Pakistan’s glamorous new foreign minister wows India

Posted By Robert Zeliger Wednesday, July 27, 2011 - 5:07 PM

She's young, stylish, sharp and pretty, and Indians are falling for her. Yep, it seems that Pakistan's new 34-year-old foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, has accomplished what years of tense diplomacy haven't been able to -- create some genuine goodwill between the two constantly sparring nations. In her first official visit today to India since taking over the foreign ministry last week, Khar met with her Indian counterpart, S.M. Krishna. The two agreed to boost security, trade, transportation, travel, and cultural links between the countries -- in what analysts called some of the most productive talks between the two sides since Pakistani militants killed 166 people in Mumbai three years ago. But it's her youth and glamour that are credited with creating a "fresh start atmosphere."  She later met with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
But who really cares what happened behind closed doors. More importantly: she got high marks for wearing Roberto Cavalli sunglasses, classic pearl and diamond jewelry, a blue designer dress, and toting an Hermes Birkin bag. And thus ladies and gentleman, a glamour icon is born. We give it three months before Vogue comes calling... wait, maybe two.
Indian papers and news programs today gushed over Khar, praising her beauty and style.  The Times of India headlined their front page story: "Pak Puts On Its Best Face." The Navbharat Times said the country was "sweating over model-like minister." The Mail Today said she had brought a "Glam touch to Indo-Pak talks" and asked, "Who says politicians can't be chic?" These are not the usual superlatives Pakistani diplomats are used to getting in the Indian press.
Of course, not everything was picture perfect. The Indian press did attack her for meeting with a Kashmiri separatist group later in the day.
But overall, it was hard not to sense the generational shift as Khar spoke about "a new generation of Indians and Pakistanis [who] will see a relationship that will hopefully be much different from the one that has been experienced in the last two decades" after meeting with the Indian foreign minister who -- through no fault of his own, save for his misfortune of being born 79 years ago -- did totally look like her grandfather.
 

 
As Seema Goswami, a leading Indian social commentator, put it, "She's incredibly young pretty, glamorous and has no fear of appearing flash. She wore pearls when she arrived and diamonds for the talks. We're so obsessed with her designer bag and clothes that we forget she first held talks with the Hurriyat [Kashmiri separatists]. She could be Pakistan's new weapon of mass destruction."

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Is America Caught In The Closed Mind Trap?

By: Paul Craig Roberts
Opednews.com July 27, 2011 at 00:04:48

A reader responded to my recent column about how the US president was becoming a Caesar with a question: "Wouldn't a Caesar be preferable to a democracy in which the people are too ignorant, disinterested, and stupid to engage in self-government?"

Before I became a widely read columnist with many reader responses, I would have disagreed with the reader's characterization of the American people. Today, I cannot answer the reader's question with a "no" as confidently as I would like.

I receive appreciative words from many readers who are well aware of what is going on. I also hear from many who are so partisan and have such strong emotional responses that they are unable to follow an argument. I don't know what percentage these groups comprise in the population, but there seem to be a number of Americans, both on the left and the right, who are prepared to censor and even to kill in order to defend their illusions and delusions.

I remain a suspect bogyman for some on the left, because of my association with the Kemp-Roth bill and Reaganomics. As I, and others, have explained so many times, Supply-Side economics reversed the monetary/fiscal policy mix in order to cure stagflation. But some leftists persist in their insistence that it was all a trick to cut taxes for the rich -- the rich being those with more money than they. A stressed-out $100,000 a year guy with a family in a high-cost city is thrown into the rich class with the hedge fund manager who paid himself one billion dollars.

To give the leftists their due, at least they know that I was a member of the Reagan administration. However, the right-wing zealots think that I am a pinko-liberal-commie.

Recently I wrote an article pointing out that the Republicans had picked a bad time, when the world was already concerned about US financial credibility, to make an issue over the routine increase of the debt ceiling, thus creating an impasse that threatens default. The Republicans see in the debt ceiling issue an opportunity to cut social spending as the price of allowing an increase in the national debt.

One can't blame the Republicans for trying to do something about the growth of the public debt. However, there is a risk in the Republican's intransigency, and that risk is that, thanks to presidential directives put on the books by President Bush, President Obama has the authority to declare the prospect of default a national emergency. Obama can simply set aside the debt ceiling limit and seize the power of the purse from Congress. The transformation of the president into Caesar would take another large step forward.

I wrote that I regarded this risk to be greater than the risk of additional public debt.

Several Republicans never reached the point of the article. I had taken for granted that everyone knew, especially Republicans, of the Republicans' concern with entitlements and unfunded liabilities. I assumed that Republicans were aware of their party's long history of reacting against the debts that are being piled upon our grandchildren, that they knew of the Grace Commission during the Reagan years, that they knew of Republican Pete Peterson's many dramatic warnings and proposals, that they knew of David Walker's accounting of the unfunded liabilities and the Republican Party's determination to do something about the heavily-hyped cost of Social Security and Medicare.

I assumed that Republicans knew that during the Reagan years David Stockman and Alan Greenspan had accelerated the payroll tax increases that President Carter had put in place to ensure the long-term viability of Social Security and had spent the money for current operating expenses, leaving unfunded IOUs in the Social Security "trust fund." I Assumed that Republicans knew that Republican Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Michael Boskin, and his Boskin Commission had reconfigured the Consumer Price Index in order to understate inflation and, thereby, reduce the cost-of-living-adjustments in Social Security checks.

I assumed that Republicans somewhere along the way had read at least one paper by a Republican policy analyst or think-tank member about the Social Security "Ponzi scheme" and the unaffordability of Medicare.

But, no, the Republican partisans who denounced me as an anti-Republican liberal propagandist for saying what is widely reported in the media -- that the Republicans want large cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as the price of their agreement to an increase in the debt limit -- know nothing whatsoever of their party's position on social spending. Apparently, they don't even watch Fox News.

These same partisans apparently have not noticed that the $1.2 trillion military/security expenditures are "off the table" when it comes to controlling spending. The Republicans and also the Democrats regard war as more important than old age pensions and medical care for the poor and the elderly. My Republican critics have also failed to notice that House Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor has made certain that tax increases on mega-high incomes are also "off the table." According to mega-billionaire Warren Buffet, in America today we have the situation in which Buffet's secretary pays a larger share of her income in taxes than does Buffet.

When I wrote that the Republicans' fixation with slashing the social safety net -- a throw-away line that is in every news report on the debt ceiling imbroglio -- could turn out to be a threat to the separation of powers, several Republican partisans took extraordinary offense. Only a no-good liberal propagandist would claim that Republicans wanted to slash the safety net. My statement of an obvious fact reflected in the Republicans' own proposals was all that it took for my critics to conclude that a notorious Reaganite was a Republican-hating liberal.

It is annoying that people who have no idea what they are talking about are so ready to pop off. But it is discouraging to a writer that people are so emotional that they cannot follow an argument. Discouraged, in part by block-headed readers and from censorship of my writings by various Internet sites, I quit my column a while back and signed off.

I was beset by thousands of emails pleading and demanding that I continue to write. I relented, and the emails from thoughtful readers keep me going.

It is rewarding to hear from intelligent and open-minded people. But as the weeks and months go by, I find it ever more tiresome to tolerate closed minds spewing hate and ignorance. I have become convinced that there are enough frustrated and ignorant people out there to constitute a movement for a Fuhrer.

Washington, which has produced a long list of disastrous policy decisions since the collapse of the Soviet Empire two decades ago, will no doubt continue making incredible mistakes about everything, and we will end up with a Caesar or a Fuhrer.

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Karzai outlines ‘conditions’ for future US ties

KABUL, July 26: Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday outlined conditions governing negotiations for a future strategic partnership with the United States as he met defence chiefs at his palace.
The new US ambassador in Kabul, Ryan Crocker, has said the US has no interest in permanent military bases in the country and does not want to project its influence in the region by remaining in Afghanistan.
But fears remain among many Afghans over any long-term American presence in the country following the departure of all foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.
Karzai said Afghanistan's conditions included foreign forces working within Afghan legal rules, US troops not taking prisoners or maintaining jails, and an end to controversial night raids by elite commandos.
He gave no details how the demands would shape negotiations, as he addressed heads of the army, police and intelligence services in a speech marking the end of the first phase of security transitions from foreign to local forces' control.
“There are many other conditions on the economy and sovereignty and all other aspects... and about respect to the Afghan constitution,” Karzai said.
“They also have their own conditions, but we haven't agreed on anything yet.” Seven parts of the country were ceremonially hand ed over from foreign to Afghan forces last week, although Nato officials say it will be up to two years before each area will assume full control for security and governance.
All Western combat troops are due to leave by the end of 2014.
“Nato and the international community are helping our country. But this will not go on forever and we don't want it forever,” Karzai said.
“We are not proud of that. The good news will come when we, Afghans, are protecting our own homeland.
“It will happen only with hard work and sacrifice. Especially from our Afghan forces,” he added.
Critics have said the process is premature because Afghan forces are not ready to hold off the Taliban, and they say it is motivated by a political timetable as coalition nations start to bring some of their troops home.
The deputy head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, Michael Keating, said in a statement on Tuesday that the focus on the first phase of transition must be used to improve Afghanistan's institutions.
“Transition will only succeed with adequate investment in development, governance and the rule of law,” he said.
“The momentum around transition must be captured to fast-forward efforts to strengthen Afghan institutional capacity, especially at the provincial level.”—AFP

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Agenda for reform

WITHOUT belittling the polit ical economy challenges that face reform in Pakistan, I believe that the time just may have come for long-overdue fun damental reforms, and not just because of the urgency of effect ing these changes.
In this writer’s view, there is a dis cernible shift in the public narrative (being admirably piloted by the media) which is demanding better quality gover nance (the core issue) and leadership.
With little sympathy shown by our external partners, there is a growing real isation that we have to solve our own problems and live within our means. There is a need for a just and fair society in which different income groups con tribute to the restructuring of the socioe conomic order based on their capacity to bear this burden. There is certainly a degree of exaggeration about the deep seatedness of these sentiments among the voting population but an inspired political leadership with ‘greyish’ credentials of principles and probity could snatch the baton and carry the populace with it in, say, five to seven years from now.
Most of the prescriptions for our economic travails are now well-known and do not require repetition. This article refers to what would be the minimum agenda while arguing for a change in the sequencing and some modification of content.
To begin with, I would privatise anything and everything in the public sector starting with government-owned banks, simply to protect public money (including depositors’) and ensure the safety, soundness and stability of the financial system.
Just three public-sector enterprises like PIA, Steel Mills and Railways are together losing a crore rupees a minute. The country cannot afford the continued haemorrhaging of public finances and the banking system. There is no option other than privatising these organisations or some of their services. Even when it comes to social services like education, poor households are voting with their feet and sending their children to low-fee-charging private schools, although government schools are free. The lessons from initiatives like the Punjab Education Foundation that private schools provide better quality education at one-seventh the cost in government-managed schools, are clear enough. The state should ensure that children get free education without being in the business of actually providing the service, unless we can change the incentive structure in the public schooling system, thereby making it a ‘game changer’ in terms of societal thinking. This is all doable. However, it is not the purpose of this article to elaborate on the necessary measures to be undertaken to that end.
We need to liberalise trade further to induce greater competition in the economy, thereby also preventing hoarding and cartel formation.
The fiscal deficit at the federal level after the recent NFC Award has become structural in nature, as a) all major expenditures, defence, debt servicing (including loans that financed physical infrastructure in provincial use), subsidies (especially for energy — the discussion follows) and administering the state require in excess of Rs2tr against the projected tax revenues of Rs1,952bn for next year, of which more than Rs1,150tr will be earmarked for the provinces; b) most tax bases that remain to be fully exploited like agricultural incomes, properties and economic services now lie in the provincial domain. Islamabad can only coax provincial governments into raising revenues from these sources through moral suasion.
Can one realistically dream of a reform-minded provincial government (challenging the rhetoric of some political parties on reform) to, say, take measures like taxing large farmers and property owners and passing legislation that declares all benami ownerships and transactions illegal (enabling, for tax purposes, the creation of databases of real owners’ property)? Through such reforms they could then shame others on their failure to mobilise revenues from such potentially lucrative bases.
To attend to the mother of all issues, the fiscal deficit, requires a structure that taxes all earnings, irrespective of source, equally. It’s not just large farmers in legislatures resisting taxation of their incomes, even bureaucrats renting out their properties in Islamabad to the diplomatic community are paying a tax that is 50 per cent less than those earning the same level of income from other sources.
However, in my view, the expenditure side in the fiscal equation demands closer attention. To this end we need to first abandon the contorted view of our importance (‘the world cannot ignore us’) because of our strategic location and also dump the old, failed policies, frameworks and concepts of a security state and strategic depth, since these are now costing us more than Rs830bn per annum. Thereafter, there is a need to reassess security-related funding requirements.
Next, we need to quickly phase out untargeted subsidies, especially for the farming community in the shape of direct and indirect subsidies on fertiliser (the latter through the under-pricing of gas) and for its wheat purchased at prices higher than in the international market. In fact, I would argue that it would be cheaper for public finances if we were to eliminate both subsidies as against levying GST on fertiliser and pesticides.
As part of the same effort, all subsidies on energy should be withdrawn for those consuming above lifeline rates. The concession of free provision of electricity to Wapda employees which is costing us taxpayers Rs35-40bn per annum, also needs to be withdrawn immediately. All this needs to be followed up by addressing the critical issue of electricity theft and non-collection of billings without disconnecting non-payers, the combined cost of which is in excess of Rs4 crore a minute. Pilferage, however, can only be tackled through privatisation of the management (with agreed targets), if not ownership, of electricity distribution companies. The purported plan of the government to restructure their boards, their membership and authority is not the solution.
Next, we need a rightsizing of government, especially at the federal level following the 18th Amendment. Merely surrendering posts as incumbents retire through natural attrition will be too slow a process. The golden handshakes and skill-enhancement efforts to enable this can always be financed.
Finally, apart from greater austerity (surrendering of all VIP planes, stopping the provision of bullet-proof cars to all and sundry, etc) there is a need to reorder our expenditure commitments. It is naïve to think that governments should do everything. Even the richest country in the world has to prioritise its spending to avoid waste of scarce resources by spreading them thinly. And, of course, such reordering is driven by political considerations. But the fact that we have to choose is unavoidable. For instance, it is a no-brainer that availability of reliable power is more important than roads for transportation. Road networks are needed to transport goods but only after they have been produced, which requires power.
To conclude, the time just may have come to initiate the process of deep structural reforms. Admittedly, however, for this the course of action to commence depends on the extent to which our political and dominant economic elite is not totally blind to changing realities that confront us as a nation and is willing to make some sacrifices in its own enlightened self-interest. ¦ The writer was until recently governor, State Bank of Pakistan.
Dawn News

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