 |
|
China offers to play role in easing Indo-Pak ties Keep off Taiwan, China tells world Window on Pakistan
Prosecutors win ruling in Kanishka case
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Tigers sack commander US forces kill 9 suspected Taliban
|
|
China offers to play role in easing Indo-Pak ties Beijing, March 6 “China is very pleased to see that Pakistan and India are trying every means to improve bilateral relations,” Li told reporters here on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s Parliament. While describing both India and Pakistan as “friendly neighbours” of China, Li said the improvement of their relations demonstrated the “strategic visions” of Indian and Pakistani leaders and reflected common aspiration of the people of the two countries. Answering a range of questions, including China’s foreign policy, North Korean nuclear issue, non-proliferation and counter-terrorism, Taiwan and Sino-US relations, Li said the 50th anniversary of the five principles of peaceful co-existence would be celebrated in June. In the area of peace, China, India, Myanmar and other Asian countries put forward the five-principle of peaceful co-existence in their bids to promote peace in 1950s, which Li described as an “outstanding contribution” by Asian countries and Asian culture to the development of international relations. |
|
Keep off Taiwan, China tells world Beijing, March 6 “The Chinese Government and people will never allow anybody to separate Taiwan from China by any means, while striving for peaceful reunification with utmost sincerity and greatest efforts,” Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told reporters at his first annual press conference here. Li reiterated that there was only one China in the world and Taiwan was part of it. This was a fact which could be found in some international documents, including the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1973 resolution 2758 of the United Nations Assembly, and the joint communiques more than 160 countries in the world signed with China on the establishment of diplomatic relations, he said. He stressed that the Taiwan issue was China’s internal affair and should be resolved by Chinese people on their own. He said all countries in the world should abide by international laws and the basic norms pertaining to international relations, and not do anything which meddled in China’s internal affairs and lead to strained relations across the Taiwan Straits. Though Li did not mention any country by name, analysts say he intended the US, which is the biggest arms seller to the island of 23 million people.
— PTI |
|
Window on Pakistan Having administered a heady dose of religious fanaticism and pseudo nationalism, Pakistani rulers are reaping a harvest of violence. How else one could describe the repeated bouts of sectarian violence. But now these killings are taking sinister shape as last week’s killing on Moharram showed. In Quetta alone 47 Shia Muslims were killed and 150 maimed. There was a spillover to Punjab also. Last year on July 4 Quetta had seen the worst sectarian incident in Pakistan’s history when a Shia Imambargah was attacked, leaving more than 50 persons dead and scores injured. That attack came within a month of the June 9 incident in Baluchistan where 12 Hazara Shia police recruits were gunned down by sectarian terrorists. How should one interpret this carnage? Daily Times asked the pertinent question. Its answer is not only a mature analysis, but also some way out from such massacre of innocents. “A PTV survey after the tragedy showed people voicing a common refrain: “Muslims cannot do this; this has been done by foreign intelligence agencies”. This is patently untrue. While the involvement of foreign agencies cannot be dismissed through penetration of certain groups, two things cannot be glossed over: Muslims are capable of perpetrating sectarian violence, and there is a lot of evidence of the involvement of Deobandi sectarian and jihadi groups in this business.” Daily Times provided some evidence. “Take last year’s attack on the Imambargah. We now know that prior to the attack, anti-Shia literature had been circulated in the city. One prominent Hazara Shia cleric when contacted by a private TV clearly pointed a finger at some parties in the MMA. These parties are also known to have been affiliated with Deobandi groups running the jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir and indulging in sectarian attacks on the sidelines. Later, when the police caught the suspects in the Quetta tragedy, at least one of them happened to be the son of a Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam leader in Quetta.” Indeed one could agree with the conclusions of the Daily Times. “Sectarianism has acquired political dimensions and what we see today can be traced back to Gen Zia-ul Haq’s policies and the Afghan ‘jihad’. Whether there is a foreign hand in these events, as Qazi Hussain Ahmed of the Jamaat-e Islami doesn’t tire of saying, is up to the security agencies to unearth. But two things must be remembered. Foreign elements can only fish in troubled waters; they cannot trouble the waters themselves in order to fish. Two, Qazi Sahib knows that he is politically allied with parties whose hands on this score are not clean.” There is a clear link between what happened in Karbala and in Pakistan. A British scholar Mai Yamini writing in the Daily Times predicted: “The hideous bombings of the Shia shrines in Karbala will neither change nor obscure a powerful new fact of life in the Middle East. The Shias have emerged, blinking in the sunlight, as the unexpected winners. Governments that have oppressed the Shias for decades may still be in denial about this, but the terrorists who planted those bombs are not. They recognise, as the Shia themselves now do, that across the Gulf Shia Muslims are gaining massively in political power, and are awakened to their ability both to organise themselves and to the gift that lies literally under their feet: oil. The newfound power of Shia Muslims in this volatile region represents a major challenge both to the old Sunni ruling establishments - outside Iran - and to the United States. The years of Shia subservience are over.” But apparently thinking that the problem was an administrative one, Shafaqat Mahmood in News International advised, ‘ Musharraf should learn about the efficacy of the old set-up from success of the anti- terrorist operations currently going on in the tribal areas of NWFP. If there had been no political administration there - negotiating with the tribes, bribing and cajoling, carefully calibrating the use of force - the entire foray into an un-chartered territory would have been a massive failure. Unfortunately Baluchistan is twisting slowly in the wind because there is no such mechanism there anymore.” |
|
Prosecutors win ruling in Kanishka case Vancouver, British Columbia, March 6 The evidence involves two interviews the woman had with an officer from Canada’s spy agency, in which she said Bagri tried to borrow her car to deliver suitcases to the airport the day before the June 2, 1985, bombings that killed 331 persons. The woman, a former friend of Bagri and his family, and whose name is shielded by a court order, also told the agent that Bagri warned her after the bombings to keep quiet about their encounter. In admitting the evidence, British Columbia Supreme Court Judge Ian Bruce Josephson yesterday also refused the prosecution’s request to enter several other interviews she did with the police in the 1990s, saying that her comments about Bagri did not pass the legal test. The woman testified in December and early February that she did not remember the meeting with Bagri and telling the police about it, but also did not deny it happened. Bagri and co-accused Ripudaman Singh Malik have pleaded not guilty to the attacks.
— Reuters |
|
Boy to move apex court against ban on ‘kirpan’ Montreal, March 6 Lawyer Julius Grey decided to take the case to the country’s highest court after Quebec’s Court of Appeal on yesterday banned the dagger, known as the kirpan, from schools on security grounds. “It’s up to the Supreme Court now,” said Grey. “This case is far from over.” Yesterday’s decision struck down an earlier ruling in May, 2002, by Quebec’s Superior Court, which let Gurbaj Singh Multani, then 12, wear the dagger, provided that he kept it wrapped in material and hidden beneath his clothes. The row erupted when the boy’s kirpan fell out during a lesson break, prompting the school to suspend him pending a decision on the case, on the grounds that carrying a weapon in school infringed upon safety regulations. His head teacher suggested to his parents that he could go to lessons with a plastic replica kirpan or use a pendant representing the dagger, a compromise deemed acceptable by other Montreal Sikh families. But ultra-orthodox Sikh parents have rejected the solution, arguing that it violates central tenets of their religion.
— AFP |
|
Tigers sack commander Kilinochchi (Sri Lanka), March 6 “Karuna has been discharged from the Liberation Tigers organisation and relieved from official responsibilities,” the LTTE said in a statement read out here. The expulsion will have no bearing on the Norwegian-brokered truce.
— PTI |
|
US forces kill 9 suspected Taliban Kabul, March 6 The clash occurred yesterday east of Orgun, about 175 km south of Kabul and not far from the border with Pakistan, said Lt Col Bryan Hilferty, a military spokesman. There were no US casualties. Hilferty said the shooting began as a “platoon-sized” unit of suspected Taliban — about 30-40 men — tried to flank 10 American soldiers manning the sniper position. “I don’t know who opened fire first,” Hilferty said. He said after the clash, the remaining rebels ran off, and the coalition held no prisoners.
— AP |
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Mailbag | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | National Capital | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
In
video (
