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Pervez, Bush discuss F-16 sale
Pak likely to sign rights convention 17 Iraqis working for US army killed Blair’s ‘green summit’ under
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Pervez, Bush discuss F-16 sale
Washington, December 5 “You know there’s always the issue about F-16s, but no decisions were made at the meetings today,” Mr. Powell said, following his meeting with New Delhi has opposed the sale of the jets to Pakistan. Mr Bush and General Musharraf discussed Pakistan’s relations with India and Mr Powell said he too later had a “longer discussion” on the subject. Mr Powell said he believed “both sides are trying to find a way to move forward,” referring to a recent meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and General Musharraf on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly and the possibility of a similar meeting at the SAARC conference early next year. In an interview with The Washington Post, General Musharraf was optimistic about the renewed peace initiative with India. “I think we’ve broken new ground,” he said, noting a joint statement issued in New York. “I see this very optimistically. But as I said, these are mere words. We need to convert them into action.” Earlier, Mr Bush praised General Musharraf for showing “great courage in that relationship between India and Pakistan, leading toward what we hope will be a peaceful solution of what has been a historically difficult problem.” Ironically, Congressman Frank Pallone, New Jersey Democrat, and a former co-chairman of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, in a September 23 letter to Mr Bush accused the Bush administration of “contributing to increased security concerns throughout South Asia, and particularly to India” by contemplating the sale of the F-16s. Pakistani Air Chief Marshal Kaleem Saadat first stirred speculation about the sale when he told reporters in September that the USA would soon accede to Pakistan’s 15-year-old campaign to acquire the F-16s, providing at least 18 of the jets. In an interview with Jane’s Defence Weekly, Saadat said the transfers would likely be announced after the November 3 US presidential election. The sale of the jets was blocked in 1990 when the US government stopped a shipment of 28 F-16s to Pakistan in accordance with the Pressler amendment. The amendment required the administration to cease military exports to Islamabad if it was suspected of possessing a “nuclear explosive device.”
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Pak likely to sign rights convention Islamabad, December 4 About signing and ratification of UN conventions, Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan said Pakistan had its reservations on the Convention on International Criminal Court (ICC). He said Pakistan had already signed the Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Civil rights movements and NGOs have been demanding that Pakistan sign Rome statute under which the ICC was set up. They have also been demanding that the government sign and ratify the CAT. Earlier, the foreign office had ducked Pakistan People's Party (PPP) Parliamentarians' question on whether the Pakistan Government had signed the CAT. In a written reply Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri stated, "the information is being collected." The PPP said it was surprising that the Foreign Minister did not know whether Pakistan had signed the conventions and sought shelter behind "collecting information." When asked Senator Farhatullah Babar said he had submitted the question on November 5 and the minister had three weeks to collect information and give a reply on November 26 when the Senate met for its 18th session on Friday. He said the government had not signed the three conventions and yet it did not want to say so and that is why the minister skirted the question. The PPPP Senator said arbitrary detentions, kidnappings by intelligence agencies and torture in custody were some of the serious forms of torture which could not be perpetrated easily by any government if it had signed the CAT. He said the reluctance of the government to sign the CAT showed that it wanted to continue the abominable practice of arbitrary detentions and kidnappings by the security agencies. He said it was ironic that in Pakistani criminal law also there was no mention of torture. "We do not recognise torture in our law, even in the Police Order there was no provision for preventing torture," he maintained. He said India had signed the CAT and Bangladesh was a state party to the convention. He said under a protocol added to the CAT in 2002 the UN human rights machinery was authorised to access places of detention. Similarly 97 countries had signed the statute on the ICC and also ratified it. Pakistan had voted in favour of the ICC at the UN conference in 1998 when Nawaz Sharif was Prime Minister, but with the coming of military government Pakistan has refused to sign it citing various reasons, he said. |
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17 Iraqis working for US army killed
Baghdad, December 5 Insurgents have launched a series of attacks in Sunni areas since Friday, mainly targeting Iraqi security forces and civilians working with the US military. The US 1st Infantry Division said gunmen in two cars opened fire on two civilian buses carrying Iraqis to work at an arms dump outside Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit today, killing 17 and wounding 13. A suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle beside a National Guard convoy in the rebel stronghold of Baiji, north of Tikrit, killing local National Guard commander Mohammed Jassim Rumaied and three of his bodyguards, colleagues said. Yesterday, a suicider targeted a bus carrying Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in the city of
Mosul, 390 km north of Baghdad, killing 16. The Peshmerga have been helping secure Mosul since most of the city’s police fled after an insurgent onslaught last month. Two suicide bombers also struck at a police station just outside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad yesterday, killing seven and wounding more than 50. On Friday, a suicide bomb outside a Shi’ite mosque in Baghdad killed 14, and 11 Iraqi police personnel were killed in a guerrilla assault on a police station in the capital. At least six US troops have also been killed since Friday. Two were killed in an ambush in Mosul yesterday, two by separate roadside bombs earlier in the day, and two Marines were killed by a suicide car bomb at the Jordanian border on Friday. The surge in violence has fuelled fears that Iraq’s first democratic elections in decades, scheduled for end-January, could be derailed by guerrilla attacks and
intimidation. — Reuters |
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Blair’s ‘green summit’ under
fire
Tony Blair will this week urge the British public to take green issues seriously in an attempt to relaunch the Government’s ailing strategies on tackling climate change. The Prime Minister is hosting a “power breakfast” of business leaders, politicians and environmentalists at Downing Street on Wednesday, where he will unveil a new five-year strategy to combat global warming. The event has been given added political urgency by Mr Blair’s recent admissions that the UK is set to miss the Government’s ambitious target to cut greenhouse emissions by 20 per cent by 2010. In his joint announcements with Margaret Beckett, the Secretary of State for the Environment, he will concede that his government’s efforts need to be stepped up, but he will claim that business leaders, environmentalists and the public have to cooperate on combating climate change. Mr Blair will call for Britain to “pull together as a country”, said one Whitehall source, and will renew his promise to put combating climate change at the centre of Britain’s presidency of the European Union and G8 group of industrialised nations next year. It is understood that Mr Blair’s speech will also include a call for the public to be far more environmentally aware when they buy cars, homes and household goods — a call which has led to angry accusations that ministers are “passing the buck”. The Government is anxious to deflect criticism of its record, which intensified last week after the Chancellor failed to significantly increase Treasury spending on green issues. Stephen Tindale, the director of Greenpeace, said: “This is a cop-out. Ministers have been going on about this ad nauseam. Now they need to do something about it. We don’t need more consultation — they should just get on with it.” Tony Juniper, the director of Friends of the Earth, said that “time was running out” for Mr Blair, who needed to take radical action if he wanted to show that the UK was a world leader before next year’s G8 presidency.
— By arrangement with The Independent |
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