ISLAMABAD: Pakistani and Afghan officials remained at odds on Thursday over the issue of construction of a gate on the Pakistani side of border at Torkham. The two countries had, after diplomatic and military contacts a day earlier, agreed to defuse the tense situation that had arisen due to skirmishes over the construction of the border gate by Pakistan, but there were disputed claims about the conditions on which the hostilities were to be ended.…
Posts published in “Day: June 17, 2016”
ISLAMABAD: The Afghan Ambassador to Pakistan, Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal, has warned Pakistan of consequences if the construction work on the gate was not halted. According to the Afghan news agency Khaama Press, Zakhilwal said the construction work of the gate had not been stopped by the Pakistani forces despite an agreement reached to halt the work and resolve the issue through diplomatic negotiations. Zakhilwal further added that an agreement was reached with a Pakistani military…
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has played down the recent skirmishes ‘instigated by enemies’ on the Pak-Afghan border while stressing the need for improved border management controls amid growing tensions between Kabul and Islamabad. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif while briefing the upper house of parliament on Thursday said Islamabad wanted brotherly relations with Kabul despite on-ground grievances. “We have no dispute with Afghanistan,” he said. “The enemies of Pakistan do not want it to progress neither do they…
BRUSSELS: The Nato alliance agreed on Wednesday to hold onto its broad geographic layout of bases in Afghanistan, a move that could make it easier for the United States to keep more troops there as Kabul struggles with a resurgent Taliban threat. President Barack Obama has planned to slash the number of US forces in Afghanistan from about 9,800 to 5,500 before he leaves office in 2017, despite calls from former commanders and envoys to…
WASHINGTON—A long- promised plan by President Barack Obama to shift control of drone campaigns around the world gives the U.S. military more responsibility but retains a Central Intelligence Agency role in the targeted-killing program, according to officials briefed on the arrangement. Mr. Obama’s plan settles a three-year turf battle among the CIA, the Pentagon and a divided Congress over whether the time has come to scale back the CIA’s quasi-military role 15 years after the…
PESHAWAR: The federal government through Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday submitted reply in the Peshawar High Court and stated that the convicted Indian national writ petition wherein he had sought the benefit of Section 382-B of the Code of Criminal Procedure to include the period of his detention in his sentence was non-maintainable and liable to be dismissed. The reply said the petition was not maintainable in view of Article 199 (3) read with…
KABUL: Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai said Pakistan does not want good relations between India and Afghanistan and wants “no bilateral trade and no access to Central Asia for India” which is unacceptable for Afghanistan. In an interview with BBC Urdu on Thursday, Karzai claimed that India is helping Afghanistan build its infrastructure and health facilities and has “filled Afghanistan with money despite being a poor country”. “India wants to truly befriend Afghanistan and we…
ISLAMABAD: The Iranian government has finally responded to a letter written by the interior ministry seeking investigation into Indian intelligence agency RAW’s network in Iran. According to sources, the response was handed over to Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan by Iranian Ambassador Mehdi Hunerdoost who called on him here on Wednesday. According to an official statement, progress in expansion of cooperation in a number of areas, including security, was reviewed during the meeting which…
Guobin Yang is a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania best known for his research on the internet in China. But in his latest book, “The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China,’’ he turns back to examine the upheavals of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution and the imprint they left on a generation of Chinese who became radicals and Red Guards in the name of Mao Zedong. The book explores the cultural background to…
HONG KONG — A Chinese court has sentenced the wife and son of the country’s former security chief to prison, a year after the family patriarch was sentenced to life in prison for corruption and leaking state secrets. The Yichang City People’s Intermediate Court, about 800 miles south of Beijing, handed down a nine-year term to Jia Xiaoye, whose husband, Zhou Yongkang, was until 2012 one of China’s most powerful officials. His son by a…
BEIJING—The landlocked African kingdom of Lesotho doesn’t have an obvious stake in the South China Sea, but it is among some 60 countries that China says stand behind it as it faces potential censure by an international tribunal over its territorial claims there. The sudden involvement of Lesotho and other small nations far from Asia is the product of a Chinese blitz to rally support in the final countdown to a ruling in The Hague,…