By Andrew Buncombe in The Independent, UK, Jan 7 Seven months after Sri Lanka’s long and bitter civil war was brought to an end by a withering government assault, the political coalition that supported the Tamil Tigers has thrown its support behind the former army chief who crushed them. In an ironic twist to the presidential election campaign being fought on the island, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) announced yesterday that it was supporting General…
Posts published in January 2010
MUZAFFARABAD, Jan 6: A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a military installation in a southern district of Azad Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday morning, killing four soldiers and injuring 11 others. According to officials, the attack took place at 6.58am outside a military barrack, also called army’s human resource development centre, in Tararkhel town of Sudhnoti district. The area is home to a basic healthcare centre for soldiers and civilians. The barrack has not…
MUZAFFARABAD: Prime Minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir Raja Farooq Haider on Tuesday called for a joint session of Pakistan’s parliament to “revisit the national Kashmir policy” which he said had seen deviation under Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf. “Pakistan needs to reaffirm its decision of 1949 from its most supreme forum of parliament,” Mr Haider said in his welcome address to President Asif Ali Zardari during a special joint sitting of the AJK assembly and…
By Zulfiqar Ali Khan in The Dawn, Jan 7 HUNZA: After the devastating landslide, scarcity of food, medicines and fuel is becoming a real threat for the lives of the 22,000 inhabitants of Gojal, the largest tehsil of Hunza-Nagar district in Gilgit-Baltistan. According to reports, shops, civil supply depots and utility stores in the valley have finished their stocks and cannot bring in fresh supplies due to blockade of the Karakoram Highway (KKH). People of…
By Maqbool Malik ISLAMABAD – High command of the ruling PPP is in a fix in finding a suitable female candidate for appointment as first governor of Gilgit-Baltistan, sources informed TheNation on Monday. The sources disclosed that PPP leadership has interviewed a few women members of the newly elected Gilgit-Baltistan Assembly but none of them could qualify the set out criteria for the gubernatorial slot. The sources were of the view that this has forced…
DHAKA, Jan 4: All the Islamic political parties of Bangladesh should drop the name of Islam from their name and should stop using religion during campaigning, Law Minister Ahmad Shafique said on Monday. He said this following a Supreme Court ruling on Sunday, which upheld a 2005 ruling by the high court throwing out the fifth amendment of the constitution, which had allowed religion-based politics to flourish in the country since the late 1970s. “All…
The Dawn, Jan 1 RAWALPINDI, Dec 31: A United States-operated training facility for Pakistani security forces at the Police College Sihala has been closed for being vulnerable to terrorist attacks, a senior police officer told Dawn. College commandant Nasir Khan Durrani confirmed the closure, saying: “Yes, I have been verbally informed by the interior ministry about it.” American instructors had started training Pakistani police in counter-terrorism techniques at the facility in 2003. The presence of…
By Baqir Sajjad Syed in The Dawn, Jan 1 ISLAMABAD: Weeks after denying that Pakistan had an extradition treaty with the United States, the government said on Thursday that the two countries had an accord for return of fugitives as per a 1973 notification. “We have an extradition treaty with the US,” Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said at a media briefing. The US-Pakistan accord has roots in a US-UK treaty of 1932, which was…
The Dawn, Jan 1 GILGIT, Dec 31: Speaker Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly (GBLA) Wazir Baig has urged people to visit government offices without any hesitation for resolution of their problems as “officials are public servants not rulers”. Addressing a gathering on environment, organised by Gojal Rural Support Organisation, he said “conspiracies are afloat to steal treasures underneath the surface of Gilgit-Baltistan as the black mountains are full of natural resources”. Speaker Baig said that development was…