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PESHAWAR: Pakistani Taliban militants on Tuesday claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack on a UN office in which five people were killed saying the United Nations was a US slave.
A suicide bomber dressed as a paramilitary soldier blew himself up in an office of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in the capital, Islamabad, on Monday killing five members of staff including an Iraqi.
‘We accept responsibility for the attack in Islamabad,’ Azam Tariq, a spokesman for the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or Taliban Movement in Pakistan, said in a telephone call to a Reuters journalist in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
‘All these organisations are slaves of the United States,’ Tariq said when asked why the aid agency, which is helping millions of impoverished Pakistanis, was targeted.
Pakistan security forces have made gains this year against al-Qaeda-linked Pakistani Taliban militants who have set off numerous bombs in towns and cities aimed at security forces and government and foreign targets.
But Monday's attack on the tightly guarded UN office was a setback for hopes that the militants were in disarray and on the back foot following the killing of their leader, Baitullah Mehsud, in a US missile attack in August.
The United Nations temporarily closed its office in Pakistan after the blast for security reasons, a UN spokeswoman said, adding security would be reviewed on Wednesday.
Tariq accused the United Nations of turning a blind eye to atrocities in ethnic Pashtun tribal regions on the Afghan border, militant strongholds which the army has been attacking and where US drone aircraft have launched deadly missiles.
‘Why can't the United Nations see the atrocities being committed in Waziristan and other tribal areas?’ he said referring to a region known as a hub of Taliban and al-Qaeda activity.
Offensive imminent?
The government ordered the army to launch an offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in their South Waziristan bastion in June.
The security forces have been launching air and artillery strikes, while moving in troops, blockading the region and trying to split off factions.
Speculation is rising that a ground offensive is imminent but the army has declined to say when that might begin.
Tariq said the Pakistani Taliban reserved the right to carry out more attacks in the face of the threats of an offensive. The Taliban were fully prepared to confront and defeat ‘Obama and his associates’, he said.
Speculation about an assault on South Waziristan comes as the United States has been stepping up pressure on Pakistan to go after Afghan Taliban factions based in northwestern enclaves.
With Afghan violence reaching new heights, the United States is weighing options on how to deal with the insurgency eight years after driving the Taliban from power.
The Pakistani Taliban swear allegiance to Mullah Mohammad Omar, chief of the Afghan Taliban, who are fighting to expel western forces.
The Pakistani Taliban support that aim and also want their version of religious rule in Pakistan.
Imran Khan asks Pak govt. to halt Swat military operation
Lahore, Oct.4 (ANI): Cricketer turned politician Imran Khan has once again asked the Pakistan government to stop the military operation in Swat and Malakand Divisions, and said the issue could be resolved through dialogue.
Addressing a meeting of the party workers, Khan said the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) supports the country’s armed forces, but the military operation in the valley should be discontinued immediately in order to restore peace in the region.
Referring to a recent video footage, which showed an elderly man being brutally beaten by the some Pakistan Army soldiers, Khan asked Army Chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani to take stern action against those involved in the incident.
“We stood by our Army and completely supported it but we opposed the use of force. Cruelty can never be justified whether it was done by the Taliban or the government,” The News quoted Khan, as saying.
Expressing unity with the Baloch people, Khan said the PTI would observe October 9 as Balochistan Day and he would himself visit the insurgency hit province on that day. (ANI)
WHETHER the bravado is contrived or based on genuine strength is perhaps immaterial at this stage. The hard, cold fact is that the new TTP leadership based in South Waziristan appears to be intact and, on the face of it at least, unified in its resolve to battle the state. The re-emergence on Monday of Tehrik-i-Taliban chief Hakeemullah Mehsud came as a major embarrassment for the interior ministry which was claiming that he had been killed in intra-Taliban fighting. What’s more, he was flanked by none other than Waliur Rehman Mehsud, the man ostensibly responsible for his death. On Monday, Hakeemullah vowed to exact revenge for the killing of his predecessor Baitullah Mehsud. He moreover pledged allegiance to Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar and was accompanied by a sectarian hate-monger who is also wanted in connection with an attack on the US consulate in Karachi. This triumvirate of sorts should send a clear signal to the security establishment: there can be no differentiating between good and bad Taliban. They are one and the same, on both sides of the Durand Line. Militant sectarian outfits in Pakistan are also part of the Taliban–Al Qaeda nexus now and must not be spared in the ongoing crackdown.
An army of suicide bombers was waiting for orders, Hakeemullah warned, adding that the TTP had become stronger, not weaker, in the post-Baitullah period. This may not be true but such claims cannot be dismissed either given the intelligence black hole that is South Waziristan. A truer picture can emerge only when the military moves towards Mehsud strongholds and takes on the enemy in its own backyard. A ground offensive is said to be imminent and battle lines have been drawn on both sides. The Mehsud Taliban, backed by their Uzbek allies, are expected to fight to the last man and they also enjoy the advantage of home turf in a terrain that can be baffling for outsiders. Yet they can be no let-up on the part of the security forces. Hakeemullah Mehsud may talk big but it is clear that the Taliban are on the back foot. This is the time for a decisive assault.
That said, the country must brace itself for more violence in the streets even if the state enjoys the upper hand in the theatre of war. Responsibility for Monday’s suicide bombing in Islamabad has been claimed by the TTP, and more attacks can be expected if the Mehsud militants are taken head-on. But no setback, however big, should deter the state and the citizenry in their fight against the enemy within. (Dawn Editorial)
UNHCR official is alive: BLUF Updated at: 1350 PST, Monday, February 23, 2009
QUETTA: The Balochistan Liberation United Front (BLUF) has denied the reports of making phone call to press club regarding killing of abducted United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) provincial head John Solecki.
The spokesman of BLUF said rumors are false alarm and said that he is still alive and absolutely fine.
Earlier, unknown persons had phoned in Quetta Press Club and claimed that John has been killed and his body will be found after two hours.
However, government and independent sources could not confirm the reports of John’s killing.
John Solecki had kidnapped in Quetta on February 2. An unknown organization Baloch Liberation United Front (BLUF) had claimed the responsibility of kidnapping.
Unknown persons claimed killing of abducted UNHCR
Updated at: 1300 PST, Monday, February 23, 2009 (The News/Xinhua)
QUETTA: The unknown persons claimed killing of United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) provincial head John Solecki.
According to reports, unknown persons phoned in Quetta Press Club on Monday and claimed that John has been killed and his body will be found after two hours.
Another TV channel, Express News, said the phone call was made from Nushki town, roughly 100 kilometers south-west of Quetta near the Afghan border.
A previously unknown group, the Baloch United Liberation Front, had claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. There is however a speculation that Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or their sister orgnaization Lashkar-e-Jhangavi camouflaged as Baloch nationalists abducted Solecki to terrorize the United Nations and the international community. (The UN has recently committed to institute a commission to probe the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, an investigation which might expose the possible role of the ISI-Taliban alliance.)
It may be noted that Solecki's driver, a Pakistani Shia Muslim was shot dead instead of being left or taken alive.
John Solecki, a US national who led the UN refugee agency's regional office, was kidnapped February 2 by gunmen in the provincial capital, Quetta, while he was on his way to work in a car carrying the UN emblem and registration plates.
However, government and independent sources could not confirm the reports of John’s killing. A UNCHR spokesman did not confirm the report, but said it might be a hoax call.
* NYT says Taliban operations in Quetta different from FATA * Intelligence officials say Afghan troop surge futile unless Taliban supply lines from Quetta are cut
Daily Times Monitor
LAHORE: There is growing concern among US officials, even as CIA drones pound targets in FATA, about alleged Taliban havens in Balochistan, The New York Times reported on Monday.
Americans are increasingly focusing on Quetta, from where Taliban leaders are alleged to stir violence in Afghanistan. Taliban operations in Quetta are different from operations in the Tribal Areas. As the United States prepares to pour as many as 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan, military and intelligence officials say the effort could be futile unless there is a concerted effort to kill or capture Taliban leaders in Quetta to cut the group’s supply lines into Afghanistan.
Afghan and US commanders have long said Taliban leaders, including Mullah Muhammad Omar, guide commanders in southern Afghanistan from the city. “When their leadership is where you cannot get to them, it becomes difficult,” said Gen Dan K McNeill, who until June was the senior American commander in Afghanistan and recently retired. “You are restrained from doing what you want to do.”
Quetta is close to the provinces in southern Afghanistan where the war’s fiercest fighting has occurred. American intelligence officials said that the dozen or so militants who were thought to make up the Taliban leadership in the area were believed to be hiding either in Afghan refugee camps near Quetta or in some of the city’s Afghan neighbourhoods.
One former intelligence official with years of experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan likened the situation to America’s difficulties during the Vietnam War, when Vietnamese guerrillas used a haven in Cambodia. For the past year, the top American goal in Pakistan has been to press Islamabad for help elsewhere – in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan.
But NATO generals and diplomats have long complained that the command and control of Taliban fighters, distinct from Al Qaeda insurgents, may lie in southern Pakistan, and that Pakistani security services ignore the threat. “We’ve made progress going into the Tribal Areas and Northwest Frontier Province against Al Qaeda, but ... not ... against the Quetta shura,” said a senior Obama administration official.
Some current and former American intelligence officials are sympathetic to difficulties that the government in Islamabad faces in rounding up Taliban leaders. Balochistan has long been an area hostile to government control, and even Pakistani spies have difficulty building a network of sources there, they said.
The influence of the Taliban leadership over operations on the ground in Afghanistan is a matter of some debate among analysts.
“The Quetta shura is extremely important,” said Lt Gen David W Barno, a retired former commander of American forces in Afghanistan who is advising General Petraeus on a strategic review of this region, including Pakistan and Afghanistan. “They are the intellectual and ideological underpinnings of the Taliban insurgency.”
But Gen David D McKiernan, currently the top military commander in Afghanistan, said in a speech in Washington in November that any assessment that said the Quetta shura’s dictates were closely followed by field commanders “gives the Taliban far too much credit for coherency at the operational and strategic level.”
“They don’t have that,” the general added.
Still, diminishing the Taliban leadership in Quetta and weakening its influence over Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan might also open the way to engaging more moderate Taliban politically. “The challenge has always been to exploit some cleavages between the top leadership, which we’ve ruled out of bounds in terms of reconciliation, and the layers one or two layers beneath them,” said Daniel Markey, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
In May 2007, Pakistani operatives tracked Mullah Dadullah as he crossed the Afghan border. He was later killed by American and Afghan troops. But most of the arrests in Pakistan have coincided with visits by senior American officials. The arrest of Mullah Obeidullah, the former Taliban defence minister, in February 2007 coincided with the visit of former US vice president Dick Cheney. It is unclear whether he is still in custody or was secretly released as part of a prisoner exchange to free Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan, kidnapped last February and released three months later.
Mullah Rahim, the top Taliban commander in Helmand, was arrested two weeks after Admiral Mike Mullen and a top CIA officer visited Islamabad. But an American intelligence official said last week he was no longer in custody. “The dilemma at the moment,” said Seth Jones, a terrorism analyst at the RAND Corporation, “is that some elements of the Pakistani government continue to support the Taliban as a proxy organisation in Afghanistan.” (Daily Times)
Based on various media reports, mainly compiled by Malik Siraj Akbar:
According to a recent internet survey in Pakistan, the majority of people do not believe that Baloch nationalists are involved in the kidnapping of John Solecki.
http://gmcmissing.wordpress.com/tag/john-solecki/
A relatively new organization calling itself the Baloch Liberation United Front (BLUF) has accepted responsibility for John Solecki’s kidnapping. The organization is demanding the release of around 6000 missing Baloch people who have been arrested by the Pakistani army intelligence agencies along with 141 Baloch women.
” We demand a resolution of the Baloch issue via Geneva Conventions,” said Shaik Baloch, a spokesman of the BLUF.
Solecki, the Balochistan head of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), was kidnapped on February 2 when he was on his way to the office located in Quetta’s Chaman Housing Society. His driver, Syed Hashim, was killed by the kidnappers.
” The reason it took us five days to claim responsibility was to make sure that we reach at a safe place before claiming responsibility,” said the spokesman: ” We are at a safe place now”.
The spokesman said his organization had no links with other Baloch armed groups but supported their cause and it would continue its operations in the future. ” If the UN does not meet our demands, we will kill its official and the onus would lie on the UN itself,” he warned.
The spokesman said John was absolutely fine. They could kill him at the first place but did not do so because they are peaceful people struggling for a just cause. However, if the UN takes their demands lightly then they will be obliged to kill the UN official.
“John is safe and sound in our custody,” said Mir Shahik Baloch, the spokesman of the BLUF, who telephoned various newspaper offices in Quetta via satellite phone from an undisclosed location. “We have kidnapped John to highlight the plight of the Baloch people in Pakistan who are being treated by the State worse than slaves. If the UN does not intervene and ensure the release of 6000 missing Baloch people, including 141 women and resolve the Baloch issue according to the Geneva conventions, we will kill John,” warned the spokesman.
Who are the actual kidnappers of Solecki?
Soon after the abduction of the American UN official, speculations went on the direction of the Baloch insurgents and the Talian operating in the area. But both the groups, including the top-most Baloch armed group, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) disassociated itself from the kidnaping of the US citizen. It is the first time the BLUF has emerged on the surface.
Baloch Traditions
The Baloch are a people who have sacrificed their lives to guard their guests. Shaeed Nawab Akbar Kahn Bugti cared so much about his Hindu minority subjects that he kept them close to his fort so that no one could harm the Hindus. The Baloch went to sacrifice their lives when Dr. Shahzia Khalid was raped by the Pakistani army. Our history is full of such examples. We can die but cannot let our guests be slightly affected.
Baloch Reaction The entire day across Balochistan went discussing the Baloch Liberation United Front (BLFU). There is a mixed reaction. Many are unwilling to buy the argument that the Baloch could kidnap an American national. Because one does not see similar instances in the past. Those in a state of disbelief, contend that it is a deliberate attempt by the state of Pakistan to
a) Declare the Baloch as terrorists across the world in return of their democratic struggle for the just right of Baloch ownership on their natural resources.
b) Cause a set-back to the ongoing trail of two Baloch leaders, Hairbayar Marri and Faiz Baloch who are currently facing terrorism charges in a London court.
c) To provide a justification for the establishment of more military check-posts, cantonments and increase the number of troops in Balochistan province.
d) To present the Baloch fighters as even more brutal than the Taliban.
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Inspector General Frontier Corps speaks:
In an interview with Aaj TV, Inspector General Frontier Corps (FC) Major General Saleem Nawaz spoke very harshly against the kidnappers. “They [ the kidnappers] have touched a wrong person and will have to pay a heavy price for this act,” he warned.
The IG repeatedly argued that the BLUF was in fact the reshaping of the older organizations. Sitting from Afghanistan, he charged, Bramdagh Bugti, the grandson of Nawab Mohammad Akbar Khan Bugti, was running these operations on the directives of foreign elements. “If he were in the country, we would have arrested and brought him to justice,” he assured.
Mr. Nawaz also ridiculed the BLUF demands for the release of 141 missing women and 6000 other Baloch missing persons. In his views, these were exaggerated figures and if some people were really missing then their relatives and neighbors should contact the government to seek justice.
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Kidnappers threaten American abducted in Pakistan
By ABDUL SATTAR – 1 day ago
QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — Kidnappers threatened on Friday to kill an American employee of the United Nations within 72 hours and issued a grainy video of the blindfolded captive saying he was "sick and in trouble." A letter accompanying the video delivered to a Pakistani news agency said the hostage, John Solecki, would be killed unless authorities released 141 women it said were being held in Pakistan.
The video and the demands indicated that Solecki, the head of the U.N. refugee agency in Quetta, a city near the Afghan border, was alive and that his captors wanted to negotiate.
Solecki, who appeared blindfolded and with a shawl draped over his shoulders in the 20-second clip, said his message was addressed to the United Nations.
"I am not feeling well. I am sick and in trouble. Please help solve the problem soon so that I can gain my release," he said.
The kidnappers have identified themselves as the Baluchistan Liberation United Front, suggesting a link to local separatists who have waged a long insurgency against Pakistan's government rather than to the Taliban or al-Qaida, which are fighting U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Still, the death threat heightened fears for Solecki's safety, coming just a week after Taliban militants apparently beheaded a Polish geologist abducted in another border area of Pakistan after the government failed to respond to demands for a prisoner release.
The Pole's slaying, if confirmed, would be the first killing of a Western hostage in Pakistan since American journalist Daniel Pearl was beheaded in 2002.
Gunmen seized Solecki on Feb. 2, after shooting his driver to death as they drove to work in Quetta.
Days later, the previously unknown Baluchistan Liberation United Front claimed responsibility for the kidnapping in a telephone call to the Quetta office of Online International News Network, a Pakistan-based news agency.
Online said it received an anonymous telephone call Friday telling it to collect a parcel from the post office, in which it found a memory card from a mobile phone containing the video of Solecki as well as the letter.
It supplied a copy of the video to Associated Press Television News and allowed an AP reporter to see the letter.
The letter demanded the release of 141 women from Pakistani custody and said the group would issue another list of hundreds of alleged male prisoners. "We will issue this list very soon. If our demands are not met, we will murder John Solecki," it said.
The commander of a government paramilitary unit in Quetta dismissed the claim of female prisoners as fiction.
"Who are these 141 women? Who knows who they are? This is just attention-seeking. This is just terrorism," Maj. Gen. Salim Nawaz told the Aaj television network.
Nawaz said that "powers who want to destabilize Pakistan" were manipulating ethnic Baluch separatist groups — language usually used by Pakistani officials to mean archrival India.
Maki Shinohara, a spokeswoman for the United Nations, said it had not been able to establish contact with the kidnappers. She said officials were scrambling to work out how to respond to the threat and the demands.
At United Nations headquarters in New York, U.N. associate spokesman Farhan Haq said the world body was studying the video to determine what to do next.
"We have seen the video and based on what we can see, it appears to be the person in the picture is John Solecki," Haq said. "Our team in Islamabad continues to examine the information. We have nothing further to add at this time beyond reiterating our appeal that John be released."
U.S. Embassy officials could not be reached late Friday for comment.
A string of attacks on foreigners near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan in recent months have highlighted authorities' crumbling control in the face of an intensifying Islamic insurgency.
Afghanistan's ambassador-designate, an Iranian diplomat and a Chinese telecoms engineer have been seized in or near the main northwestern city of Peshawar and are still missing. Gunmen killed an American aid worker in Peshawar in November.
While Quetta has been relatively calm, Afghan officials have repeatedly described it as a hub for Taliban leaders orchestrating the insurgency across the border. Pakistan's denies that.
Associated Press writers Asif Shahzad and Stephen Graham in Islamabad and John Heilprin at the United Nations contributed to this report.
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Kidnappers of an American U.N. official John Solecki release his video
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Kidnapped UN official to be recovered soon: Malik
Sunday, February 15, 2009 By Muhammad Ejaz Khan
QUETTA: Adviser to the Prime Minister on Interior Rehman Malik on Saturday said the government is utilising all resources to recover kidnapped UN official John Solecki, and hoped he would soon be recovered as they have some indications.
Talking to newsmen at the Chief Minister Secretariat soon after attending a high-level meeting to review the kidnapping case of Solecki, Malik observed that those who had kidnapped the UN official wanted to create problems for the country.
“We will take every possible step to ensure safe recovery of John Solecki,” he said and added that the demands of the captors are ìunrealisticî. He said: “I have been directed by President Asif Ali Zardari and the prime minister to review the progress about the case and we are hopeful the UN official would be recovered soon.”
He said the three demands from the group are not based on reality and one is about release of 141 women that the group says had been arrested by the government of Balochistan or the federal government. “I categorically assure that ladies have not been arrested by the Balochistan or federal government as both the governments were struggling for securing the rights of women. We have counter-checked from Nadra and if anybody has any clue he should approach the government as a telephone number of the CM Secretariat had been allotted in this regard.”
Malik said: “I would like to invite the attention of the international community that these are highly unrealistic demands. Let the parents and children of the ladies come forward.”
He said if anybody had the list it should be produced and we would release them.
Replying to a question about the 72-hour ultimatum given by the captors, Malik said the abductors wanted to weaken the country. “I appeal to them to release John Solecki because he came here to serve the people.”
Meanwhile, a press statement said the UN is seeking direct contact with those who are holding UN refugee agency’s (UNHCRís) representative in Quetta, John Solecki, to confirm he is indeed alive.
The United Nations is aware of the demand relayed through the media, and also seeks urgent contact to discuss ways of securing his safe release as soon as possible, it said. The United Nations appeals to the community leaders, the people and all parties concerned to support its current efforts to obtain contact with those who are holding him, it added.
Agencies add: “We have sufficient good leads which I cannot share right now. I hope to God and pray to God and Insha Allah we will succeed in recovering him,” Malik told reporters..
He condemned the kidnappers as “anti-Pakistan and anti-Islam.”
The abduction is the most high-profile Western kidnapping in Pakistan since US journalist Daniel Pearl was snatched in 2002 and beheaded by Al-Qaeda militants.
The efforts of the kidnappers are aimed at increasing international pressure on the country, he said.
He, however, said the government could not be blackmailed and called upon the people in whose custody Solecki is to release him immediately.
The adviser said maintenance of law and order was the provincial government’s responsibility and said the federal government would ensure every possible assistance in this regard.
Terming the authenticity of the list provided by the group as challengeable, the adviser said after sharing the list with the CM, the IG Frontier Corps and officials of law-enforcement agencies, he was sure that none of the ladies was with the government.
He explained that the name of Zarina Marri neither existed in the record of Nadra nor that of the local administration.
“If the list provided to the authorities is based on reality, the heirs of these 141 ladies should contact the CM House. The government will again verify their names and take steps for their release.”
Clarifying the status of allegedly missing 6,000 Baloch youths, Malik said the government received an incomplete list of 800 youths a few months ago. Only 200 names mentioned in the list were verified, of whom most had gone abroad while many of the remaining persons were released after interrogation.
Malik expressed the doubt that the enemies of the country might have planned to fulfil their motives by making unrealistic demands.
Can we hope to see criminals such as Hamid Gul, Baitullah Mehsud and other supporters/leaders of Taliban and Al Qaeda soon in a court of law?
Ban announces UN commission on Benazir’s murder
* Chile’s UN Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz to head the three-member body * Presidential spokesman says Pakistan will only pay seed money, rest will be contributed by other countries
ISLAMABAD: United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday announced the establishment of an independent commission to probe the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
“I intend to establish an independent commission of inquiry to be headed by a distinguished person who will be appointed very shortly,” he said while speaking at a dinner reception hosted by President Asif Ali Zardari.
The state-run APP news agency reported later on Wednesday that Chile’s UN Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz would head the three-member commission. It said Indonesia’s Marzuki Dar Usman will be a member of the commission, but no decision has been made on its third member, likely to belong to Sweden or Norway.
Earlier, talking to reporters at the Prime Minister’s House, the secretary general had said he would soon make an important announcement on the Benazir assassination probe.
Farhatullah Babar, the spokesman for President Asif Ali Zardari, told Daily Times that a framework of the commission was being finalised.
He said Pakistan had offered to pay all the expenses on the probe, but the UN asked Islamabad to pay only the seed money adding it would ask other countries to contribute to the probe.
He said it was not clear how much Pakistan would have to pay.
“The people of Pakistan hope that this commission will determine the facts and circumstances of assassination of the former prime minister, and that the findings of the commission will lead to eventually exposing the financers, perpetrators, organisers, sponsors and conspirators of the terrorist act and bring them to justice,” he said.
President Zardari said at the dinner earlier that long-standing disputes continue to threaten global peace, adding that the Jammu and Kashmir issue had been pending on the agenda of the UN for the last six decades. “Pakistan is determined to resolve the issue through dialogue taking into account aspirations of the Kashmiri people,” he said. irfan ghauri/app (Daily Times)
....
Zardari welcomes formation of commission
ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari has welcomed United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s announcement of setting up a commission to probe Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Addressing a dinner reception for Ban, he assured the UN of full cooperation by Pakistani authorities. “The commission will have complete freedom to access documentary material and physical evidence and to interview any individual whose testimony would be necessary for fulfilling mandate,” he said. staff report (Daily Times)
....
UN Commission on BB’s assassination
Contrary to the analysis of many, the UN Commission on the assassination of the PPP leader Ms Benazir Bhutto will finally come into being. The visiting United Nations Secretary General, Mr Ban Ki-moon, announced on Wednesday that he was in the process of setting up the Commission comprising three members of repute from Chile, Indonesia and possibly from one of the Scandinavian countries. The framework of what and how the Commission will investigate is yet to be settled. A PPP spokesman says that the “findings of the commission will lead to eventually exposing the financers, perpetrators, organisers, sponsors and conspirators of the terrorist act and bring them to justice”.
President Asif Ali Zardari says: “The commission will have complete freedom to access documentary material and physical evidence and to interview any individual whose testimony would be necessary for fulfilling its mandate”. This will be the key question in the days to come. Will the government of Pakistan be able to make all institutions of the state open up to investigation by the Commission?
The UN, by taking the decision to go ahead with the setting up of the Commission, has broken new ground: it has allowed an international investigative instrument into the sovereign domain of a state on the government’s own request. For most analysts the question that arose was: if Pakistan is sovereign, why should the UN come and find out who murdered a former prime minister? Will not such a probe prove that Pakistan’s institutions are not under sovereign control and therefore Pakistan cannot do its own investigation without the government appearing to be partisan in the eyes of a divided national polity?
Most experts compared the case to the one relating to the killing of Lebanon’s former prime minister Mr Rafik Hariri in 2005 — a foreign secretary had to leave because he disagreed with the decision to invite the UN to investigate — and saw inconsistencies. They thought the UN General Secretary could not accede to Pakistan’s request without a vote in the UN Security Council and that Pakistan could not be compared to strife-torn Lebanon where the state’s sovereignty was fragmented. They also pointed to the designation in the Hariri case of an outside suspect in the neighbouring state of Syria who had controlled Lebanon in the past through troops stationed on Lebanese soil. Although the PPP had voiced its suspicion that the assassination in Rawalpindi could have been planned abroad, it had not nominated the external killer.
Finally, was it enough for the UN that Pakistan had pointed to an external killer without a UN Security Council mandate? Getting the UN in was seen as internationalising a case that had to be dealt with by Pakistan within Pakistan. The experts asked if an external probe would not subordinate Pakistan’s national institutions to external trespass and violate areas of information sealed to scrutiny on the basis of national security? It now develops that the Friends of Pakistan, led by the United States, have agreed to partly fund the UN probe aimed at prying open areas of inquiry that an internally fractured state is unable to approach freely. In a way, Pakistan has thus finally been equated with a fractured and divided Lebanon, and the PPP is clearly interested in seeing where the tracks lead “inside” Pakistan rather than anywhere outside. Once the Commission gets going, the government’s guarantee that all institutions would be open to questioning will be put to the test. The Commission may finally not get anywhere, but unlike many of Pakistan’s own commissions in the past, the world will know where inside the machinery of the state people are unwilling to answer questions. Finding that out will help the international community determine the nature of terrorism incubating in Pakistan and threatening the outside world. Since that is problem number one for Pakistan, we support this initiative by the PPP government to unravel the murder of Benazir Bhutto. Read more...
The Balochistan head of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), John Solecki, was kidnapped on Monday when he was going unguarded in his car to his office in Chaman in Balochistan. Mr Solecki was an extremely “valuable” victim because of his status as a UN official and his American nationality. Therefore the reaction from the UN will be most inconvenient for Pakistan in so far as the UNHCR is crucial to Pakistan’s efforts to take care of war-displaced refugees. The UN has the option of terminating its missions if its personnel are not seen to be even minimally secure.
Terrorism thrives on kidnapping for ransom. Its operations need money even if each branch-line cell has its own independent revenue through extortion. We have seen the rise of one warlord after the other when their kidnappings and “extortion notes” were either ignored or not effectively opposed by the state. The rise of Baitullah Mehsud is owed to the kidnapping of Chinese engineers from a project in the Tribal Areas. The problem with high-profile abduction is that the state can no longer adhere to its stance of “not negotiating” with the terrorists when it comes under pressure to pay off and get the abducted person back.
Baitullah Mehsud’s second colossal addition to his treasury was the untold sum he received from Islamabad for letting go of Pakistan’s ambassador to Kabul. Mr Tariq Azizuddin was released in May last year by the Taliban after three months of capture, and the government kept on denying that it had succumbed to both “swap” and “payment”. But the facts are certainly otherwise. When the victim is an important person the terrorists will additionally want the release of its militants arrested by the state.
Kidnapping therefore provides funding and the recovery of arrested activists. The Taliban have an Iranian diplomat — Hashmatullah, an Iranian Commercial Attaché in Peshawar — in their custody. Desperate to find him, the government last raided a locality in Karachi to retrieve him alive. In the battle that ensued, two policemen died while 35 men belonging to Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other banned religious outfits such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi were arrested. The last named ally of Al Qaeda routinely resorts to kidnappings in Karachi for revenue. The Iranian diplomat is still missing. The conclusion is inescapable: until the state becomes strong enough in the face of the terrorist challenge, “normal” activities, like trade, sports and finally diplomacy itself, will come under risk. Read more...
A UN special representative condemns the increasing attacks on schools in northwestern Pakistan by Taliban and other armed groups.
In a statement issued in New York, Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN secretary general's special representative for children and armed conflict, said that she was particularly appalled by recent incidents, including the blowing up of five schools in northwestern Pakistan in Swat Valley.
She also expressed concern over the increase in the number of child victims of the attacks on schools by the Taliban, who deny children the right to education, a Press TV correspondent reported.
The throwing of acid to prevent female children and teachers from going to school is deplorable, she stressed.
So far, more than 170 schools have been destroyed by Taliban-related militants who had set January 15 as the deadline for a ban on girls' enrolment in Pakistan's Swat Valley schools.
Some 1,600 government-run schools, educating a quarter-million students, have announced that they would remain closed after the winter vacation until the end of February.
Due to threats from militants, nearly 400 private schools have also announced that they would not enroll girls to comply with the Taliban edict banning female education.
Mr Ban said it would not be up to him to launch a war crimes tribunal. It was pathetic
It's a wrap, a doddle, an Israeli ceasefire just in time for Barack Obama to have a squeaky-clean inauguration with all the world looking at the streets of Washington rather than the rubble of Gaza. Condi and Ms Livni thought their new arms-monitoring agreement – reached without a single Arab being involved – would work. Ban Ki-moon welcomed the unilateral truce. The great and the good gathered for a Sharm el-Sheikh summit. Only Hamas itself was not consulted. Which led, of course, to a few wrinkles in the plan. First, before declaring its own ceasefire, Hamas fired off more rockets at Israel, proving that Israel's primary war aim – to stop the missiles – had failed. Then Cairo shrugged off the deal because no one was going to set up electronic surveillance equipment on Egyptian soil. And not one European leader travelling to the region suggested the survivors might be helped if Israel, the EU and the US ended the food and fuel siege of Gaza.
After killing hundreds of women and children, Israel was the good guy again, by declaring a unilateral ceasefire that Hamas was certain to break. But Obama will be smiling on Tuesday. Was not this the reason, after all, why Israel suddenly wanted a truce?
Egypt's objections may be theatre – the US spent £18m last year training Egyptian security men to stop arms smuggling into Gaza and since the US bails out Egypt's economy, ignores the corruption of its regime and goes on backing Hosni Mubarak, there's sure to be a "compromise" very soon. And Hamas has had its claws cut. Israel's informers in Gaza handed over the locations of its homes and hideouts and the government of Gaza must be wondering if they can ever close down the spy rings. Hamas thought its militia was the Hizbollah – a serious error – and that the world would eventually come to its aid. The world (although not its pompous leaders) felt enormous pity for the Palestinians, but not for the cynical men of Hamas who staged a coup in Gaza in 2007 which killed 151 Palestinians. As usual, the European statesmen appeared hopelessly out of touch with what their own electorates thought.
And history was quite forgotten. The Hamas rockets were the result of the food and fuel siege; Israel broke Hamas's own truce on 4 and 17 November. Forgotten is the fact Hamas won the 2006 elections, although Israel has killed a clutch of the victors.
And there'll be little time for the peacemakers of Sharm el-Sheikh to reflect on the three UN schools targeted by the Israelis and the slaughter of the civilians inside. Poor old Ban Ki-moon. He tried to make his voice heard just before the ceasefire, saying Israel's troops had acted "outrageously" and should be "punished" for the third school killing. Some hope. At a Beirut press conference, he admitted he had failed to get a call through to Israel's Foreign Minister to complain. It was pathetic. When I asked Mr Ban if he would consider a UN war crimes tribunal in Gaza, he said this would not be for him to "determine". But only a few journalists bothered to listen to him and his officials were quickly folding up the UN flag on the table. About time too. Bring back the League of Nations. All is forgiven. What no one noticed yesterday – not the Arabs nor the Israelis nor the portentous men from Europe – was that the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting last night was opening on the 90th anniversary – to the day – of the opening of the 1919 Paris peace conference which created the modern Middle East. One of its main topics was "the borders of Palestine". There followed the Versailles Treaty. And we know what happened then. The rest really is history. Bring on the ghosts. (The Independent)
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GENEVA (AFP) — A divided UN Human Rights Council voted on Monday to condemn Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip and set up a probe into "grave" human rights violations by Israeli forces against the Palestinians.
The resolution setting up a fact-finding mission was adopted despite the lack of Western support.
Thirty-three African, Asian, Arab and Latin American countries voted for the resolution. Thirteen mainly European states abstained, while Canada was the only country to vote against.
The 47 member council -- frequently critical of Israel in the past -- normally seeks to adopt resolutions by consensus.
Western countries said the text put forward by Arab and African states was too biased and failed to clearly recognise the role that rocket attacks launched by Palestinian militants played in triggering the offensive.
Last minute changes failed to overcome the differences after the special session on the violence in the Gaza Strip spilled into a second day.
The European Union's representative said the EU could have supported some elements, but found the text too one-sided despite its concern about human rights violations in Gaza.
Israel also dismissed the resolution as biased and cast doubt on the Council's credibility. The United States is not on the Council and steers clear of it.
The text released by the UN Council "strongly" condemned the Israeli military operation in Gaza, saying it had "resulted in massive violations" of the human rights of Palestinians.
With the toll surpassing 900, including nearly 400 women and children, according to Gaza medics, it called for "urgent international action" to halt "grave human rights violations by Israel".
The draft resolution also called for an end to rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.
But the key contents were four overlapping probes targeting Israel.
The resolution tasked 10 UN experts on human rights and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay with two separate probes into the violence.
It also set up an independent, international fact-finding mission to "investigate all violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by Israel", while UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was asked to investigate the bombing of UNRWA schools in the Gaza Strip.
During the first day of the session on Friday, Pillay had warned that human rights violations in Gaza were extremely serious and some attacks that hit civilians and relief workers might warrant prosecutions for war crimes.
"Credible, independent and transparent" investigations were a first step towards ensuring accountability, she added on Friday, warning that "violations of international humanitarian law may constitute war crimes for which individual criminal responsibility may be invoked."
Julie de Rivero of the advocacy group Human Rights Watch said lack of consensus and the resolution's focus on Israel "undermined its credibility."
Israel has refused to cooperate with similar fact-finding missions in the past, as well as a UN special rapporteur on the human rights of the Palestinians, complaining of bias because they fail to consider attacks on Israelis as well.
Israeli authorities last month detained and turned back the UN expert, Richard Falk, upon his arrival at Ben Gurion airport, accusing him of "legitimising Hamas terrorism."
....
No safe place
Also on Monday, the Swiss-run International Committee of the Red Cross said civilians in Gaza had nowhere to run and hide.
"No place is safe in Gaza these days," Antoine Grand, the head of the ICRC in Gaza, told the Reuters news agency. "There is no place for the civilians. They are afraid to stay home, they are afraid to move, they are afraid to go down the street or to try to buy some food."
Unlike other conflict zones, civilians in Gaza have nowhere to escape to because the territory is ringed on all sides by Israeli land and sea forces.
Grand said the ICRC had been fired on twice in recent days as its convoys tried to carry out humanitarian work.
Israel launched its offensive against Hamas 17 days ago.
A UN source who wished to remain anonymous said that he doesn’t know what goes on in meetings between Foreign Minister Qureshi and Ban or Zardari, but from the papers the impression at the UN is that the Pakistani government wants a commission which functions under its control but Islamabad wants a UN commission, while it wishes to limit its investigative work.
[Is ISI blocking the road to a UN lead investigation as it might uncover the unholy jihadi-ISI alliance?]
It is time the PPP government levelled with the people and admitted that there really is not going to be any UN investigation per se into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Why? Because the Government of Pakistan has failed to pursue the investigation with any seriousness, nor is it clear as to what exactly it wants. Over time, the impression, which is beginning to turn into conviction, has grown that the Zardari government is merely using the UN in pursuit of its own agenda. And that, of course, is something the UN will not permit itself to be used for.
There have been so many mixed signals from Pakistan that it is no longer clear to anyone in New York what the intentions of the government in Islamabad are. In fact, the very worst, the most cynical interpretation is being placed on Islamabad’s contradictory and changing position.
To begin with, when the demand for a UN probe was first made by the PPP, it was not in power. General Musharraf was. Once the PPP took office, its first order of business should have been the formation of a national judicial commission to investigate the assassination. It did no such thing and has shown no such inclination.
Strange statements have flowed out of responsible members of the PPP government. On July 23, 2008, it was said that the UN investigation into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto could cost up to $100 million. On December 25, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told reporters in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, “It was Shaheed Benazir’s demand that her assassination be investigated by the UN.”
What an absurd statement! Does it mean that Benazir knew she was going to be assassinated and once that event came to pass, the investigation should be handed over to the United Nations?
On December 27, her grieving spouse stunned the world by declaring that that he “knew the killers of Benazir Bhutto”. I am not the first to make the point that failing to share information about the perpetrators of a crime amounts to collaboration. There has been no follow-up explanation of this extraordinary claim and no-one from among the leading lights of the PPP has had the courage or the decency to ask the leader for details.
Let me go back to the UN and how and in what manner it was first invited to get involved in the Benazir murder probe. On July 10, 2008, during a meeting between UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, a broad understanding was said to have been reached on certain issues concerning UN help for Pakistan’s efforts to have the assassination investigated.
The meeting followed a request to the Secretary General from the Foreign Minister to establish an international commission to identify those responsible for the assassination and to bring them to justice. Ban indicated that further consultation with Pakistan and others within the UN would be required to examine the modalities and structure of such a commission.
At the time, Pakistan claimed that a broad understanding had been reached on the nature of the proposed commission, unhindered access to all sources of relevant information and measures to safeguard the objectivity, impartiality and independence of the commission.
The UN was more guarded in its comments. “While we’ve made some progress in terms of arriving at a broad understanding of some issues, there is the need for further consultations with Pakistan, and possibly with other states, about the scope and the mandate of this proposed committee,” UN spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters. “We’re trying to help Pakistan as we can,” he added.
By early October, the Secretary General made it clear that the commission that Pakistan wanted the UN to set up would not be an investigative unit, but a fact-finding body. “This is not going to be an investigation,” he told his monthly press conference.
Ban said that during his discussions with President Zardari in September, they agreed that there would be “some sort of a commission under the United Nations.” Discussions were still going on technical matters such as who should be appointed commission members, how it should be funded and under what time frame and scope should it function.
“We’re trying to work out solutions,” Ban said, adding, “We’re still discussing it with the Pakistan government.” When asked why it was taking so long to set up the commission, he said that it could take “a little bit longer”, but will be done “soon”.
Pakistan in the meantime shifted its position as to the financing of the inquiry. Foreign Minister Qureshi said that as regards the funding mechanism, it should not be such that Pakistan alone would have to bear the cost. But, he said, discussions between the two sides were still going on.
The last UN press release makes it clear that there has been no progress on the issue. On December 26, 2008, Ban Ki-moon expressed the hope that an independent Commission of Inquiry into the circumstance of the killing of Benazir Bhutto could be established soon. He said his office had consulted the Pakistani government on the nature and scope of the Commission, which Pakistan has asked him to establish to identify those responsible for the assassination and to bring them to justice. Ban indicated that further consultation with Pakistan and others within the UN was needed to examine other modalities and the Commission’s structure, including its scope and mandate.
The statement from the UN chief’s office after his meeting with Zardari said the UN “would see what it could (do) to support the request for an independent fact-finding commission,” adding that it would “explore further the precise modalities and brief of such a commission.”
A UN source who wished to remain anonymous said that he doesn’t know what goes on in meetings between Foreign Minister Qureshi and Ban or Zardari, but from the papers the impression at the UN is that the Pakistani government wants a commission which functions under its control. The UN is of the view that if it has to do the investigation, the commission should be under UN control and have a free hand to do its work. The commission should be able to visit any place, interview anyone and seek any related document.
“What the Pakistan government is trying to do is to write the terms of reference for a UN commission,” the source said. That is not acceptable to the UN. So as an alternative, the UN has offered to provide experts borrowed from various countries to join a Pakistani commission, but Islamabad wants a UN commission, while it wishes to limit its investigative work.
Islamabad has been backtracking in various other ways too. When Qureshi first made the request in July 2008, he said his government would bear all costs. Later, when rough estimates were given, Islamabad had second thoughts and urged the UN to seek help from other nations, a long drawn out process and a classic example of delaying tactics.
To this grim story, a bit of comic relief was provided in January by PPP’s unelected and unelectable secretary general Jahangir Badar, who declared that the UN would begin its investigation in January. He made the statement after returning from New York. (Daily Times)
Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent. His e-mail is khasan2@cox.net
UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, where they have had mixed success
Do I hear the braying of the UN donkey in Gaza? On his Middle East tour, the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, may well be mentioning that well-known Eeyore figure on the East River, always so willing to send its peacekeepers on Mission Impossible. The Palestinians have been trying to internationalise their conflict with the Israelis ever since Yasser Arafat pleaded for UN forces to protect the Palestinians after the failure of the Oslo agreement.
Always the Israelis have refused. The very odd observer force which the EU installed in Hebron after Baruch Golstein had massacred Palestinians at the mosque – its patrols regularly interrupted by the Jewish settlers of this very odd city – simply faded away. And the United Nations Relief and Works Agency has been throwing tents and food and school classes at the slums of Palestinian refugee camps for generations. Can it be that yet another Israeli failure in Gaza will change the dynamics of "peacekeeping" in the Middle East, that at last the ghost of Arafat will watch the "internationalisation" of the Israeli-Palestinian war?
The cliché, in both senses of the word – both the tired phrase and the matrix for any future UN force – is, of course, UNIFIL, the so-called United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. It arrived in southern Lebanon in 1978 after Israel's hopeless "Operation Litani", which was supposed to "destroy" the Palestinian guerrilla forces north of the Israeli border. The UN mandate insisted that the Israelis retreat to their international frontier – which they refused to do – eventually leaving the UN with an Israeli occupation force to the south of them and Palestinian units with bases inside the UN force and to the north of them.
When Israel staged another hopeless invasion in 1982 – like its unrealistic Hamas operation in Gaza as well as the 1978 Lebanon invasion, it was supposed to "destroy" their Palestinian enemies – the UN found itself operating entirely within an Israeli occupation zone, even allowing Israel's intelligence officers to travel through UN checkpoints to arrest or assassinate members of the latest Lebanese militia to oppose the occupation in the south.
Only when Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, 22 years after the UN's first arrival, did the peacekeeping force – now largely from poorer African and Asian countries – operate independently, albeit with Hizbollah now installed in their midst. The 2006 Israeli-Hizbollah war ended with a larger UN force in southern Lebanon, this time commanded by Nato generals who patrolled an area free of Hizbollah weapons – but only because Hizballah's newer long-range rockets could be fired from north of the UN's area of operations.
The UN force, it should be added, was constantly abused by Israel. It was accused of being "pro-Palestinian" (whatever that is), in league with "terrorists" (it was never explained how), weak, anti-Israeli and – of course – anti-Semitic. Israelis even accused a local UN Fijian commander of spreading Aids. So could there be yet another UN force in the region? Originally, there was a UN observer force on the Lebanese-Israeli border.
It arrived in 1948 and still exists – unarmed, on the frontier to this day, within the UNIFIL zone – and this, in reality, could be the framework of a new UN force in Palestine. In other words, an unarmed observer group rather than a peacekeeping force, which could add an international voice to ceasefire violations between Israel and Hamas. But be sure, the Palestinians would then ask for the same institution to be placed on the West Bank-Israeli border – and therein lies the problem for both Israel and the UN.
For which "frontier" would the UN then patrol? The UN border of the 1940s, the pre-1967 ceasefire lines – in which a pre-annexed East Jerusalem belonged to the Arabs – or the post-1967 border in which Israel claimed "annexed" Jerusalem, or the massive walled "frontier" which now bites deeply into yet more Palestinian territory – illegally in international law? And would the UN also have to "observe" the equally illegal Jewish settlements built on Arab land within the West Bank?
Gaza sounds an easy option. The UN could place some international troops around Gaza. But it would only be a matter of time before they would be required around the West Bank. That would be a Palestinian dream – and, for those Israelis who wish to continue their expansion into Palestinian land – a nightmare.
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WASHINGTON: The United Nations has decided to confer its top human rights award posthumously on former prime minister Benazir Bhutto for promoting democracy and fundamental freedoms in Pakistan, informed sources at the UN Headquarters said on Tuesday.
The award will be announced on December 10, the UN human Rights Day. The occasion also marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.The sources said President of the UN General Assembly Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann would officially communicate the decision to President Asif Ali Zardari in the next few days.
Instituted in 1968, the United Nations human rights awards are intended to “honour and commend people and organisations which have made an outstanding contribution to the promotion and protection of the human rights embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in other United Nations human rights instruments”.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon will present the award — a metal plaque bearing the
UN seal and an artistic design, and engraved with an appropriate citation — at a headquarter ceremony in New York on Dec 10.
The recipients are selected by a special committee comprising the presidents of the General
Assembly and the Economic and Social Council and the chairs of the Commission on Human Rights, the Commission on the Status of Women, and the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. (The News)
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The meeting on interfaith peace and dialogue being held under the auspices of the UN General Assembly is truly a rare event. An occasion where 17 leaders from across the world, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Jordan, Pakistan, Israel, the Philippines, Spain, the UK and the USA, can meet and dine together under the same roof is, to say the least, unusual. That hostilities which bar such gatherings still exist even in the 21st century is a reflection of the kind of world we live in. Some of the Muslim countries invited to the meeting, an initiative of the Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, do not indeed recognize Israel. For this reason alone, the message delivered loudly and clearly at the meeting, from King Abdullah, from the UN secretary-general and the General Assembly president, to develop understanding and end the defamation of religion is significant. The Saudi king's words about religion being used to cause misery and his reminder that terrorism and criminality go against the grain of all faiths, are especially important in the context of Pakistan. Indeed King Abdullah will have raised the issue of extremism during his separate dinner for the presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan. In both these countries in particular, as well as in other parts of the Muslim world, the message of peace delivered by Islam has been distorted into one that advocates blind hatred and senseless violence. The UN chief also spoke wisely in talking about the prejudice that exists against Islam and its vilification.
The call for tolerance to be developed, for the multicultural world we live in to become a source of strength rather than division, is one that must be carried home by our leaders. In this context, President Asif Zardari's decision to stay away from a dinner hosted by the UN secretary general, according to some reports in order to avoid a meeting with the Israeli president, is rather inapt.Surely the whole purpose of the meeting is to bring people together. The need is for the president to absorb this message himself, set an example and also set in place a policy to build the tolerance we have heard so much about within our own society, where bias, anti-Semitism and irrational discrimination on the basis of religion can be seen everywhere and are sometimes confused with principle or morality, not only by orthodox elements but by people everywhere. (The News)
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President Asif Ali Zardari’s address at the General Assembly of the United Nations on Thursday has to be rated as a good speech that fairly expressed Pakistan’s point of view on the problem of terrorism while avoiding the kind of isolationism that exuded from the speech of his Iranian counterpart, Mr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mr Zardari sounded a firm and persuasive note to the United States and NATO-ISAF forces in Afghanistan while committing Pakistan to the war against terror and to interdiction of cross-border attacks from inside Pakistan.
Understandably, there was detailed reference to the assassination of his wife, Ms Benazir Bhutto, and to her “doctrine of reconciliation” between the West and the Islamic world, which he joined with another grand economic gesture after the Second World War in the shape of America’s Marshall Plan. While he asked the UN Secretary General to initiate a UN inquiry into her death, he clearly linked her killing to Al Qaeda: “If Al Qaeda and the Taliban believed that by silencing Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, they were silencing her message, they were very wrong”.
He couched his appeal for economic cooperation in the same words as were used by President Bush while addressing Pakistan after 9/11: “The question I ask the world’s leaders in this august chamber is whether you will stand with us, just as we stand for the entire civilised world on the frontlines of this epic struggle of the new millennium?” Then he made the most important pitch as a representative of the people of Pakistan: “Yes, this is our war, but we need international support — moral, political and economic”.
The burden of his message was: this is not your war alone; it is also Pakistan’s war, but Pakistan will not fight it alone or come under pressure from policy made against the interests of Pakistan: “We must all fight this epic battle together as allies and partners. But just as we will not let Pakistan’s territory to be used by terrorists for attacks against our people and our neighbours, we cannot allow our territory and our sovereignty to be violated by our friends”.
On the sidelines of the United Nations’ session, Mr Zardari also met the prime minister of India, Mr Manmohan Singh, with whose government the ongoing bilateral dialogue for normalisation was disrupted after the suicide-bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul. The body language of the two was positive and Mr Zardari made an appropriate reference to India in his UN speech too: “We will continue the composite dialogue with India so that our outstanding disputes are resolved. Whether it is the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir, or cooperation on water resources, India and Pakistan must accommodate each other’s concerns and interests; we must respect and work with each other to peacefully resolve our problems and build South Asia into a common market of trade and technology”.
It is deplorable that after the Indo-Pak joint statement on the opening of four trade routes, some people have tried to create the impression that this would be a bad departure from Pakistan’s “historic position” since India has not relented on the issue of Kashmir. In fact, it is time for sensible departures from bad policies in the past that have laid us low. So it is quite clear that there are powerful elements inside the state that oppose “reconciliation” more than they oppose terrorism and may in fact be counting on terrorism and such people in and out of the media to bring about a change in Pakistan to their liking. These vested interests must be resisted.
In response to Mr Zardari’s initiatives, the US is making efforts to stage a high-level international conference of European, Asian and Gulf Arab countries to debate “common strategies” to help Pakistan defeat the terrorism threat. It is expected that Pakistan will help the G8 countries arrive at a package of economic assistance that will tide Pakistan over its problems of coping with the global price hikes and internal market downturn. The United States has to step forward in this regard and give the lead.
Robert M Hathaway, the director of the Asia Programme at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, wrote thus last week: “As it currently stands, US trade policy actually discriminates against Pakistan. US tariffs on Pakistani textiles are far steeper than on similar goods from other countries...Each container of exported towels puts 500 Pakistani men and women to work. Yet, textile exports from literally dozens of developing countries around the world face lower US tariffs than do Pakistani textiles. The least we could do is to level the playing field for Pakistani goods”. Right you are, Mr Hathaway!
Pakistan would dive into a most dangerous isolationism if the swelling domestic opinion against American cross-border attacks were to become decisive. The world needs a nuclear-armed Pakistan to be part of the global effort against Al Qaeda. And Pakistan needs to avoid the Taliban like the plague and not fall into the trench of isolation without the economic cushion needed to break this fall. President Zardari has put Pakistan’s case clearly in a spirit of cooperation. This is a foreign policy posture that has more chances of success than any other approach divorced from reality. (Daily Times)
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A tribute to Pakistani soliders fighting the terrorists of Taliban, Al-Qaeda and Sipah-e-Sahaba
Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto 1953-2007
Ghalib
The rose, with its redolent petals The water lily, with its robe of virgin white These have surely come to us in transmigration Of but a few of those Endowed with sublime beauty and grace. Some embrace death to sprout again But most, forever, in dust remain.
Links to Free Talkshows / Videos on Pakistan Politics
(Only) When love teaches the etiquette of self-knowledge, Are the Imperial Mysteries revealed to the slaves! Whether it be Attar or Rumi, Razi or Ghazali, Nothing comes to hand without supplication in the early dawn Do not lose hope in them, 0' wise guide! Even though the wayfarers are slow-moving, They are not without zeal (to reach the goal)! (Iqbal)
QUETTA: The unknown persons claimed killing of United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) provincial head John Solecki.
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