Pakistan, India agree to revive dialogue

* Gilani, Singh meet in Bhutan
* Qureshi says meeting positive, leaders discussed all issues
* FMs, foreign secretaries to work out modalities of engagement

THIMPHU: India and Pakistan on Thursday agreed to revive dialogue – without any preconditions – following a meeting between the prime ministers of the two countries on the sidelines of the 16th SAARC summit in Bhutan.

India on US religion panel watch list

New Delhi, April 29: America’s religious freedom monitor has placed India on its “watch list” for the second year running, calling Delhi’s steps to address “threats to religious minorities” slow and often ineffective.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which will release its report tomorrow, lists India with 28 other countries, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China.

All these countries require “close monitoring due to the nature and extent of violations of religious freedom engaged in or tolerated by the government”, says the commission, a bipartisan federal body whose members are appointed by the US President, Senate and the House of Representatives.

Arrests signal rise of “Hindu terrorism” in India

Andrew Legon

The arrest of suspects linked to a string of bomb blasts raises the spectre of “Hindu terrorism” in India. The Bush administration moves against a charity believed to support Hamas. Pirates capture a chemical-laden cargo ship off the coast of Yemen, while Islamist insurgents in Somalia seize another key port. And much more in today’s update.

Indian police arrested a Hindu monk on Wednesday during an investigation into a wave of bomb attacks that have killed more than 200 people this year. Sudhakar Dwivedi, who often used the alias Swami Amritanand, was arrested in Kanpur in the central state of Uttar Pradesh. The head of a Hindu monastery, Amritanand was charged with conspiring in an attack on the predominantly Muslim town of Malegoan in September which killed four people.

IHK police gave IB 35 suspicious cell numbers 5 days before 26/11

By Iftikhar Gilani

NEW DELHI: In yet another charge on India’s premier intelligence agency Intelligence Bureau (IB) sitting over sensitive inputs that could have averted the 26/11 terror attack on Mumbai, a private TV network claimed that the Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) police had handed over to the IB 35 cellular phone SIM card numbers for immediate monitoring five days before the attack.

President for out of box, imaginative decisions to tackle energy crisis

APP

ISLAMABAD – President Asif Ali Zardari has asked for an early adoption and utilization of modern solar and geothermal technologies including solar cookers, geothermal heat pumps, solar water heaters and solar water pumping etc. to take full advantage of the available natural energy resources, on one hand and to meet the energy requirements of the country, on the other. “The energy crisis has forced upon a vigorous search for out of box, imaginative and bold solutions,” the President said during a briefing given to him on alternate energy sources here at the Aiwan-e-Sadar on Thursday.

Those who were present during the briefing included Minister for Water and Power, Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, Secretary General to the President, M. Salman Faruqui, Special Advisor to Prime Minister, Kamal Majidullah, Senator Syeda Sughra Imam, Secretary to the President Malik Asif Hayat, Secretary Water and Power, Shahid Rafi, Secretary Petroleum and Natural Resources, Kamran Lashari, Special Secretary Finance, Asif Bajwa, President ZTBL, Ch. Mohammad Zaka Ashraf, Advisor M/o Water and Power, Riaz Ahmed Khan besides senior officials of Planning Commission and relevant ministries.

Pak moves 100,000 troops from Indian to Afghan border

Reuters

WASHINGTON - Pakistan has shifted 100,000 of its troops from its Indian frontier to spearhead an unprecedented crackdown on militants along the Afghan border, but the offensives are unlikely to have an immediate impact on the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said.

In a report to Congress released on Wednesday, the Pentagon estimated that about 140,000 Pakistani troops were taking part in offensives against militants in the semi-autonomous tribal regions, known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA, and the Northwest Frontier Province, near Afghanistan.

The Pentagon, which had long pressed the Pakistanis to take on Taliban and al Qaeda leaders on their territory, said the recent military deployments were the biggest in the country’s history on the western border.

India and Iran’s Afpak policy

ATUL ANEJA

How does India propose to get back into the game of realignments beginning to unfold in and around Afghanistan?

An Afghan iron smith man works at his workshop in Kabul, Afghanistan on Tuesday. Photo: AP

Iran’s recent hyper-activism in neighbouring Afghanistan and Pakistan has caused considerable consternation in large parts of the globe. In media circles, think-tanks and world chanceries, high-browed mandarins and their well-healed affiliates are trying to make sense of the latest, seemingly inscrutable piece of the Persian puzzle.

NATO: Problems with No Solutions?

James Joyner

NATO risks becoming a relic of the Cold War unless it finds a renewed sense of solidarity and political will while framing its new Strategic Concept. That’s the central message of STRATCON 2010: An Alliance for a Global Century, a report by the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Advisors Group.

The project, co-chaired by General Brent Scowcroft, Dr. Thomas Enders, and Senator Chuck Hagel, provides a blueprint for avoiding this outcome, offering concrete recommendations for how the Alliance must be transformed in order to meet the global threats and challenges of the 21st Century. The report was co-authored by SAG members Dr. Julian Lindley-French and Dr. Yves Boyer.

Below are some key quotes from the report and my brief reaction to them:

Zardari ‘caused’ Bhutto’s deaths?

By Dr Shahid Qureshi

Zardari’s greed and corruption made Benazir Bhutto vulnerable, desperate, compromised and open to abuse. Her father Z A Bhutto and grandfather Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto were prime ministers, highly educated and were not involved in any reported financial corruption. Zardari who proved to be ‘funeral director’ of Bhutto’s was no match. It is a typical princess, pirate and parrot story. Unfortunately due to the greed of pirate (Zardari) and Parrot (Rehman Malik), a people’s Princess is dead. The clever princess builds bridges with the ‘Shrek’ and signed charter of democracy, whom Zardari now call humpty dumpty.

Benazir Bhutto being a typical Asian Muslim woman inside swallowed her pride. She told a senior journalist in USA at a coffee shop, “if I divorce (Zardari) him, my children will lose their father, I am a politician and people might take advantage”. She knew full well who else was visiting Zardari and his dog while he was living in the US.

Benazir was continuously trying to sell herself to the foreign guarantors of the deal. Her inner anxieties and tensions were obvious like she never switched herself. Why? What made her so vulnerable, weak and compromising that she kept on making mistakes and nobody around her intervened? Who told her to open the roof of the bullet and bombproof car? It is reported that she was on the phone with her kids and probably it was Zardari who told her to open soft roof of her car to wave and greet people. Some one might have the recordings of those calls? May be her friends?

Benazir Bhutto requested Israel for Protection (2)

By Dr Shahid Qureshi

In the past leaders of the developing countries knowingly to do things with the assumptions that no one is going to know. Though media in Pakistan is developing but it has changed the outlook of the people. The sons and daughters of former Unionists and colonial loyalists, who should have been hanged for treason are now become champions of democracy in Pakistan. The Bhuttos are no different who stayed in power by supporting military dictators or making (NRO) deals with the dictators.

When they are abroad no one in the streets of Pakistan knows whom they meet and how they sell the interests of the state of Pakistan. They wine and dine with the open enemies of Pakistan and make corruption a moral issue when it suits them. They ignore the national interests to achieve their goals. This what late Benazir Bhutto did?

“(Israeli) Mossad Snubbed Bhutto’s Protection Request”, on 28th December 2007 an Israeli website: www.israelinationalnews.com, reported that “Slain Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto “desperately” asked the CIA, Scotland Yard, and Israel’s Mossad to assist in her personal protection in the weeks before her assassination, Maariv reported Friday. Bhutto said that, ‘President Pervez Musharaf’s men would not let her protect herself adequately: she was not allowed to use dark-paned windows in her motorcade or use equipment for location of roadside explosives. She suspected Musharaf wanted to make her an easy target for assassins.

Benazir Bhutto with Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillermanwho served as Israel’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations from January 2003 – August 2008.

Political manipulation in India

User-Friendly Yo-Yo

Is the Congress using the CBI to bully Mayawati into submission?

NK SINGH

Illustration: SAMIA SINGH

THE LAW in its majestic equality forbids all men to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread – the rich as well as the poor,” French writer Anatole France had said. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) follows this line in letter and spirit. It spares neither backward leaders Mulayam Singh and Lalu Yadav nor Dalit leader Mayawati – albeit for a specific purpose.

Death Squads in Afghanistan

A US-Sponsored Terror Network

By FRANCIS SHOR

It should no longer be a matter of dispute that US Special Forces in Afghanistan are responsible for an increasing number of murders, whether part of targeted extra-judicial killings or the result of bad intelligence. From the attack on a bridal shower in Gardez on February 12, 2010 that killed numerous civilians, including two pregnant women, to the growing list of executions of insurgents in the Kandahar area, Special Forces have become the US military version of death squads.

As noted in an April 25 article in The New York Times, the offensive against supposed Taliban forces in Kandahar has already commenced, with the “opening salvos of the offensive…being carried out in the shadows by Special Operations forces.” It’s as if Dick Cheney, who asserted that the US would have to operate in the shadows in prosecuting its global war on terror, is still the guiding political force behind such military operations, notwithstanding the fact that the Obama Administration has dispensed with references to the war on terror. Nonetheless, it is terror, promoted by Washington policymakers and perpetrated by Pentagon planners, that is spreading throughout Afghanistan.

India’s ‘Kyrgyz plan’ for Pakistan

The Post

NEW DELHI: The Indian intelligence agency, RAW chief has been directed by the military commanders to create Kyrgyzstan like situation in Pakistan by exploiting Pakistan’s internal crisis like the energy crisis and the price hike, reported a private news channel.

Details of the 2-day special conference of the commanders of the joint forces of India that ended here yesterday have reveled that the Chief of top spy agency the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) K C Verma was the one who stole the show on the day-2 of the conference as he not only got immense commendation by the participants for his briefing on operations in Pakistan and China but also managed to grab the endorsement for the approval of a huge amount of funds for future operations in Pakistan and China.

Dreams of India to turn Pakistan a compliant state dashed

By Asif Haroon Raja

India has kept USA and western world netted to its frequency since 1991. In the aftermath of 9/11 when the US and its western allies declared war against the Muslims, India got very close to the west and like Israel was made a strategic partner. Its grievances and allegations against Pakistan were listened to sympathetically, its counsels heard attentively and information shared taken as gospel truth.

Although Pakistan too was made an ally and a frontline state to take the major brunt of terrorism, its complaints against India were contemptuously brushed aside and it was snubbed for leveling false allegations. Pakistan was compulsively made a tactical partner to serve short term interests of USA. Discriminatory behavior of USA and other western countries kept Indian leaders in exhilarating and festive mood. Each allegation cooked up by Indo-US-Israeli spin doctors resulting in Pakistan bashing by US officials’ thrilled India the most.

RAW was given a free hand to carryout subversive activities and every successful move made to joggle Pakistan was lauded by the master coordinator. The band of six with champagne glasses in their hands would dance with joy from sunset till dawn. Pains of Pakistan became the delight of the sadistic gang. At the close of each month, head of RAW in Kabul would proudly highlight achievements made in the roundtable conference attended by CIA, Mossad, MI-6, BMD, RAAM and US-NATO senior military officials. They would laugh their heart out how Pakistani leadership had been duped and how they were able to put the strings of the trap around Pakistan’s neck effortlessly. India was profusely rewarded without having contributed anything towards curbing terrorism. Rewards were in recognition of its strenuous efforts to soak Pakistan in blood.

New Research leads focus on anti-Muslim hate crime

A new report launched today 28 January reveals the trends behind underreported violence against Muslims in London. It illuminates how contexts of fear and prejudice against Muslims are providing a basis for violence against Muslim communities. This is the first step in a ten year research project led by the European Muslim Research Centre at the University of Exeter that will investigate Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate crime in towns and cities across Europe.

Dr Jonathan Githens-Mazer and Dr Robert Lambert MBE, of the University of Exeter co-authored ‘Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: a London Case Study’ the first study from the new European Muslim Research Centre.This reportis being launched today in partnership with Muslim community groups to provide research for and about Muslims in Europe. The authors call for anti-Muslim hate crimes to be taken more seriously by government, media and the police.