By Rob Crilly, in The Daily Telegraph
Lahore: Pakistan has repeatedly accused India of breaching the terms of a 1960 treaty governing the use of shared river systems, complaining that irrigation channels on its side of the border have emptied.
The issue has now been adopted by militants in Jamaat-ud-Dawah, widely regarded as a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Jihadi group fighting Indian troops in Kashmir and responsible for the November 2008 wave of gun and bomb attacks that killed at least 170 people in Mumbai.
Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Lashka-e-Taibi and head …

By Babar Dogar in The News, Apr 28
LAHORE: Former foreign minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri has disclosed that the agreement on Kashmir, worked out through back-channel diplomacy, was an interim one, and was subject to review after 15 years.
Talking to The News here on Tuesday in the backdrop of ‘Aman Ki Asha’ – a joint venture of the Jang Group of Pakistan and The Times of India, Khursheed Kasuri claimed the Pakistani and Indian sides at that time had the realisation that in view of the history of Jammu and Kashmir …

One issue that stood out in Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir’s address to the 37th session of the Standing Committee of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in Bhutan was the need to adopt a regional approach towards tackling water issues. Environment and climate change will be the focus of the 16th SAARC Summit, which is going to adopt a declaration titled ‘Green and Happy South Asia’. Climate change worldwide and the malign effects of global warming will have a negative impact on our common heritage — the …

TOBA TEK SINGH, April 26: Former municipal committee chairman Mian Muhammad Rafiq Sarhandi has demanded of the federal government to lift curbs on second visit to India.
A Pakistani has to wait for 18 months for next visit to India.
In a press statement, he said hundreds of people belonging to the Indian town of Sarhand resided in the Toba district and wanted to attend the Urs of Hazrat Mujaddid Alif Sani and offer fateha on the graves of their relatives, but the curbs on their second visit had barred them from …

By Myra MacDonald in the Reuters Blog
DAMADOLA: Despite initial military successes against the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, Pakistan is unlikely to move any time soon to dismantle the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group. As I wrote in this analysis,  Pakistani security officials say the country has enough on its plate fighting militants on its Afghan border without opening a new front in Punjab province, where the LeT is based. They argue this could drive the LeT – which has been careful not to launch attacks within Pakistan itself …

Former foreign minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri’s startling disclosure that a solution to the Kashmir problem had been worked out under the Musharraf government and that all that was required was a signature on the relevant documents is rather unexpected and opens up all kinds of new possibilities. While there had been talks on the issue that contributes most to continued tensions between India and Pakistan, we had not known a solution was so tantalisingly close. The information offered up by Kasuri, at a seminar organised as part of the Jang …

By Babar Dogar & Ranjan Roy in The News, Apr 24
LAHORE: Former foreign minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri has said the solution to the Kashmir dispute is just a signature away once India and Pakistan decide to pull the file from the rack.
While addressing the concluding session of the two-day seminar — held as part of the ongoing Aman ki Asha campaign, launched by the Jang Group and Times of India — and later talking to The News and the Times of India here on Friday, the former foreign minister revealed …

India, along with China, is the economic engine that will drive global economic growth for possibly decades to come. The whole world is keen for a slice of that action. Are we — who ironically are best placed to take advantage (both directly and indirectly) — to be the only ones to reject such a golden opportunity?
Many readers are probably watching the Indian Premier League (IPL) matches these days. Like it or not, the event is now firmly established, is clearly a big success, and likely to go from strength …

LAHORE, March 7: Banned outfit Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) chief Prof Muhammad Saeed on Sunday led a protest rally against India which urged the government to “use force if New Delhi does not come to terms on water issue.”
Prof Saeed had been put under house arrest after Mumbai attacks in 2008 which, India alleged, were conducted by militants linked with his group.
Though he was released on court orders after some time as the government failed to put forward cogent reasons for its action, he kept a low profile and did not …

The kidnapping of three Sikhs and beheading of one of them in the troubled FATA has earned a bad name for the country, where the track record of treatment of minorities is already poor. According to ISPR, the military rescued two of the kidnapped Sikhs after an operation and has shifted them to safety, while some news reports suggest they escaped the Taliban captivity in the Chapri Feroz Khel area between the Orakzai and Khyber Agencies and took shelter with the security forces in Tirah Valley. Conflicting reports aside, it …