Islamabad, June 8
The Pakistan Supreme Court bench hearing the petition of the suspended Chief Justice today, put off the ruling on its maintainability till next week apparently due to differences among the ranks of judges.

The hearing of Iftikar M Chaudhry’s petition started off on a shaky note with both government and defence lawyers exchanging heated words, prompting Justice Khalil-ur-Ramday, heading the full court bench, to issue a warning to both sides that if they continue to disrupt, the bench would call off its proceedings.

After sometime, court official announced that the bench would not meet for the day and instead resume hearing on June 11.

The announcement to put off the case gave rise to suspicions that divisions prevailed in the ranks of the 13-member bench over admissibility of Chaudhry’s petition challenging the presidential reference against him and the judges wanted more time to sort out their differences.

The court has not yet decided on the admissibility of the petition despite four weeks of arguments.

It first has to decide on the admissibility and later on its merits specially Chaudhry’s contention that President Pervez Musharraf has mollified intention in filing charges against him and the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) has no jurisdiction to conduct trial against him.

Meanwhile, the lead attorney for the Suspended Judge, Aitaaz Ahsan accused top government officials of lying in affidavits that denied Chaudhry’s account of his ouster.

The verbal clash occurred a day after the chiefs of the intelligence agencies and the chief of staff of President Musharraf filed counter affidavits refuting Chaudhry’s earlier allegations that he was physically prevented from leaving Musharraf’s office after he declined to quit.

As the court met today to continue the hearing of Chaudhry’s petition, his defence lawyers rose to make a point interrupting the submissions of government lawyers.

The two sides then clashed disregarding the pleas of Ramday to stop. After repeated attempts, Ramday delivered the final warning following which the two sides calmed down and the government lawyers continued their arguments.

Earlier, a government lawyer said Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz may have to quit if the apex court reinstates the suspended judge.

Mallik M Qayyum, who is in the panel of lawyers representing the government in the case, last night said Aziz may have to go because he forwarded the reference of allegations against Chaudhry to Musharraf who in turn passed it on to the SJC.

He said if in the event of any adverse judgement reinstating Chaudhry, Aziz has to take responsibility. — PTI

The government decision to transport Tamil civilians who were residing in lodges in Colombo has drawn criticism from political parties across the country as well as human rights groups.

The issue was the hot topic of debate in Parliament on Thursday with Tamil legislators bringing a suspension of sittings with angry protests against the move.

Nearly 300 Tamil civilians were transported back to the north and east by bus on yesterday and the government said they had gone voluntarily. However Tamil politicians said they were being removed forcibly and descried it as 'ethnic cleansing."

The removal of the Tamil civilians came after two bombs exploded in Colombo and a suburb two weeks ago killing more than nine civilians and injuring around 50 others. The governments said Tamil Tigers had infiltrated the lodges and were using them to carry out bomb attacks.

When Parliament debated the issue, the Tamil politicians got unexpected support from one of their arch rivals in Parliament, the Sinhala Nationalist People's Liberation Front or JVP. A senior JVP MP Anura Kumara Dissanayake said the government was only pushing the Tamil civilians straight into the lap of the LTTE. "You are going do demarcate a separate area for the Tamils by sending them off to an area which the LTTE calls its their traditional homeland. This will only strengthen their argument," he warned.

The main opposition United National Party too accused the government of doing more harm than good by this move.

The issue adds to the ever increasing problems with regard to accusations of discrimination against Tamil civilians which has been confronting the government in the past few months. How it chooses to handle this issue will decide whether the problems will grow or become less in the coming few weeks.

Washington, June 8
A proposed immigration bill to legalise millions of illegal workers in the US has suffered a serious setback after a Democratic-led effort to speed up its passage in the Senate failed.

Supporters of a ‘cloture’ (limiting a debate on the house floor) on the bill, which is endorsed by President George W Bush, could muster only 45 of the 60 votes needed, with 50 senators from both the Democratic and Republican camps opposing it.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid, who is not a keen supporter of the compromised bill, quickly pulled it down the floor, saying “We are finished with this for the time being.”

The future of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill, a compromise product of three months of bipartisan negotiations, now looks uncertain. Even though Reid maintained the issue could be taken up again later this year. “We all have to work, the president included, to find a way to get this bill passed,” he said.

Proponents of the proposed legislation insisted, there was still a hope despite the blow in the Senate.

“This matter is on a life-support, but it is not dead,” said Republican senator Arlen Specter, a central architect of the plan, the New York Times reported.

Senate conservatives fought the legislation from the start, saying that it rewarded those, who broke the law. Around 12 million illegal immigrants will qualify for citizenship under the proposed measure. — PTI

Heiligendamm (Germany), June 8
Even though the developed G-8 targets the climate deal for 2009, scientists and environmentalists are wondering if the US will sign up to binding emission levels as part of the post-Kyoto deal and how to involve emerging economies like China where carbon emissions are soaring.

On its part, India has made it clear of involving itself in meeting the challenges of climate change without affecting its development process through the auspices of the United Nations Framework for Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Developing countries maintain that they are partners and not petitioners in cleaning up and protecting the environment.

Host and German Chancellor Angela Merkel failed to persuade the US to endorse hard targets to combat climate change, bringing in its ambit overall targets for carbon emissions and average global temperatures or improvements in energy efficiency.

The G8 leaders joint statement said they would "consider seriously" decisions of the European Union, Canada and Japan which wanted to at least halve the global emissions by 2050.

US President George Bush, however, accepted that the UN-led talks on replacing the Kyoto protocol on global warming, which ran out in 2012, was the main forum for addressing climate change. The US had refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol arguing that its targets for capping CO2 emissions threatened the growth and was meaningless if major developing countries like India and China didn't take part.

Despite the promises of cooperation, the G-8 Summit appears to set the scene for a race between the US and Europe to shape global talks over the next two years.
At the same time, scientists and environmentalists believe a further UN agreement to cap emissions is essential if the world is to avoid temperatures rising by more than two degrees. Therefore, Merkel's goal at the G-8 was to speed the way to a UN deal.

The 38-page G-8 Declaration adopted yesterday deals with global growth and stability, systematic stability and transparency of financial markets, freedom of investment and social responsibility, promoting and protecting the environment, climate change, energy efficiency and energy security, transparency and sustainable growth and fight against corruption.

The declaration also takes note of the "Heiligendamm Process" with major emerging economies, India, China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. In this new partnership, the G-8 will initiate a new form of topic-driven dialogue in a structured manner based on this new partnership. They agreed to address four issues: promoting and protecting innovation, enhancing freedom of investment, defining common responsibilities for development with special regard to Africa and sharing knowledge for improving energy efficiency and technology cooperation to reducing CO2 emissions coupled with the St Peterburg's Plan of Action on Global Energy Security.

The OECD has been asked to provide a platform for this dialogue process which will begin in the second half of this year. The G-8 Summit in Japan in 2008 will receive an interim report on the progress made and at the G-8 Summit in Italy in 2009 a final report on the outcome of the dialogue process will be presented.

The O5 leaders met last evening in Berlin and outlined the key aspects on climate change at the Outreach sessions of the summit today. Based on their undeniable political and economic strength, the O5 maintained they could make a decisive contribution to increase the participation of the developing countries in meeting the challenges of climate change.

The leaders of the O5 called for joint collaboration in the field of cross-border investment, research and innovation, climate change, energy and development. They stressed that all these challenges must be addressed from a multilateral, regional and bilateral perspective taking into consideration the interests and capacities of the different states.

Agreeing to have consultations on a regular basis on issues of common interest and coordinate their positions, the leaders instructed their foreign ministers to meet on the margins of the next UN General Assembly session in September in New York.