No institution has right to create a state within state: PM

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Thursday said conspirators were plotting to bring down his government, giving his most public indication yet that he fears being ousted from power.

“I want to make it clear today that conspiracies are being hatched here to pack up the elected government,” Gilani told a gathering at the National Arts Gallery, without naming anyone.

“But we will continue to fight for the rights of people of Pakistan whether or not we remain in the government,” Gilani said, declaring himself the country’s longest serving premier, with 45 months on the job.

Two weeks ago, Interior Minister Rehman Malik dismissed rumours that a coup could overthrow the government, but Gilani’s remarks appeared to show that members of the administration believe their early departure is all too possible.

Addressing the National Assembly on Thursday, PM Gilani said that the government respects the armed forces and has supported the military in the worst of times.

“They are a disciplined army and follow the constitution,” Gilani said. “They are under the government and will remain under the government.”

But heading off questions in parliament, he took aim at the military over reports that the defence ministry conceded to the Supreme Court that it had no control over the armed forces or ISI intelligence agency.

“If they say that they are not under the ministry of defence, then we should get out of this slavery, then this parliament has no importance, this system has no importance, then you are not sovereign,” he told lawmakers.

“They are being paid from the State Exchequer, from your revenue and from your taxes.”

All institutions are subservient to the Parliament, and no institution has the right to create a state within the state, added the prime minister.

“If somebody thinks that they are not under the government, they are mistaken. They are under the government and they shall remain under the government, because we are the elected representatives of the people of Pakistan.”

Appearing to lose patience, he said the government had stood by the security services over a storm of American pressure over the Osama bin Laden killing, the November 26 Nato attack and the 2008 attacks on Mumbai.

“In the worst circumstances we doubled their salaries. They have to be accountable to parliament.”

“We are being asked by the judicial commission (examining the May 2 US raid that killed bin Laden raid and how the al Qaeda leader lived in Pakistan undetected) about issuance of visas (to Americans).

“But I want to ask how was (bin Laden) living here for the past six years? On what type of visa was he living here? Why was security not taken care of, if he entered in Pakistan without a visa?”

SC dismisses govt’s review petition against NRO verdict

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed the government’s review petition against its ruling declaring the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) illegal, DawnNews reported.
The apex court ruled that the government could not make a case for reviewing the judgment.
The petition was heard by a 17-judge full court headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.
The NRO was struck down by a Supreme Court verdict on December 16, 2009.
The bench directed the authorities concerned to comply with its earlier detailed order on the issue in letter and spirit and without any delay.
Prominent lawyer and Pakistan People’s Party leader Aitzaz Ahsan told journalists outside the court building that the government was bound to implement the orders, adding that, the president, however, had immunity.
Moreover, Yaseen Azad, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), was of the view that the verdict should be implemented according to the court’s directions.
The court knows how to get its orders implemented, he added.

West says Iran deceives world on nukes

The U.S. and its Western allies bluntly accused Iran on Friday of deceiving the world and declared it could no longer dismiss evidence it is working secretly on making nuclear arms. The unusually tough accusations were bound to raise international tensions over Iran's nuclear program — even though the Western statements emphasized that the preferred solution was through diplomacy. Statements delivered to the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board by the United States, and on behalf of Germany, Britain and France, contained no mention of military action — an option that has not been discounted by either Israel or the U.S. if Tehran refuses to stop activities that can be used for nuclear weapons. Still, they pulled no punches, drawing heavily on a recent IAEA report based on intelligence from more than 10 nations that concluded that some alleged clandestine activities by the Islamic Republic could not be used for any other purpose than making nuclear arms.

PPP concerned over ‘memo gate’ scandal

ISLAMABAD: The core committee of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) on Friday discussed the controversy surrounding Ambassador to US Husain Haqqani over a secret memo alleged to have been sent by President Asif Ali Zardari to former chairman of US joint chiefs of staff Admiral Mike Mullen.
The committee meeting was held under the chairmanship of President Zardari who is also the party’s co-chairman.
The president took the party’s top leadership into confidence over his meeting with Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and said that an investigation would be held into the matter.
Party stalwarts termed the situation grim and said that the opposition was taking advantage of the circumstances and attacking the government on this front.
President Zardari directed PPP leaders to effectively counter the opposition’s propaganda.
The president also discussed Zulfiqar Mirza’s London visit and his meeting with Scotland Yard officials with party officials and assured the core committee that he was not directing the former minister.

‘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.