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Saturday,
June 29, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Pak bans parties promoting terrorism WINDOW ON PAKISTAN Pervez ‘heads’ NSC to keep hold on power Pak dailies flay amendments |
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India to acquire subs from France 32 killed in Afghan munition depot blast 4 die in Lanka grenade attacks
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Pak bans parties promoting terrorism Islamabad, June 28 The ordinance also says that no political or religio-political party will be allowed to receive funds from abroad for any purpose — not even for managing political activities, such as running the election campaign and developing the party infrastructure. The ordinance, which was promulgated yesterday, is to be ‘’implemented with immediate effect,’’ The News reported today. It also necessitates the holding of intra-party elections by all political parties before August 5 to have legal status to participate in the October elections. The ordinance comprises three chapters elucidating legal restrictions on political parties. It requires strict compliance by political parties with the clauses of the Constitution pertaining to the fundamental rights of the people. It states that a political party will not be allowed to contest the elections if its action and agenda will be a threat to Pakistan’s sovereignty and the public order, or, if it is, in anyway, involved in terrorism. Political parties, which promote their respective political agenda on the bases of ethnicity, provincialism or sectarianism, will also not be allowed to contest the elections. The ordinance further says that no political party will be permitted to form armed groups for any purpose or to impart military training at any tier of its organisation. In addition, political parties will have to prepare their respective constitutions, explaining reasons and purposes for which they have been established, besides their future programmes and aims. They will have to have a proper structure at all levels and details of the office-bearers and their respective tenures. The parties will also have to keep a record of their finances — funds collected from various local resources and the money collected through sources such as membership fees. Such information should also be supplemented with details of how the party accords membership and selects candidates to represent it in various bodies, including the National Assembly and the Senate. The ordinance also demands that the parties put in place the criteria for suspending its members. Furthermore, if any party plans to make any change in its manifesto, it will have to intimate the Election Commission immediately. The same has to be done in case of amendments in its Constitution. The Article 5 of the ordinance says no public servant (Services of Pakistan) will be able to get the membership of any political party. The ordinance seeks strict compliance by political activists and candidates with Article 63 of the Constitution. No political activist will be allowed to be a member of more parties than one at a time.
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WINDOW ON PAKISTAN There is enough evidence to prove that Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaida network has considerable presence in Pakistan. Officially, Islamabad has been refusing to accept the reality, but it cannot do so now. Perhaps realising the great difficulty in hiding the truth, for the first time it has indicated that its security forces are chasing Al-Qaida terrorists in various tribal areas and elsewhere. This is part of the statement issued by an agency of the armed forces that 10 Pakistan security personnel lost their lives the other day in an operation against the activists of Osama bin Laden’s dreaded outfit in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. The development is quite significant. A number of Al-Qaida activists were also gunned down in the encounter. Earlier, 327 Al-Qaida and Taliban men were arrested by Pakistan’s security forces and later handed over to the USA. It is believed that the recent terrorist attack on the US consulate in Karachi besides the targeting of an Islamabad church and the killing of 11 French naval technical experts were carried out by Al-Qaida operatives. While the correct position about Al-Qaida’s presence in Pakistan is yet to be established, Home Minister L.K. Advani disclosed on June 26 that he had information about 3000 men of the terrorist outfit having crossed over to Pakistan from their bases in Afghanistan. Let us see what Pakistani writers have to say on the subject. Well-known columnist Husain Haqqani wrote in The Nation of June 19: “Instead of facing the challenge squarely, officials have been somewhat shy about admitting the presence of Al-Qaida in Pakistan. During the anti-Soviet resistance (in Afghanistan) militants from all over the Muslim world transited through Pakistan to participate in the Afghan jehad. Some of them created covert networks within Pakistan, taking advantage of poor law enforcement and the state’s ambiguity towards pan-Islamic militancy. Now that the Al-Qaida and Taliban base in Afghanistan has been disrupted, they are using their former transit station as a temporary staging ground.” However, Eric Margolis in an article carried in the June 27 issue of Dawn quotes The New York Times to say the following: “The small, tightly-knit leadership of Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaida has been succeeded by a group of younger militants who have formed ad hoc alliances with other anti-US groups from Morocco to Indonesia. These groups now pose the most serious danger to the United States and will remain a potent threat for years to come.... “Al-Qaida’s numbers were grossly exaggerated by the Bush administration and US media. Hardcore Qaida members never numbered more than 200-300. Claims that there were 5,000-20,000 Qaida fighters in Afghanistan were nonsense. This wild exaggeration came from lumping Taliban tribal warriors with some 5,000 Islamic resistance fighters from Kashmir, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, the Philippines and Chinese-ruled Eastern Turkestan, none of whom were part of Al- Qaida. “The reason 12,000 US-British -Canadian troops operating in Afghanistan can’t find Al-Qaida——a campaign that has so far cost over $10 billion — is that there were few to begin with; by now, most have slipped away through Pakistan.” The article further reveals that “It’s also becoming painfully clear that Afghanistan was never the true epicentre of anti-US militancy, as Washington initially believed. The real hotbeds of Islamic resistance to the United States lay in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, North Africa, and Europe. “According to the leaked report in The New York Times, a loose network of anti-American groups has surfaced in these regions, united mainly by their fury over events in Palestine, America’s impending invasion of Iraq, and opposition to America’s political and economic domination of the Muslim world. “Osama bin Laden, be he dead or alive, and his Al-Qaida movement have become irrelevant. In truth, they were never much more than a symbol of hatred and defiance. “But their message, propagated by 9/11, has reverberated around the world. The torch of anti-Americanism is being taken up by the ‘jehadi’ movement — Muslim veterans of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s — and by a younger generation of militants.” Here it is interesting to note what an editorial in The Nation said on June14: “If Al-Qaida can be active inside the US, it can be theoretically present anywhere in the world, though there is little likelihood of its moving in the direction of the LoC as it knows full well that Pakistan is actively cooperating with the US and other countries in capturing its members. An Uighur separatist leader with alleged Al-Qaida links was only recently handed over to Beijing. Mr Rumsfeld has acknowledged that Islamabad had turned over high-level operatives of the organisation in the past. There is, therefore, need to probe the matter thoroughly instead of blindly accepting what the Indian side says.” |
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Pervez ‘heads’ NSC to keep hold on power Islamabad, June 28 During a presentation on “Suggested National Security Strategy for Pakistan” at the National Defence College yesterday, General Musharraf rejected the proposal that the Prime Minister should head the NSC instead of the President, the Dawn reported today. “I don’t have any political agenda and ambitions, and that is why I feel that the President should head the NSC,” he said, justifying the proposed restoration of presidential powers for sacking the Prime Minister if he committed excesses and deviated from the path of ruling the country through fair and democratic means. He said there was a genuine need to strike a balance in the powers of the President, the Prime Minister and the Army chief “Since I am not pursuing any personal political agenda, I think I can perform this job well,” he added. “If the Chief of Army Staff becomes ambitious, he starts crossing the limits; if the President gets impulsive, things start deteriorating, and if the Prime Minister renders himself ineffective and starts plundering the country, it becomes difficult to run the affairs of the country,” he remarked. “Let me assure you that the Army chief, being a member of NSC, would extend all his support to the Prime Minister in case the Opposition tries to take any undue advantage of any particular situation,” he said.
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Musharraf defends proposed amendments Islamabad, June 28 Speaking at a meeting of senior defence officials here, he defended the amendments that paved the way for constitution of a military-dominated National Security Council (NSC) to be headed by him. The NSC has to be headed by the President to ensure strong checks and balances among the three power brokers — the President, the Prime Minister and the army chief, he said.
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Pak dailies flay amendments Islamabad, June 28 “Under the new dispensation the President will be the lord and master of all that he surveys,” screamed an editorial in The Nation daily. The package, released ahead of the October general elections, “envisages an all-powerful President” with “absolutely no check on his powers”, it warned. Political commentator Najam Sethi, editor of the Daily Times, branded the proposals a “nightmare”. “These proposals are just one man’s dream. And his dream is a nightmare for all political and democratic forces,” Mr Sethi told AFP, rejecting the government line that they were aimed at stability and sustainability. “They are neither geared to make a future government stable nor can they be sustained beyond General Musharraf himself,” he countered. “It has no longevity and the day General Musharraf goes it will collapse and the parliament will reassert itself.” Analysts concurred that the constitutional changes would turn Pakistan’s traditionally parliamentary system of government into a presidential system by bolstering General Musharraf’s already vast powers. The proposals were a “clear attempt by the military general to subordinate the legislature and executive, at both federal and provincial levels, to the person of the President,” analyst Mohammad Niazi said. “General Musharraf wants to ensure that no matter what the result of the October elections will be, he is able to get his way. It is a preemptive move.” The News daily in its editorial warned the changes would “greatly change the configuration of the political system in the country, with power passing from the Prime Minister to the President, even though the fiction of a parliamentary system is maintained”.
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India to acquire subs from France Paris, June 28 Defence electronics group Thales, prime contractor for the operation, has already signed an agreement with the Mumbai-based naval shipyard Mazagon Dock for the transfer of technology so that the submarines could be built there, the newspaper said, quoting industrial sources. “France and India are reflecting to find the ideal date to announce this contract,” La Tribune said, adding that: “The crisis between India and Pakistan does not really favour the announcement of such a contract.”
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32 killed in Afghan munition depot blast Kabul, June 28 “A new figure gives 32 dead and 70 injured, according to local authorities in Spin Boldak,” an employee of a foreign aid organisation told AFP on condition of anonymity. However, officials in the main southern city of Kandahar, some 100 km to the north-west, said no one had died. “According to our reports nobody has been killed. There were three persons buried under the rubble whom we recovered alive,” spokesman for Kandahar provincial Governor Gul Agha, Khaled Pashtoon, said. “We’re investigating to find out the cause of the explosion. We don’t know if it was deliberate or accidental,” he said. A blast around midnight tore through a local military munition depot, triggering a succession of secondary blasts over several hours.
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4 die in Lanka grenade attacks Colombo, June 28 More than 50 persons were injured in clashes yesterday between Tamil and Muslim groups in and around Valaichenai in Batticaloa district, where curfew was imposed after grenade attacks, buses and ambulances were stoned, and over a dozen shops were set ablaze. Most of the casualties, including the deaths, were due to grenade explosions, the police said. Two mortar shells exploded close to a group of priests and trustees of Hindu temples and the Batticaloa mosque, who were walking towards Valaichenai, along with army and police officials to defuse the tension, reports said. The 60 mm mortars were fired from the direction of a Tamil village, the police said, adding that a member of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission was present close to the spot, but there were no reports of injuries. The incident came many hours after a grenade attack at the Valaichenai esplanade caused serious injuries to four persons. By late evening, Tamil and Muslim groups battled each other in the town, as the police rushed in reinforcements. Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) leader and Ports Minister Rauff Hakeem rushed to Mutur along with senior Cabinet Minister Karu Jayasuriya to defuse the tension. Earlier, the LTTE’s local unit had put the blame for the attack on a little-known Islamic extremist group called ‘Osama wing’ of ‘Jehad’. Valaichenai has been under curfew for two days after protests against the Mutur incident led to violence, with the Tamils claiming that their peaceful hartal was marred by attacks on them, and the Muslims alleging that their shops were stoned. Though the immediate cause for the sudden escalation in violence is not clear, there is evidence of increasing friction between the Tamils and the Muslims over the presence of the LTTE in the area and incidents of alleged extortion from Muslim businessmen. The LTTE agreed to spare the Muslims from its system of collecting money from civilians in April, after Mr Hakeem met its leader V.Prabhakaran.
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