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Asian Voice - Saturday 12th June 2010
Suspension of peace talks helped non-state actors: Gilani Islamabad: The suspension of the India-Pakistan composite dialogue in the wake of the 2008 Mumbai attacks allowed nonstate actors to succeed in 'dictating their agenda', Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said on Monday. Reiterating Pakistan's desire for the "negotiated and peaceful resolution" of all disputes with India, Gilani said: "By
suspending composite dialogue following the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, non-state actors succeeded in dictating their agenda." The premier made the remarks while addressing a gathering of top army officials, including army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, at the Command and Staff College in Quetta.
Pakistan has more nukes than India Has 70-90 warheads compared to India’s 60-80: Global watchdogs
New Delhi: After racing ahead of India in ballistic as well as cruise missiles, with covert help from China and North Korea, Pakistan seems to be surging ahead in the nuclear arsenal as well. A series of recent estimates by international nuclear watchdogs and reputed thinktanks hold that Pakistan has a total of 70 to 90 warheads to India’s 60 to 80. China, in comparison, has around 240 warheads. Even as global fears about the possibility of jihadis gaining access to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal,
Schoolboy ties knot, expelled Peshawar: A Pakistani pupil has been expelled from his private school for getting married on the sly because teachers believe marital relations are inappropriate playground talk. Ghairat Khan, a bearded seventh grader, is registered as 13 years old and attends classes at the Englishlanguage Peshawar Model School with 12 and 13-year-old boys, but insisted he is 18. Khan said he married his 16-year-old cousin because his father died and his mother was ill with asthma.
enriched uranium or technical know-how continue, its deadly inventory is only going to expand in the coming years. Pakistan, after all, is supplementing its ongoing enriched uranium-based nuclear programme with a weapons-grade plutonium one. Its two new heavywater reactors being built at its Khushab nuclear facility, with China’s help, are clearly geared towards producing weapons-grade plutonium. In its latest annual world military expenditure report released last week, the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said Pakistan’s weapons-grade plutonium production would jump seven-fold with the two new reactors at Khushab nearing completion. “Our conservative estimates are that Pakistan has 60 warheads and could produce 100 nuclear weapons at short notice,” said SIPRI, adding that Islamabad had earmarked its US-supplied F-16 fighters, Ghaznavi and Shaheen missiles as its nuclear delivery systems. India’s nuclear
weapons programme, in turn, has largely been plutonium-based, basically centred around the Pu-239 produced in research reactors like Cirus and Dhruva at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. Nuclear arsenals of India, Pakistan, and even China, pale in comparison to the gigantic ones of the two former Cold War foes, US and Russia. SIPRI estimates there are a whopping 22,600 active, inactive and stored nuclear warheads around the globe, enough to destroy it several times over.
Zardari is disenchanted with India
Washington: Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has said he was disappointed with India but insisted he can never be a hawk vis-a-vis New Delhi. "I'm a little disenchanted with India. I expected the largest democracy in the world to behave much more maturely. We are facing a threat on the eastern and western borders," Zardari told Newsweek in an interview. The president spoke in response to a question on Islamabad's call to extradite the lone surviving 2008 Mumbai attacker, Pakistan's Ajmal Amir Kasab. Pakistan has repeatedly said that terror-
Asif Ali Zardari
ists who killed 166 people in Mumbai were "non-state actors" even if they were Pakistanis. He reiterared the point to Newsweek. "This new-age terror has created a phenomenon where a few people can take entire states to war. The fact that these people happen to belong to
Pakistan or India or Bangladesh is immaterial. They are non-state actors, and states should behave like states." But he stressed that he could "never be a hawk (on India). I'm a liberal by nature and democrat by principles. War is never an option as far as I'm concerned". India and Pakistan have fought three major wars since their independence in 1947. Zardari also sought to distance his country from Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani American who tried to bomb the Times Square in New York.
10 killed, thousands homeless as Phet hits Pak Islamabad: Ten people were killed and thousands were left homeless as tropical cyclone Phet brought heavy rain and flooding to Pakistan's coast, officials said on Monday. The chief port of Karachi was spared the brunt of the cyclone, which made landfall 80 km to the south at Thatta district late on Sunday. Qamaruz Zaman Chaudhry, the head of Pakistan's Meteorological Department, said lowlying areas of Thatta's coast bore the brunt of the storm with waves up to five metres high. At least 10 people were electrocuted in Karachi where heavy rains disrupted power transmission. Dozens were admitted to hospitals with injuries
A woman wades through flood water outside her makeshift home at Ibrahim Haideri fishing harbour after heavy rainfall in Karachi on Sunday
from rain-related accidents, said Mohammed Younus, a spokesman for the private Edhi Rescue Service. Several flights were cancelled or delayed at Karachi international airport. About 20,000 people were stranded in Gawadar,
a port city in the southwestern province of Balochistan, where 350 mm of rain fell within 24 hours. 'Our people are carrying out rescue and relief activities round the clock,' district official Pasand Khan Buledi said.
Thunderstorms kills 37 At least 37 people were killed and dozens more were injured when thunderstorms hit Pakistan's Punjab province. Lahore was the worst hit, with 11 people, including six children, killed in the provincial capital. Seven people were killed and 60 injured in the neighbouring district of Sheikhupura. Nineteen deaths occurred in other districts of Punjab. Most of the casualties were caused by falling roofs or walls and road accidents. Winds with a speed of 93 km per hour uprooted trees and destroyed power lines, cutting the power supply for hours in Punjab, The News reported. The deaths occurred before Phet hits Thatta district.
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In focus Pak Army officers conducted Kabul attack, reveals probe New Delhi: The Pakistani army's involvement in the attack in Kabul that left 16 people, including seven Indians, a French film maker and an Italian diplomat, killed have been exposed. The attack took place on February 26 last. CNNIBN has managed to get access to an interrogation report of one of the masterminds of the attack - Fateh Hazrat Abdul Razzaq Ali who is a serving Captain in the Pakistani army. The interrogation was conducted by the Afghanistan antiterrorism department officials. Ali was arrested in Afghanistan on March 30 last. He revealed during interrogation that two Herat based ISI officers had planned the attack on the guest houses in Kabul. Fourteen Pakistani army officers were sent to co-ordinate the attack with the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Taliban gunmen. Ali has named three serving Pakistan army officers - Hazrat Bilal, Hazrat Abdul Gafar Ali and Sardar Mohammed - who were involved in the attack. The officers had arrived in Afghanistan through Kandahar and Helmand province On February 15 to carry out the operation. Indians were the prime target in the suicide attack carried out by the Taliban terrorists. Two officers of the Indian Army were among those killed apart from five other officers who got injured.
Al-Qaida no 3 killed in US drone strike Islamabad: Al-Qaida’s number three leader, Mustafa Abu alYazid al-Misri, who was the organization’s operations head in South and Central Asia including Afghanistan, and who had threatened India with more 26/11 type attacks, has been killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan’s lawless tribal region, according to a statement released by al-Qaida. Egypt-born Mustafa Ahmed Muhammad Uthman Abu al-Yazid (55), better known as Mustafa Abu al-Yazid al-Misri, was killed along with his wife and three children on May 25 in a drone strike in Datta Khel area, 25 km north of Miranshah town of North Waziristan, confirmed a Pakistani intelligence official. Yazid is said to be the senior most al-Qaida leader to be killed in the US air campaign to date. Earlier reports of his death have been proved wrong and this is the first time alQaida has acknowledged such a claim. US intelligence officials have described Yazid one of the founders of alQaida and the main conduit of its chief Osama bin Laden. As al-Qaida’s operational commander in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, Yazid is believed to have had a hand in everything - from al-Qaida’s finances to its operational planning.
Indian envoy meets opposition leader Islamabad: Indian High Commissioner Sharat Sabharwal has discussed bilateral relations with a top leader of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz). Sabharwal met Chaudhry Nisan Ali Khan, a member of the Pakistan parliament, at Punjab House, Online news agency said. They discussed the political situation in Pakistan, terrorism and other issues. Khan said that cordial relations between the two countries would enhance stability of the South Asian region. The Indian envoy said New Delhi wanted good relations with Pakistan. Khan is a five-time member of the National Assembly. He has previously served as federal minister for petroleum and natural resources.
Forex reserves cross $16 bn Karachi: Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves have crossed $16 billion for the first time in three years, but the country's foreign debt stands at a staggering $54 billion. Central bank spokesman Syed Waseemuddin told Geo News on Friday that as of May 21, Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves stood at $16.129 billion, largely because the US deposited $280.80 million meant for expenses in the war against terror. The last time the reserves had exceeded $16 billion was in August 2007. Of the $16.129 billion, the State Bank of Pakistan (SPB) held $12.30 billion, the remaining $3.70 billion was deposited in commercial banks, Waseemuddin said. On the flip side, Pakistan's external debt stood at $54.23 billion as of March 31, SBP figures show. Meanwhile, the government accepted the resignation of SBP governor Syed Salim Raza and asked Deputy Governor Yaseen Anwar to officiate in his place. Citing 'personal reasons', Raza had submitted his resignation effective from May 6, which was accepted by President Asif Ali Zardari on the advice of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, a government statement said. The former Citigroup banker, who was appointed SBP governor in December 2008, was due to retire in February 2011.