‘Nato should act against terrorist safe havens in Afghanistan’

PESHAWAR: Pakistan’s top military commander fighting militants in the northwest Saturday said Pakistan will act against terrorist safe havens and urged Nato and Afghanistan to do the same.

Lieutenant General Asif Yasin Malik, who is supervising military operations in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, told reporters that his troops would not leave the area until complete security had been ensured.

“We will take action against the terrorists in our area and Nato and Afghanistan should also take action against them (terrorists) in their area across the border,” he said.

Malik was speaking during a visit to the development projects started by Pakistan army in the Kotkai area of South Waziristan tribal district on the Afghan border, where the military launched a ground offensive two years ago.

“Pakistan will not tolerate any infiltration in its area. The Afghan government and Nato should not allow terrorists’ safe havens in Afghan provinces along the Pakistan border,” he said.

“Our troops will stay here until complete security is ensured in this area, the Pakistan army is not going back from the tribal regions,” Malik said,

Militants are dug in on both sides of the border, and last week the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Pakistan to do more to squeeze militant safe havens in its territory, notably those of the Haqqani network.

Begum Nusrat Bhutto dies in Dubai

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (R) escorts her mother Nusrat as they arrive to attend the parliament session in Islamabad in the February 15, 1997, file photo. -Reuters Photo

ISLAMABAD: Begum Nusrat Bhutto, whose husband and daughter both served as prime ministers of Pakistan and a political force herself, died Sunday in Dubai after a long illness, a spokesman for the family’s political party said. She was 82.

Her life tracked many of the ups and downs in Pakistani politics. Her husband, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was the founder of the Pakistan People’s Party that controls the government in Pakistan today. He served as both prime minister and president in the 1970s.

Begum Nusrat Bhutto took over as head of the Pakistan People’s Party for several years after her husband was hanged in 1979, following what many believed was a politically motivated conspiracy and murder trial. She also served in Pakistan’s parliament.

Her daughter, Benazir Bhutto, took over as head of the Pakistan People’s Party and served twice as prime minister.

She was killed in a suicide bomb attack in 2007, shortly after returning to the country to participate in elections following years of exile in Dubai. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, is now Pakistan’s president.

Zardari has traveled to Dubai to bring home Begum Nusrat Bhutto’s body, said Jamil Soomro, a spokesman for the Pakistan People’s Party. She will be buried in the family’s mausoleum in southern Sindh province, Soomro said

Pakistan did its part By The president Asif Ali Zardari

Pakistan, perhaps the world’s greatest victim of terrorism, joins the other targets of al-Qaeda — the people of the United States, Britain, Spain, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Turkey, Yemen, Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Algeria — in our satisfaction that the source of the greatest evil of the new millennium has been silenced, and his victims given justice. He was not anywhere we had anticipated he would be, but now he is gone.
Although the events of Sunday were not a joint operation, a decade of cooperation and partnership between the United States and Pakistan led up to the elimination of Osama bin Laden as a continuing threat to the civilized world. And we in Pakistan take some satisfaction that our early assistance in identifying an al-Qaeda courier ultimately led to this day.

 

Let us be frank. Pakistan has paid an enormous price for its stand against terrorism. More of our soldiers have died than all of NATO’s casualties combined. Two thousand police officers, as many as 30,000 innocent civilians and a generation of social progress for our people have been lost. And for me, justice against bin Laden was not just political; it was also personal, as the terrorists murdered our greatest leader, the mother of my children. Twice he tried to assassinate my wife. In 1989 he poured $50 million into a no-confidence vote to topple her first government. She said that she was bin Laden’s worst nightmare — a democratically elected, progressive, moderate, pluralistic female leader. She was right, and she paid for it with her life.
Some in the U.S. press have suggested that Pakistan lacked vitality in its pursuit of terrorism, or worse yet that we were disingenuous and actually protected the terrorists we claimed to be pursuing. Such baseless speculation may make exciting cable news, but it doesn’t reflect fact. Pakistan had as much reason to despise al-Qaeda as any nation. The war on terrorism is as much Pakistan’s war as as it is America’s. And though it may have started with bin Laden, the forces of modernity and moderation remain under serious threat.
My government endorses the words of President Obama and appreciates the credit he gave us Sunday night for the successful operation in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa. We also applaud and endorse the words of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that we must “press forward, bolstering our partnerships, strengthening our networks, investing in a positive vision of peace and progress, and relentlessly pursuing the murderers who target innocent people.” We have not yet won this war, but we now clearly can see the beginning of the end, and the kind of South and Central Asia that lies in our future.
Only hours after bin Laden’s death, the Taliban reacted by blaming the government of Pakistan and calling for retribution against its leaders, and specifically against me as the nation’s president. We will not be intimidated. Pakistan has never been and never will be the hotbed of fanaticism that is often described by the media.
Radical religious parties have never received more than 11 percent of the vote. Recent polls showed that 85 percent of our people are strongly opposed to al-Qaeda. In 2009, when the Taliban briefly took over the Swat Valley, it demonstrated to the people of Pakistan what our future would look like under its rule — repressive politics, religious fanaticism, bigotry and discrimination against girls and women, closing of schools and burning of books. Those few months did more to unite the people of Pakistan around our moderate vision of the future than anything else possibly could.
A freely elected democratic government, with the support and mandate of the people, working with democracies all over the world, is determined to build a viable, economic prosperous Pakistan that is a model to the entire Islamic world on what can be accomplished in giving hope to our people and opportunity to our children. We can become everything that al-Qaeda and the Taliban most fear — a vision of a modern Islamic future. Our people, our government, our military, our intelligence agencies are very much united. Some abroad insist that this is not the case, but they are wrong. Pakistanis are united.
Together, our nations have suffered and sacrificed. We have fought bravely and with passion and commitment. Ultimately we will prevail. For, in the words of my martyred wife Benazir Bhutto, “truth, justice and the forces of history are on our side.”
The writer is the president of Pakistan.

Rabbani killing plot: Pakistan denies receiving any evidence

Pakistan denies it has received any evidence showing former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani’s assassination was planned in Quetta. Foreign Office spokesperson Tehmina Janjua said Afghanistan has not shared any evidence with Pakistan in this regard. “Pakistan is ready to cooperate with Afghanistan to investigate Rabbani’s killing,” she continued. The spokesperson said that Prime Minister Gilani had offered his government’s cooperation with Afghanistan to probe any incident. This offer stands effective, she added

Qadri gets death sentence in Salman Taseer’s murder

ISLAMABAD: An Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) awarded death penalty to Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri on Saturday, DawnNews reported.
Mr Taseer was assassinated by his security guard and personnel of Punjab Elite Force, Mumtaz Qadri, on January 4, 2011 at Kohsar Market in Islamabad.
“The court has awarded my client with death. The court announced the death sentence for him,” Shujaur Rehman, one of Qadri’s lawyers, told AFP by telephone.
Judge Pervez Ali Shah announced the verdict at the court behind closed doors in the high-security Adiyala prison in Rawalpindi, the lawyer said.
Qadri had earlier confessed in court that he had killed Punjab governor Salman Taseer for his ‘blasphemous’ statements.
Qadri’s supporters took to the streets to denounce the sentence soon after it was handed down.
“By punishing one Mumtaz Qadri, you will produce a thousand Mumtaz Qadris!” one man shouted through a megaphone outside the jail.
The court handed down two death sentences for murder and terrorism to Qadri, who has seven days to file an appeal, state television reported.
Reporters and other members of the public were not allowed in to the hearing and it was not known if Qadri attended.

‘You can’t put a gun to my head and make me like Tendulkar’

After coming under fire for several days, former Pakistan speedster Shoaib Akhtar shot back at critics in India and beyond, saying he could not be forced into praising India’s batting legend Sachin Tendulkar.
“I have my personal favourites which include Viv Richard, Brian Lara and Imran Khan and I can take nothing away from the greatness of Sachin Tendulkar. But you can’t put a gun to my head and force me to like him. For me, Viv Richards remains the greatest batsman and he won more matches for West Indies. This is my opinion and I stand by it,” Akhtar said in an interview with an Indian news channel as the storm created by the launch of his autobiography “Controversially Yours” continued.
He also tore into former Pakistan and Indian players saying they were towing the lines of their employers in criticizing him “for a few bucks.”
“I am sick of clarifying my statements about Tendulkar. I never said he was a coward or scared of me. If these people had put in the effort of reading my book, they would realize I was talking about a specific day and a specific test played in Pakistan. He was struggling with a tennis elbow and our strategy was to target him with short balls. He got struck a couple of times and on the head in Karachi and walked away from me. I felt he was uncomfortable and scared at that moment. That is what I felt and I’ll stick to it. Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid when they played against me did not win, so to me they were not match-winners. Don’t buy my book, borrow it from someone and read what I have said, they are facts and incidents,” he said.
Shifting his focus to Pakistan cricket and specifically Wasim Akram and Ijaz Butt he claimed the duo needed to look at their character before making statements.
“Wasim Akram…there can only be one. But he needs to look at his own past. He was fined by a court for his involvement in match-fixing and even had a player’s revolt against him. He was abusive and had a bad attitude. What position is he in to say anything to me? For me even if a person’s name comes up in something slightly related to fixing, I lose respect. Shoaib Malik’s name came up too and I don’t respect him anymore.”

Pakistan Cricket Board Chairman (PCB), Ijaz Butt, who had recently called Akhtar a madcap and termed his statements as “bullshit”, also copped some flak.

“A person who responded to the match-fixing allegations against Pakistan by accusing the English players of match-fixing cannot be taken seriously. He is old and I don’t think a person of his caliber should be acting like the way he does.”

Akhtar also responded to suggestions that he was breaking the “unspoken code” between teammates by saying his book was his frank opinion and that it was meant to be a learning experience for future Pakistan cricketers and even the management.

To a conclusive question about what India needed to do to be a better fast-bowling unit he said, “The attitude is missing. When they run in they must strike fear in the hearts of batsmen.”

“Whether I was unfit, had back niggles or was limping, I ran in gave everything.

“Additionally, India needs to get on the road, get a group of about 50 fast bowlers and put them in the fast bowling academy.”

Pakistan never backed Haqqani network: ISI chief

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s intelligence chief on Thursday denied US accusations that the country supports the Haqqani network, an Afghan militant group blamed for an attack on the American embassy in Kabul.
“There are other intelligence networks supporting groups who operate inside Afghanistan. We have never paid a penny or provided even a single bullet to the Haqqani network,” Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha told Reuters after meeting political leaders over heavily strained US-Pakistani ties.
Pasha, one of the most powerful men in the South Asian nation, told the all-party gathering that US military action against insurgents in Pakistan would be unacceptable and the army would be capable of responding, local media said.
But he later said the reports were “baseless”.
Pakistan has long faced US demands to attack militants on its side of the border with Afghanistan, but pressure has grown since the top US military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, accused Pasha’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate of supporting a Sept. 13 attack on the US mission in Kabul.
The dozens of political parties that participated in Thursday’s meeting rejected the allegations against state links to violent militants in a joint declaration. “The Pakistani nation affirms its full solidarity and support for the armed forces of Pakistan,” they said.
The Obama administration appears to be trying to smoothe things over with Pakistan even as it struggles with mounting frustration with Islamabad and seeks to curb speculation about divisions in its ranks.
As some US officials appear to distance themselves, Mullen, who steps down this week, said he stood by the tone and content of his comments.
“I phrased it the way I wanted it to be phrased,” he said in an interview aired on Thursday.
He said the ISI was giving the Haqqani group financial and logistical support and “sort of free passage in the (border) safe haven.”
“They can’t turn it off overnight. I’m not asserting that the Pak mil or the ISI has complete control over the Haqqanis. But the Haqqanis run that safe haven. They’re also a home to al Qaeda in that safe haven,” he told National Public Radio.
The attacks threaten to become a major obstacle to US hopes of withdrawing smoothly from Afghanistan.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said that the relationship with Pakistan was “complicated but very important.”
“There’s no question that we have disagreements, complications in our relationship and we speak openly and candidly with our Pakistani counterparts about those,” he said.
Patience Wearing Thin
Support is growing in the US Congress for expanding US military action in Pakistan beyond drone strikes against militants, said Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential Republican voice on foreign policy and military affairs.
Islamabad is reluctant to go after the Haqqanis — even though the United States provides billions of dollars in aid — saying its troops are stretched fighting Taliban insurgents.
Pakistan says it has sacrificed more lives than any of the countries that joined the “war on terror” after the Sept. 11 attacks by Islamist militants on the United States in 2001.
Pakistan’s military faced withering public criticism after a surprise US raid that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a garrison town not far from Islamabad in May.
A similar US operation against militants in North Waziristan on the Afghan border, where American officials say the Haqqanis are based, would be another humiliation for the powerful army.
Graham said in an interview with Reuters that US lawmakers might support military options beyond drone strikes that have been going on for years inside Pakistani territory, including using US bomber planes within Pakistan. He added that he did not advocate sending in US ground troops.
“I would say when it comes to defending American troops, you don’t want to limit yourself,” Graham said.
The US Treasury Department on Thursday announced new sanctions on five individuals it said were linked to “the most dangerous terrorist organizations operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” including the Haqqani network.
But it stopped short — despite growing political pressure at home — of officially designating the Haqqani network a terrorist group.
Pakistan was designated a major non-Nato ally by the United States for its support of coalition military operations in Afghanistan after 9/11.
But their relationship has been dogged by mistrust. Although regarded as critical to US efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, Pakistan is often seen from Washington as an unreliable partner.
Following US accusations that some in the Pakistani government have aided anti-US militants, Congress is reevaluating its 2009 promise to triple non-military aid to Pakistan to a total of $7.5 billion over five years.
That aid came on top of billions in security assistance provided since 2001, which Washington is also rethinking.