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Egypt Elections
Pak to revise policies on key national issues
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Obama calls Zardari, says NATO raid not a deliberate attack
Bonn conference begins today
A tale of two cities
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Egypt Elections Cairo, December 4 Muslim Brotherhood's new Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) received roughly 40 per cent of the vote and the main Salafist Al-Nur party between 20 and 25 per cent, the state media reported today. The main liberal coalition, the Egyptian Bloc, won only 15 per cent of the vote, a development though not completely unexpected, has somewhat alarmed the country's minorities, mainly the Coptic Christians who comprise an estimated 10 per cent of the population. Though the first round saw just one-third of Egypt's constituencies go to polls but the results give an ample indication of the how the new Parliament would look like. Egyptians will return to the elections tomorrow for run-offs from the first round of the polls, whose final outcome will not be known until other parts of the country vote in two more rounds. The process will not be complete until January 11. Egypt's oldest political movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, has tried hard to stress itself as a moderate and pragmatic group, distinct from the Al Nur party, the ultra Conservatives who want to impose Islamic law. The deputy head of the FJP, Essam el-Erian, has reassured Egyptians that the party would not impose Islamic values on Egypt, and would not encroach upon personal freedoms. The vote drew an official turnout of 62 per cent, described as "the highest since Pharonic times". Most candidates will have to go through to two further rounds of voting over the next six weeks. The BBC described the elections as "arguably the first fully free and fair election in Egyptian history". "This is the first chance to see the strength of the Islamists, who look likely to win at least half of the seats in the new Parliament. There are two very different sets of Islamists, and it is not at all certain that they will work together," it said. The voting on November 28 and 29 covered nine out of 27 provinces, which will elect about 30 per cent of the 498-seat lower house of parliament. Two further rounds are scheduled over the next six weeks. The upper house will then be elected in another three stages. Meanwhile, Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak described the Islamist success in the first Arab nation to recognise the Jewish state and to sign a peace treaty with it as "very, very worrisome". "It is too early to predict how the changes that we face will end up. It could be that in a historical context, they are positive. In an immediate context, they are problematic," he told Israel's Channel Two television on Saturday. — Agencies
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Pak to revise policies on key national issues
Lahore, December 4 The government will revise the 'terms of engagement" for these issues, including policies that were framed during the regime of former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, Gilani said during an interaction with a group of reporters at the State Guest House here. Gilani mentioned in passing that the Kashmir dispute was among these issues but did not give details of how the government intended to revise its policies. He said the review would include key issues like Pakistan's role in the war on terror and the country's cooperation with the US and NATO. The change in policy had become necessary in the aftermath of the cross-border NATO attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on November 26, he remarked. "As the Pakistan People's Party-led government and the entire political and military leadership has considered this issue as an opportunity, we will revise all previous terms of engagement as part of the country's new strategy to fight terrorism," Gilani said. "And after having the terms of engagement revised, we will make new terms of engagement with the US and NATO," he said while responding to several questions. Pakistan responded angrily to the NATO airstrike by closing all routes used to transport supplies to American and allied forces in Afghanistan and asking the US to vacate the Shamsi airbase, reportedly used by CIA-operated drones, within 15 days. Gilani said his government would use Parliament to develop uniform policies on key national issues by taking all stakeholders on board. Parliament is the best forum to frame national policies through debate and discussion, he noted. National issues like relations with the US and NATO, the Kashmir dispute and the nuclear programme have a direct bearing on Pakistan's sovereignty and security and will be debated in Parliament to evolve national consensus, he said. "We will formulate policies reflecting the aspirations of the people," he said. Gilani said the objective behind boycotting the Bonn Conference was to devise a fresh and uniform policy to deal with national issues in future in the light of the challenges facing the country.
— PTI
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Obama calls Zardari, says NATO raid not a deliberate attack
Washington, December 4 The incident has thrown the already fragile US-Pakistan ties into a tizzy, with Pakistan boycotting the Bonn conference to discuss the future of Afghanistan. "Earlier today the President placed a phone call to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to personally express his condolences on the tragic loss of 24 Pakistani soldiers this past week along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan," the White House said in a statement. "The President made clear that this regrettable incident was not a deliberate attack on Pakistan and reiterated the United States' strong commitment to a full investigation," the White House said. During the roughly 30-minute call, the two Presidents reaffirmed their commitment to the US-Pakistan bilateral relationship. — PTI
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Bonn conference begins today
Berlin, December 4 About 100 countries and international organisations will be represented at the Monday gathering, with some 60 foreign ministers in attendance, among them US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. But one of the most important countries for Afghanistan's future, its eastern nuclear-armed neighbour Pakistan, said it will boycott the conference to protest last month's NATO air assault carried out from Afghan territory that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Pakistan is seen as crucial player in the region because of its links and influence on insurgent groups that are battling Afghan government and foreign troops and that sometimes use Pakistan as a base for their operations. The Bonn conference is expected to address the transfer of security responsibility from international forces to Afghan security forces over the next three years, long-term prospects for international aid and a possible political settlement with the Taliban. "Our objective is a peaceful Afghanistan that will never again become a safe haven for international terrorism," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said. The US had once hoped to use the Bonn gathering to announce news about the prospect for peace talks with the Taliban, but neither an Afghan nor a US outreach effort has borne fruit. — AP
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Two multinational conclaves will make decisions on Friday that will test journalistic hyperbole. In Brussels, the European Union summit may decide the fate of the eurozone and therefore the quality of life of our children. But the decisions made by the 195 nations of the world at the United Nations climate-change summit in Durban, South Africa, on the same day could make an even bigger difference to the quality of life of our children's children.
The Brussels summit could make the difference between plunging Europe into depression and a return to the kind of growth experienced since 1945. The significant decisions are likely to be made in Paris tomorrow by Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, but formally all the EU leaders will make them on Friday. The narrow focus of British commentary is on the domestic problems that this will present to David Cameron, who has promised his Eurosceptic party that he would hold a referendum on proposed treaty changes. That is part of a wider problem, which is that the response to the euro crisis seems to involve technocrats suspending democracy for the greater good. The appointment of un-elected prime ministers in Greece and Italy did not look good, although their governments command majorities in elected Parliaments. But the search for devices to avoid referendums in Ireland and elsewhere hardly helps the EU's claim to democratic legitimacy. Nothing could be more damaging to Sarkozy's grand talk of "refounding Europe" than its being seen as a conspiracy of elites against peoples. But one other item of business on Friday will be Croatia’s accession treaty, providing for it to join the EU, subject to a referendum, in 2013. The EU is still something that more people want to join than to leave. The paradox of Brussels, of course, is that the summit is trying to get Europe back to the kind of economic growth that threatens the sustainability of human life. Important though it is for our next 20 years, the decisions made, or avoided, at Durban this week. The caravan of UN climate-change conferences has, since Rio in 1992, stopped in a different city each year (last year was Cancun, next is Qatar), some of which have been more important (Kyoto 1997, Copenhagen 2009) than others. Durban could still be important, or it could be another stop at which all the hard choices are put off for another year. — The Independent
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Egypt's Islamists, including the liberal Brotherhood and radical Salafists, have surged ahead in the first round of parliamentary polls, together pocketing 65 per cent of the vote.
The Pakistan government plans to revise its policies on key national and outstanding issues, including relations with the US, the war on terror and the Kashmir
dispute.
