Pakistan

Ghanour (Patiala), June 30: The Minister of state for External Affairs Preneet Kaur today said that levying of ‘Jizya’ on Hindus and Sikhs by Taliban in Swat region was an internal matter of Pakistan though the government was concerned about it.

“We have taken up the matter with them and in future also we will raise it at an appropriate level and time,” she said while addressing a ‘thanksgiving’ rally here after scoring a hatrick of victories from the Patiala Lok Sabha seat.

She also expressed concern over racial attacks involving Indian students in Australia.

Islamabad, June 30: Pakistan will begin production of JF-17 thunder jets, a lightweight multi-role combat aircraft, in collaboration with China, the Online news agency reported Tuesday.

The countries signed an agreement in March for the production of 42 JF-17 fighters at the Pakistan Aeronautical complex in Kamra in Punjab province. Some parts of the aircraft would also be manufactured in China.

The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) plans to raise its first squadron of JF-17 jets by the end of this year, sources said.

London, June 30: Pakistan has assured the UK that it is determined to nab or eliminate top Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud from the northwest of the country where its forces are engaged in decisive battle with the militants.

Replying to a question on the Rs 50 million bounty announced for Mehsud, visiting Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the government was determined to nab or eliminate him.

Islamabada, June 30: Pakistan on Monday said its anti-Taliban operations in Swat had entered the final phase with troops having “totally dismantled” the militants’ infrastructure, even as over 30 rebels and 16 soldiers were killed in fresh fighting in the unruly NWFP and Waziristan.

The operations in Swat are in their final stage and expected to end in a few days as only a little area remains to be cleared of militants, Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira told a news briefing.

Islamabad, June 30: The Taliban has declared an end to the peace deal it signed with the Pakistani government last year due to the ongoing military operation in northwest Pakistan.

The Taliban made the announcement Monday after a meeting of the group’s local shura (council) in North Waziristan, the website of the Dawn newspaper said.

On Feb 17 last year, the group signed a nine-point agreement with the government to restore peace in the area.

Islamabad, June 30: At least four people were killed and three wounded Tuesday in a blast at a petrol pump in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, TV reports said.

According to Geo TV, the blast occurred in a car parked at a petrol pump in the Sorab area.

The police have cordoned off the area and begun an investigation.

–IANS

Islamabad, June 30: Piotr Stanczak did not exhibit the slightest hint of hesitation when the Pakistani Taliban asked him to choose between execution and conversion to Islam.

Whether the Polish geologist acted out of pride or religious conviction, he decided to pay through his blood to save his faith, a choice that bewildered his killers and keep them talking about him with respect after his murder.

Islamabad, June 30: Pakistan has ruled out any possibility of shifting its troops from the eastern Indian border to the western border with Afghanistan.

Addressing a joint press conference with the ISPR spokesman Major General Athar Abbas here, Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira said Pakistan will not remove its military from the Indian border and deploy it along the western border with Afghanistan.

“We cannot and will not do it. Pakistan could not remain oblivious to the conventional threat,” The Dawn quoted Kaira, as saying.

Islamabad, June 30: Islamabad strongly rejects reports that the US has been spending millions of dollars to keep Pakistani nukes out of the reach of extremists.

A foreign ministry statement said on Monday that there was no truth whatsoever that any US money had been diverted toward developing or toward the maintenance of the nukes.

The ministry also emphasized that the control and command systems of nukes were completely indigenous.

Lahore, June 30: MQM chief Altaf Hussain has said the Partition of India in 1947 weakened Muslims, as it divided their power.

In an interview with Najam Sethi on Duniya News, Altaf said there would have been no Partition had the Congress accepted Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s 14 points.

Altaf said few people knew that even Allama Iqbal had not demanded a separate Pakistan in his famous Allahabad address in 1930. “He had, in fact, demanded the creation of Muslim states in the Muslim-majority areas,” he said, adding that Iqbal’s son justice (retired) Javed Iqbal could confirm this.

Islamabad, June 29: On the case of eight-year-old Zahida in Karachi, Pakistan, whose father Abdul Rasool exchanged her in marriage for another woman. Rasool wanted to marry Haseena and thus gave his daughter to her brother Dilshad.

When reporter asked the cleric who married them, he said that he did whatever he was told and the girl’s father was present and said she was 15 years old. Zahida’s mother Parveen told SAMAA that the marriage was contracted on June 25, following which she went to the local union council nazim and registered a case with the police.

Islamabad, June 29: Pakistani fighter jets bombed suspected Taliban hideouts on Monday and a stray mortar crashed into a mosque during prayers as violence in the volatile northwest on claimed more than 20 lives.

The air strikes hit a guest house being used by militants in the village of Kani Guram, in South Waziristan, where government forces are readying an offensive against Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud. Four militants were killed, three intelligence officials said.

Washington, June 29: Pakistan, plagued by insurgency and the worst-ever economic crisis, has been named among the “top 10 failed states” by the U.S.-based Foreign Policy magazine.

Pakistan, bracketed along with countries like Somalia, Afghanistan and Sudan, has improved its position only by a notch — it is placed 10th in the index for 2009 published in the July-August issue of the magazine.

The fifth annual ‘Failed States Index’ is a collaboration between The Fund for Peace, an independent research organisation and Foreign Policy.

Islamabad, June 29: Nearly two months after Taliban militants expanded from their stronghold in the Swat Valley into neighboring Buner district, touching off an army offensive to remove them, there are early signs here that life is slowly returning to normal.

Bazaars have reopened in the two biggest towns, Daggar and Ambela. Power is back up in several larger communities. Men are mixing cement and rebuilding damaged walls. And families are either trickling back or sending older sons ahead to safeguard valuables and harvest overripe crops.

Islamabad, June 29: Pakistani authorities on Sunday announced rewards for information leading to the capture, dead or alive, of 11 militant commanders, including a bounty of Rs. 50 million for local Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud.

According to an advertisement issued by the North-West Frontier Province government, Maulvi Faqeer Muhammad, the Taliban deputy chief based in Bajaur tribal region, carries a reward of Rs. 10.5 million.

Islamabad, June 28: An unidentified caller claiming to represent the Taliban demanded Rs 6 million as “jiziya” from the minority Hindu community of Battagram district in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province on Sunday.

The caller made the demand during a phone call to local Hindu leader Parkash. He asked Parkash, a doctor, to collect Rs 6 million from the Hindus in Battagram and pay the amount to the Taliban.

According to media reports, the caller said all minorities living in Battagram must pay “jiziya” or a tax levied on non-Muslims.

Islamabad, June 28: Pakistan has offered a Rs 50 million reward for information on Baitullah Mehsud, a senior leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban who is linked to the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Advertisements have appeared in newspapers here offering reward on information that leads to the arrest of Baitullah Mehsud and his accomplices.

The rewards are for militants, including three from South Waziristan, another three from Bajaur, two from Mohmand, two from Darra Adamkhel and one from Kurram Agency.

Islamabad, June 28: The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has informed Pakistan that the al Qaeda-linked Al Kini group was behind a series of terrorist attacks in the country, including last year’s suicide car bombing of the Marriott Hotel.

The FBI has asked Pakistan’s Federal Investigating Agency to share its findings on these attacks that were gathered through interrogation of arrested suspects to help hunt down the top members of the Al Kini group.

Karachi, June 28: Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said the military operation in the Swat Valley is nearing end as the top rung militants there have been killed and the government would now focus on the development of the region, the Online News Agency said Saturday.

He made the remarks while inaugurating a Textile City here.

He said the military operation against Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud will continue till he is captured.

The Pakistani leader said the government has formulated the country’s first textile policy that will help create jobs.

—–IANS

Rawalpindi, June 26: A division bench of Lahore High Court Friday acquitted former prime minister Nawaz Sharif of wrongdoing in acquiring a helicopter in the mid-1990s, saying he had taken it on rent for an election campaign.

A two-member bench of judges Tariq Shamim and Saeed Ijaz declared as null and void an accountability court’s verdict holding Sharif guilty of acquiring the Russian-made Mi-8 helicopter.

The court also condoned Sharif’s delay in filing his appeal.

Islamabad, June 26: The Pakistani military Friday seemed to be winding down its 61-day anti-Taliban operations in Swat and two other districts of the northwest and was focusing on mopping up operations in the areas that have been cleared of the militants.
One indication of this is that no Taliban have been been killed in the 48 hours to Friday afternoon, to go by an Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) statement.

“During the last 24 hours, security forces apprehended two terrorists and also recovered arms and ammunition,” the statement said.

Miramshah, June 25: Wrapped in white bandages and lying on a bed in the dust-bowed district hospital in Miramshah, the capital of North Waziristan, Fazl-e-Rabbi is one of who lucky enough to survive a US deadly missile strike at a funeral ceremony in neighboring South Waziristan a day earlier.

“We had just finished the funeral prayers and I was wearing my shoes when I felt that the sun had exploded on my head,” Fazl-e-Rabbi, who received injuries in his arms, legs and lower abdomen, told.

Islamabad, June 24: Pakistan’s Supreme Court dismissed on Wednesday an appeal by Sarabjit Singh, an Indian man seeking a review of a death sentence imposed on him for spying and carrying out bombings in the 1990s.

The rejection came as relations between old rivals India and Pakistan inched towards improvement following a meeting last week between their leaders, the first since last year’s militant attack on Mumbai in which 166 people were killed.

Islamabad, June 24: Pakistan said today it would not hand over to India its citizens suspected of causing the 26/11 mayhem but would try them under its own laws.

“No Pakistani would be handed over to any other country including India,” Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Malik Amad Ahmed Khan said during the debate in the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, on the budget for fiscal 2009-10, a news agency reported.

Islamabad, June 24: A Taliban leader who had emerged as a potential rival to Pakistan’s most wanted militant has been assassinated by a guard, alleged to have been planted by the feared Baitullah Mehsud.

Qari Zainuddin was shot several times by one of his own guards who had stormed into his office following morning prayers and then fled in a car. Mr Zainuddin was rushed to hospital and pronounced dead on arrival.