2. Raisani wants mandate to hold talks with militants: By Saleem Shahid in Dawn, Aug 9
QUETTA, Aug 8: Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani said on Sunday he could bring the resistance forces in Balochistan to the table for talks if the federal government and other quarters concerned gave him the mandate to do this.
Talking to newsmen at the Chief Minister Secretariat, Nawab Raisani said he did not have the mandate of Islamabad to initiate talks for resolving the Balochistan issue.
He said without such a mandate it would be useless to hold an all parties conference because Baloch nationalist parties would not attend it. www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/national/raisani-wants-mandate-to-hold-talks-with-militants-980

3. Inter-city movement of 30 Ulema banned: By Mohammad Asghar in Dawn, Aug 9
RAWALPINDI, Aug 8: The Punjab government has banned inter-city movement of 30 Ulema during Ramazan in the province, Dawn has learnt.
Sources said DCOs of Lahore, Multan, Bahawalpur and other districts had been notified about the banned ulema, including Khateeb of Lal Masjid Maulana Abdul Aziz and Maulana Shabir Hussain Hafizabadi. DCOs have been directed to ensure the ban on the entry of ulema in and out of their respective districts.
Other ulema on the list include Maulana Mohammad Ahmed Ludhyanvi, Maulana Abdul Ghani, Ali Hassan Imami, Maulana Mohammad Hussain Nakashbandi, Maulana Abdul Rehman, Shaukat Raza Shaukat, Qari Ghulam Hashmi, Ghulam Asghar Naqvi, Maulana Mohammad Taufail, Maulana Mohammad Alam Tariq, Maulana Masood-ur-Rehman Usmani, Syed Irshad Hussain, Maulana Mohammad Ali Zakir, Qari Ghanzafar Ali, Syed Sajjad Hussain Shah, Allama Zaigham Abbas, Maulana Mohammad Taufail, BA Hijrah Shah Sikum, Allama Dildar Hussain, Maulana Masood ur Rehman Usmani, Maulana Abid Karim Nadeem, Maulana Ashraf Ali Zaigham, Maulana Abdul Rehman Nasir, Allama Ghulam Abbas, Maulana Usman Zia and Maulana Aurangzaib Farooqi.
Meanwhile, the Additional Inspector General of Police, Rao Muhammad Iqbal, has issued security plan for Ramazan. The police have been directed to get assurance from the mosque administrations that the only one gate would be used for exit and entry during Isha and Taraveh prayers. http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/local/islamabad/intercity-movement-of-30-ulema-banned-980

4. Ulema announce long march: report in Dawn, Aug 9
LAHORE, Aug 8: The Sunni Ittehad Council has decided to withdraw its support for the Punjab government and hold a long march from Data Darbar to Barri Imam in Islamabad on Oct 16 to protest the government’s failure to arrest the accused in suicide attack case.
This was announced by council president Fazle Karim at a peace conference here on Sunday to mark the chehlum of Data Darbar attack victims.
People from all the four provinces attended the conference held in front of the shrine. http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/local/lahore/ulema-announce-long-march-980

5.  First Pakistani Jihadi wanted by all: By Amir Mir in the News, Aug 09
LAHORE: The fugitive leader of the Harkatul Jihadul Islami (HUJI), Commander Ilyas Kashmiri, has become the first Pakistani Jihadi leader to have been designated by the United Nations and the United States as a ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorist’ for his alleged al-Qaeda connections.
And interestingly, Kashmiri is not only wanted by Pakistan and India for his alleged involvement in terrorist activities, but also by the United States. Before Kashmiri, it was Dawood Ibrahim, a billionaire gangster heading the ‘D-Company’ and wanted by India for the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, who had been declared a ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorist’ by the US State Department in October 2003.
Much to Islamabad’s embarrassment, the US Treasury Department, amongst its reasons for naming Dawood Ibrahim as one of the world’s worst terrorists, cited intelligence reports of his connections with al-Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Since then, Dawood, who India alleges is hiding somewhere in Pakistan, had gone underground. But he was not a Jihadi leader like Ilyas Kashmiri, a veteran of the Kashmir jihad who has spent several years in an Indian jail. He is the ameer of the Azad Kashmir chapter of the HUJI, whose Pakistan chapter is led by another al-Qaeda-linked jihadi, Qari Saifullah Akhtar, who had been named by Benazir Bhutto in her posthumous book as a principal suspect in the October 18, 2007 attempt to kill her in Karachi, a few hours after her homecoming from self-exile.
Labelling its 46-year old renegade chief, Kashmiri, a global terrorist, in conjunction with the United Nations, the United States Treasury Department declared on August 6 HUJI as a foreign terrorist organisation and slapped sanctions on Kashmiri while accusing him of providing logistic support to al-Qaeda for carrying out terrorist attacks.
Stuart Levey, US Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said in his official statement that Kashmiri has supported attacks against Pakistani government personnel and facilities, including the 2009 attack against the offices of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Pakistani police in Lahore, that killed 23 people and left hundreds injured.
Detailing his alleged acts of terror, the US official added that Ilyas Kashmiri directed the October 2008 assassination of the former commander of the Special Services Group (SSG) of the Pakistan Army, Major General Amir Faisal Alvi in Rawalpindi, in retaliation for his role in the fight against militants in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
“He also led an al-Qaeda-linked cell in planning the assassination of a senior general of the Pakistan Army (Ashfaq Parvez Kayani) – a plan that was eventually abandoned due to al-Qaeda’s strategic considerations”.
On February 25 2010, during the Indo-Pak foreign secretary talks, the Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao handed over three files containing dossiers of terrorists to her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir.
The files contained dossiers of Pakistani nationals allegedly involved in the Mumbai terrorist attacks. And Ilyas Kashmiri was one of them. The dossier detailed the activities and links of Kashmiri to the Mumbai attacks, claiming that his Brigade 313 was mentioned in conversations between the attackers and their Pakistan-based handlers.
The dossier also mentioned an under-trial American national David Headley’s meetings with Kashmiri in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan in February 2009 and thereafter in May 2009. Headley, now being tried by an Indian court for his alleged role in the Mumbai attacks, has already confessed to his involvement in the gory episode that killed 166 people, including six American nationals. India had sought from Pakistan the handing over of Kashmiri in a Delhi kidnapping case, not to mention the warnings issued by him, warning foreign players to stay away from sporting events in India such as the World Hockey Championship, International Premier League Season as well as the Commonwealth Games.
According to the US Treasury Department’s charge sheet against the HUJI chief, which was read out by Stuart Levey on August 6 in Washington, Ilyas Kashmiri is at the core of HUJI’s efforts to plan and carry out attacks against American forces and our allies.
“He is responsible for creating a cadre of militants to act on behalf of the HUJI and al-Qaeda. In acting together, the United States and United Nations are today taking another important step in combating the threat that al-Qaeda and its affiliated organizations pose to innocent people around the world.
Since 2001, Kashmiri has led HUJI training camps that specialized in terrorist operations, military tactics, and cross-border operations, including a militant training centre in Miram Shah, North Waziristan in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. In January 2009, a US federal grand jury in Northern District of Illinois indicted Ilyas Kashmiri for terror-related offences in connection with a terrorist attack against the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Denmark following uproar over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH).
In fact, Ilyas Kashmiri was arrested by the Pakistani authorities after the December 2003 twin suicide attacks on General Pervez Musharraf’s presidential cavalcade in Rawalpindi, but released a few weeks later due to lack of evidence.
He subsequently decided to shift his base to the North Waziristan region on the Pak-Afghan tribal belt and joined hands with the now slain ameer of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan Commander Baitullah Mehsud.
Having switched from the freedom struggle in Jammu Kashmir to the Taliban-led resistance against the Nato forces in Afghanistan, Kashmiri had established a training camp in the Razmak area of North Waziristan and shifted most of his warriors from his Kotli training camp in Azad Kashmir. He is still believed to be operating from somewhere in North Waziristan. http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=30621