Pakistan should ‘go the extra mile’ to combat terrorism especially in the wake of last month’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has said.

“Nobody should be prepared to spare [any] organisation” that is “playing havoc both here and in India,” he told India’s Tehelka magazine in an interview. “We should take serious action and let India know that action is now being taken against such elements,” he said. “I think we should now set an example.”

Nawaz said it was very important for India and the rest of the world to see that Pakistan was sincere and sympathetic. He stated that despite political differences, he was absolutely sure the government in Islamabad was not involved in the Mumbai attacks. “The political leadership of Pakistan has no such agenda,” he said.

Nawaz said Pakistan was fighting with “elements within the country” whom he called “people who don’t believe in democracy”.

“These elements are products of dictatorship,” he said, adding that there were no suicide bombings when he was the Prime Minister. “They emerged after Musharraf’s takeover. He is responsible for grooming them. Such groups were wrongly projecting jihad. The definition of jihad is to fight against tyranny and injustice. Killing innocent people is not jihad.”

He said the Pakistan army and the ISI were “legally and technically” under the control of the civilian government. “But some adventures in the past have been derailing democracy.”

He said the Indians wanted ‘someone senior’ from Pakistan to visit them and a ‘full delegation’ could have gone to India after the Mumbai attacks.

Nawaz Sharif’s brother and Chief Minister of the Punjab province Shahbaz Sharif, meanwhile, has regretted that India had hastily approached the United Nations instead of providing evidence and joining hands with Pakistan to combat the common enemy.

He said Pakistan had its own grievances and alleged that investigations had proved that a serving colonel of the Indian Army was behind the killing of hundreds of Pakistanis in the Samjhota Express carnage. He also alleged that Indian agents were responsible for creating unrest in Balochistan. He stated that cooperation could help both countries ease the situation.

Talking to reporters after presiding over an all-parties conference in Lahore, Sharif said it was decided in the meeting to cooperate with the federal government in the larger interest of Pakistan.

A top-level meeting chaired by Pakistan President Asif Zardari here yesterday reiterated the nation’s resolve to comply with the UN Security resolution against militant individuals and outfits.

It, however, decided that all actions against suspected terrorists would be taken under the country’s laws and no Pakistani citizens would be handed over to India or any other country and they would be tried in the country’s courts of law. Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani also attended the meeting.

Information minister Sherry Rehman later told reporters that the meeting also discussed ensuring strict security measures in the country following the ban and crackdown on militant outfits.

President Zardari said actions against these militant outfits were not taken under pressure from any side but for the sake of the country’s security as Pakistan itself is a victim of terrorism.

Sherry said the meeting reaffirmed resolve not to allow the use of Pakistan territory for terrorist activities against any country.

It was further decided that in the coming session of the National Assembly Prime Minister Gilani would take Parliament into confidence on the government measures against the militant outfits.

Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who had joined the mainstream politics in early 2007 renouncing politics of violence and became the Prime Minister of Himalayan nation in last August, has made very public and dramatic political volte-face by justifying the relevance of violence in the Nepalis politics.

Dahal said still there was need to educate people about the “positive aspects of violence” to safeguard the recent political outcomes.

He tried to glorify the decade-long bloodshed unleashed by the Maoists and said whatever political changes there had come about in the country so far had taken place with the help of violence, including the declaration of a federal democratic republic.

“We should not tell people lies about violence,” Dahal said, adding that, “If there is an attempt to take away people’s rights they will counter the attempt with violence.”

At a time when the major political parties mainly the Maoists main ruling party and the Nepali Congress the main opposition in the Constituent Assembly were locked horns over the integration of 19,600 Maoists combatants into the Nepal army, Dahal said the gun was in the middle at the moment. “There is a strong possibility that the gun will come into the hands of the people,” he said.

Maoist chairman warned, “If the gun goes back to the hands of the feudal and foreign agents, the people will have to pick up guns again and not plead to them,” however, another coalition partner CPN-UML leader Pradeep Gyawali said, “Violence can never be the choice of a democratic force or principle, and the gun can never be a decisive means for change.”

Gyawali had also said the present political change was a rejection of all kind of violence and the result of a decisive movement with broad participation of the people.

Kabul, December 13
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown today called for other NATO nations to do more to share the burden of fighting Taliban insurgents and stem the rising tide of violence in Afghanistan.

The United States is sending 3,000 extra troops in January to add to the 31,000 soldiers it already has in Afghanistan.

US President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to make Afghanistan a top priority and will have to decide whether to send 20,000 more US soldiers in the next 12 to 18 months.

Britain, the second biggest troop contributor to Afghanistan, has recently reinforced its 8,100 soldiers with 300 extra troops, but military commanders have made it clear British forces are already stretched and oppose sending more.

While 41 countries have troops in Afghanistan, some European NATO members do not allow their forces to operate in the south and east where almost all the fighting takes place and bar them from offensive operations.

‘’In future there must be a burden sharing and that is something that we will insist upon,’’ Brown told a news conference in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

‘’That means that other countries have got to play their part as well as Britain and America in making it possible for us to have the troops on the ground and the equipment on the ground that is needed,’’ he said.

Other European nations could provide more air support or financial assistance to the war effort if they are unable, due to political considerations, to put more troops in the ground, US officials have suggested in the past.

The 300 extra British troops, combined with Danish and Estonian troops, have launched a major operation to counter an October Taliban offensive near the provincial capital of the southern province of Helmand, British military sources said.

Britain has lost more than 130 troops in Afghanistan since the Taliban were toppled after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

Mostly based in the opium growing, Taliban stronghold of Helmand, troops say they have faced the fiercest fighting British forces have seen since the 1950s Korean War.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in Afghanistan on Wednesday that British, Canadian and Dutch forces in southern Afghanistan were holding their own, but that was not good enough.

If approved, the US plan is to send most of its extra troops to southern Afghanistan to try to reach a ‘’tipping point’’.

Between 6,000 and 10,000 extra US troops would be sent to Helmand province, a British military source said. ‘’They are going to be the difference now in Helmand,’’ he said.

Brown arrived in Kabul for talks with President Hamid Karzai after visiting the frontline in Helmand. He condemned the Taliban’s use of a child suicide bomber in an attack which killed three British troops yesterday. — Reuters