The Balochistan Assembly has unanimously adopted a resolution reposing full confidence in the leadership of President Asif Ali Zardari and his policies. The resolution was moved by Mir Sadiq Ali Umrani, Parliamentary leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) , in the Assembly’s winter session.

Similar resolution has been passed by provincial chapters of the PPP while efforts are under way to get it through the other provincial assemblies, including Punjab, where the PPP is part of the coalition government led by Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N).

President Zardari has been under pressure in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling on the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) to step down on moral ground for having got corruption cases pardoned under the NRO. He has come out of the shell of the President House for the first time since becoming the President in September 2008 to dispel impression that he is under siege. For last over a week he has been addressing meetings, opening projects and meeting the media while making aggressive statements against his detractors and to boost morale of his party.

The resolution lauded the efforts being made by the President to resolve longstanding issues of Balochistan and other provinces. It welcomed the consensus NFC award and the Aghaz-i-Huqooq-i-Balochistan package, which it said bore testimony to the vision of the PPP’s co-chairperson. The resolution praised the efforts made by President Zardari to steer the country out of the present crisis and to meet various national and international challenges.

The move to get a favourable resolution passed by the Balochistan Assembly marks the beginning of what appears to be a much-thought-out campaign by President Zardari and his supporters to use democratic forums for countering the present political onslaught by what the President himself has described as ‘non-state actors’.

Moscow, January 6
A suicide bomber today blew up an explosives-laden car at a traffic police base in the restive Russian republic of Dagestan bordering Chechnya, killing at least six officers and injuring 14 others.

The bomber drove his car to the traffic police base in Makhachkala, the capital of Daghestan, when policemen were lined up for the morning briefing.

“The force of the explosion is estimated at 50-60 kg of TNT equivalent and the sound could be heard in different parts of Makhachkala,” a police spokesman told state-run Vesti news channel. However, the larger tragedy was averted as the entry was blocked by a police vehicle before the blast was triggered, the spokesman added.

“Thanks to the precautionary measures taken since last August’s similar attack on a police station in neighbouring Ingushetia, a larger loss of life could be averted,” he said, adding the officers killed were those who blocked the terrorist’s car.

President Dmitry Medvedev, who is on a New Year holiday to the south Russian skiing resort of Sochi on the Black Sea coast, has ordered Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev and FSB security chief Alexander Bortnikov to take the situation under control in Daghestan.

The Caucasian republic of Daghestan has been a scene of terror strikes and killing of security officers, including the police chief, last year, Vesti-FM radio said. — PTI

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has said that the grievances of Baloch people could not be addressed unless the murderers of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti were put to trial.

He stated this while addressing a Press conference at the residence of the provincial party leader Sardar Yaqub Nasir on Monday. The PML-N leaders Ahsan Iqbal, Pervez Rashid, Khawaja Saad Rafiq and Khuda-e-Noor were also present on the occasion. Strongly condemning the brutal murder of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, Nawaz Sharif said that he (Bugti) was a true Pakistani and had taken oath under Constitution of Pakistan several times.

“Assassination of Nawab Bugti on the basis of personal enmity is indeed highly condemnable,” he said, demanding that the killers of Nawab Bugti should be called to account in order to embalm. Nawaz Sharif said that there was no logic in apologising to the people of Balochistan for the past mistakes unless the real issues, including action against the killers of Nawab Akbar Bugti and recovery of missing persons, are addressed.

“If the wounds of the people of Balochistan are to be assuaged then social and economic justice must be done,” Nawaz said while talking to newsmen soon after his arrival in Quetta after 11 years. He said that Nawab Bugti was a pro-Pakistan politician and he had always worked for the protection of the Constitution. “It is totally wrong to kill a personality, who is the protector of the Constitution, for personal interests,” he said. He demanded that those involved in the killing of Nawab Bugti should be tried in courts.

Nawaz said the government should restore the trust of the angry people of the province on the federation, adding, “mere lip service would not work”. He said the steps taken by the government for the solution of the problems of Balochistan are not enough and urged for more measures in this regard. Replying to a question about the role of the PML-N in the present set-up, Nawaz dispelled the impression that his party was playing the role of a friendly opposition. The PML-N’s stand on the restoration of the judges, the NRO and corruption is very clear, he said. “We are firm on our stand on the 17th Amendment,” he added.

Nawaz recalled that Nawab Akbar Bugti, Sardar Ataulah Mengal and other Baloch nationalist leaders had supported the repealing of the 8th Amendment in the past. Earlier, when Nawaz Sharif arrived at the Quetta international airport, he was received by Balochistan CM Nawab Muhammad Aslam Raisani, provincial ministers and PML-N leaders. In the evening, Nawaz Sharif held separate meetings with chief of the Pashtoonkhawa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) Mehmood Khan Achakzai and the Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP) chief Talal Akbar Bugti.

A furious President Barack Obama on Tuesday said there had been unacceptable intelligence lapses that allowed a suspected terrorist to board a US-bound flight on Christmas Day and attempt to blow it up.

"The bottom line is this: The US government had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt the Christmas Day attack. But our intelligence community failed to connect those dots, which would have placed the suspect on the 'no fly' list," the president said in blunt remarks after a meeting with his national security team. "In other words, this was not a failure to collect intelligence; it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had. The information was there. Agencies and analysts who needed it had access to it. And our professionals were trained to look for it and to bring it all together."

The President, who was vacationing with his family in Hawaii at the time of the incident, had been criticised for not responding quickly to the attack. The suspect, Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear while on board a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. His attempt was foiled by fellow passengers who succeeded in subduing him. The incident has prompted stricter restrictions and additional security screening for people traveling from certain terrorist hot spots. People who are from or travelling from or through these countries are supposed to have full-body pat-downs and have their carry-on luggage checked: Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Yemen. The new rules also apply to US citizens traveling from these countries.

In another fallout of the Christmas day attack, the Obama administration announced that no Yemenis currently held at the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would be released in the foreseeable future. There are 92 Yemeni nationals in Guantanamo Bay. Forty of them were set for release before the attack. They are now likely to be transferred to a high-security facility being set up in Illinois. But Obama reiterated his commitment to shutting down the controversial prison in Cuba, which he described as a "tremendous recruiting tool for Al-Qaida."

Explaining his decision on putting off the transfer of the Yemeni detainees, he said it was always his intention to transfer detainees to other countries only under conditions that provide assurances that US security is being protected. He cited the "ongoing security situation" in Yemen while explaining his decision.

US intelligence agencies were aware that Abdulmutallab had travelled to Yemen and met with extremists there. Obama said the intelligence community also knew of other red flags — that Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula sought to strike not only American targets in Yemen, but the US itself, and that this terrorist group was working with Abdulmutallab. Obama said the failure to add Abdulmutallab to the "no fly" list shows that the system needs to be strengthened.

London, January 6
A slew of deadly diseases like AIDS and swine flu have transmitted from animals to humans due to climate change and dramatic environmental disruptions, scientists in the US have claimed warning that the phenomenon may continue in future.

“Dramatic changes to the environment are triggering major alterations to human disease patterns on a scale last seen during the industrial revolution,” said Montira Pongsiri, an environmental health scientist at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). “We appear to be undergoing a distinct change in global disease ecology. The recent emergence of infectious diseases appears to be driven by globalisation and ecological disruption,” he said.

Pongsiri and his colleagues examined five emerging and re-emerging diseases-malaria and West Nile disease (spread by mosquitoes), Lyme disease (spread by ticks), Hantavirus (spread by mice and rats) and schistosomiasis (spread by freshwater snails).

Changes in land use, farming practices and climate are behind the increasing number of outbreaks, they wrote in the journal ‘Bioscience’. The team observed that the rise of manufacturing and pollution levels increased the incidence of chronic diseases including cancer, allergies and birth defects.

At least 45 animal diseases have been identified and reported to the UN agencies in the past two decades and the number is expected to increase in the coming years. The HIV is the best known example of a disease passed from animals to humans which went on to cause the global AIDS pandemic.

The virus is presumed to have crossed from chimpanzees to humans in West Africa in the last century and more than 25 million people have since died from it. — PTI