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Wednesday,
July 3, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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NEWS ANALYSIS
US spy machines on way to Pak
US, Israeli flags burnt in Iraq |
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Federal death penalty trashed
Gunmen free S. Korean hostage 2 Indians arrested in Casablanca
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NEWS ANALYSIS Lahore, July 2 The major opposition front, the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD), has decided to hold a series of public meetings all over Pakistan from July 5. Federal Information Minister Nisar Memon has in the meanwhile reiterated the government’s determination not to allow any agitation in the country. Fearing that the Opposition will strongly criticise the government’s policies at its meetings, the administration may decide to ban these gatherings. The Musharraf government has taken these major political measures in the wake of the government’s repeated failures to cobble together a king’s party capable of winning majority seats in the National Assembly in the forthcoming elections. The pro-government camp seems to be in a disarray over the questions of leadership. Last year President Musharraf started patronising several parties with the belief that their leadership would go to the Muslim League (Quaid-i-Azam), created as a result of the split in the Muslim League led by Mr Nawaz Sharif. A second team was created this year in the form of the National Alliance led by former caretaker Prime Minister Mustafa Jatoi. Former President Farooq Leghari is also part of the alliance. But all these parties have failed to make an impact on the public mind. On the other hand, General Musharraf is bitterly against the two main parties that control the electorate in the country — leftist and liberal segments led by the People’s Party and the centre-right Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz). He has also angered religious parties who are now in the vanguard of the opposition against him. In this situation, the objective of these legal initiatives seems to be to deal with the obstacles that lie in the path of General Musharraf. While the proposed constitutional amendments vest all the powers of the state with President Musharraf, the new law on political parties seeks to undermine the opposition parties, the Pakistan People’s Party led by Ms Benazir Bhutto and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) in particular. Gen Tanvi Naqvi (retd), head of the official think-tank, the National Reconstruction Bureau, said in an interview with Dawn that the formation of the National Security Council (NSC) would give a political role to the armed forces. Constitutional experts, however, say that General Musharraf wants to put the armed forces in charge of politics, assemblies and the Cabinet. In the NSC there will be five civilians (the Prime Minister and the four Chief Ministers) against four military people and the President himself. The President will head the council. The Chief Ministers will be the nominees of Governors and the latter, in turn, will be handpicked by the President. Thus, the President will have total control over the council. Once the NSC is in place, the Prime Minister and the four Chief Ministers will live under the shadow of the Army. Enjoying full support of the military chiefs, the President will have the final say in all matters taken up by the council. An important function assigned to the body would be to advise the President to dismiss the Prime Minister, the Cabinet and the National Assembly. The official line is that these amendments will put an end to military coups as General Musharraf has promised, but political observers ask if there is need for an Army takeover when it can control the levers of power through the council. When the Army is ruling directly it has to face public criticism. Once the council is formed, policy decisions will be dictated by men in uniform while the civilian Prime Minister and parliament will face public criticism for whatever disaster is caused by the decisions of the council regarding the economy, domestic policies and foreign affairs. The constitutional package also runs into legal difficulties. The Supreme Court gave the military government powers to amend the constitution to run the government for three years up to October 12, 2002. But these amendments are prospective and will go beyond the prescribed limit. The amended political parties law makes life difficult for the opposition parties. A section has been introduced in the amended law to specifically remove Ms Benazir Bhutto and Mr Nawaz Sharif from their position as party chairpersons. Under the new law, a person disqualified from being elected as a member of parliament would not be eligible to contest a party office. The courts have convicted both Ms Benazir Bhutto and Mr Nawaz Sharif, and as they are not presently in a position to seek the legal remedies available to them from the higher courts, they will be deprived of their position as party bosses. The parties that fail to hold organisational elections before August 5 will not be eligible to take part in the October polls, according to the new law. It is difficult for the larger parties with branches all over the country to complete the exercise in five weeks. This raises suspicion that the government consciously delayed notifying the condition to debar some of the parties it doesn’t like. Or that it wants to postpone the elections on the pretext of giving more time for holding the party polls. |
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US spy machines on way to Pak
Islamabad, July 2 “A huge transport plane carrying $ 73 million equipment has already left the USA ,’’ the daily, quoting defence sources, said. The equipment, being supplied by the USA as a part of the ongoing cooperation in the war against terrorism, would be shifted to
Quetta, where preparations were underway to impart training to the Pakistani army for deployment at the western borders to check Al-Qaida and Taliban fighters’ movement. The plane bringing the defence equipment could land only at Karachi’s Quaid-i-Azam International Airport, the Islamabad International Airport or at the Chaklala Airbase as, according to the sources, no other airport in the country could sustain landing of such a heavy transport aircraft. The border surveillance equipment was supposed to be delivered to the Pakistani security agencies by mid-June, but had been delayed due to some unknown reasons. Meanwhile, newly designated US Ambassador to Pakistan Nancy Powell this morning called on Pakistani Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider to discuss bilateral ties, particularly with reference to the ongoing cooperation in the war against terrorism, ‘The Dawn’ reported. UNI |
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US, Israeli flags burnt in Iraq Baghdad, July 2 The demonstrators, who included Jordanians, Yemenis, Sudanese, Somalis, Lebanese, Syrians, Egyptians and Palestinians as well as Iraqis, raised Iraqi and Palestinian flags and portraits of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, an AFP correspondent reported. “Bush’s speech draws in blood the US-zionist policy of hegemony over the Arab world,” said a banner carried by the protesters, while another called for “jehad to liberate Palestine.” The demonstrators handed the head of the UNDP office a message for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urging the United Nations to “shoulder its responsibilities and act firmly to secure the immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian towns and villages.” Iraq’s official press has vehemently criticized Bush’s June 24 key speech on the Middle East in which he demanded that the Palestinians replace Arafat with a new leadership “not compromised by terror” as a condition for supporting the creation of a Palestinian state within three years. The Bush administration has also threatened to take military action against Iraq and try to unseat Saddam on grounds that he is pursuing weapons of mass destruction.
AFP |
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Federal death penalty trashed New York, July 2 In his ruling, Rakoff said Monday the best available evidence suggested that innocent people were sentenced to death with greater frequency than was previously supposed and convincing proof of their innocence often emerged only a long time after their original conviction. “It is therefore fully foreseeable that in enforcing the death penalty, a meaningful number of innocent people will be executed who otherwise would eventually be able to prove their innocence,” Rakoff said. By depriving people of the right to prove their innocence, the 1994 Federal Death Penalty Act therefore violates procedural and substantive due process, as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment, he added.
AFP |
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Gunmen free S. Korean hostage Manila, July 2 The private Manila radio station DzMM said government negotiators would present the Korean, Yoon Jae-keun, to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who is visiting the southern island of Mindanao. It gave no details on how Yoon was released. Yoon, 43, a frequent visitor to the Philippines, and a Filipino hotel owner were abducted by 10 gunmen on February 6 while on a trip to Sultan Kudarat province on Mindanao to buy metal from local traders. The police said the supposed traders turned out to be former Muslim guerrillas-turned-bandits. Another armed group is still holding three Indonesian seamen hostage on Jolo island off Mindanao. The Indonesians were abducted from a Singaporean-owned tugboat passing through southern Philippine waters on June 17.
Reuters
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2 Indians arrested in Casablanca Casablanca, July 2 The youths, hailing from Punjab and aged 19 and 23, were, like other Asians who have attempted to enter Morocco illegally, using the country as a transit point to emigrate to Europe. The youths, who bought the visas for Rs 10,000 each, had followed a complicated itinerary that took them from India to Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire before they arrived in Morocco lately.
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