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80 killed as Pak forces bomb seminary
“India, Mexico can complement each other”
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Heavy shelling in Lanka
as talks fail
Two-way trust must, says Kasuri
Prince Charles, wife in Pakistan
Bangladesh inches towards normalcy
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80 killed as Pak forces bomb seminary
Islamabad, October 30 Initial estimates, based on intelligence and local sources, indicate that the missile attack on the seminary located north of Khar, the headquarters of Bajur tribal agency, killed up to 80 persons, army spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said. “There were casualties as between 70 to 80 people were present at the madrassa when the security forces conducted the operation,” he said. “The attack was launched after confirmed information was received that the inmates were involved in terrorist training,” he said adding that the seminary was being observed for the past few days. “Gunship helicopters were used and most of the targets eliminated,” he said. It is the second major attack on Bajur in less than a year. According to reports, among the dead was Liaquat Hussain who ran the madrassa and is believed to have been sheltering Al-Qaida militants. Locals said the madrassa was targeted as Hussain belonged to the banned group ‘Tanzeem Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi’
(TSNM).
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“India, Mexico can
complement each other”
Mexico City, October 30 His presence among 200 Mexican businessmen, including several executives of Mexico-based Indian companies, like Tata Consultancy, Ranbaxy, Dr Reddy Pharmaceuticals etc, gave credibility to the IMBC, a brain child of the Indian Ambassador in Mexico, Mr R.K. Bhatia. Noting India’s economic growth rate of over 6 per cent for the last 15 years, Dr Derbez said Mexico needed to learn from India’s experience. Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Minister admitted that there were numerous opportunities for Mexican investors to invest in infrastructure which need huge investments. Dr Derbez invited Mexican businessmen to join the IMBC in large numbers. Calling Mexico as amongst India’s “key partner,” the Indian Ambassador said: “Our government has been a pro-active facilitator and catalyst in the growing business-to-business interaction.” He referred to two recent meetings between Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Mexican President Vicente Fox, both on the margins of G8/G5 meetings in 2005 and 2006 and explained how those meetings had strengthened India-Mexico relationship. Besides several agreements in trade and investment fields, India is currently working to sign four new agreements with Mexico, all pertaining to trade, customs, investment protection and avoidance of double taxation, Mr Bhatia said, adding that once they were in place early next year, “the climate for business will improve significantly.” In an interview, Dr Irma Adriana Gomez Cavazos, Mexico’s Assistant Minister (head of Economic Relations) in Foreign Affairs Ministry, responded to the Indian Ambassador’s comments noting that: “We have been for quite sometime working very hard, trying to expedite the (business visa) process. We give visa to any Indian citizen and have made visa procedure very, very simple. We give multiple entry visa to Indian businessmen that’s valid for three years.” Sometimes the difficulty could also be attributed to Mexico’s bureaucratic set-up, same way as in India, as visa comes under jurisdiction of their Interior Ministry (akin to India’s Ministry of Home Affairs) and so they have to negotiate with their Interior Ministry, Dr Gomez explained. Even though Indian citizens face no more difficulty in getting Mexican visa, “we are still trying to be more efficient in our procedure and past difficulties have been solved.” Dr Gomez also explained how Mexican companies had immense expertise in infrastructure field, may it be building of highways, roads, bridges, and public transport and so there could be close collaborations between the two countries. “Right now there’s a big interest amongst Mexican businessmen to explore possibilities of investing in India’s infrastructure sector and one Mexican company (its name was not mentioned) is already working in India in this field,” said Dr Gomez. She referred to India-Mexico science and technology agreement that India’s Science and Technology Minister Sibbal signed recently when he went to Mexico City.
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Heavy shelling in Lanka
as talks fail
Colombo, October 30 Residents in the army-held Jaffna peninsula said fierce shelling began before dawn, an eerie reminder of months of fighting that killed hundreds of civilians, troops and rebel fighters in the run-up to the talks in Geneva. The abortive talks ended yesterdaywith both sides meeting separately with mediator Norway before failing even to agree on whether not to meet again for talks in the future. That was a worst case scenario for many analysts, diplomats and residents, who now fear the worst fighting, since a now-tattered 2002 ceasefire, will resume in earnest. Officials said the talks ran aground over a central rebel demand that the government reopened a highway that crossed through rebel territory to Jaffna, cut off from the rest of the island by Tiger lines and where food is in desperately short supply. The island’s two-decade civil war has already killed more than 65,000 people since 1983, with hundreds killed and tens of thousands displaced since fighting flared in late July. Norwegian chief mediator Erik Solheim, who oversaw the talks, said overnight the government and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had said they were committed to a truce “which still technically holds on paper.”
— Reuters
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Two-way trust must, says Kasuri
Islamabad, October 30 Citing National Security Adviser N K Narayanan’s comments on the evidence of Pakistan’s involvement in the blasts, Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri said that the Pakistan leadership avoided knee-jerk reactions ,like blaming India, whenever a violent incident took place in Pakistan. “I have read with interest the statement of Narayanan on the quality of evidence... We should avoid knee- jerk reactions. In Pakistan, by and large, when an incident happens ...we try and not voice it and the President, the Prime Minister and I avoid making such statements. “We get a lot of information through our own sources. But we do not go public until we feel that we have clinching evidence. Otherwise it makes the case worse,” he said. He said in the case of Mumbai blasts, Pakistan had “unreservedly and very seriously” condemned it, but the Indian accusations had damaged the peace process. “See the damage that has been done. So many months down the road we are told that evidence is not particularly good, it is not ‘clinching’ to quote Narayanan,” he said. To a question whether the two countries planned to implement confidence- building measures to further relations between the militaries of both countries, he said : “They are discussing certain things.”
— PTI
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Prince Charles, wife in Pakistan
Islamabad, October 30 The royal couple flew into Islamabad, late yesterday and were scheduled to meet President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz today, their first official engagements during their five-day visit, said British High Commission spokesman Aidan Liddle. Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, were received by Sumaira Malik, Pakistan’s Minister for Women’s Affairs, at the airport. Mr Liddle would not say what the Prince of Wales plans to discuss with Pakistani leaders or whether he was expected to ask about Mirza Tahir Hussain, a British national on death row in Pakistan for murdering a Pakistani taxi driver. Hussain, 36, was convicted for murdering Jamshed Khan in 1988. He was scheduled to be executed on November 1 in Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, but Musharraf delayed it until the end of the year. — AP
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Bangladesh inches towards normalcy
Dhaka, October 30 Begum Sheikh Hasina had more than one hour meeting with the President at Bangabhaban (President House) and put forward some demands that include removal of Chief Election Commissioner Jusitce M.A. Aziz and Attorney General Mohammad Ali and making the administration neutral for holding free and fair general elections scheduled in January next year. Awami League general secretary Abdul Jalil said a new agitation would be announced on November 3 if President Ahmed’s caretaker government fails to meet their demands and act neutrally. The indefinite siege was imposed on October 28 to press for the appointment of a neutral Chief Adviser (interim PM) of a caretaker government. But former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s four-party alliance and former opposition leader Sheikh Hasina’s 14-party combine could not reach a consensus on selecting an acceptable person for the office of Chief Adviser. As a result, the President had to assume additional responsibility of the caretaker government yesterday. The President is likely to appoint 10 advisers of his caretaker administration tomorrow to oversee the general elections. He sought names from major political parties for appointing advisors. During the three-day siege, at least 24 persons were killed and several thousand wounded in violent clashes between supporters of Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina. The capital city of Dhaka was completely cut-off from rest of the country during the agitation. Normal life and economic activities that were completely battered during the siege started inching towards to normal from this afternoon with vehicles slowly coming to the streets and shops opening.
— UNI
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