blasphemy and hence cornered it.

This country was built on the foundations of a promise, which spoke for religious and social egalitarianism. It is time that this promise is duly paid heed to and that this trust which binds the varying sects in our society, is honoured. Ahmadis deserve to be fought for and protected. It’s time we raise our voice towards injustice and dedicate our time and energy as well as our tweets and Facebook statuses to start a campaign against the perpetrators of these heinous crimes.

Or would this underprivileged community have to become Syrian, French or Burmese to get noticed for suffering such a monstrosity?

The writer is a freelance columnist and is currently pursuing a degree in law from Lahore University of Management Sciences. He tweets @sahialiafzal I

Email: editorial@pakistantoday.com.pk

COMMENT 09

Wednesday, 25 November, 2015

Editor’s mail

Send your letters to: Letters to Editor, Pakistan Today, 4-Shaarey Fatima Jinnah, Lahore, Pakistan.

Fax: +92-42-32535230 E-mail: letters@pakistantoday.com.pk Letters should be addressed to Pakistan Today exclusively

De-radicalising MYC

Why have past Israeli-Palestinian negotiations failed?

And what needs to be done

Alon BEn-MEir

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O new format for peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians can succeed unless it carefully considers the reasons behind the failure of past negotiations to ensure that the same mistakes are not repeated. The following highlights some of the more prominent reasons behind the collapse of prior IsraeliPalestinian negotiations: Disagreement on rules of engagement: Given their stark disagreement on various issues, each side insisted on rules of engagement that could serve their own strategic interests first. For example, Israel insisted that the negotiations must first consider its vital national security concerns, whereas the Palestinians wanted to negotiate borders first to establish the parameters of their state.

In addition, both sides have failed to delink the conflicting issues, arguing that nothing is agreed upon unless everything is agreed on at the same time. Moreover, by not setting aside, or “banking,” any conflicting issue over which they have reached an agreement, it made it difficult to make significant progress as every time they entered into new negotiations, they had to start from scratch.

Lack of trust: One of the most daunting problems is the lack of trust between the two sides, as neither has made any effort to mitigate it. On the contrary, they have both made demonstrable actions on the ground such as building and expanding settlements, erupting into wanton violence, and engaging in public acrimony in ways that only deepen mistrust. Moreover, personal chemistry and communication, which could stimulate trust between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, was and still is absent.

Failing to engage the public: Both sides have failed to involve their respective publics in the progress (or lack thereof) in the peace process, invite support,

and prepare their citizens to accept the inevitable concessions that will be required to reach an agreement.

Moreover, the press was left in the dark and was not allowed to witness or gauge any aspect of the negotiations to engender public discussion, thus leaving the public with little or no expectation or hope that the peace negotiations could in fact lead to an agreement.

Political factionalism: Whereas a majority of Israelis and Palestinians (based on many polls conducted over the years) have steadily supported a solution to the conflict based on two states, political factionalism within both communities makes it extremely difficult to concede on this or any other issue.

Major opposition from political opponents who have different agendas, though they represent a smaller part of the overall population, have consistently scuttled the peace talks. The settlement movement in Israel and extremist jihadist groups among the Palestinians wield far greater political influence than their numbers warrant, and thus far have succeeded to dash any prospect for peace, justifying their refusal to accommodate the other.

Power disparity in the negotiations: Whereas Israel enjoys a preponderance of military and economic power and negotiates from a position of strength, the Palestinians are living under occupation with a limited ability to challenge Israel.

As a result, they have sought to balance their power relations at the negotiating table or prior to the commencement of the negotiations with Israel by demanding, for example, to freeze settlement activity or release Palestinian prisoners, to which Israel objected.

Lack of a comprehensive US strategy: As the mediator, the US did not follow a carefully constructed framework for the negotiations that could guide both sides to make the necessary concessions to reach an agreement.

Indeed, being that both Israel and the Palestinians often vacillated and changed course by design or circumstances, the US (out of frustration) changed its strategic approach in response, thereby losing consistency and control over the negotiating process, which led to repeated failures.

No consequence for failure: Although the US offered eco-

Only international intervention would provide the practical channel for the peace negotiations

nomic and security incentives for both to reach an agreement, it lacked a strategic approach and attached no repercussions for failing to reach an agreement. That is, the lack of a mechanism to punish either or both sides for failing to make serious progress made it possible to resist any pressure, knowing that they could do so with impunity.

Absence of bold leadership: There has been a serious absence of courageous and visionary leadership that could move against the political current for the sake of a larger purpose by making important concessions to each other to advance the peace negotiations.

Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, signed by Yitzhak rabin and Yasser Arafat, neither side has produced a leader with the strength and conviction to take a risk for the sake of peaceful coexistence. This leadership malaise will have to be cured before a new round of negotiations begin, but is not likely to happen without intense and consistent external pressure.

The new international effort to resume the peace negotiations must not lose sight of the popular demand of the majority on both sides to live in peace, because on their own, they will not come to terms with one another.

The regional turmoil must not forestall the Israeli-Palestinian peace process; on the contrary, it should serve as the catalyst that could end one of the longest conflicts in modern history.

Past experiences also revealed that although some progress was made through US mediation, the negotiations failed to produce an agreement and nothing indicates that the resumption of the negotiations under US auspices would lead to different results.

As such, it has become increasingly clear that only international intervention would provide the practical channel for the peace negotiations and motivate or incentivize both sides to come to terms with the inevitability of coexistence.

The US’ role is central to the success of these efforts, provided that Obama or his successor stop enabling Israel to pursue its self-destructive path by no longer providing Israel with unconditional political backing and economic and military support.

Indeed, the two-state solution remains the only viable option that allows for peaceful coexistence, on which any new initiative must be based.

In addition, both sides have failed to delink the conflicting issues, arguing that nothing is agreed upon

Dr Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Centre for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. alon@alonben-meir.com

One step forward and two steps backward – that’s what today’s Pakistan’s dilemma is. On one side renewed attacks on law enforcing agencies are telling us that all is not well. Apparently terrorists are getting adjusted to operate from their underground holes. Same time radicalised religious leaders are joining hands to instigate general public sentiments on nonissues. One would wonder why Lal Masjid is once again getting heated up wherein Maulana Abdul Aziz has given two weeks’ notice to government to enforce Sharia in Pakistan. If outbursts from Lal Masjid were not sufficient, then came the dead horse of Milli Yakjehti Council (MYC) under resurrection. Speaker after speaker in its meeting in Islamabad threatened the federal government to abandon any attempts to ‘liberalise’ the country.

Obviously this is a deliberate effort to confuse the nation about the war on terror. Mind you, the religious terrorists mushroomed in the last three decades are the logical product of radicalisation of the society that started with the USUSSr war in Afghanistan. earlier versions of MYC wholeheartedly supported Americans in that war and since then we haven’t seen any peace in the country. What’s the point for MYC to condemn the ‘liberalisation’ of society?

Shouldn’t Pakistan take care of its religious minorities letting them practise their respective faiths without any fear and intimidation? Shouldn’t Pakistan clamp down on forced conversions? Shouldn’t Pakistan take action on the lawlessness in the name of blasphemy laws?

Shouldn’t Pakistan safeguard its future generations by enforcing minimum marriage age? Why should Pakistan allow discrimination against its citizens because of their caste, creed, religion, sect or language? Shouldn’t Pakistan take its women as equal human beings, not an asset/property? Why should a rape victim be liable for the crime committed on her and present poof against the rapist? Why Pakistan allow murderers to get out of prison by signing deals with victim families, generally under duress? Why the killers be protected under the dark shadow of ‘honour killing’? I wonder why all the religious parties parrot the line to revive the Pakistan of Quaid-e-Azam but take go to lengths to discard Quaid’s speech of August 11, 1947, which sets the goals for a newly created state. As the pressure on terrorists is being mounted, we will see such MYC circuses on an increased frequency. In short, you can’t eliminate the menace of terrorism without de-radicalising the society and that task should start from the MYC. MASOOD KHAN Jubail, Saudi Arabia

Imran-Reham divorce Last month the divorce of Imran Khan and reham Khan caused uproar in the public and media. Imran Khan requested everyone to respect his privacy as he was going through a tough period. Despite his request it remained a hot topic of debate for sometime in Pakistani media. In my opinion, being an important political figure and a national hero you cannot expect a complete privacy. Your personal life will be discussed in media and you should be prepared for that.

Secondly, you should first respect your privacy if you do not want people commenting on your personal life. Imran Khan and reham Khan’s statements and tweets about their divorce and personal matters provoked people and media to invade their privacy. For instance, in an interview on 19th November, 2015, reham Khan stated the reasons of her failed marriage with the PTI chairman.

Then her poetic tweet on 21st November showed that she was still depressed over her divorce. If Imran Khan and reham Khan want the media to respect their privacy, then they should avoid all those platforms that discuss their personal life. Moreover, keeping in view the morals of our society, media should also discuss the news about someone’s personal life in a decent and acceptable matter without hurting their feelings.

NAMERAH ZAFAR Islamabad

Another 9/11 The morning of 13th November, 2015, dawned as usual but the nerve wracking evening jolted the world. The brutal killing of almost 130 people at six different venues left the global community in deep shock and sorrow.

ISIS, the biggest terror of present era claimed the responsibility for the attacks by saying that they did it for Islam. In vengeance the French government launched its biggest airstrike in Syria which as expected claimed the innocent lives. The unjustified hatred and prejudiced mindset of the west ultimately held the whole Muslim community as culprits. Like 9/11 once again Islamophobia and hate campaigns against Muslims are in full bloom in West. The consequences of the Paris massacre which the innocuous Muslims had to bear are traumatising. The heart rending incidents of banning head scarves and humiliating Muslims are on the rise.

Previously the disturbing stories of the Syrian refugees gained the world attention and sympathies which started to bring a change in Muslim image all over the world. This cannot be digested by some of the world “game changers” who once again were successful in tarnishing the image of Muslims by implementing one of their evil plans.

Any of the militant organisation — ISIS, TTP or Al-Qaeda — do not represent Islam and Muslims. Islam is a religion of love and peace. Quran strongly condemns such barbaric acts by saying: “Killing one person unjustly is as though killing all mankind.” Our hearts bleed for the French people and we are with them in this difficult time.

RUMAISA ANWAR Rawalpindi

Think before you talk It appears that Aftab Sherpao is not the only one who does not know that the Indus river is flowing at least 100 feet below his feet and he will never get any water from any dam on the Indus, except a bare minimum from Tarbela dam through the narrow Pehur canal.

Now Asfandyar Wali Khan has also said that he is dead against Kalabagh dam. I wonder how he proposes to raise the level of the Indus without building Kalabagh dam. Water from the dam by gravity will cost the farmer rs400 per acre per annum for the 8 lakh acres in D I Khan and Bannu districts. Pumping the same water from Chashma reservoir will cost rs5,000 per acre per annum. Think before you talk, I would say.

ENGR KHURSHID ANWER Lahore

10 BUSINESS

Wednesday, 25 November, 2015

CORPORATE CORNER shabbir malik becomes ceo at mcom ISLAMABAD: Veteran communications specialist, lobbyist and one of Pakistan’s prominent advertising professionals, Shabbir Malik, has been elevated as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the country’s leading advertising agency; MCOM. With a vast experience in the field of marketing, media management and public relations, Shabbir Malik joined MCOM as Executive Director in 2006 and later became the Chief Operating Officer. He has been associated with leading agencies for the past 3 decades and has been the key resource for prestigious government and commercial accounts. He has numerous award-winning campaigns to his credit. Shabbir Malik has won several performance awards during his professional career while also represented his organizations at national and international advertising and media events. PRESS RELEASE

DUBAI: Haier Mobile Pakistan hosted a reception-cum-dinner in honour of the Pakistani cricket team in Dubai. CEO Zeeshan Qureshi, PCB Chairman Shehryar Khan and others pose for a photograph on the occasion. pr

No gas load sheddiNg for domestic coNsumers NA TOLD RELIEF PACKAGE FOR FAMILIES OF DECEASED EMPLOYEES TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON ISLAMABAD

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STAFF REPORT

HE National Assembly was told on Tuesday that uninterrupted gas supply was being ensured to the domestic consumers throughout the country.

Replying to a calling attention notice by Haji Muhammad Akram Ansari and others, Parliamentary Secretary for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahzadi Umarzadi Tiwana said that there was a shortage of 2,000 mmcf of gas and that load management of gas was being carried out according to the policy in the industrial sector. However, she said domestic and commercial sectors were being supplied gas on priority basis.

Shahzadi Tiwana said a mechanism can be evolved to facilitate the industry through LNG. Responding to another call attention moved by Dr Shireen Mazari and others regarding the country losing the vote for the membership of Human Rights Council in Geneva, Minister for SAFRON Abdul Qadir Baloch said Pakistan remained member of the Council for three times. He said unfortunately Pakistan could not retain the membership for the fourth time despite best efforts.

He said our missions in different countries made full efforts in this regard and the Foreign Office also wrote letters to different countries to seek their support.

He said that 120 countries assured their

support but in the actual polling Pakistan could not secure the required votes. He said the missions had been directed to increase their efforts so that Pakistan may not face such defeat in future.

Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab Ahmed told the House that a new package for deceased government employees’ had been prepared and would be implemented soon after the approval of prime minister. He said enhanced financial assistance had been proposed in the package and employment to one of the children of the deceased employee had also been recommended.

The House, which transacted members’ private business, also adopted the resolution urging the government to take immediate

PepsiCo franchisee to increase production and improve efficiency with Sidel innovative solutions

Government urged to extend relief to LPG consumers

KARACHI PRESS RELEASE

KARACHI: Renowned journalist Hashi Moto and Professor Hira Moto inaugurating exhibition of postal stamps in Japan organised by PakJapan Friendship Forum. pr

Major Gainers COMPANY Ferozsons (Lab) Ghandhara Ind. Sanofi-Aventis Shield Corp. XD Ghand Nissan

OPEN 940.00 402.02 665.99 280.00 210.77

HIGH 973.22 402.02 666.00 285.60 210.77

LOW 931.00 392.00 650.00 280.00 210.77

CLOSE 946.35 402.02 650.00 285.60 210.77

CHANGE 19.47 19.14 15.45 13.60 10.03

TURNOVER 140,850 29,000 650 500 39,500

8650.00 1280.00 1020.00 1500.00 363.94

8650.00 1202.05 980.00 1480.00 336.10

8650.00 1202.05 986.00 1480.00 336.10

-350.00 -63.26 -44.98 -20.00 -17.68

20 21,350 2,220 2,000 63,500

7.67 39.65 42.70 31.65 11.99

7.47 37.00 40.85 30.70 11.09

7.50 38.83 41.24 30.91 11.54

-0.11 0.12 -0.69 -0.22 0.55

18,155,000 16,294,500 15,109,000 11,515,500 7,734,500

Major Losers Nestle Pak XD Hinopak Motor Exide (PAK) Colgate PalmoXD Noon Pakistan

8650.00 1279.99 1020.00 1500.00 363.94

Volume Leaders K-Electric Ltd. TRG Pak Ltd Sui South Gas Sui North Gas Engro Polymer

7.64 38.50 42.25 31.28 11.09

Interbank Rates USD GBP JPY EURO

PKR 105.4903 PKR 161.1259 PKR 0.8587 PKR 112.6953

Forex UK Pound Sterling Euro US Dollar Canadian Dollar Australian Dollar Japanese Yen Saudi Riyal U.A.E Dirham China Yuan

BUY

SELL

160.75 113.25 105.9 79.25 75.95 0.84 28.2 28.95 16.4

161.45 113.75 106.15 79.8 76.4 0.87 28.35 29.1 16.55

Pakistan Beverage Limited (PBL), one of the leading beverage producers in Pakistan, has once again selected Sidel, a leading global provider of PET solutions for liquid packaging, to boost their products’ quality and improve production efficiency in order to meet the increased market demand. The Standalone SBO8 Universal2Eco Blower for Carbonated Soft Drinks (CSD) is the second blower that PBL has purchased from Sidel in less than a year, with an aim to deliver high output rates with exceptional reliability.

Carbonated Soft Drinks (CSD) is the second most consumed beverage item in Pakistan, after milk. According to industry estimates, the consumption of CSD is estimated to stand at 825.9 million litres in 2015 and to exceed one billion litres by the end of 2019, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 7.4 per cent. With this growing consumer demand in the beverage industry, comes the need for greater production output at an increased level of efficiency. After installing Sidel’s SBO8 Universal2Ecoblower, PBL will be producing 16,000 bottles per hour for 500 ml, 1,500 ml, and 2,225 ml bottles.

Oil prices up in Asia ahead of OPEC meeting, US report

CMYK

steps for implementation of deceased employees’ package as announced by the prime minister with regard to the federal government employees. The resolution was moved

by Tahira Aurangzeb.

The House passed a resolution moved by Muhammad Muzamil Qureshi saying that the government should take immediate steps for construction of new water reservoirs in order to tackle the water shortage in the country.

The House adopted another resolution moved by Sher Akbar Khan asking the government to take steps to establish a women university in Buner. Through yet another resolution adopted by the House the government was asked to take strict and immediate action against the sale of counterfeit drugs and medicines in the federal capital.

ISLAMABAD APP

The Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) Distributors Association has urged the government to make measures for provision of gas at affordable price to consumers who are already grappling to make ends meet.

“An illegal increase in LPG price is like a thunderbolt for the consumers who hardly meet basic expenses of their households.

So, the government should work out remedial measures to arrest the unbridled trend in LPG prices which are on rising trajectory these days,” the association’s chairman Irfan Khokhar said on Tuesday.

He said the marketing companies passed undue prices onto the common consumers by creating artificial gas shortage or they sold locally produced LPG at imported one.

He said the OGRA was supposed to take action against marketing companies which were involved in unfair business practices and extend relief to consumers.

But unfortunately, he added, the regulatory authority had taking no action and those unethical business forces were brazenly pocketing extra money through illegal practices in LPG market.

Similarly, marketing companies did not import prescribed quota of LPG, leading to widening supply and demand gap of LPG in the country. He said the association had prepared a summary spelling out approach to offset shocks in LPG market and maintain the commodity’s price at affordable range for the consumers throughout the year.

He said several rounds of the meetings had already been held with concerned officials to discuss the guidelines and proposals to thrash out strategy for implementation.

He said the current local production stood at 1600 tons per day and its demand had soared to 3,000 tons per day, necessitating for the government to put matters of LPG market in order and extend relief to consumers.

He said the demand was likely to further exceed if domestic sector was not supplied with smooth gas supply in peak winter season. He was of the view that hefty duties and taxes on LPG import was also an impediment to the government’s efforts to ensure its stocks at adequate level.

SINGAPORE AGENCIES

Oil prices climbed in Asia Tuesday ahead of a key meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and a report on US commercial crude inventories to gauge demand in the world’s biggest oil consuming nation.

Analysts said the impact of comments by the Saudi Arabian oil minister that his country was prepared to work with other oil producers to stabilise prices was muted because there was no firm signal to slash production to ease the glut in global crude supplies.

The market will be closely watching the gathering of

OPEC on December 10 for firm announcements regarding the Organisation’s production levels, analysts added. OPEC’s decision in November 2014 to maintain high output despite falling prices accelerated a decline from peaks of more than $100 a barrel seen earlier in the year.

At around 8:10AM, US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for January delivery was up 16 cents at $41.91 and Brent crude for January was trading 17 cents higher at $45.00.

“There was no concrete signal from the Saudi oil minister’s remarks that OPEC will cut back on production so the impact is limited,” said an investment analyst with Phillip Futures in Singapore Daniel Ang.

BUSINESS 11

Wednesday, 25 November, 2015

Pakistan seeks Afghanistan’s permission for land survey of Wakhan corridor ISLAMABAD AMER SIAL

In a major development, Pakistan has sought permission from Afghanistan for the land survey of the Wakhan corridor to assess the possibility of establishing a road link with the land locked Tajikistan. An official source said that the proposal was given at the Pak-Afghan Joint Economic Commission (JEC) meeting on November 23. The Afghan side assured a positive response after discussing the said issue with the government. The matter was proposed at the JEC meeting as Tajikistan had already approached both the governments for joining the bilateral Afghanistan Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement. Tajikistan wants to use Pakistani ports for its imports and exports. Pakistan supports joining of Tajikistan in the agreement. However, Afghanistan has linked it with Pakistan’s permission of direct access to Afghan trucks to Indian border and beyond. It is important to mention that the Wakhan corridor is a small strip in northern Afghanistan that separates Pakistan from Tajikistan. The establishment of road link through Wakhan corridor is under consideration for the last many years to provide a direct transport link between Tajikistan and Pakistani seaports.

NA body talks airbags, ABS for cars, supply of sugar to utility stores ISLAMABAD: National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Industries and Production suggested on Tuesday that internationally accepted minimum safety features like airbags and antilock breaking system (ABS) must be made a mandatory feature by all automobile manufacturers. The meeting was held under the chairmanship of MNA Asad Umar in the Parliament House to discuss airbags and antilock breaking system (ABS) in Automobiles in Pakistan. The meeting also discussed stoppage of the supply of sugar to utility store franchises and implementation status on the recommendations of the standing committee.

Regarding the stoppage of the supply of sugar to utility stores, the committee suggested to the government not to give subsidy on sugar until smooth supply of sugar to utility stores was ensured. The committee further directed Ministry of Industry and Production (MoIP) to present a plan for timely purchase and supply of sugar to utility stores within the framework of rules and regulations. The committee showed grave concern over the shutdown of the Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) and demanded to revamp it to make it viable; the committee suggested to call the Privatization Commission chairman in the next meeting and also asked the MoIP to ensure release of salaries to the employees of Pakistan Steel Mills. Members who attended the meeting were MNA Isphanyar M. Bhandara, MNA Qaiser Ahmad Sheikh, MNA Mian Abdul Mannan, MNA Syed Imran Ahmad Shah, MNA and Minister for Industries and Production Iftikhar-ud-Din. STAFF REPORT

govt may iNcrease taxes, duties oN 350 products from december THE MOvE IS AIMED AT MEETING REvENUE SHORTFALL WHICH INCREASED TO RS 40B DURING FIRST qUARTER OF 2015 ISLAMABAD

f

STAFF REPORT

INANCE Minister Ishaq Dar on Tuesday chaired an important meeting of the tax mandarins to finalise additional revenue measures that the government plans to impose through a mini budget from December 1, an official source said.

The meeting was attended by newly-appointed FBR Chairman Nisar Mohammad and other senior officials to discuss future roadmap for increasing revenue collection. The meeting also discussed on the strategy to meet the targets set for the current fiscal year.

The government is expected to increase duties and taxes on 350 products to meet the revenue shortfall that increased to Rs 40 billion during the first quarter of the current fiscal year. The government plans to take additional

revenue measures to meet the fiscal deficit limit as well as to continue with the IMF programme.

The new tax administration wants to change the revenue strategy, the source said, adding they want to nab the non-filers, push the low filers and hold the corrupt accountable in the system.

This requires giving some relaxation to tax men to exercise their legal powers for tax collection.

“However, the government wants them to adopt the old approach. Let the people file their returns on their own assessment. The number of tax filers should be increased as demanded by the IMF and the rest of the issues would be dealt with after increasing the tax base increases,” the source said. It is important to mention that the government had set an ambitious target of generating Rs 3.1 trillion in tax collection during the current fiscal year even though the economic activity has failed to take off dur-

ing the last two years.

Instead on increasing the tax compliance and clawing the tax evaders, the FBR reverted to its old trick of increasing the GST on each and everything.

The most innovative being the imposition of withholding tax on cash withdrawal from banks. This type of gimmickry back fired and resulted in change of previous FBR management.

A statement issued by the finance ministry said that the FBR had achieved 33 percent revenue growth in the last

Endeavours being made to introduce draft telecom policy, says Anusha ISLAMABAD APP

Ministry of State for Information Technology Mrs Anusha Rahman on Tuesday said that endeavours were in place to introduce the draft of telecommunications policy soon with particular focus on promoting latest trends and services.

She said in view of new trends the ministry of IT had proposed spectrum trading, spectrum reforming, over the top (OTT) as well as satellite services in the policy which were not part of the previous telecom policy. In an exclusive talk with APP at GSMA seminar here, the minister while highlighting benefits of the policy said that it would give them a stage to flourish for next five years.

The seminar - building digital societies: making commerce smarter - was organised in collaboration with mobile phone operators, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). With regard to satellite services, she said Pakistan possessed Paksat-1 which could be utilised to ensure communication services in far-flung areas of the country, but this required regulatory framework

which had been proposed in the policy so that these services can be provided under rules.

Anusha Rahman said the policy would also enable and encourage local manufacturing, content and application development and added that the policy would also be aimed at achieving universally available and affordable telecom services to all users to benefit economy and society. To a query, the minister said that efforts were also underway with different companies to introduce local manufacturing of mobile handsets which would help ensure their affordable prices.

The minister said that she had

asked China Mobile to facilitate local manufacturing of handsets in Pakistan by introducing to Chinese vendors the “concessionary tax regime” introduced by government for setting up local manufacturing of mobile handsets.

She said Pakistan had now become a lucrative place for manufacturers owing to various incentives and also low labour rates.

The minister said that Haier Co had already started manufacturing locally by establishing its plant in Pakistan. Thanks to incentives announced by the prime minister, more companies would also be attracted for the purpose, she added.

CHINA INKS DEAL WITH ASEAN FOR EXPANDING FREE TRADE AREA BEIJING INP

China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have sealed a deal to upgrade their free trade area (FTA) injecting fresh impetus into regional economic cooperation.

This is in line with the China’s economic strategy expanding its free trade regime, facilitating Pakistan and South Asian region as well, reports Chinese media. A protocol that pronounces the full conclusion of China-ASEAN negotiations on upgrading their FTA was signed at a ceremony in Kuala Lumpur in the presence of visiting Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and leaders of the 10member ASEAN. The upgrade of the FTA, China’s first with foreign trading partners, was nailed down after only four rounds of talks that officially started in August 2014, in a sign of the common aspiration and practical need of both sides to deepen and expand cooperation in trade

and economy. Covering a wide range of areas including goods, services, investment, and economic and technological cooperation, the upgrade will provide fresh momentum for economic development of both China and ASEAN. Conducive to fostering a closer China-ASEAN community of common destiny, the move is also to help realise the target of scaling up twoway trade to 1 trillion US dollars by 2020 and promote the negotiations on

the regional comprehensive economic partnership and the free trade area of the Asia-Pacific.

In their negotiations, China and ASEAN attached great significance to the facilitation of trade in goods and investment further opening up the services market and lifting the level of economic and technological cooperation, Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng told reporters after the signing ceremony.

CMYK

China enjoys abundant capital and strong technological strength, while ASEAN aspires for accelerated regional integration and has great needs for industrial development and infrastructure, Gao said. Therefore, the two sides have compatible concepts of cooperation, complementary economic advantages, and great potential in bilateral collaboration, he added.

Taking effect in 2010, the ChinaASEAN FTA has made China the bloc’s biggest trading partner and ASEAN the third largest trading partner of the world’s second largest economy.

Thanks to the FTA, China-ASEAN economic and trade relations have enjoyed healthy and stable development.

Bilateral trade surged nearly nine times from 54.8 billion US dollars in 2002 to 480.4 billion in 2014, according to the minister.

Established in 1967, ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

two years with dedication and concerted efforts and the number of tax payers had risen from 7,00,000 to one million which was highly creditable.

The FBR chairman shared the detail of various revenue measures and assured that his team would put in its best to realise the targets for the current fiscal year. He said the FBR was taking due cognizance of the recommendations put forth by the tax reforms commission to enhance revenue and improve tax payers facilitation.

Flour mill owners threaten stoppage of production from Dec 2 LAhore: Pakistan Flour Mills Association (PFMA) on Tuesday decided to observe countrywide strike and suspend production of flour from December 2 against what they called attempts to prevent export of wheat products. PFMA said that bureaucracy is hatching conspiracies to annihilate flour milling industries of the country by illegally creating problems for mill owners in the export of wheat products. “We will shut down our mills and hand over their keys to the chief ministers of the respective provinces,” they announced. “Bureaucracy is unable to understand language of decency and we are all prepared to take any step to save our business,” they warned. Addressing the press conference, PFMA Chairman Naeem Butt, Asim Raza and others demanded that permission be given for exporting fine atta with rebate. Government should fix uniform rates of wheat in all the provinces, they demanded. They also demanded that government play its role in seeking revocation of duty imposed by Afghan government on export of wheat and its products. ONLINE

Pakistan to participate in ATF Trade Exhibition 2015 in Cape Town KArAChI: Four Pakistani Companies, with the support of Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP), representing an assortment of trade sectors, are participating in the three-day 17th annual Apparel, Textile and Footwear (ATF) Trade Exhibition, in Cape Town, South Africa. Strictly a “Trade Only” exhibition, ATF is designed specifically for exhibitors to meet with related trade and industry professionals and establish business contacts. The event also offers manufacturers, suppliers and service providers in relevant industries opportunity to reinforce business with South African buyers.

ATF, a leading annual fair, is increasingly becoming the hub for retail chain stores. The products on display will include men’s, ladies and children wear, leather garments, footwear, fashion accessories, home textiles and made-ups, clothing fabrics, yarn, thread, machinery and trims etc. Pakistani companies including Crown Leather Corporation Karachi, R.T. International Sialkot, Faisal Fabrics Limited Faisalabad and Best Exports Pvt Ltd Faisalabad are expected to participate in the exhibition and showcase locally produced products. High Commissioner of Pakistan to South Africa Najmus Saqib visited Cape Town from Pretoria to meet the Pakistani exhibitors participating in the ATF. STAFF REPORT

12 WORLD VIEW

Wednesday, 25 November, 2015

HOW THE UNITED STATES HELPED CREATE THE ISLAMIC STATE WashingTon posT

D

Juan Cole

ID the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 lead to our current crisis over the Islamic State?

The question has been posed baldly in this campaign season, as when a young woman at a campaign rally said to GOP candidate Jeb Bush (using an alternate name for the militant group), “Your brother created ISIL.” It was not so much the invasion itself, however, as the policies implemented afterward that are mainly to blame for Iraq and Syria lying in pieces. What President George W. Bush’s administration did was to foster sectarian divisions and create a long-lasting insurgency.

At every point along the way, the Bush administration made choices that exacerbated sectarian tensions in Iraq and set the country on the path to break-up. The assertion by some observers that the country is riven by age-old hatreds, is ahistorical and incorrect. In previous decades, political passions centered on anti-colonialism or big landlordism and socialism. The vacuum of power created by the U.S. dissolution of the secular Baath Party encouraged Iraqi politicians to play on sectarian passions in unprecedented ways. Provoking a violent insurgency was likewise fateful. Once an insurgency comes into being, it typically does not subside for 10 to 15 years.

But Americans have difficulty recognizing their own culpability in the rise of the Islamic State for two reasons. First, the public (and the press) seldom understood or credited Iraqi social forces with the ability to act independently, focusing instead on the U.S. military’s campaigns. Second, Iraq became a football in partisan bickering, with dispassionate analysis abandoned for unsubstantiated blame games.

After the 2003 invasion, Bush administration officials deliberately pushed aside Iraq’s Sunni Arabs, who had dominated Saddam Hussein’s regime, and favored a clique of Shiite operatives. The main vehicle of politics in Iraq, the secular-minded but sanguinary Baath Party, which ruled 1968 to 2003, was dissolved. Shiite Bush allies like the late Ahmad Chalabi and Nouri al-Maliki (who would serve as prime minister from 2006 until 2014) formed a “Debaathification Commission” that fired close to 100,000 Sunni Arabs from government jobs, even from teaching school. This was at a time when there were no private-sector jobs. Shiite Baathists went largely untouched.

Bush’s viceroy, Paul Bremer, a militant free-marketeer, at the same time dissolved most state-owned factories and threw the economy into a tailspin. Then Bremer dis-

solved the vaunted Iraqi million-man army, sending officers and troops away with no pensions and no prospects. Unemployment swept the Sunni Arab provinces the way bubonic plague swept medieval Europe.

Idleness reached levels of 70 percent in Sunni Arab areas where insurgencies grew up. In contrast, the Shiite cliques the Americans brought to power made sure to get jobs for their coreligionists in the new government. The Bush administration and its Iraqi allies did everything the opposite of the way Nelson Mandela handled national reconciliation in post-apartheid South Africa. They also got the opposite outcome.

The administration’s vindictive targeting of Fallujah after four security contractors were killed in spring of 2004 reduced a proud city to rubble by the following late autumn and alienated Sunni Arabs in other cities, who refused to vote in the January 2005 elections. The resulting parliament was Shiite-dominated, and charged with crafting the constitution, a constitution all the Sunni-majority provinces rejected.

The mistreatment of the Iraqi Sunni Arabs drove many of them into guerrilla war against the United States. Some 50 major cells emerged in the Sunni-majority provinces. One of these, al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, was led by Abu Musaab alZarqawi, a Jordanian former car thief. It attracted not only the religious-minded Sunnis who perceived a growing joint U.S.Iran domination of Iraq, but also former Baath officers who knew were Saddam Hussein’s hidden arms depots were located.

After al-Zarqawi was killed in 2006 by an American airstrike, Iraqis took over the leadership of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

They created the so-called Islamic State in Iraq, which began holding swaths of territory. Many of the leaders of this group were former Baathist military officers, and some met and networked in Camp Bucca, where the United States warehoused 25,000 suspected insurgents. It is unlikely that these Baathists sincerely embraced Muslim fundamentalism, and many are likely using the Islamic State group in a cynical way to garner public support (an al-Qaeda emissary, after meeting with them, called them “phony snakes” betraying the real jihad).

When, in 2011, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad attacked the youth revolution against him militarily and turned it into a violent insurgency, Islamic State fighters went off to Syria to fight the remaining Baath regime. The militant group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, authorized a Syrian branch in 2012, the Support Front (Jabhat al-Nusra). It was manned in part by veteran holy warriors of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, including Syrians who had fought alongside al-Zarqawi. But over time, the Islamic State itself engaged in major opera-

Telegraph, UK

tions over in Syria. It soon became apparent that the group is opportunistic: It would let other rebels do the hard fighting against the Syrian army and take territory. The Islamic State, however, would then sweep in and steal that territory away from its putative allies. In 2013, when the organization sought to absorb the Support Front into itself, alQaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of the planners of the 9/11 attacks, ordered Syrian al-Qaeda to break with the Islamic State, which he kicked out of his organization.

The Shiite religious parties that had come to power in Baghdad under American rule were continuing to exclude Sunnis. The Iraqi military came to be dominated by exmembers of Shiite militias, such as the Badr Corps originally founded among expatriates in Iran. In 2011 when youth protests broke out in Mosul and Fallujah, al-Maliki ordered them brutally repressed, ending any hope Sunnis had for political reform and inclusion. Having taken rural al-Raqqa province in Syria in 2013 and 2014, Daesh began intriguing with Sunni urban elites back in Iraq, in cities such as Mosul.

In June 2014, the world was startled when Sunni Mosul rose up against the largely Shiite Iraqi army. Crowds attacked police and troops and paved the way for Islamic State fighters to come into the city from Syria. Local Sunni Arab elites, sick of being marginalized and humiliated by Shiite Baghdad, decided they would risk an alliance with the Islamic State. The corrupt Iraqi Army could have held Mosul by simply standing firm. Both officers and their men ran away and delivered it into the hands of the militant group, which later extended its sway to 40 percent of Iraqi territory (but only perhaps 10 percent of its population).

Had the United States put its full effort into rolling up al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, instead of slighting that theatre in favor of con-

centrating on Iraq, the organization might have been effectively destroyed in 2001 and 2002. Instead, by occupying Iraq the Bush administration gave a whole new generation of angry young men a cause to fight in and bestowed on al-Qaeda a new lease on life.

Had the Bush administration not destroyed the Iraqi state and its army, these local institutions could have forestalled the rise of an al-Qaeda insurgency. That insurgency would never have learned tactics from the Marines it fought in Iraq, nor developed networks for munitions acquisition.

Without an organized, well-funded and experienced insurgency in Iraq that could be exported across the border into Syria, money and arms would not have flowed so easily to the hard line of the hard line among rebels in that country. The Free Syrian Army might have been able to hold together as a loose alliance of secular-minded Sunni Arabs with moderate Muslim Brotherhood fighters. Instead, the extremists, hardened al-Qaeda and other hard line veterans of the Iraq War, outflanked the FSA in Syria. The Bush administration’s patent favoritism toward Shiite religious parties and marginalization of the Sunni Arabs had created a powerful constituency for the Islamic State in Iraq.

Why Bush chose sectarian favoritism over South Africa-style reconciliation remains mysterious. The odd conviction among some politicians that a longer or more brutal American occupation of Iraq could have forestalled the rise of the Islamic State betrays a profound misunderstanding of the actual dynamics. The U.S. occupation created the conditions under which the group flourished.

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell collegiate professor of history at the University of Michigan.

Turkey shooting down a Russian warplane won't start World War 3 Telegraph, UK ShaShank JoShi

The apparent downing of a Russian fighter jet by Turkey – which Ankara claims was violating its airspace, despite ten warnings – is an exceptionally dangerous moment in Syria’s four-year civil war. But, in the context of warming diplomatic relations with Moscow and the extraordinary risks of escalation, Turkey’s Western allies are likelier to proceed with extreme caution.

A crisis like this was almost inevitable. Turkey had complained of repeated airspace violations by Russian aircraft in early October, prompting Nato to issue a protest. Later that month, Turkey did indeed shoot down what, for one heart-stopping moment, seemed to have been a Russian fighter aircraft – but turned out to have been a probable Russian drone. With Russia, Syrian, American, French, British, Canadian, and Arab aircraft filling Syria’s crowded skies, Russ-

ian aircraft coming with 500 feet of American planes, and Russia repeating some of its border-probing behaviour seen over the last year or two in Europe, a crisis was always liable to erupt. The US and Russia had agreed safety protocols in late October, including a ground communication line for round-the-clock contact, but this wouldn’t have applied to Russia-Turkey interactions.

It is crucial to keep a sense of perspective. This would not be the first time that Russian aircraft have been shot down

by American-made planes, or vice versa, without sparking Word War 3. Pakistan’s American-made F-16s shot down a slew of Soviet aircraft in the late 1980s, during the latter’s war in Afghanistan. Going back further, a US Army RU-8 Seminole flying from Turkey was downed over Armenia, then Soviet territory. The most famous incident is of course the downing of CIA pilot Gary Powers’ U2 spy plane in 1962. Soviet pilots also played an important covert role during the Korean War

EU referendum: 16 year-olds should not be allowed to vote

between 1950 and 1953, with Russian sources claiming that they shot down 1,100 to 1,300 American aircraft.

However, this is the first time since the end of the Cold War that a Nato member has downed a Russian warplane. Although Turkey will insist that it was within its rights to shoot down a plane in its airspace, after the past month’s repeated incidents, its alliance partners in Nato will want to focus on de-escalation.

Relations between the West and Russia had thawed slightly, though it would be premature to speak of a rapprochement.

In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, French President Francois Hollande announced his intention to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin with the intention of forming “one big coalition”. US President Barack Obama met with Putin himself with noticeably warmer body language, and the UN Security Council has passed a resolution sanctioning “all necessary means” to eradicate Isil (though, lacking in so-called Chapter VII author-

ity, this was largely a political gesture).

The Middle East is bringing the world’s Great Powers into their closest proximity since Kosovo War in 1999, and in a far more dangerous way.

Talks in Vienna have also resulted in modest progress towards a peace deal for Syria. While Nato will surely release another note of protest over the apparent intrusion into Turkish airspace, Turkey’s Western allies will be wary of jeopardising what they see as these diplomatic gains by pressuring Russia too strongly. What will Russia do now? Like any leader, Mr Putin will be under pressure to respond. But it is possible that Moscow’s adamant claim that its aircraft was in Syrian airspace – despite Turkey’s statement to the contrary, and supporting evidence from radar – will allow for a face-saving compromise, whereby Putin directs his ire at Syrian rebels rather than towards Turkey. The Kremlin mouthpiece Russia Today has likewise insisted that the jet was brought down from the ground. Paradoxically, this

The House of Lords resumes consideration of the European Union Referendum Bill, which should offer British voters an overdue and welcome say on membership of the EU by the end of 2017. Labour and Liberal Democrat peers – who hold sway in the upper chamber – want to extend the franchise for the referendum, allowing 16and 17-year-olds to vote.

Advocates argue that since people of that age may vote in elections to the Scottish Parliament, they should also be able to vote on Europe.

This logic is obviously flawed: just because something happens in Scotland, that does not make it right. The case for votes at 16 is far from clear, and we remain unconvinced.

In truth, though, the argument about the franchise is a red herring. The peers seeking to give youngsters the vote do not really care about the young. They want to cause trouble for the Government. A new franchise would require a new electoral roll. The time taken to compile that roll might preclude a referendum next year. Overturning a Lords vote to amend the Bill – as the Commons is entitled to do – would also cost time and potentially limit David Cameron’s options.

Some Tory opponents of EU membership are quietly egging the peers on. They calculate that the later the referendum, the more likely Brexit becomes. Peers would be wrong to pass their disruptive and cynical amendment. Whatever the arguments over EU membership, Mr Cameron and his Government were elected on a clear promise to pass this Bill, which was first published in the same form in the last Parliament.

The House of Lords is entitled to scrutinise and revise government plans, not wreck them. Peers should think again.

might have a calming effect. Much will surely depend on the fate of Russia’s two pilots, one of whom was reported to be in Turkmen hands while another other, according to images circulated on social media, appears to have died. Turkey’s government has close ties to Turkmen communities and rebels in northern Syria – only yesterday Ankara had called for a UN Security Council meeting to discuss escalating Russian and Syrian attacks on Syrian Turkmen – and could, perhaps, use this longstanding leverage to secure the release of the pilots or their bodies.

On the other hand, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan might well ask why he should lend such assistance to a country that continues to probe his airspace with impunity, merely to shield a Syrian diplomatic process that he, one of Assad’s bitterest opponents, views with scepticism. Moscow and Ankara are likely to avoid a spiral into conflict over this incident. But the underlying cause will remain, and such episodes will repeat themselves unless Russia realises that brinksmanship on Nato’s borders is a reckless, dangerous game. The Middle East is bringing the world’s Great Powers into their closest proximity since Kosovo War in 1999, and in a far more dangerous way. The Syrian war is not only generating vast refugee flows and incubating the world’s most potent terrorist group; it is also a cockpit of traditional state-on-state international rivalries.

Wednesday, 25 November, 2015

ARTS

13

I never SaId IndIa IS InToleranT: Shah rukh khan

T

HE king of Bollywood has finally opened up about the controversy revolving his statement on “growing intolerance” in India. Shah Rukh Khan recently faced political backlash for voicing his opinion on the matter following which he was labelled a ‘Pakistani agent’ for extending his support to cross-border talent. The Bollywood fraternity stood by SRK, but the actor chose to remain silent over the hot debate as he was busy with the shoot of his upcoming film Dilwale. Now that the film has been completed, Shah Rukh has finally gotten the opportunity to

explain what he meant. In an exclusive interview with Mid-Day, SRK was asked if he would use his gift of the gab for a broader purpose, to which he said, “My reply will be in two parts. Yes, I think I should.

I have an idea, b u t haven’t been able to put it to practice.”

“I want to create a

weekly video where I could present myself to the world.

I could be talking about everything, not just films. But then, I also think I should speak less,” he added. Shah Rukh straight out denied he ever said India is intolerant: “I talk about something and it is misconstrued, and I get into trouble.

That’s a nuisance.

Like that thing

which blew up recently – I never said India is intolerant.” “When I was asked about it, I said I wouldn’t like talking about it, but when they insisted, I had just said that the youth should concentrate on making this a secular, progressive country. It is just that people like to believe what they want to believe,” he said. “Misconstruing my words might or might not suit a particular political agenda, but I am annoyed because I didn’t mean what is being portrayed. I am an actor and make films. This is enough of a job. I am an icon because I can be what I am on screen,” the 50year-old megastar added. AGENCIES

Surviving on 25% of my liver: Amitabh ENTERTAINMENT DESK

DAN CLARKE Great #RussianJet shot down by #Turkey. I didn't really like this planet anyway!

ALI ZAFAR The world outside can be as ugly as its meant to be. The world inside can be as beautiful as YOU want it to be.

JIBRAN NASIR RIP Flying Officer #MariumMukhtar, a brave soldier and daughter of the Nation.

Your courage and resolve will continue to inspire many.

ARSLAN NASEER What is more important, is invisible.

FAISAL QURESHI Morning shows have come a full circle of stupidity and her royal moronness.

GoT promo: Is Jon Snow alive?

Is he dead? Is he alive? Is he coming back? HBO’s medieval saga Game of Thrones is known for serving up graphic deaths of its lead characters, but when fan-favourite Jon Snow was killed off, avid followers speculated every theory and sighting that would bring back their heroic soldier. It looks like they prevailed. GoT tweeted a teaser poster on Monday with a partial shot of Jon Snow’s rugged, bloodstained face and trademark hair, with the simple caption: ‘APRIL’ — Season 6 release: It was then placed on Billboards in various cities across the US Monday morning: It is the first time the TV series has officially acknowledged the future of Kit Harington’s character, and the poster sent fans on social media into overdrive. The Game of Thrones tweet was shared more than 35,000 times in three hours on Monday and “Jon Snow” became the top Twitter trend. As soon as the promo was unveiled Twitter broke out with excited fans: Emmy-winning GoT, based on George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books, is a sweeping fantasy epic of the battle across seven kingdoms for the Iron Throne.

It is HBO’s most-watched series, averaging 20 million viewers per episode this year. AGENCIES

Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan has made a shocking revelation about his health. During the launch of a media campaign on Hepatitis, Big B revealed that he is surviving on just 25 per cent of his liver today. The rest 75 per cent has been affected by the deadly virus, Hepatitis B. Speaking at the event, the actor recalled how he had contracted the disease.

“Hepatitis B came to me accidentally. After my accident on the sets of Coolie, I was infused with the blood of about 200 donors and 60

bottles of blood were injected into my system,” he said, as reported by The Indian Express. “One of my blood donors was carrying the Hepatitis B virus which went into my system. I continued to function normally till 2000 and almost 18 years after the accident, during a very normal medical check up, I was told that my liver was infected and I had lost 75 per cent of my liver.” “So, if I am standing here today, you are looking at a person who is surviving with 25 per cent of [his] liver. That is the bad part. The good part is you can survive even with 12 per

cent. But no one wants to get to that stage,” he added. Big B also appreciated the medical facilities in India and praised doctors for being the best in treating patients infected with TB and Hepatitis B.

Obama to feature on Coldplay's new track The British rock band has found a new fan and it is none other than the President of the United States. And now Barack Obama will be singing on Coldplay’s new album A Head Full of Dreams. The move came in after the US leader sang the band’s song Amazing Grace at the funeral of a victim of the Charleston shooting in June. Chris Martin, the band’s frontman, requested to use the recording because of its ‘historical significance’. “We have a tiny clip of the president singing Amazing Grace at that church,” Chris was quoted as saying, reports The Sun. He said they used it “because of the historical significance of what he did and also that song being about ‘I’m lost but now I’m found’.”

According to sources, the White House has granted permission for the band to use the clip as the President “clearly loves Coldplay”. It will serve as an interlude on the album. “Barack Obama wouldn’t let just anyone feature his vocals on the record, espe-

cially considering what a deeply emotional moment it was for him,” a source close to the band was quoted as saying. “But he clearly loves Coldplay and is happy to be a part of their music history. The band was obviously thrilled,” the source added. Earlier in 2012, Obama claimed to be a Coldplay fan, but the members didn’t actually believe him. “I met Barack Obama in the summer and one thing he said to me was, ‘Oh I have your songs on my iPod,’ but I just thought, ‘Oh I bet he says that to every pop star he meets.’ AGENCIES

Twitter lashes out at aamir khan for statement on intolerance Bollywood actor Aamir Khan has attracted immense attention after disclosing that his wife suggested they leave India following cases of religious intolerance in the country. Soon enough, #AamirKhan hit top trends on Twitter and hostile comments from Bollywood and enraged fans surfaced. Veteran actor Rishi Kapoor had a few words of advice for Aamir. Former actress Raveena Tandon was also furious, but chose not to name or tag anyone in her tweets, though it was fairly clear who she was referring to: Singer Abhijeet compared his wife to Aamir’s.However, renowned Indian journalist Barkha Dutt stood by Aamir. Whereas Bigg Biss Season 4 winner has chosen to ban Aamir Khan. The Jazbaa director knows better than to preach freedom of speech. Fans were a little unforgiving. And then there were others who were all for Aamir’s argument.

Director Anurag Kashyap too shared his views on the matter: “Intolerance has always been there. We don’t have freedom of expression. It is something we have to live with, do our own bit, fight and refuse to participate. I hope it silences,” he was quoted as saying by the Indian Express.

India’s ruling party BJP also reacted, terming Aamir’s statement unfair. ”We won’t let Aamir leave the country, he is safe. This kind of comment influenced by a politically motivated campaign insults those who have given so much honour to Aamir in India,” said Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, the Minister of State for Minority Affairs.

“It is stupid… It is stupid to be intolerant and this is our biggest issue, not just an issue… Religious intolerance and not being secular in this country is the worst kind of crime that you can do as a patriot,” he had said.

Following Aamir Khan's statement about leaving India due to growing intolerance, veteran actor Anupam Kher has criticised the actor for his words, reminding him that it was India which gave him recognition and fame, reported Hindustan Times.

Kher tweeted to Khan after the actor and his wife Kiran Rao expressed concerns about intolerance in India and suggested that they should leave the country. Aamir is not the first actor who has spoken up about intolerance in the country. Superstar Shahrukh Khan had also raised his voice on the matter. Indian actors Sonam Kapoor and Sidharth Malhotra also supported Pakistani actors Mahira Khan and Fawad Khan when Shiv Sena called for a ban on them. Anupam Kher, who starred with Aamir Khan in Dil Hai K Manta Nahi, is also the husband of actor Kiron Kher who is a member of the current ruling party, Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). AGENCIES

Charlie Sheen 'paid out £6.6million to keep sex tape with another man secret' ENTERTAINMENT DESK After making headlines for being HIV positive, Charlie Sheen has returned to the news as a result of yet another scandal. Reports are surfacing that Sheen paid £6.6million to keep eight sex tapes private, but in vain because they have been leaked.

The videos apparently show the actor with both male and female partners, with one showing him performing oral sex on another man and smoking cocaine, reports Mirror.

While Sheen is still battling to keep the clips away from the public eye ,Radar Online claims they have obtained the videos. National Enquirer magazine also investigated the story for 18 months and has apparently seen five of these tapes. Sheen previously admitted to paying £6million to numerous people to keep them from disclosing his HIV status.

He labelled the blackmail as his “truth becoming their treason”.

About the sex tapes, a source is reported to have said, “It makes you

wonder what went through Charlie’s mind to let himself be filmed. He is desperate to keep the videos off the internet but they have already been leaked. The clips last about 30 seconds and show him smoking a crack

CMYK

cocaine pipe and with a male lover.”

Radar also reports that in 2013 Sheen spent $1,629,507 on “friendly entertainment” which was believed to be a decent term for hookers, sex swap escorts and male gigolos, ac-

cording to financial reports for his production company 9th Step. It was previously reported by Radar that a source revealed that Charlie Sheen is “secretly bisexual” and he would “regularly spend thousands of dollars to sleep with transsexual hookers.” His open marriage with Brooke Mueller was also exposed claiming they “had multiple sex partners together while they were married.”

The former Two and a half men star is also facing a host of legal claims from his former partners, including exgirlfriend and ex-porn star Bree Olson, who deny his claims of informing them of his illness before getting intimate. Charlie was once worth £66million, but he lost a lot of it in payouts and is reportedly selling the house he bought for his ex-wife Brooke Mueller and twin sons – hinting at financial trouble for the father-of-five.

Reports also claim he is evicting them, but a source said, “Charlie would never kick his children out of their home but he needs his money from somewhere while not working.”

14 LEISURE

Wednesday, 25 November, 2015

HaGaR tHE HoRRIblE

ARIES

TAURUS

GEMINI

Although you may decide to suppress your desires now, it's only because you realize that sharing them could create more problems.

You have a good sense of what is real and you are moved to talk your walk

You wish that all your relationship dreams could come true, but this may not be possible now. Fortunately, you can still be happy with your current lot in life since you prefer knowing the unvarnished.

You are preoccupied with your thoughts today, but it may be difficult to keep your mind on the sunny side of the street. Your key planet Mercury joins karmic Saturn, making you an intellectual force with.

CANCER

LEO

VIRGO

If you find yourself stuck in an emotional funk today, you might believe there's no easy way out. Your current situation could be bothering you enough now that it is apparent to everyone around you. There's.

An intense wave of self-awareness washes over you today, but the results are uncharacteristically sobering. It's not that you have lost your legendary confidence; it's just that you're not feeling very.

You might not know whether to stand on your soapbox and shout your truth or grit your teeth, swallow hard and keep quiet. Either way, you may wish you took a different route as your key planet Mercury.

LIBRA

SCORPIO

SAGITTARIUS

You're not willing to bury your feelings today just to keep the peace.

You Libras are known for your innate diplomatic skills and your natural propensity for putting the needs of others in front of your.

It's all too easy to work yourself into a corner today as heavy Saturn leans on mental Mercury in your sign. Thankfully, you intuitively realize that you have the power to manifest the changes that are.

You may be secretly struggling against the lessons that taskmaster Saturn is teaching you now. The good news is the hardest work is probably already completed.

The time for scheming is over; whatever you.

dIlbERt

GaRFIEld

baldo

CAPRICORN

AQUARIUS

PISCES

You might be resigned to tear down any walls that are currently standing between you and your goals. You know that you're capable of reaching your destination, but you're tired of being the one who bears.

Your out-of-the box strategy for success may not be as effective as you think today. Instead of drawing attention to what makes you different, surprise everyone by demonstrating your ability to collaborate.

If you are shouldering an emotional burden, you have a rare chance to finally release whatever is bothering you now. It's just not worth holding on to all your imagined worries that are based upon painful.

cRosswoRd

sUdokU

woRd sEaRcH

ACROSS

bRIdGE

How to play fill in all the squares in the grid so that each row, column and each of the squares contains all the digits.

The object is to insert the numbers in the boxes to satisfy only one condition: each row, column and 3x3 box must contain the digits 1 through 9 exactly once.

LOON MIGhT NETTLE PERSON PLEASE PRINCE REBATE REPRESENT ROBE SANE SCARE SELECTION ShORE SPECk SQUINT STIPENd VALVE

Today’s soluTions

tHoUGHts aNd actIoNs

cHEss white tO PLAY AND MAte iN three MOVes 8

crossword solution

7 6 5 4 3 2

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

chess solution

A

1.Qxc6+ [1.Nxc7+ Rxc7 2.Qxc6+ Rxc6 3.Rd8#] 1...bxc6 2.Nxc7+ Rxc7 3.Rd8# *

1

sudoku solution

1 Long-tailed crow (6) 4 Approximately (Latin) (5) 7 Short journey on behalf of another (6) 8 Saunters (6) 9 Expression of pain (4) 10 floor covering (8) 12 Attempt to anticipate or predict (6-5) 17 Out of date (8) 19 Engrave (4) 20 from that point (6) 21 Underground passage (6) 22 Cleverly funny (5) 23 Worshipped (6) DOwn 1 Continental aristocrat (7) 2 Evoking vivid images (7) 3 Laziness (9) 4 Small jazz or dance band (5) 5 Waves (7) 6 Accept as true without proof (6) 11 Not cared for (9) 13 Least difficult (7) 14 Near Leo (anag) — girl's name (7) 15 Accomplish a goal (7) 16 Toady (6) 18 fortunate (5)

ABOUT ACCOUNTANT BARGE BASIN BEAk BRUTE CARTON CATCh CENTER CLOSETS COkE CONfRONTAT ION COUNTESS dOUBT ENEMy IMPORT LINT

SPORTS 15

Wednesday, 25 November, 2015

Murray praises Ghent security arranGeMents SportS DeSk

COUTINHO LOOKS TO INTENSIFY HIS MAGIC SportS DeSk Liverpool midfielder Philippe Coutinho believes he has become a more complete player and said he is always striving to make himself better after putting in a string of fine performances in recent weeks.

The 23-year-old Brazilian picked up the club’s player of the season award after he scored five goals and set another seven in the Premier League last season and helped the Merseyside club to a sixth place finish and a spot in the Europa League.

Coutinho had a quiet start to the campaign but has burst into life under the stewardship of new manager Juergen Klopp and has scored four goals, including a brace in the Reds’ dismantling of champions Chelsea on Oct. 31. “It’s been personally a good year for me, with big moments, some good goals and receiving awards,” Coutinho, who scored in Liverpool’s 4-1 victory over Manchester City on Saturday, was quoted as saying on the club’s website.

“To be named the best player at Liverpool was an honour and not something I could’ve imagined a few years ago. I’m more complete, with more confidence and different experiences to learn from.

“I feel that I’ve grown a lot as a player (over the last year). I’ve spent time working on the areas I knew I needed to improve, like scoring more, and I still have to push myself but I’ve come a long way.”

“I’m playing all the time, I’m learning and becoming stronger so this is all good for me,” he added.

“Every game day is special for me. Every day is a new chance to grow, and that is what I want. Team trophies will be important. That is a main thing. I always want to be better.”

Meanwhile, skipper Jordan Henderson, who broke a bone in his foot during training, has said he is close to first-team action after being on the sidelines for over two months.

“I’m getting there. This is one of the longest periods of time I’ve been out for and that has been tough for me. Hopefully I’m not too far away now,” said Henderson.

Liverpool, who sit ninth in the league table, go into Sunday’s league game against an outof-sorts Swansea City knowing a win could see them go as high as sixth in the table.

Andy Murray says the Great Britain team feel secure in Ghent amid concerns over a potential terrorist attack in Belgium.

Murray and the rest of the GB team arrived in the city on Monday ahead of the Davis Cup final against their hosts, which is due to get under way on Friday.

In the nation’s capital Brussels, the terror alert was raised to the highest level after the government warned of a “serious and imminent” threat of an attack.

Addressing a media conference on Tuesday, Murray praised security staff for putting arrangements in place to allow the team to feel safe.

“I’ve been saying the last few days, a lot of the ties you think everything’s fine and the security you don’t necessarily need it,” he said.

“But in situations like this it’s great that we have such capable people that are able to give us the best advice and everyone, I think, is very comfortable in the team.

“It was obviously a bit concerning a few days ago but I think once we got here, and got into the hotel, came to the venue and saw what it was like here, I think that made everyone a lot more comfortable.”

BCB to look into alleged abuse of Tamim Iqbal

SportS DeSk BPL technical committee chairman Jalal Yunus has said they have referred Tamim Iqbal’s allegations of abuse during the match between Sylhet Superstars and Chittagong Vikings to the

BCB’s disciplinary committee, with due process set to begin this week.

“Both parties will be called up in the next two days,” said Yunus. We have referred it to the board’s disciplinary committee.”

Cricketers Welfare Association of

Bangladesh (CWAB), the players’ body, has condemned the alleged abuse of Tamim, who was seen exchanging heated words with Sylhet Superstars owner Azizul Islam after the start of the match was delayed because two of Sylhet’s players - Josh Cobb and Ravi Bopara - did not have NOCs. “CWAB is alarmed and angry at the attitude shown towards a senior Bangladesh cricketer,” a statement signed by their secretary Debbabrata Paul said. “We protest the behavior directed towards Tamim Iqbal. We hope that the BPL governing council will take swift action against such attitude.”

The Bangladesh cricketers’ body also expressed concern about the storming of the Shere Bangla National Stadium’s gates by supporters of Dhaka Dynamites on the opening day of the T20 tournament.

“The manner in which the Dhaka Dynamites’ officials and supporters ignored the security while entering the [Mirpur] stadium is unprecedented,” the CWAB statement said.

“It put the security of Bangladesh cricket under threat.”

Pair of Rams somehow missed the team bus, causing inactives AgencieS Rams running back Tre Mason was a surprise inactive Sunday, and now we have a reason why. Speaking with reporters, coach Jeff Fisher said Mason, along with rookie tackle Isaiah Battle, missed the team bus to the airport. “Isaiah and Tre were deactivated yesterday for violating club rules. They missed the team bus. So those are the rules. Fifty-one other guys made the bus, so they didn’t play,” he said, via the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “I’m just disappointed that [Mason] missed the bus for whatever reason. He’s going to play this week, he’s had a couple (of) good weeks of practice, he’s healthy and he’s going to play this week.” Mason was the team’s starter at the beginning of season while Todd Gurley recovered from injury.

Even with Gurley’s return, Mason has had a solid role in St. Louis as a backup. In the three games before last week’s inactive, Mason had 27 combined touches.

Last season, Mason led the Rams in rushing with 765 yards. The Rams then acquired Gurley with the 10th overall pick in this year’s draft, and he’s been tearing up the league. In eight games (seven starts) Gurley has 775 yards and six touchdowns.

Mason’s violation of team rules will only widen the divide between him and Gurley.

Pink ball set to give Test cricket a glitzy makeover SYDneY Agencies

Venerable Test cricket, 138 years after its origins, is about to get a glitzy makeover in this week’s first-ever day-night Test match between Australia and New Zealand in Adelaide. While playing with a pink ball under lights is an anathema to staunch cricket traditionalists, administrators are pointing to dwindling crowds and outdated scheduling as they attempt to move the Test format into the 21st century. Emboldened by the success of Twenty20 with its frenetic pace and slick innovation, Cricket Australia is trialling day-night Test cricket from Friday in a bid to attract more fans and interest.

Cricket Australia chief James Sutherland is a leading proponent and believes it should be viewed as part of the evolution of the five-day game. “We know and understand we need to shift entertainment into periods of the day that are more ap-

pealing,” Sutherland said. “I love all cricket but my preferred format of the game is Test cricket. And I honestly believe if we do nothing then we are at risk of loving Test cricket to death,” he added.

Tickets for the day-night Test match, where play will be from 2:00-9:00 pm local time, are selling briskly, with Cricket Australia comparing the interest to a high-demand Ashes series against England. The contrast with Australia’s first two daytime Tests of the current series against New Zealand could not be starker with low turnouts and funereal ground atmospheres in Brisbane and Perth yet again bringing into focus Test cricket’s ability to survive in a modern sporting environment. While the daynight concept has been hailed as “thoroughly enlightened” by the new international cricket chief, legendary Pakistan batsman Zaheer Abbas, it has its opponents. Some players have been critical of the revolutionary pink ball used be-

cause the traditional red ball is difficult to see in the dark complaining it deteriorates more quickly.

Kookaburra, which manufactures the balls used in Australia, say the difference between the red and pink versions is pri-

CMYK

marily a very fine film of extra paint used on the pink ball to help keep its colour.

“I don’t think any Test ball has gone through the level of testing and development that the pink ball has got and the number of trials and feedback,” “Test

cricket is seen as the pinnacle format by the majority of international players. The fact that players value it so highly is critical to its survival as a format around the world,” FICA chief Tony Irish said. “One really shouldn’t mess too much with that.” But pink-ball Test matches could just be the start of a cricket revolution, if some visionaries have their way.

Former Australian captain Mark Taylor, now a current Cricket Australia board member and television commentator, is advocating the introduction of four-day, 100-over Tests and a more clearly defined championship.

Taylor wants all Test matches to begin on Thursdays, allowing games to build to a Sunday evening climax.

“You’ve got to look at the game as a whole. Where is cricket going?

“The younger generation generally want more instant gratification and I think over five days to keep them interested in the game is not so easy,” he said.

SPORTS Wednesday, 25 November, 2015c

pcb seeks government clearance on IndIa serIes LAHore

p

Agencies

AKISTAN’S cricket chief said on Tuesday he had sought their government’s permission for a bilateral series with India on an unspecified agreed neutral venue. Sri Lanka is the likeliest venue to host a shortened bilateral series between the arch-rivals after the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) refused a request from the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) to play in United Arab Emirates, Pakistan’s adopted home because of security fears at home.

The move came after PCB chairman Shaharyar Khan met BCCI president Shashank Manohar in Dubai on Sunday.

“We have sent the report to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and has sought permission to play India on a neutral venue,”said Khan, without confirming Sri Lanka as the venue of the series.

“After the Dubai meeting both BCCI

and PCB have said that the final decision rests with the respective governments, so in the next three to four days we expect a final decision,” said Khan. With time running out, as India have to travel to Australia for a limited over series starting

from January 12 and Pakistan visit New Zealand in the same period, the full series of two Tests, five one-day and two Twenty20 is likely to be reduced.

It is likely that both countries will agree to play three one-day and two

Twenty20 internationals. Sri Lanka Cricket interim committee head Sidath Wettimuny confirmed Pakistan has contacted him to arrange the matches.

“I received a call from the PCB asking about the possibilities of hosting the series. We are now looking at it very seriously,” Wettimuny said. “Nothing is confirmed as yet as we have to get back to them on schedules and availability, but we are very excited by the request. I think this is a great opportunity for us to support Pakistan and India. They have always supported us,” Wettimuny added.

Pakistan and India have not played a full series since 2007. India stalled bilateral series with Pakistan in the wake of 2008 terrorists’ attacks on Mumbai, which New Delhi blamed on militants based across the border. But last year both the boards signed a memorandum of understanding under which they are scheduled to play six series between 2015 to 2023 but all subject to government clearance.

PAKISTAN WITHDRAWS FROM 2015 SAFF CHAMPIONSHIPS fIfa’s ethIcs commIttee wants lIfe ban on platInI pArIS Agencies FIFA’s ethics watchdog wants Michel Platini to be banned for life over a suspect payment, the European football chief’s lawyer declared on Tuesday.

Platini is serving a 90-day suspension on corruption charges over a $2 million payment he received from FIFA president Sepp Blatter who is also suspended.

Platini’s lawyer Thibaud d’Ales described FIFA’s life ban demand as a “scandal” and “excessive”. Blatter’s representatives refused to comment on whether the same request has been made against the Swiss official. FIFA’s investigatory chamber announced Monday that it has opened a case and a decision is expected to be handed down next month. Until then Platini is forbidden to take part in the race to become Blatter’s successor as president of FIFA. He is one of five official candidates to run football’s scandal-hit ruling body with the election scheduled for February 26.

SportS DeSk Pakistan will be withdrawing from the South Asian Football Federation (Saff) Championships 2015 that will begin in Kerala on December 23, while the registration for the event will close on Tuesday. A Pakistan Football Federation official confirmed that the country cannot register for the event in time and the federation does not have the funds to hold a camp to prepare the team.

Meanwhile, All India Football Federation General Secretary Kushal Das also confirmed that Pakistan has withdrawn from the Championships without giving any reason.

“We have been informed that Pakistan has pulled out of the SAFF Championships. They did not give any reason for the withdrawal,” said Das on Tuesday. Das further said that teams will be given walkover who were scheduled to play against Pakistan in the Championships. “There will be no change in the schedule of the tournament and it will begin from December 23. India will get a walkover against Pakistan,” said Das. Earlier, National striker Saadullah said that Pakistan would need to

field a full-strength squad including players who are part of foreign leagues if they are to win the SAFF Championships. Also, former national team captain Muhammad Essa Khan criticised the government for creating the mess that he thought

could lead to Pakistan’s failure to participate in the event. Pakistan have never won the SAFF Championships.

Out of the total 10 events, India has been victorious six times while Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Maldives and Afghanistan have won it once each.

IslahuddIn calls for matches agaInst european gIants ISLAMABAD Agencies Olympian Islahuddin Siddique on Tuesday urged the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) to organise youth team tours to Europe in order to prepare them for next year’s Junior Hockey World Cup in India.

“After watching the performance of the junior team in the recent Hockey Asia Cup, I can say our team, stands at No 2 position in Asia as they lost the final to India. But they still have a long way to go to be a contender at the world level,” said Islah.

“Pakistan junior team will have to put up a lot of hard work against European sides,” he said.

Islahuddin said PHF should arrange matches against the likes of Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and also the European sides in order to groom its talent.

“A total of 20 to 25 matches should be organised for the team against these sides.”

Islahuddin, who represented Pakistan from 1967 to 1978, said the juniors did not show enough fighting spirit in the final against India.

“Our goal-keeping was very poor and needs improvement.”

He advised PHF to set up a goal-keeping camp to improve this department.

“PHF should call in the expertise of Shahid Ali Khan, Mansoor Ahmed and Ahmed Alam for the camp,” he said adding the full-backs should also be called in for the training camp.

Islahuddin called on the PHF to also focus on the improvement of the the senior team, currently ranked 10th in the world.

Pakistan to defend second position in rankings against England SportS DeSk The Shahid Afridi-led Pakistan side will be defending its second position in the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) Twenty20 rankings when they take on England in a three-match series starting from Thursday in the UAE. Pakistan bagged the Test series 20 under Misbahul Haq’s captaincy, while England beat Azhar Ali and co 3-1 in the ODIs. The T20 series will announce the ultimate winner in the tour.

Pakistan are 14 points ahead of the eighth-placed England which means Afridi must lead the team to victory to ensure that they stay put on the second position. Sri Lanka is on top of the table right now as the reigning world champions.

If Pakistan beat England 2-1, then both sides will remain as they are on the rankings table.

However, if England beat Pakistan 2-1 then Eoin Morgan-

led T20 side will jump up to the sixth position and Afridi and his men will drop down to fourth.

In another case, if Pakistan win 3-0 they will join Sri Lanka on top of the points table with 125 points but will still remain on the second position by a fraction of a point.

Meanwhile, if England beat Pakistan 3-0 then the men in green will drop down to the sixth position and England will jump up to the fourth position.

In the ICC Player Rankings for T20I Batsmen, England’s Alex Hales will start off as the highestranked batsman from either side in third position. The 26-year-old Nottinghamshire batsman trails India’s Virat Kohli in second place by four, and number-one ranked Aaron Finch by 13 points.

‘ICC investigating England’s third ODI win over Pakistan for alleged corruption’ Captain Eoin Morgan (eighth) and Jos Buttler (47th) are the other England batsmen to feature

inside the top 50.

Pakistan has no batsman inside the top 10 but in Ahmed Shehzad (14th), Umar Akmal (16th), Mohammad Hafeez (24th) and Shahid Afridi (35th), it boasts four batsmen inside the top 50.

In the ICC Player Rankings for T20I Bowlers, England has no bowler inside the top 75, while Pakistan has four bowlers inside the top 75. These include Shahid Afridi (ninth), Sohail Tanvir (16th), Shoaib Malik (68th) and Mohammad Irfan (75th).

Sunil Narine leads the bowlers’ table, which also includes his West Indies team-mate Samuel Badree in second spot and Sachithra Senanayake of Sri Lanka in third place.

Shakib Al Hasan of Bangladesh is on top of the all-rounders’ category, but Pakistan’s duo of Hafeez and Shahid are within striking distance. Second-ranked Hafeez trails Shakib by 47 points, while Shahid is another four points behind.

Published by Arif Nizami at Plot # 7, Al-Baber Centre, F/8 Markaz, Islamabad.

CMYK