Editoral-Russia to have a free press

RUSSIA is rightly under constant criticism for suppressing free speech. Yet a resolution of its supreme court indicates a strikingly positive trend to develop the legal conditions for journalistic freedom.Court resolutions routinely explain statutory norms on topical legal issues to the country’s lower courts. Last week the supreme court unanimously adopted a resolution on the mass media. Its novelty is not just in being the first such to directly interpret media law: it is extraordinary, too, in its content — directing all courts to provide free...

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Editoral-The Chashma deal

PAKISTAN’S nuclear programme is once again under fire. This time the legality of its deal with China for two nuclear reactors ostensibly for civilian purposes is being questioned. The US has demanded an explanation from Beijing and has asked for details of the accord it concluded with Islamabad three months ago. It wants to be sure that China is not violating the international obligations it undertook when it joined the 46-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). The NSG is a regulatory body to oversee trade in nuclear fuel and technology to ensure...

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Editoral-OTHER VOICES - Middle East Press EU curbs

…RUSSIA has slammed the United States and European Union for bringing in fresh, unilateral sanctions against Iran. President Dmitry Medevdev, whose country had, under intense pressure from the United States, voted for the punitive international sanctions against Iran earlier this month at the United Nations, is upset that the new US-EU sanctions go beyond what had been sanctioned by the world body and target investments in Iran’s crucial oil industry and trade with the Islamic republic. …Russia and China … had decided to go with the US-sponsored...

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Editoral-Poor police performance

IT is generally assumed that the less than satisfactory performance of the police in protecting the lives and property of citizens is caused by the scarcity of human and financial resources. However, the budget books tell an entirely different story so far as the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) police is concerned. According to 2009 estimates, the total population of Islamabad was 1.21 million. In 2009-10, the total strength of the Islamabad Capital Territory Police was 10,700. This included 238 officers and 10,462 staff. The ratio of one policeman...

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Editoral-Descartes letter found

THE name Guglielmo Libri will mean little to anyone outside the inner circles of academia. But a mere mention of the 19th-century Tuscan noble and polymath to European scholars still has the power to provoke hand-wringing and despair. Count Guglielmo Libri Carucci dalla Sommaja was more than a respected scientist and a decorated professor of mathematics. He was also — and more notoriously — a book thief, guilty of intellectual larceny on an international scale. In the mid-1800s, Libri pilfered tens of thousands of precious manuscripts, tomes and...

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Editoral-A law unto themselves

It is unfortunate that a community that won public admiration during the 2007 lawyers’ movement for its efforts to restore the deposed judiciary should now be drawing criticism because of the irresponsible behaviour of some of its members. From the 2008 beating up of a former federal law minister in Lahore to subsequent incidents of thrashing policemen in Lahore and Islamabad, the behaviour of a number of lawyers has gone far beyond what is socially acceptable. Their actions have been tantamount to a wilful defiance of the law and violation of...

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Editoral-Terrorist watch list

That the US State Department has still not designated the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan as a ‘foreign terrorist organisation’ may seem astonishing. After all, whatever the legal and procedural steps involved, it seems inconceivable that any legitimate process for designating groups as terrorist organisations would not include the TTP on such a list. If it can be assumed that the Obama administration is dragging its feet on the issue — several senators wrote to Secretary Hillary Clinton last month requesting that the TTP be included on the State Department’s...

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Editoral-McChrystal’s blunder

It is inconceivable in Pakistan that a top general would be publicly reprimanded, and perhaps even fired, over comments made to the media. But things are done differently in the US where the military brass is answerable not only to the president but also Congress and the American people. What prompted Gen Stanley McChrystal, chief of the international forces in Afghanistan, to talk the way he did to the popular magazine Rolling Stone is difficult to say. Perhaps he is getting increasingly frustrated prosecuting a war with no definite end in sight....

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Editoral-Afghan war’s tipping point

THE contours of a confused end to the war in Afghanistan can be discerned now. After the failure of the operation in Marja, Helmand, the much-hyped operation in Kandahar may not prove more than a military exercise undertaken for the benefit of US voters to show that something far-reaching is being accomplished, the reality, of course, being very different. President Hamid Karzai has lost faith in his western supporters and has accused the West of instigating the attack on the recent loya jirga that he had summoned in Kabul to reach the Taliban....

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Editoral-Why the French crashed

ITHOUT wishing to sound too much like Rex Harrison, let me say this: why can’t the English be more like the French? There they hold bosses hostage until they accede to revolutionary demands, namely: 1) recognition that working on Friday afternoons or Monday mornings is an insult to everything the soixante-huitards fought for; and 2) the office must be airlifted next door to the boulangerie where they bake really good pain aux amandes.These life-affirming, economy-destroying attitudes also explain why the French football team has crashed in South...

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Conference by Sc of Pak

The Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) will hold an international jurists’ conference in the federal capital in the third week of September. Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, the association’s acting president Amanullah Kanrani said the chief justices of several countries, including the United States, and leading figures of the international legal community would participate in the conference.—Correspond...

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Gen McChrystal faces sack for unguarded remarks

The White House indicated on Tuesday that the top US commander in Afghanistan might lose his job for making derogatory remarks about President Barack Obama and his team.“The magnitude and graveness of the mistake here are profound,” said President Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibbs who repeatedly declined to assure the White House press corps if Gen Stanley McChrystal’s job was safe.“All options are on the table,” said Mr Gibbs when asked if firing the top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan was also an option.US Defence Secretary Robert Gates...

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Hafeez gives tough message in polite words

In polite words of Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, the government gave a tough message in the National Assembly on Tuesday: not to let “vested interests” block a reform of general sales tax (GST) and “take a stand” about loss-making state enterprises. Winding up a 12-day general debate on the new budget, the minister rejected fears of the parliamentary opposition and traders that a reformed GST, earlier proposed to be renamed as value-added tax, would increase prices, explaining that the move would actually reduce the tax rate to a uniform...

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China likely to go ahead with nuclear deal

China is likely to go ahead with financing the construction of two nuclear power reactors in Pakistan despite concerns from certain quarters, Chinese experts have said. A plan to build the reactors would be unveiled during a meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) being held in New Zealand, said an article published in the China Daily on Wednesday. “This is not the first time China has helped Pakistan build nuclear reactors, and since it will be watched by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the deal is not going to have any problems,”...

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Rs12.98 billion budget for Gilgit-Baltistan

The Gilgit-Baltistan government presented on Wednesday its first budget with an outlay of Rs12.984 billion and Rs6.404 billion non-development expenses.Finance Minister Mohammad Ali Akhtar told the Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly that Rs1.227 billion would be required to increase the salary of government employees by 50 per cent and medical allowance of employees up to BPS 15 by 100 per cent and higher pay scales by 15 per cent. He also announced a 50 per cent raise for police personnel and revision of their pay scales to bring them at par...

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UK says Iran gas pipeline Pakistan’s internal matter

Iran continued to dominate the political and diplomatic scene on Wednesday as Pakistan cautioned British Foreign Secretary William Hague that sanctions against the Gulf country beyond the ones mandated by the United Nations could have serious repercussions for Afghanistan and the Middle East. The warning, Dawn has learnt, was conveyed by Pakistani diplomats during their talks with Mr Hague, who is in Pakistan on his first visit as foreign secretary. According to Foreign Office sources, a significant part of the talks focussed on the latest UN sanctions...

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Obama sacked his top commander in Afghanistan

US President Barack Obama sacked his top commander in Afghanistan on Wednesday over insubordination, stressing that in a democracy institutions were stronger than individuals. Mr Obama appointed General David Petraeus his new commander in Afghanistan where the outgoing commander, Gen Stanley A. McChrystal, enjoyed much support, both among ordinary people and the rulers. “Today I accepted Gen McChrystal’s resignation as commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan,” declared President Obama in a brief address to the media...

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Pak-India poised to set peace agenda today

Foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan will meet here on Thursday to explore ways of overcoming mistrust and returning to peace talks. But expectations for a breakthrough are low. Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao arrived in Islamabad on Wednesday to set off the phased process for re-engagement agreed between Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and his Indian counterpart Dr Manmohan Singh during their meeting on the sidelines of the Saarc summit in Bhutan. Ms Rao, who is the most senior Indian official to visit Pakistan after the Nov 2008...

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Accord on 1,000MW electricity from Iran in Aug

Water and Power Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf will visit Iran in August to sign an agreement for importing 1,000MW of electricity.The decision about the minister’s visit was taken at a meeting between Mr Ashraf and Iranian Ambassador Mashallah Shakeri here on Wednesday. The ambassador briefed the minister on a power transmission line from Iran to Gwadar.Pakistan plans two projects for importing electricity from Iran. Work on a project to import 100MW for Gwadar has already been initiated. The $3.1 million project is scheduled to be completed by the...

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Duty on solar energy plants reduces

In order to minimize the persistent energy crisis in Pakistan, Ministry of Environment announced on Thursday lowering of duties that were imposed on solar energy plants.During a press conference held in Islamabad, Federal Minister for Environment Hameedullah Jan said that at present duty on solar energy products is 28 per cent which is to be reduced to five to six per cent.For that mater a summary will shortly be presented to the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC).Jan stated that after reducing the duties, solar energy products will be available...

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