Pakistani Politics

The story of how the head of the country’s judicial pyramid, the chief justice of Pakistan, using the services of a key officer working for the prime minister, tried to influence and stop the embarrassing story of his daughter’s FSc marks from being published, needs to be told.

One quiet night, four days before this newspaper headlined the grave misuse of powers by the Federal Board of Islamabad, this correspondent was taken by the press secretary to the prime minister to meet the Chief Justice, Abdul Hameed Dogar, to his Islamabad residence, after I refused to oblige the press secretary and stop the story.

The PS argued for the CJ and I offered not to file the story if his facts were found correct. I said that I am even willing to talk to the chief justice on the issue. After I made this offer, he asked me to rush to the Prime Minister House immediately but later called me that we both would be meeting the chief justice at 9:15pm at the CJ House on Friday Nov 21. We met him and stayed with him for over two hours.

Read the rest of this entry »

President Asif Ali Zardari had telephonic conversations with the French and Afghan presidents on the situation in the region, especially the heightened tension in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.

In his discussions with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the regional situation and bilateral matters came under discussion. A presidential spokesman said during the conversation with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the two leaders agreed to meet early next year.

The French leader also expressed his support to democracy in Pakistan. British Foreign Secretary David Milliband also called President Asif Ali Zardari on Sunday evening over the phone and discussed with him the situation in the region.

Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director-General and Pakistan Army spokesman Maj-Gen Athar Abbas said on Sunday that the Army had not found any solid evidence of unusual military movement by India on the international border.

Talking to newsmen, he said the Pakistan Army was ready for national defence and to tackle any untoward situation on the western border. He said the Army was closely monitoring Indian military movement on the international border, but no unusual activity was found. He advised the nation not to worry about India’s reported ambitions.

“Our intelligence sources have also told us that no such directives were issued by the Indian government to increase the number of Indian troops on the Pak-India border,” he said.

Read the rest of this entry »

Pakistan would divert troops to its border with India and away from fighting militants on the Afghan frontier, if tensions erupt in the wake of the attacks on Mumbai, a senior Pakistani security official said on Saturday.

The next two days would prove crucial to relations between the nuclear-armed rivals, a second official said, after India blamed “elements” from Pakistan for the coordinated assault on its financial capital.

“If something happens on that front, the war on terror won’t be our priority,” the senior security officer told journalists at a briefing.

“We’ll take out everything from the western border. We won’t leave anything there.”

The senior officer described the communication received from New Delhi notifying Pakistan of suspicions of a Pakistani link to the attacks on Mumbai as “well within limits”.

Read the rest of this entry »

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s not much publicised telephone call to President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday evening is understood to have led to the government’s hasty announcement on Friday to send the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to New Delhi to help in the probe into the Mumbai terrorist attacks for which the Indian government pointedly blamed Pakistan.

Rice’s call to the president within 24 hours of the Mumbai massacre was prompted by the top Indian leadership’s clear signal to the US President George W Bush of evidence linking it to Pakistan, according to credible sources.

The Americas Division at the Foreign Office had no clue about the content of the conversation the two leaders had, indicating that the call was directly channelled through Pakistan’s embassy in Washington, more specifically Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani. Neither the Foreign Office nor the US Embassy in Islamabad issued any statement after the call.

Read the rest of this entry »

Terming the situation very serious, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Saturday said India must act to defuse severe tension that has flared after the militant assault on Mumbai.

He was addressing a press conference here at the Foreign Office after the federal cabinet held crisis talks about growing tensions over Indian accusations that attackers originated in Pakistan or had links to Pakistan.

Adviser to the PM on Interior Rehman Malik and Adviser on Security Mahmood Ali Durrani were also present at the press conference.

Qureshi said: “It is in Pakistan’s interests and in India’s interests to defuse the situation. Lowering of tension is essential.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh directly told his Pakistani counterpart on Friday that some Pakistani elements had sent the weapons used in the Mumbai terrorist attacks from Karachi and to sort this out, the ISI chief should immediately rush to India.

Talking to The News in his office at the Prime Minister House, Yousuf Raza Gilani narrated the whole story of how the Indian prime minister had actually made this request during their telephone talk.

The ISI director-general will be sent to India in the light of the two-year-old agreement between the two countries inked during the regime of Gen Pervez Musharraf, which requires a country to seek help of the other or use information and intelligence in their war on terrorism.

Read the rest of this entry »

A number of former Army generals and political leaders belonging to opposition parties on Friday bitterly criticised the government for hastily acceding to the New Delhi’s demand of sending the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) director-general to India and termed the decision bowing down to India.

“Former military dictator Pervez Musharraf had bowed down to the US immediately after 9/11 and had let the nation down and now the sitting rulers have humiliated the nation by bowing down to India,” said Lt-Gen (retd) Hamid Gul, former chief of ISI, while commenting on the development.

“We are losing our position. The decision of sending the ISI director-general to India should have been taken through diplomatic channels,” he added.

Read the rest of this entry »

National Assembly Speaker Dr Fehmida Mirza on Friday intervened in the FSc marks saga of Chief Justice Dogar’s daughter by illegally cancelling a meeting of the NA standing committee, which was to be held on Friday.

The National Assembly Secretariat formally wrote to the committee that its ongoing meeting to probe the issue of awarding illegal marks to the daughter of the chief justice had been cancelled.

But, according to the rules of the National Assembly, the standing committee meetings are called and prorogued only by chairmen of committee and that the speaker could neither intervene in the proceedings of any meeting nor cancel or postpone any ongoing meeting.

Read the rest of this entry »

Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar on Thursday said his country had played no role in terrorist attacks in Mumbai that killed more than 125 people and injured hundreds more.

Ahmed Mukhtar was responding to an assertion by India’s military that the militants who conducted the attacks in the southern India city had come from Pakistan. “In previous cases, they have acted like this, but later, it all proved wrong,” Mukhtar told reporters, referring to previous claims from India of Pakistani involvement in terrorist attacks.

“We are very much positive that Pakistan is not involved in this,” the defence minister said, adding that he would wait to see if accusations of Pakistani involvement also came from the Indian government. “We are worried over this, they have suffered a big damage,” he added. “In our country also such things are happening as we are fighting a war against terrorism.”

Read the rest of this entry »