Editoral-OHER VOICES - Pushto Press Peace in Balochistan

BALOCHISTAN Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani has reiterated that no military operation was under way in the province and that the law and order situation was better as compared to other places. Talking to media personnel, he said the Balochistan package had created employment opportunities … and the provincial budget was people-friendly. The chief minister said the government was planning to develop new roads and hospitals … [and] advised youngsters to avail job opportunities in the Frontier Constabulary and Pakistan Army. He advised youngsters...

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Editoral-Whaling talks collapse

THOUSANDS of whales will continue to be killed each year following the collapse on Wednesday of international negotiations to redraw whaling rules after two intense days of secret talks. Nonetheless, anti-whaling groups hailed the collapse as a success, as it means the ban on whaling — introduced 24 years ago but ignored by some nations — remains in place. Pro and anti-whaling countries failed to reach a compromise agreement at the meeting of the 88 member countries of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Agadir, Morocco. Acting IWC chairman...

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Editoral-Islam’s stress on environment

THE verse, “Corruption has spread in the land and the sea because of what they had committed” (30:41), seems to refer to the trespasses that human beings have committed against nature, leading the earth at a dizzying speed to an impending ecological disaster. Muslims need to look at the Islamic scriptures to determine their spiritual and ethical framework regarding responsibility towards preserving the environment. In Surah Ibrahim it is said: “God is He who created the heavens and the earth, and sent down water from the sky, then brought forth...

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Editoral-UK budget to ‘hit the poor harder’

BRITAIN’S leading experts on tax and spending on Wedneday strongly challenged UK chancellor (finance minister) George Osborne’s claims to have delivered a “tough but fair” budget, concluding that the measures in the emergency package would hit the poor harder than the rich. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the chancellor and the deputy prime minister and leader of the UK coalition’s junior partner Nick Clegg could only assert that the better off were the big losers from the austerity move by including reforms announced by Labour, such as the...

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Editoral-A progressive budget

There are a number of pleasant surprises in Gilgit-Baltistan’s first budget. Firstly, the territory has divided the Rs12.98bn budget almost down the line, with Rs6.4bn earmarked for non-development expenditure and the rest going towards development spending. The creation of 1,500 new jobs has been announced. But perhaps the most welcome aspect is that a quarter of the budget for FY2010-2011 has been set aside for education. The number of scholarships for students from Gilgit-Baltistan studying in other parts of Pakistan has also been doubled. This...

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Editoral-Websites’ blockade order

It is hard to grasp the logic behind the Lahore High Court’s decision to block search engines that allegedly carry blasphemous material. Anyone familiar with the Internet knows that search engines are essentially devoid of content: they merely throw up thousands of related web links in response to a user’s specific query. This means that a person affronted by ‘blasphemous’ material unearthed by, say, Google deliberately looked for it in the first place. No one forced him or her to visit an ‘offensive’ site and it seems implausible to argue that...

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Editoral-Pakistan-India ties

Not much was expected in terms of public announcements from the meeting of the foreign secretaries of Pakistan and India yesterday in Islamabad and not much was offered afterwards for public consumption other than blandishments. With their bosses, the foreign ministers, set to meet on July 15, such meetings are invariably about setting the stage for higher-level interactions. From the perspective of nudging forward Pakistan-India relations, the meeting to be held between Interior Minister Rehman Malik and Home Minister P. Chidambaram may hold greater...

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Editoral-Politics of ethnicity

POLITICALLY motivated targeted killings, sectarian violence, forced occupation of other people’s property, illegal bulldozing of poor settlements, a growing crime rate and an increasingly helpless and corrupt administration are making Karachi ungovernable. There are many local, national and international causes for this state of affairs. However, a major cause is the politics of ethnicity and the close link it has unwittingly acquired with the trillions that can be made from the land and real-estate business. According to the 1998 census, 48 per...

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Rental P.Plant fails test run, loss Rs225m

A 150 megawatt rental power plant (RPP) installed in Samundri has consumed furnace oil worth Rs225 million provided by the government over the past year, but is yet to pass a reliability test run mandatory to join the national transmission system. Because of its old age, the plant manufactured by China in 1958 failed its first test conducted on June 4 by a Dutch engineer hired by the Asian Development Bank. The engineer gave another chance to the Techno E-Power, the company which had installed the plant, suggesting that it should replace old equipment...

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SC orders EC for fake degree MPs

June 24: The Supreme Court ordered the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Thursday to initiate action against legislators accused of having used fake degrees to contest the election. Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry issued the order after writing a detailed judgment to justify rejection of an appeal of Rizwan Gill, PML-N’s former member of the Punjab Assembly from PP-34 (Sargodha VII), for possessing fake bachelor’s degree.The commission is required to depute an officer to supervise the entire exercise, while sessions judges who will...

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Foreign secretaries swap proposals

The foreign secretaries of Pakistan and India swapped on Thursday proposals for addressing the issues constraining bilateral ties, as the two countries prepared for a long haul to address mutual mistrust. While Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna are set to meet in Islamabad on July 15, it was evident after the secretaries’ parleys that the return to peace talks, suspended in November 2008 in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, would not be happening soon. But, more worrying was a warning from...

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US Senate approves Iran curbs

The US Senate on Thursday approved tough new unilateral sanctions aimed at squeezing Iran’s energy and banking sectors, which could also hurt companies from other countries doing business with Tehran. The Senate passed the bill 99-0. The House of Representatives was expected to follow suit later in the day. Then the measure will go to President Barack Obama for his assent. Congress intends to pressure Tehran into curbing its nuclear programme. Lawmakers from both parties have been pushing for months to tighten US sanctions on Iran. At the Obama...

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Pakistan-Afghanistan anti-terror cooperation

akistan and Afghanistan agreed on Thursday to enhance their cooperation in combating terrorism and extremism for the sake of regional security and development. Addressing a joint press conference with Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi after a meeting, Afghan Foreign Minister Dr Zalmai Rasoul said that peace and security in Pakistan and Afghanistan were interlinked and they should cooperate with each other to achieve shared goals. Dr Zalmai said his government was ready for a rapprochement with reconcilable Taliban militants to bring the nine-year-old...

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