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Pak arrests Afghan militant group chief Shy writer skips Nobel function
Hurriyat delegates in Nepal for conference |
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MQM chief calls for round-table conference of all parties London, December 11 Altaf Hussain, chief of Muttahida Qaumi Movement, has called for a round-table conference of all political and religious parties of the country to evolve an agreed and realistic plan to save Pakistan.
Shah Rukh apologises, monks call off stir Bangladesh Oppn forms human chain
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Pak arrests Afghan militant group chief
Islamabad, December 11 “Yes, we arrested Syed Akbar Agha, the chief of Jaish-e Muslimeen (Army of Muslims), in Karachi around 10 days ago,’’ minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed told Reuters. “He was the mastermind of the kidnapping of UN workers in Afghanistan,’’ he said. Jaish-e Muslimeen is a splinter faction of the Afghan Taliban. In October, the group abducted UN workers Annetta Flanigan from Northern Ireland, Kosovan Shqipe Hebibi and Filipino diplomat Angelito Nayan in Kabul. The three were freed unharmed on November 23. Ahmed said Agha had been arrested when the security forces raided a flat. ‘’He was living there with his family members who have not been arrested,’’ he said. “He is still with the Pakistani security forces and is being interrogated,’’ he added. Officials say that they had kept Agha’s arrest secret to capture his associates. Quetta: Pakistani police has arrested at least 14 suspects in a series of raids following a deadly bombing in the southwestern city of Quetta that killed 11 persons, the police said today. “There have been raids in Quetta and other parts of (southwestern Baluchistan) the province overnight,” Pervez Rafi Bhatti, a Deputy Inspector General of Police, said.
— Reuters |
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Shy writer skips Nobel function
Stockholm, December 11 Kenyan Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel peace laureate, received her prize in Oslo, becoming the seventh African and the first African woman to win that award. Jelinek, a feminist author who suffers from social phobia, declined to receive her prize from Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf, saying that the public spotlight was “like a physical violation” for her. She will receive the prize at the Swedish embassy instead. The Nobels, widely regarded as the world’s most prestigious accolades in science and literature, have been awarded since 1901. The 2004 prizes are worth 10 million crowns ($ 1.5 million) each and bring the winners instant fame. Israeli chemistry laureate Aaron Ciechanover said earlier in the week in Stockholm that his world had been turned upside down from the moment he was told he had won the prize in October. “I answered the phone and my plain, orderly life was turned into chaos in 10 seconds,” he told reporters. Five of the prizes — medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace — were founded in the will of Swedish 19th century industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. The economics prize established by Sweden’s central bank has been awarded since 1969 despite recurring criticism that economics is not an exact science in the same league as physics, chemistry or medicine. In the recent past, most science laureates have been Americans and 2004 was no exception with US scientists sweeping the physics and medicine awards. David Gross, David Politzer and Frank Wilczek won in physics for showing how tiny quark particles interact inside atoms. Linda Buck and Richard Axel earned the medicine prize for discovering how the human sense of smell works. When the pair were asked at a news conference this week what was their favourite smell, Buck pointed to a flower and Axel said: “My favourite smell is the scent of a woman.” Israel got its first Nobel science prize laureates, Avram Hershko and Ciechanover, sharing the honours with American Irwin Rose for research into how the body defends against disease by marking undesirable proteins for destruction. American Edward Prescott and Norwegian Finn Kydland picked up the economics prize.
— Reuters |
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Hurriyat delegates in Nepal for conference
Kathmandu, December 11 After initial hiccups at Indira Gandhi Airport over the issue of travel documents, both the Mirwaiz and former Hurriyat chairman Abdul Gani Bhat were allowed to travel to the Himalayan kingdom on the identity cards of their respective organisations to attend the two-day conference beginning tomorrow. This is the first time that Mr Bhat, considered the brain behind the moderate faction of the Hurriyat Conference, is attending a conference on Kashmir abroad. The conference had come under cloud after Nepal had made it clear that it would not allow anyone to use its soil for anti-India propaganda. However, Nepal gave last-minute permission to them to enter the country. Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sharan Mahat said: “We gave them permission because the countries concerned have shown no objection.”
— PTI |
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MQM chief calls for round-table conference of all parties London, December 11 Mr Hussain, who was talking here to a group of editors from Pakistan, said the government should organize the conference, but participate in it only as an observer. “How can we keep Pakistan intact? That is the question, the answer to which the conference should be able to come up with a majority vote and the answer must be grounded in reality,” he added.
Mr Hussain said the superpower had plans for Iran, but then in his opinion this plan could change and the superpower might decide, in view of its self-interest, and circumstances, to “take out our (nuclear) factory first and make a bid at us before it turns to Iran.” However, his top aides Anwer Bhai and Tariq Javed who accompanied him during the interview, intervened to say that before such an APC is
organised, there should be another APC to decide that Punjab alone did not have the right to decide about Pakistan and that others who lived in the country, the
Sindhis, Pushtoons, Balochis and the Mohajirs being equal partners were as much first class citizens of the country as the people of Punjab considered themselves to be and in doing so “we expect the people of Punjab to make the required sacrifices.”
Mr Hussain hastened to add that he had no animosity towards the common Punjabis and that his grouse was only against the dominant Punjabi establishment. He said given an opportunity he would be able to play a positive role in unifying the nation, “a unified nation can be occupied but the occupier cannot consolidate the occupation as it is happening in Iraq.” He said he felt he would be able to turn Pakistan into one nation by promoting what he said fraternity, pluralism and cultural pluralism. He was clearly implying that if he was allowed to lead the nation he would be able to do what Benazir Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif or the military dictator could not achieve so far — national unity. |
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Shah Rukh apologises, monks call off stir
Colombo, December 11 A handful of monks who had been camping overnight outside the concert venue called off their agitation after legislator Mon Athuraliye Rathana spoke to them to convey the apologies of the organisers, the monks said. “They dispersed peacefully clearing the way for the concert to go ahead without any protest,” an official involved in the negotiations said. From the start, the protest was not seen as a serious attempt to block Khan and his troupe although some of them issued threats to self-immolate, he said. “Khan who flew into Sri Lanka yesterday evening apologised to the monks and said he would observe two minutes of silence in memory of the late priest,” the ‘Daily Mirror’ newspaper, one of the organisers of the show, said earlier in the day. The police today cordoned off the concert venue to prevent any disruption.
— PTI |
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Bangladesh Oppn forms human chain
Dhaka, December 11 The hour-long protest, stretching 900 km, was to demand resignation of Begum Khalida Zia government and to hold general elections. “This is a peaceful and democratic protest,’’ said Abdul Jalil, a top leader of the main Opposition Awami League.
— PTI |
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