Posts published in “Day: August 20, 2016”

WASHINGTON – The United States has said that the emergence of a new Taliban faction makes the Afghan reconciliation process more difficult, stating it has always stood for the effort to be “Afghan-led and Afghan-owned.” “I mean, any time you’ve got various splinter groups emerging, that does make those efforts more complex, but that remains our overarching goal and what we view as really the long-term solution for Afghanistan to achieve peace and stability. But…

LANDI KOTAL: Scores of tribesmen, traders and custom clearing agents staged a demonstration near Torkham border after a local resident died of heart attack when he was refused timely permission at Shaheed Morr checkpost to reach a hospital. The protesters were holding black flags and chanting slogans against the personnel of Frontier Corps posted at the checkpost. The protest march started from the custom terminal and ended at Shaheed Morr where the slogan-chanting protesters blocked…

The Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad Gautam Bambewale delivered the message of Delhi’s willingness to talk in response to the invitation by the foreign secretary of Pakistan, Aizaz Chaudhry to his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar. However, India has stuck to its old position of only having cross border terrorism as the subject of the dialogue, while on the other hand, Pakistan’s aim was to start a dedicated dialogue on Kashmir. There is of course a…

Hopes that Pakistan and India could leverage the SAARC summit for a ‘reset’, perhaps even stage a one-on-one between Nawaz Sharif and Narendra Modi, now appear overblown. The Ch Nisar-Rajnath Singh spat notwithstanding, Islamabad did everything but practically bend over backwards to facilitate the talks this time. Even after Singh left abruptly from the home ministers’ meeting, Dar sb assured extra special treatment for the Indian finance minister (for the end of month meeting) so…

The invitation by Foreign Secretary of Pakistan Aizaz Chaudhry to his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar for talks on Kashmir was met by rejection as Jaishankar maintained that only cross border terrorism should be discussed with Pakistan. All of this comes amidst heightened tensions between the two states particularly after Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi in his 15th August address said that the people of Balochistan along with Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan had thanked him…

Discussions between India and Pakistan would normally be seen as good news. But right now, New Delhi appears to be using Pakistan’s invitation for discussion on the Kashmir situation as a means to underscore its own position on the issue. In asking India to hold foreign secretary-level talks with us over Kashmir, Pakistan wanted the full spectrum of outstanding issues to be discussed, ranging from the occupation and the recent human rights abuses to the…

IS it a ray of hope or just an illusion? Amidst the acrimony and bombast that has been the Pakistan-India relationship recently has come an exchange of letters discussing the possibility of talks between the two countries. It is a measure of how strained ties are that even though both sides have mooted a very different agenda for potential discussions — thereby all but discarding the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue before it could even begin —…

BEIJING: Nearly 3,000 teachers from China’s restive Xinjiang province trained to teach and spread “anti-separatism” are being dispatched across the country to schools where students from the restive region are enrolled. The objective behind the two-year programme is to promote unity, state media reports said on Wednesday. The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China’s largest and home to the Muslim Uyghur minority, has been intermittently rocked by violence in the past few years. Speaking at the…

A succession struggle is underway in China ahead of next year’s Communist Party Congress. And this time the central fight is over monetary policy instead of ideological slogans. The outcome has implications for China’s response to slowing economic growth. On one side is Premier Li Keqiang, who controls the machinery of government through the State Council and is supposedly in charge of running the economy. He emphasizes the health of the economy and the need…

BEIJING: Chinese police have busted underground banks that handled 200 billion yuan ($30.2 billion) in illegal money transfers this year, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) said on Wednesday. Police said they arrested 450 suspects involved in 158 cases of underground banking and money laundering, according to a notice posted on the MPS official website. Beijing has been fighting illegal cross-border outflows in an attempt to slow capital flight as its yuan currency weakens to…