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Hurricane Rita pounds Gulf coast
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Pak links MFN status with Kashmir issue
9,000 seminaries to be registered in Pakistan
Kabul’s opium problem may kill democracy, warn Congressmen
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Hurricane Rita pounds Gulf coast
Houston, September 24 The storm swept in from the Gulf of Mexico, coming ashore near the Texas-Louisiana border with the eye hitting near to the Sabine Pass, in Texas around 10 miles off the coast. The storm’s turn to the east was good news for Galveston and Houston and bad news for New Orleans, which was battered by Katrina about three weeks ago, where wind-driven water surged across the sand bags and cement used to temporarily plug flood walls. Rita which crashed ashore as category three storm on border of Texas and Louisiana States was soon downgraded to category two. However, it was still packing winds up to 160 km per hour capable of doing extensive damage. Meteorologists said it could dump up to 60 cm of rain in short period and were watching whether it stalled or passed over quickly. If it stalled as some weather models expect, the damage and flooding could be far worse in the affected areas. As the storm raged, torches of oil refineries were seen burning. Officials were worried about the storm’s impact on the facilities and chemical plants along the Texas and Louisiana coasts. More than 675,000 residents of Texas had no electricity. President George W Bush watched the raging hurricane Rita from a military base high in the Rocky Mountains.
— PTI |
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Hurricanes wake-up call on global warming
London, September 24 Jan Egeland said he believes that Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans last month and Hurricane Rita, which battered parts of Texas, are the result of climate change. “I think it is a wake-up call for everybody in that you have two of the worst hurricanes ever hitting the US within weeks of each other,” he said. Egeland also pointed to hurricanes that have blown up recently in the Indian and Pacific oceans and in the Caribbean.
— AP |
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Pak links MFN status with Kashmir issue
Islamabad, September 24 Pakistan would not extend the MFN status to India without the resolution of “disputes”, including the Kashmir issue, Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar Khan told reporters at a seminar on “Regional economic cooperation in South Asia” in Karachi. He said Islamabad had to improve port efficiency and reduce cost of doing business at ports
to facilitate bilateral trade. In addition, infrastructure facilities, including border infrastructure and simplified customs procedures should be in place to facilitate trade with India. To a question, Mr Khan said he was of the opinion that the WTO would not clash with SAFTA in the SAARC region, but added that after 20 to 25 years, trade blocks would vanish under free trade regime. SAFTA would go much beyond WTO, he was quoted as saying by the APP news agency. Lack of awareness about each other and absence of public pressure on the governments of India and Pakistan were the main reason for slow progress on bilateral issues in the region, he said. Advent of prosperity in the two countries will lead to disappearance of most differences, he noted.
— PTI |
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Peace with India only when Pak
Washington, September 24 “India is not going to agree to a territorial change with respect to Kashmir. Period. As long as the Pakistani elite, especially its military elite, continues the mission that it had for half a century, no permanent peace between the two countries is possible,” Mr Blackwill said in a speech at the John Hopkins University’s School for International Schools. Observing that Indo-Pak relations were better today than anytime in history, he said an “open border” between the two countries would reduce the issue of “sovereignty”. “If there is peace between those two countries and there is an open border, the issue of sovereignty (in Jammu and Kashmir) would mean less and less,” he said. However, he said he saw no signs in the Pakistani military to suggest that they were anywhere near such a conclusion. “If you doubt that, I invite you to read President Musharraf’s policy speech before the UN, which is a speech that could have been given 20 years ago,” he said. Applauding the improved Indo-Pak ties, Mr Blackwill said the US had nothing to do with the peace process kickstarted by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. “America has nothing to do with that. It was begun by Prime Minister Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf responded to that while the US cheered from the sidelines,” he added.
— PTI |
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9,000 seminaries to be registered in Pakistan
Islamabad, September 24 The agreement on the issue of the registration of seminaries was reached at an hour-long meeting between the ITMD’s leadership and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. Sources said the government also assured the ITMD, an alliance of five organisations overseeing some 13,000 seminaries across the country, that it would take a ‘lenient view’ on the issue of foreign students studying in these institutions. Talking to reporters after the meeting, Prime Minister Aziz said the government would extend full support to seminaries for their modernisation and bringing them into the mainstream education system. He, however, warned that the government would not tolerate it if any seminary violated the law and indulged in activities other than imparting education. He said the government wanted madarsaas to play their role as seminaries of other religions had been playing while imparting religious education for reforming society. However, he stressed, the government also wished that madarsaas included worldly subjects in their syllabi so that their graduates became more useful to society. Mr Aziz warned that sectarianism and training youths for terrorism was against Islamic teachings which could not be allowed at any cost. “We want to offer the world to visit these seminaries to see how useful services they are rendering and how they are engaged in ridding the country of scourge of terrorism and sectarianism,” he emphasized. ITMD spokesman Mufti Munibur Rehman said the alliance had agreed to join the registration process and added that the issue had been resolved upon the government’s assurances that the ITMD’s reservations would be removed. “We see hope at the end of the tunnel and feel that the solution of the issue is in the best interest of the country,” he said. |
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Kabul’s opium problem may kill democracy,
As Afghans wrapped up their first parliamentary elections in more than three decades, members of the United States Congress warned that Afghanistan’s rampant drug trade could jeopardise its political gains.
Congressman Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said at a hearing on U.S. policy in Afghanistan on yesterday that according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, good weather and rains produced a bumper drug yield this years “so that Afghanistan still produced 4,100
tons of opium - 87 per cent of the world’s supply.” Mr Hyde said these drugs “fund terrorism, corrupt democratic institutions such as the new Parliament, and make democratic security much more difficult to produce.” The Congressman was concerned that Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government was wavering on its commitment to fighting drugs and extraditing some major druglords who, he said, ultimately funded terrorists from the billions of dollars that these narcotics generated. In testimony to the committee, Ms Nancy Powell, Acting Assistant Secretary in the bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs at the State Department, said Afghanistan could not hope to develop into a properly functioning democracy with a stable government operating under the rule of law if the drug trade “dominates the economy.” Mr Karzai, often derisively referred to as the “mayor of Kabul” by his opponents a stinging reference to the limitations on his government’s writ, has struggled to deal with rival warlords in Afghanistan. According to a U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom report, Mr Karzai “does not exercise full control over the country.” Taliban remnants remain active in various regions and continue to pose a threat to the stability of the government. “Many of the human rights abuses practiced by the Taliban reportedly persist today under the rule of regional warlords, who continue to operate in regions that are effectively outside the Central Government control,” the report notes. Ambassador Maureen Quinn, coordinator for Afghanistan at the State Department, said some people have expressed concern about the inclusion of warlords or regional commanders in Afghan politics. “We hope that the factional leaders will begin to understand that their future lies within the framework of democracy and the constitution - not outside of it,” she said. Congressman Tom Lantos of California, the highest ranking Democrat on the powerful committee, contended that the opium problem was a threat to Afghanistan’s democracy that could “kill it slowly, quietly but just as effectively as the Taliban.” Mr Lantos said NATO forces in Afghanistan should engage in counter-narcotic interdiction. “If Afghanistan becomes a narco-state, as it may well be, then Europe, the main consumer of Afghan opium, will pay a heavy price tomorrow for its military timidity today,” he warned. |
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