Pakistan Information & News

Prisoners

JODHPUR: By the removal of cases through the central and the state administration against the 51 Pakistani nationals suffering in the Jodhpur Central Jail for the past 7 months, the frightening curse for the prisoners has finally revive an end.

All of them were detained from Munabao in April and May while returning to Pakistan, on charges of tamper with their visas. The detainees comprised 25 women, 22 men and 4 minors, the relatives of whom have been running from pillar to post to get them acquitted.

All of them had come to India by Thar Express and spent the stipulated time in India meeting their relatives. But when they were leaving India, on chekcing their visas it was found out that the visitors had tampered with the visas. Munabao is the last station on Indian side and these people were held on charges of tampering and sent to Jodhpur Central Jail.

All of them were arrested at different intervals. The first batch of 16 Pakistanis was arrested on April 19, second batch of seven was arrested on April 26, third batch was arrested on May 3, fourth batch May 10, fifth batch on May 17, sixth batch on May 24 and seventh on May 31. Similarly four arrests were also made from Kutch in Gujarat on April 27 and six arrested from Attari border in Amritsar on May 1. Those detained at Attari have been ordered to be released but those in Kutch are still awaiting the release orders.

DSP (CID), Hem Singh Charan said, “During checking their visas at the immigration counter of Munabao, it was found that their visas had been tampered with. Once this was noticed an FIR was lodged with the GRP, who arrested them and produced them before the Jodhpur Railway Court, which sent all of them to jail.”

He added that the visa limit, which is 45 days, was found to have been extended for in these cases and many were recommended for exemption from the police inquiry regardless of their age. But during interrogation, it was found that all this tampering had been done by their agents in Pakistan who took advantage of their ignorance. These people were heavily charged for this.

The counsel for these detainees, Sandeep Mehta also said that all of them have been found innocent and the central government has directed the state government to withdraw the case and release them.

According to Charan, all of them will be deported on Friday, the scheduled departure of the Thar Express. “We have started completing all the formalities for this . The matter was pursued by the higher authorities of the foreign ministries of both the countries in New Delhi. After a series of meetings and hearings in the railway court, finally the government decided to withdraw cases against them considering them innocent,” said Charan.

Shah Mahmood Qureshi

Discussion to media at Multan Airport, Foreign Minister, Shah Mahmood Quraishi said, “We are ready to completely lend a land with India, but India should give real proofs. Foreign minister said we have all the potentiality for protection and the Pakistan Armed Forces are completely prepared for resistance.

When question asked, Shah Mahmood Quraishi said that the news about prime minister under duress for acceptance was meager rumours. He further said that President’s visit to Afghanistan couldn’t take place due to bad weather, but the President would soon go to Afghanistan. To another question, he replied that Pak-Afghan ties would be seen taking much optimistic turn in the days to come.

Pranab Mukherjee

GANGTOK: India on Friday said it was obliged to “consider the entire range of options that exist” with the failure of its neighbours to deliver on its promise of not supporting terror activities.

Terrorism remains a scourge for our region. If a country cannot keep the assurances that it has given, then it obliges us to consider the entire range of options that exist to protect our interests and people from this menace,” external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee said, without naming Islamabad.

“We have made repeated appeals to our neighbours over the years to ensure that they do not provide support to terrorist activities and to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure but our pleas have been ignored in spite of assurances given by them,” Mukherjee said.

He said this in his message from New Delhi to the international conference on ‘Sub-regionalism Approach to Regional Integration in South Asia: Prospects and Opportunities’ here.

Pak-Indo

WASHINGTON: India might have ruled out the martial alternative against Pakistan in the result of Mumbai terror attacks but the worldwide intelligence community continues to suppose that strikes in PAK and somewhere else could still occur.

International intelligence service Stratfor, in its most recent report, said, “Indian armed operations against targets in Pakistan have actually been prepared and wait for the indication to go onward.”

It added, “These most probable would take the form of one-sided accuracy strikes inside Pakistan-administered Kashmir, the length of with particular forces action on the ground in Pakistan proper.”

The private sector intelligence service said that dissimilar the huge movements of 2002 during Operation Parakram, India’s preparations this time were more under the radar and not able to be seen to the earth at large. Its only sign was the fact that the Border Security Force (BSF) has been put on high alert on the western sector as well as the eastern sector — this paramilitary force’s main permission would be to put off penetration.

“Sources have signed to Stratfor that New Delhi is going through the political motions in order to give Pakistan the chance to take care of the militant problem itself — but the Indians know that Islamabad has neither the will nor the ability to speak to their concerns,” Stratfor said.

Three weeks after the attacks, India has gone out of its way to restore confidence everyone that it is not thinking of military action on Pakistan. This was most recently conveyed by Indian high commissioner to Pakistan Satyabrata Pal to Awami National Party chief Afsandyar Wali Khan in Islamabad earlier this week. But India continues to tell all its global interlocutors that its endurance will not last long, particularly if Islamabad cannot onslaught on terrorism.

India’s actions therefore far have been to put up a kind of worldwide agreement that the attacks were sourced in Pakistan. It has led to an enormous gush in international force on Pakistan to “do more” to fight terrorism. Almost every member of the global community also believes that the next attack in India would see the gloves come off.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon

NEW YORK: UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has advised India and Pakistan to determine all exceptional issues throughout dialogue, as he fated last months’s attacks in Mumbai.

“They are two big neighbouring countries and they should preserve and get better their connection through incessant compound dialogue which they have initiated, through joint respect and sympathetic,” he told his year-end press conference at UN Headquarters in New York.

At the same time, the secretary general said the view of the worldwide community and the United Nations was very clear that intimidation could not be defensible under any state of affairs, and harassed the need for all countries to fight terrorism.

Responding to a question by a Pakistani correspondent about the exacerbation of tensions in the subcontinent following the raid by Indian warplanes into Pakistani territory and India’s attempt to compress a resident peaceful defiance movement in occupied Kashmir, Ban said there had been some periods when India and Pakistan had been at war and there were tension over some issues like Kashmir.

“Peace between the two countries will have great implications not only in the sub continent, but also throughout the world,” Ban added

Sean McCorMack

WASHINGTON: United States said Friday that nothing was discussed to announce Pakistan “A terrorist-assisting country”.

Responding to a question, Sean McCormack, spokesman of U.S. States Department, said during a press conference in Washington, though Pakistan-based terrorist group Jamaat-ud-Dawa was purportedly concerned in the Mumbai carnage, nothing discussed as to think Pakistan, a terrorist-assisting country.

He comprehensive U.S. pleasure on Pakistan government’s choice to prohibit terrorist outfit however, he said, the war on terror across the world needs to be monitored intimately.

Responding to another question he said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would meet Britain’s Foreign Secretary in United Nations next week and predictable that the anxiety between Pakistan and India would likely come under conversation.

Shah Mahmood Qureshi

ISLAMABAD: Foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said that Pakistan would not permit to draw on its country for terrorism.

Generous the strategy declaration at the foreign office, he said that India did not show any proof of the Mumbai attacks in spite of Pakistan’s demand.

He said that Pakistan is itself a sufferer of terrorism and it is making solemn efforts for the abolition of terrorism in the county.

The foreign minister told that investigations against the Jamaat-ud-Dawa are by now going on but rock-solid evidences are necessary for additional investigations concerning the Mumbai attacks.

He said that Pakistan would itself address all matters connecting to terrorism according to the law.

Condoleezza Rice Manmaohan Singh

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has arrived in New Delhi on Wednesday amidst rising anxiety flanked by India and Pakistan subsequent the attacks on Mumbai.

Speaking to reporters, she said Pakistan should show a “actual intelligence of clearness and importance” in implementing its assurance to undertake terrorism in the wake of Mumbai terror attacks and that will be its message to the management in Islamabad.

“I would desist from speculating from what Pakistan will do on the specific request (of India for handing over its fugitives based in that country).

“What has to happen is there has to be a real sense of transparency, real sense of act and real sense of urgency because these are extremists who have the same purpose and same objective and that is to terrorise and send message to states around the world,” US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Rice, who will have meetings with her complement Pranab Mukherjee and later call on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was asked about what the US thought that Pakistan would do on India’s request to hand over fugitives based in that country.

Rice, who will go to Islamabad from India, said Pakistan needs to act with necessity and resolution.

“This message has been conveyed and will be conveyed (to Pakistan),” she said adding extremists have done “enormous smash up” to Pakistan too.

She said countries like US, Britain and India have “great interest in getting to the bottom of this and bringing people to justice and we have great interest in avoidance (of terror attacks)”.

“That would be my message. I don’t want to go into what Pakistan may or may not do. I am going to take Pakistan’s stated commitment to get to bottom of this and make them know that they are enemies of Pakistan as well as India,” she said.

Asked whether the US knew about the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attacks like the Lashkar-e-Taiba which functions under different names in Pakistan and what is the message she would give to Islamabad, Rice said, “I have already sent a message and that message has been received favourably by Pakistan which is that whatever these leads, people have to be brought to justice.

“Government will need to make certain that they are doing every thing to garner information so that they prevent further attacks,” she said.

White House

WASHINGTON: The United States this week objected to Chinese tactics to build two nuclear reactors in Pakistan near Chashma.

Leading Pakistani officials announced last month that China had agreed to build two supplementary reactors at Chashma, where Beijing has already built one nuclear power station and is erecting another. The previous projects were dignified before China joined the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group, the body that sets nuclear deal strategy.

Nuclear Suppliers Group rules bar sales of responsive nuclear technology and resources to nations, such as Pakistan, that have not joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation agreement and do not permit worldwide monitoring of all their nuclear activities. Earlier this year, the group agreed to excused India from the sales ban, opening the door for New Delhi to pay for civil nuclear technology from the France, Russia, the United States and others.

“The U.S. position is that cooperation on the construction of two new reactors, Chashma III and IV, would be inconsistent with the commitments China made at the time of its adherence to Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines in 2004,” said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Reynolds in correspondence this week to Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.). Reynolds was responding to a letter Markey wrote last month to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressing concern about the reactor deal.

“At that time, China’s representatives detailed in a statement China’s ongoing nuclear cooperation with Pakistan that would be ‘grandfathered’ upon China’s adherence; nothing in that statement permitted construction of reactors beyond Chashma I and II,” Reynolds stated.

“Any new cooperation, therefore, would require consensus approval by the NSG for an exception to the guidelines,” he continued. “Although Pakistan’s energy needs are real and increasing, we believe Pakistan’s proliferation record would make NSG consensus difficult where China to request an exception.”

Markey praised the State Department opinion and referred to a multinational nuclear smuggling ring once led by top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

“Pakistan is responsible for more nuclear proliferation than any other single country; nuclear cooperation is off the table,” he said in a statement yesterday.

“There is no doubt whatsoever that international nonproliferation rules bar China from providing Pakistan with new nuclear reactors,” Markey added. “This is clear from a plain-language reading of the Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines, and I am very pleased that the Bush administration has agreed with this view.”

“China should not violate its international obligations by selling new nuclear reactors to Pakistan. The United States has clearly stated that such a sale would be against international nonproliferation rules, and I hope other countries stand up to deliver the same message,” he said.