The Pakistan-based Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD), which has been declared a terrorist group by a panel of the UN Security Council, has strongly refuted allegations that it is engaged in anything other than welfare activities.

It vowed to move the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to seek a reversal of the
UN action.

Addressing a news conference in Lahore on Thursday, group’s chief Hafiz Saeed said he was also writing to the UNSC to protest against its “unilateral and hasty” action without affording opportunity to the group to clarify its position.

He said the world body had acted under intense propaganda campaign build up by India taking advantage of the Mumbai attacks.

The JuD chief condemned the Mumbai carnage and all terrorist acts, saying his organisation had always been opposed to suicide bombings and killing of innocent people through terrorist acts.

He denied to have ever met the lone survivor among the Mumbai attackers, Ajmal, adding he never visited Dubai in his life where he was alleged to have met Ajmal.

Similarly, Hafiz Saeed dissociated himself with suspect commander of the JuD Zaki Lakhvi, who is blamed for masterminding the Mumbai attacks.

He said Lakhvi belongs to a Kashmiri organisation that might be involved in fighting inside India-held Kashmir. He said he never headed the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

Hafiz Saeed cautioned the Pakistan government against the crackdown on his organisation on the basis of “Indian propaganda”.

He is writing to the global body to clarify that it has no links with terrorism and the Pakistani government began investigations against it only on the basis of “Indian propaganda”, its chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed said.

He added that although he was once arrested by the government, he was let off after JuD proved that he had nothing to do with the LeT.

The other LeT leaders whom the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee has branded global terrorists are Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, Haji Muhammad Ashraf and Mahmood Muhammad Ahmed.

The Pakistani media quoted son of Haji Muhammad Ashraf that his father died in jail in early 2002 after he was arrested in late December 2001 on the charge of complicity in Sheraton Hotel blast in Karachi.

Kirkuk, December 11
At least 45 persons were killed and 93 wounded in a suicide bomb attack on a restaurant near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk today, the city’s deputy police chief Torhane Yussef said.

Women and children were among the victims of the attack on the “Abdullah” restaurant, an interior ministry official in Baghdad said.

The blast happened in early afternoon on the final day of the Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice) holiday at a roadside restaurant 15 km north of Kirkuk and 255 km from Baghdad, police officer Salam Zengana said.

A defence ministry source and waiter Abbas Fadhel said a suicide bomber activated a booby-trapped belt in the middle of the restaurant, where families were dining.

However, the interior ministry official said the attack was by an explosives-laden car outside the restaurant.

The wounded were taken to Kirkuk’s main hospital. “More and more victims are arriving,” Doctor Mohammed Abdallah said.

At the restaurant, victims were lying on the ground with blood on their faces, an AFP journalist said.

Bomb attacks have continued regularly in Kirkuk and surrounding areas, although the number of violent incidents in Iraq as a whole has dropped sharply this year.

The province is ethnically mixed, with large Arab, Kurdish, and Turkmen communities, but the Kurds have demanded that it be added to their autonomous region in the country’s north.

On December 1, police found 12 bodies in a village south of Kirkuk. They had been riddled with bullets and incinerated, Jamal Taher Bakr, the provincial police chief said. — AFP

Nairobi, December 11
Britain and Kenya today signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the arrest, transfer and prosecution of Somali pirates detained by British naval vessels.

“This MoU is very important,” said Britain’s under secretary of state for security and counter-terrorism, Lord West of Spithead, on the sidelines of an international conference on combating Somali maritime piracy.

“Kenya is a step ahead of the rest in doing this,” the retired admiral told reporters. “This fits in well with the EU force that has just been established,” he added.

The deal will provide legal support for Britain to hand over to Kenya suspected
pirates whom its naval fleet may detain during operations in the Gulf of Aden or
the Indian Ocean.

On November 18, the British navy handed over eight suspected pirates captured a week earlier during an incident at sea. They are now facing trial in the Kenyan port of Mombasa.

According to an AFP reporter there, resident magistrate Lilian Mtende denied the eight bail today and said more time was needed to study their case, which will next be heard on January 14.

The absence of a legal framework allowing for tight cooperation between the nations represented in the naval coalitions patrolling pirate-infested zones and coastal nations had been one of the main obstacles to tougher action.

Providing a broader agreement between coalition countries and coastal nations such as Kenya, Tanzania, Djibouti and Yemen is one of the main proposals on the agenda at the Nairobi conference. — AFP

Honolulu, December 11
Federal agents have arrested a Hawaii man after he allegedly threatened to attack and kill President-elect Barack Obama when he visits Hawaii on vacation this month.

Mark Miyashiro allegedly made the threats on December 3 to a doctor who was treating him for a schizophrenic disorder, according to a criminal complaint filed in the US District Court on Friday.

Miyashiro then allegedly made more threats when secret services agents interviewed and arrested him at his home in Kaneohe the next day after the doctor notified the authorities. — AP

Jerusalem, December 11
US President-elect Barack Obama plans to offer Israel a strategic pact designed to fend off any nuclear attack on the Jewish state by Iran.

Quoting an unnamed American source close to Obama’s administration, an Israeli newspaper carried this report today.