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Pak govt challenges Saeed’s release in SC India, Japan to work together on climate change MJ’s memorial on July 7 |
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Insiders pose greatest danger to Pak nukes Top militant with India
link held Rahman honoured
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Pak govt challenges Saeed’s release in SC Islamabad/Lahore, July 3 The appeal, filed in the apex court by the Home Department of Punjab province, challenged the Lahore High Court’s order of June 2 that freed Saeed and his close aide Col (Retd) Nazir Ahmed from house arrest. The appeal noted that Saeed and Ahmed were originally detained in light of a UN Security Council resolution that declared the Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) a terrorist organisation. It said the government had evidence that the JuD had links with terrorist groups. The Punjab government sought the immediate detention of both Saeed and Ahmed as their freedom could create a law and order situation. The appeal said they needed to be detained for their own “protection”. Rana Sanaullah, the Law Minister of Punjab province, said: “We hope the federal government will assist us with complete evidence against the JuD leaders.” The federal government too would be filing a similar appeal “in a few days’, he said. Unlike in the past, when evidence against Saeed and the JuD was presented in-camera in the court, the proof should be made public to strengthen the government’s position, Sanaullah said. He said the Punjab government had prepared the appeal soon after the Lahore High Court’s decision to free Saeed, but had been awaiting the federal government’s nod to proceed in the matter. Saeed, also the founder of the banned Lashkar-e-Toiba, was freed by the Lahore High Court after he spent nearly six months under house arrest. The court had said the Pakistan government did not produce any evidence to link him to Mumbai attacks. Saeed and several of his close aides were detained in the wake of last year’s Mumbai attacks after his organisation was declared a front for the LeT by the UN Security Council. They were all subsequently freed. India had expressed concern at the delay by the Pakistani authorities in appealing against the release of Saeed. On June 23, a special court in Mumbai issued warrants for the arrest of Saeed and 21 others for alleged involvement in planning and executing the Mumbai attacks. The Punjab government’s appeal in the apex court against Saeed’s release came ahead of a meeting between Prime Ministers of the two country on the sidelines of the July 11-16 Non-Aligned Movement summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. — PTI
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India, Japan to work together on climate change Tokyo, July 3 External Affairs Minister SM Krishna, who is here on a four-day visit, held wide-ranging discussions with the Japanese side on a gamut of bilateral relations during the third strategic dialogue he co-chaired with his counterpart Hirofumi Nakasone. "We are making progress in our negotiations on a comprehensive economic partnership agreement. Foreign Minister Nakasone and I agreed on the necessity of concluding a high quality and mutually beneficial agreement," he said at a joint press conference with Nakasone.The two countries will hold further talks here later this month on the matter. On the issue of climate change which they identified as an "important global challenge," India and Japan hoped that all countries would participate constructively and work towards an "ambitious" outcome at a crucial meeting on a pact to replace the Kyoto protocol in Copenhagen later this year. During his talks with Krishna, Nakasone asked India to play a leadership role "even more positively and in a broader perspective" at the UN-sponsored 'COP 15' meeting on climate change in December to discuss a new agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol. India has been resisting pressure from the Major Economies Forum to agree to greenhouse gas emission reduction commitments in a declaration being prepared for the G-8 plus 5 summit in Italy next week. "I pointed out the significance of the Major Economies Forum in the process called the 'COP 15' and expressed my hope and expectation for India to exercise leadership even more positively and in a broader perspective," Nakasone said. Japan is keen to get India's cooperation on persuading industrialised and emerging countries to iron out differences over how to fight global warming ahead of the Copenhagen talks. The new pact, a successor to the 1997 Kyoto protocol, is controversial because key polluters like the USA and Europe want emerging economies to also help cut global gas emissions.Nakasone said he and Krishna agreed to step up dialogue on the issue of climate change.— PTI
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Los Angeles, July 3 Details related to the memorial, including how the fans may register for the tickets will be announced at a press conference today, the Los Angeles Times reported. The venue which is owned by AEG Live, the organisers of Jackson's comeback gigs at London's O2 arena, has a seating capacity of 20,000 and is expected to be packed to the full.Staples centre is also the site of Michael Jackson's last rehearsal for his comeback shows.Jackson died last Thursday of a suspected cardiac arrest weeks before his much awaited comeback. Reports suggest that AEG may put up giant screens outside the venue for the thousands who will not be able get inside as the event is expected to attract a massive gathering of pop star's fans. — PTI
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Insiders pose greatest danger to Pak nukes
Washington, July 3 “The Pakistani authorities have a dismal track record in thwarting insider threats,” wrote Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who served as a CIA officer for 23 years, in the July/August issue of Arms Control Today, published by the Arms Control Association. For example, the network run by the father of the Pakistani bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, channelled sensitive nuclear technologies to Iran, Libya, and North Korea for years under the noses of the establishment before it was taken down in 2003, to the best of their knowledge, he noted. “The Umma-Tameer-e-Nau (UTN), founded by Pakistani nuclear scientists with close ties to the Al-Qaida and Taliban, was headed by Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, who had been in charge of Pakistan’s Khushab reactor,” he said. Mahmood had discussed the Al-Qaida’s nuclear aspirations with Osama bin Laden, Mowatt-Larssen wrote. He also cites Mahmood as saying that bin Laden asked him how he could construct a bomb if the group already had the material. “It is stunning to consider that two of the founding fathers of Pakistan’s weapons programme embarked independently on clandestine efforts to organise networks to sell their country’s most precious secrets for profit,” he said. “There are troubling indications that these insider threats are not anomalies,” wrote Mowatt-Larssen, a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs, who until January 2009 headed the US Department of Energy’s intelligence and counterintelligence office. “In the Khan and UTN cases, the rogue senior officers and their cohorts in the nuclear establishment were not caught by Pakistan’s security establishment. It would be foolhardy to assume that such lapses could not happen again,” he said. The Pakistani military, intelligence, and nuclear establishments are not immune to rising levels of extremism in the country, Mowatt-Larssen said suggesting “there is a lethal proximity between terrorists, extremists, and nuclear weapons insiders”. Thus “the greatest threat of a loose nuke scenario stems from insiders in the nuclear establishment working with outsiders, people seeking a bomb or material to make a bomb. Nowhere in the world is this threat greater than in Pakistan”. As Pakistan moved forward to face an uncertain future, the government faced an ongoing challenge to its authority and myriad threats against which it must defend, the US expert said. —
IANS
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Top militant with India link held
Dhaka, July 3 He operated for two-and-a-half-years in Murshidabad, Nadia and Malda districts of West Bengal on the instructions of JMB chief Shaikh Abdur Rahman and his deputy, Siddiqul Islam alias Bangla Bhai. The police nabbed Shahadat on Wednesday who on return from India had emerged as the chief organiser of “Islam and Muslim”, a new offshoot of the JMB that is banned in Bangladesh. —
IANS
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Rahman honoured
Los Angeles, July 3 The Academy extended the invitations to 134 artists and executives chosen for their "contributions to theatrical motion picture" and Rahman was the only Indian on the list. The musician who is also called the 'Mozart Of Madras' has been invited for his work in “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Elizabeth”. —
PTI
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Tokyo, July 3
