Islamabad, August 4
Twentyone persons, including four Pakistan army soldiers, were killed and 35 injured in separate incidents of a bomb blast and a militant attack in Pakistan's troubled tribal areas today.

At least seven persons were killed and 31 others injured when a suicide bomber rammed his car, laden with explosives, into another in Parachinar, the headquarters of Kurrum tribal agency in North West Frontier Province.

It was not immediately clear as to where was the bomber intending to hit.

The taxi, which was hit by the suicide bomber, was parked in a car parking area of the Eidgah market. Five shops and several vehicles were also destroyed in the incident.

Power supply in various parts of the city was suspended as some electric wires fell following the incident.

Parachinar is about 290 km west of Islamabad and is the closest point in Pakistan to Kabul and borders on the Tora Bora region in Afghanistan.

The injured, several of them in critical condition, were shifted to the agency headquarters Parachinar.

No group has yet claimed the responsibility for the attack but officials suspect it to be carried out by pro-Taliban militants.

In another incident, four Pakistan army soldiers and 10 pro-Taliban militants were killed in an early morning attack by the militants on the Dossali military checkpost near Miranshah the headquarters of the North Waziristan tribal agency.

“Militants launched a massive attack on the Dossali checkpost near Miranshah, fired over 50 rockets and attacked the checkpost with small arms which was repulsed by the troops,” Maj-Gen Waheed Arshad told reporters here.

Four soldiers and 10 militants were killed in fighting while an equal number of security personnel were injured, he said.— PTI

"No one should expect more than what Pakistan is doing in war on terror", foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri has said.

"Enough is enough, "Kasuri said in an interview with a TV channel, adding "we lost 1,000 soldiers while hunting down militants and Al-Qaeda terrorists in operation in tribal areas where we have deployed 80,000 troops. Unlike others we cannot bomb civilians in search of one or a few militants that may result in scores of civilian deaths. That is the reason our army has taken more casualties. This is a tremendous sacrifice they have made."

He said Pakistan has also proceeded carefully not to incite internal strife. Our actions in tribal areas are in the national interest, but there is a limitation which we cannot cross, he added.

The foriegn minister said irresponsible statements by certain officials, congressional leaders and a section of the media tend to put undue pressure on Pakistan, which is unacceptable. He said certain presidential candidates were trying to run their campaign at the cost of Pakistan. This is counter-productive, as Pakistan is also bracing for elections later this year and the American approach towards Pakistan would become an election issue here as well.

Separately, at a meeting with the new US envoy Anne W Peterson, Kasuri said Pakistani forces were capable of striking against terrorists inside their territory and the country would not allow foreign forces to operate inside its borders.

He expressed his concerns over the US presidential candidates' statements against Pakistan and Islam. He called the statements "irresponsible". "Such statements will widen the gulf between the Muslim world and the US," he said.

The US ambassador said these were personal statements. She said, "The US does not intend to launch incursions, as Pakistan is a key ally in the war against terror and we respect its sovereignty and integrity."

The United States has no intention of giving advice to India on how to deal with Iran, a top Bush administration official said on Friday.

Acknowledging that India is a “sovereign country,” undersecretary of state R. Nicholas Burns said, “India, like all sovereign countries, will decide what is in its best national interests.”

“India does not need me or other state department officials to give public advice, and we have too much respect for the Indians to do that,” he added. Congressional sources told The Tribune key members of the Congress, including the influential chairman of the house foreign affairs committee, Congressman Tom Lantos, and a key friend of India’s, Congressman Gary Ackerman, are concerned about India's relationship with Iran and its plans to build a gas pipeline.

India’s ambassador to the US, Ronen Sen, told this correspondent in an interview earlier in the week that linking the civilian nuclear agreement “with any other issue - today it may be Iran, tomorrow it can be some other issue - will be completely counter-productive. It would be totally unrealistic to expect a large and vibrant democracy like India to give up its independence of judgement and action. The sooner this is realized the better.”

Burns, responding to a question from The Tribune, noted, “most of our European and Asian allies have diplomatic and commercial relations with Iran, India does as well. So I don't think India should be judged against a standard that we don't ask others to do.”

The US and its allies suspect Iran’s nuclear programmes are focused toward building a nuclear weapon. The Iranians have denied these accusations, asserting that it is trying to develop nuclear power. Burns described Iran as “a very troublesome country on the international stage.”

“It is seeking a nuclear weapons capability, it has been sanctioned twice by the UN security council, it is funding and arming nearly all the Middle East terrorist groups - so it is a country that is acting against the interests of peace in Lebanon, Palestinian Territories, Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.

“Because of that, we believe, that countries should diminish their relations with Iran. And we say this to the Europeans, we say this to the Japanese, and we say nothing different to India. Our advice to all our friends and partners is; Limit your economic relationship with Iran, don’t agree to new investments, particularly in oil and gas, we say that to Europe, Japan, South Korea, the Arab countries as well as to India - and because we believe that Iran needs to be shown that in seeking to become a nuclear weapon state other countries will not conduct business as usual.”

But, he noted, “I am not trying to give public advice. India will make its own decision and the points that I have just given are consistent with the points we give to every country.”

The senior US official said Washington hoped “that India will continue to participate in the international efforts that are peaceful and diplomatic, through the IAEA and the UN, to convince the Iranians to stop and convince the Iranians to negotiate. We hope that India will be a strong supporter of that effort.”

Ghazni, August 4
The Taliban has demanded a neutral venue for talks with South Korea over the fate of 21 hostages they are threatening to kill.

The Al-Qaida-backed militants, who are demanding that some of their men be freed from jail in exchange for the captives, have agreed to talks with the South Koreans, but are refusing to meet them in government-controlled territory.

South Korea is pressing the US to intervene in the crisis as two of the group have already been killed. The rebels say they have been in regular contact with South Korea, which has told them it is doing what it can to pressure Afghanistan and the US to drop their objections to a prisoner exchange.

“They told us that they are in negotiations with the Afghan and American governments to convince them to free the Taliban prisoners in exchange for the South Korean hostages,” Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said yesterday.— AFP 

London, August 4
Self-exiled former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto will return home in October and contest national elections despite the threat of imprisonment, one of her political advisers said.

Bhutto, who still leads the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) from exile in London and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), fled the country to avoid corruption charges after her second government collapsed in 1996.

“She’s going to return from London to Pakistan in October,” Bhutto’s political adviser Wajid Shamsul Hasan said yesterday. Hasan said Bhutto would wait until the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which begins in September, before making her return.

It has been widely reported that Bhutto met President Gen Pervez Musharraf in Abu Dhabi last month for secret talks over a power-sharing deal.

Hasan refused to comment on the talks.

Both Bhutto and Musharraf have declined to comment on a meeting. But Bhutto has said her party has long been in talks with the government about restoring civilian rule.

Bhutto (54) is not frightened about the possibility of arrest should she return, Hasan said, adding, “Politics is a very daring game in our part of the world and she has no fear.”

Parliamentary elections are slated for December or January and PPP, the main opposition, is expected to do well. — AP

London, August 4
Britain today imposed a nationwide ban on movement of livestock, including cattle and pigs, hours after detecting foot-and-mouth disease in cattle in Surrey to prevent a repeat of the 2001 epidemic.

Vets began culling of around 64 cattle at a small farm near Guildford in Surrey after the animals tested positive for the disease.

All livestock within a 3-km radius of the farm were being tested and a 10-km surveillance zone was put in place last night.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Environment Secretary Hilary Benn cut short their summer holidays to travel back to London to take stock of the situation.

Brown held a meeting of the government's emergency committee, Cobra, by video conference last night, as officials discussed measures to deal with the outbreak.

Ports in northern Ireland were closed to all animal movement from Britain. The rest of the European Union countries were also expected to block imports from here.

Officials are desperate to avoid a recurrence of the disease outbreak in 2001, when more than 6.5 million animals were killed that cost £8 billion to the economy.

Many farmers believe that a three-day delay in halting the movement of cattle last time was responsible for theoutbreak's devastating effects.— PTI

Washington, August 4
Sixty years after independence, India is beginning to deliver on its promise, “unleashing a torrent of growth and wealth creation that is transforming the lives of millions”, says Time magazine in a special cover issue.

“India’s economic clout is beginning to make itself felt on the international stage, as the nation retakes the place it held as a global-trade giant long before colonial powers ever arrived there,” says the US magazine’s August 13 issue.

“Twenty years ago the rest of the world saw India as a pauper. Now it is just as famous for its software engineers, Bollywood movie stars, literary giants and steel magnates.”The special issue on A Young Giant Awakes has articles looking at the country’s middle class, religion, politics and the transformation of its economy, besides a write-up profiling the conflicts, trends and turning points that shaped modern India.

“Twenty years ago the rest of the world saw India as a pauper. Now it is just as famous for its software engineers, Bollywood movie stars, literary giants and steel magnates,” notes Time.

“It is worth remembering this as India aspires to superpower status, economic futurologists all agree that China and India during the 21st century will come to dominate the global economy,” says William Dalrymple, author of The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857.

“Extraordinary as it is, the rise of India and China is nothing more than a return to the ancient equilibrium of world trade, with Europeans no longer appearing as gun-toting, gunboat-riding colonial masters but instead reverting to their traditional role.” “Various intelligence agencies estimate that China will overtake the US between 2030 and 2040 and India will overtake the US by roughly 2050, as measured in dollar terms. Measured by purchasing-power parity, India is already on the verge of overtaking Japan to become the third largest economy in the world,” he says.

“Today, things are slowly returning to historical norms. Last year the richest man in the UK was for the first time an ethnic Indian, Lakshmi Mittal, and Britain’s largest steel manufacturer, Corus, has been bought by an Indian company, Tata.” — IANS