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…
Posts published in April 2010
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…
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…
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…
SKARDU, April 25: Lawyers have criticised the government for not giving Baltistan division due representation in judiciary and other departments of Gilgit-Baltistan. They sought share of Baltistan in judiciary and all departments according to its population. Baltistan chief court bar association president Shaukat Ali advocate, in a statement here, said the people of Baltistan had been totally ignored in filling posts in the Supreme Appellate Court, Chief Court, special judges in banking, customs, anti-terrorism, anti-narcotics,…
By Ansar Abbasi in The News, Apr 26 ISLAMABAD: After the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), now apprehensions are also being expressed by the PML-N about some alleged conspiracy being hatched by certain elements belonging to the Army and intelligence agencies. Though it is whispered and not publicly said in so many words, in their off-the-record discussions with media persons, some PML-N leaders express their fears that the third force is preparing the ground to do…
BY now Pakistanis are accustomed to ‘non-state actors’ — nebulous creatures that are blamed for the nation’s ills and help the government defer the burden of accountability. In a nod to these elements, we learnt this month that the violence and intolerance that permeate this country’s campuses are the work of ‘non-student elements’. This coinage comes from the Punjab University (PU), which re-opened recently as a 19-day faculty boycott came to an end. The faculty…
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…
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.…
By Zulfiqar Ali Khan in The Dawn, apr 25 HUNZA, April 24: The rise in temperature coupled with glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) from the Ghulkin-Hussaini glacier have increased the water inflow in the lake formed on Hunza River due to the devastating landslide of Jan 4 at Atabad Hunza. According to experts, the daily water inflow in the lake spreading over 13km has reached to 2,500 cusecs with a daily water level with an…
GILGIT, April 24: Six members of the Gilgit-Baltistan cabinet were sworn in on Saturday. Governor Dr Shama Khalid administered the oath to them at a ceremony. Those who took the oath were Dr Ali Madad Sher, Wazir Shakil, Mohammad Ali Akhtar, Haji Gulbar, Engineer Ismail and Mohammad Jaffar. Their portfolios would be allotted later on, official sources said. Senior civil and military officials as well as a large number of PPP workers and notables attended…