Pakistan

Press Round up July 19

1. Do more against terrorism: Hillary
ISLAMABAD: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Sunday called for “additional steps” from Pakistan against terrorism, ahead of talks aimed at bolstering ties and securing firmer support for the Afghan war.
“There are still additional steps that we are asking and expecting the Pakistanis to take,” she told the BBC after her arrival. Clinton noted that Washington and Islamabad had “increased our cooperation, deepened our relationship, when it comes to fighting terrorism.”
“But there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that should an attack against the United States be traced to be Pakistani it would have a very devastating impact on our relationship,” she added.
A Pakistani-American arrested over the botched car bombing in New York’s Times Square in May allegedly received explosives training from experts linked to the Pakistani militant group the Tehrik-e-Taliban, in December 2009.
The group operates from the tribal zones of Pakistan, considered by Washington to be the global headquarters of the Pakistani Taliban and their allies in al-Qaeda, as well as a base camp for the Afghan Taliban.
Clinton said all the groups were linked, and called on Pakistan not to distinguish between them. She confirmed that Washington planned to formally designate Pakistan’s Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organisation.
The Haqqani network is battling coalition troops in Afghanistan.Clinton is due to hold meetings on Monday with high-levelpolitical and military figures to further a “strategic dialogue”, and announce details of a huge aid deal aimed at chipping away at anti-American sentiment in Pakistan.
Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi will meet Clinton on Monday to reconvene the strategic dialogue started during his visit to Washington in March.Since then 13 working groups covering topics ranging from development to defence have been set up to find areas for possible cooperation, and their progress will be reviewed by Clinton and Qureshi.
The US Special Representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke said the dialogue was delivering important changes to the US-Pakistan relationship. “The evolution of the strategic dialogue and the fact that we’re delivering is producing a change in Pakistani attitude, first in the government, and gradually, more slowly in the public opinion,” Holbrooke said.
“This change is of strategic importance because it’s enabling us to get to move forward on our additional efforts on counterterrorism and in terms of working together in the tribal areas.”In a statement from his ministry, Qureshi said Clinton’s visit “would help give further impetus to the Pakistan-US partnership” and welcomed US engagement in development projects.
Clinton’s visit comes ahead of her trip to Afghanistan on Tuesday for a major international donor conference, and as Washington continues to push Islamabad for further steps to rid its western border of militants.
Reuters adds: US officials kept details of Clinton’s visit secret prior to her arrival amid sharp security concerns following a wave of suicide bombings and militant attacks in Pakistan itself.
Online adds: Sources told Online that Pakistani political leadership would brief the US secretary of state on talks with India and the deadlock in the talks created by India. During the Strategic Dialogue that was launched in Washington on March 24-25, 2010 Pakistan would try to convince US to increase investment in the power and water sectors.
Sources said Pakistan would adopt a decisive stance on India’s violation of Indus Waters Treaty and would demand US to play its role in this regard. Pakistan during the Strategic Dialogue would also demand an increase in aid being given by the US under the Kerry-Lugar Law. http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=30151

2. US reluctant to help Pakistan in execution of mega projects
By Mehtab Haider in The News, July 19
ISLAMABAD: Although US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is going to unveil here today (Monday) those projects which will be funded under $7.5 billion Kerry-Lugar Law over the next five years but Washington is not ready to help Islamabad in execution of mega projects in the most prioritised areas and funding will be made available largely to minor and medium size projects, it is learnt.
A senior official of the government told The News on Sunday that the US seemed reluctant to provide financial assistance for much needed construction of Bhasha Dam in order to remove woes of the energy deficient country. “Why the US does not help us for establishing thermal power plant as one million dollar could translate into generating one megawatt electricity and by spending $1.5 billion per annum Washington can provide a gift of 1,500MW power,” the official questioned.
In case US raised the issue of transparency in procurement then they should purchase thermal power plant by themselves and install it anywhere feasible for adding electricity into the main grid of the country, the official said.
The official said that US should help Pakistan for building Bhasha Dam, but so far no interest was shown by it to finance this project.
The consultants were hired for conducting studies so the consultant mafia that provided cut paste solution will be the major beneficiaries of upcoming US funding. There is need to evolve such a mechanism through which money could be utilized for providing benefits to the poor masses rather than benefiting few hundreds. The provision of benefit to large segment of society will help curbing anti-America sentiments in Pakistan.
A senior official of Planning Commission told this scribe that several meetings were held between the both sides to finalise the projects that would be financed under Kerry-Lugar Law but every time differences of opinion existed over them in terms of priorities set by Pakistan.
If USA wants to award contracts to its own companies and individuals and then they would hire services of Pakistanis at second stage, in such scenario the administrative cost will be much higher for utilizing these funds, the official said. http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=30166


3. Musharraf plans return, looks to Army for security, Attacks Nawaz, Zardari policies
By Rauf Klasra in The News, July 19
LONDON: Former President General (retd) Pervez Musharraf finally kicked off his campaign to return to Pakistan as he launched an attack on Saturday from Dubai against his political rivals — Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari — and their poor governance and said the Army would provide him security on his return within coming months.
Musharraf said if the military was under any constraints not to provide him security, he would raise his own private security on his return to Pakistan in the coming months to face both Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari.
General Musharraf told his top aides in a six-hour-long marathon meeting in Dubai on Saturday that he was willing to face any legal proceedings against him and would even face jail if a fair trial was conducted. “I have many top legal minds assisting me and they will come to my aid if I need them,” he was quoted by sources as saying during the crucial meeting.
Top sources told The News in London that Gen Musharraf had convened a meeting at his flat in downtown Dubai, which was attended by former foreign minister Khurshid Kusuri, Hamid Nasir Chattha, Ishaq Khan Khakwani, Raza Hiraj, Ch Shahbaz, Barrister Saif, Ch Fawwad, Dr Amjad, Lt Gen (retd) Muzaffar, ex-QMG, and Maj Gen (retd) Rashid Quershi. The meeting lasted for over six hours. The deteriorating law and order situation and economic meltdown in Pakistan was discussed in detail.
This was first time he held a serious meeting with his aides to stage a comeback to Pakistan and face his main rival Nawaz Sharif.
During his discourse, Musharraf made it clear whatever he did in curtailing the activities of extremist elements, he did it in his capacity as the president and Army chief. “This is exactly in the same manner as the current set up: the chief executive, the army chief and the corp commanders of Peshawar and Rawalpindi were carrying out their duties,” he told his aides.
One source said that Gen Musharraf actually sent a message to present Pakistani leadership and his key opponents who wanted to put him on trial that even present military leadership was busy in the same activities as it was the call of duty.
www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=30165

4 .Taxes in Pakistan Widen the Divide of Rich and Poor; The NY Times, July 19
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
ISLAMABAD — Much of Pakistan’s capital city looks like a rich Los Angeles suburb. Shiny sport utility vehicles purr down gated driveways. Elegant multi-storey homes are tended by servants. Laundry is never hung out to dry.
But behind the opulence lurks a troubling fact. Very few of these households pay income tax. That is mostly because the politicians who make the rules are also the country’s richest citizens, and are skilled at finding ways to exempt themselves.
That would be a problem in any country. But in Pakistan, the lack of a workable tax system feeds something more menacing: a festering inequality in Pakistani society, where the wealth of its most powerful members is never redistributed or put to use for public good. That is creating conditions that have helped spread an insurgency that is tormenting the country and complicating American policy in the region.
It is also a sorry performance for a country that is among the largest recipients of American aid, payments of billions of dollars that prop up the country’s finances and are meant to help its leaders fight the insurgency.
Though the authorities have tried to expand the net in recent years, taxing profits from the stock market and real estate, entire swaths of the economy, like agriculture, a major moneymaker for the elite, remain untaxed.
“This is a system of the elite, by the elite and for the elite,” said Riyaz Hussain Naqvi, a retired government official who worked in tax collection for 38 years. “It is a skewed system in which the poor man subsidizes the rich man.”
The problem starts at the top. The average worth of Pakistani members of Parliament is $900,000, with its richest member topping $37 million, according to a December study by the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency in Islamabad. While Pakistan’s income from taxes last year was the lowest in the country’s history, according to Zafar ul-Majeed, a senior official in the Federal Board of Revenue, the assets of current members of Parliament nearly doubled from those of members of the previous Parliament, the institute study found.
The country’s top opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, reported that he paid no personal income tax for three years ending in 2007 in public documents he filed with Pakistan’s election commission. A spokesman for Mr. Sharif, an industrialist who is widely believed to be a millionaire, said he had been in exile and had turned over positions in his companies to relatives.
A month of requests for similar documents for Pakistan’s president and prime minister went unanswered by the commission; representatives for the men said they did not have the figures. www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/world/asia/19taxes.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print


5. Media warned of another ‘assault’

LAHORE, July 18: Accusing the Punjab chief minister of being the real mastermind behind the anti-journalists’ resolution in the provincial assembly, Pakistan Muslim League-Q senior leader Pervaiz Elahi says Shahbaz Sharif’s real face has been exposed to the media and the masses.
In a statement here on Sunday, the Q-Leaguer warned the media of a second assault on it.
He said Mr Sharif, in line with his past practice, tried to make Sanaullah Mastikhel a scapegoat after a strong reaction from the media.
The PML-Q leader said rulers of the province attacked on the very media, which had brought them to power.
Warning the media persons about more conspiracies against them, he alleged that the PML-N leaders did not change their old habits of suppressing the independent media through arms-twisting.
Meanwhile, PML (Like-Minded) president Saleem Saifullah has directed Punjab chapter leaders of the group to speed up their meetings with sidelined leaders and workers of other factions of the Muslim League to attract them to the newly-formed alliance of PML-Zia, PML-Functional and PML-Like-Minded. http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/local/lahore/media-warned-of-another-assault-970

6. Balochistan demands dissolution of Irsa
By Dilshad Azeem in The News, July 19
ISLAMABAD: Deputy Chairman Senate Jan Jamali has called for an immediate dissolution of the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) because he says it has miserably failed to resolve water conflicts among the provinces.
“After the 18th Constitutional Amendment, the most crucial issue that needed immediate settlement is the water sharing at a time when the countries are fast heading towards potential wars over it,” he told The News.
Jamali has held several meetings and met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and visited Balochistan canals holding sessions with provincial experts. “For us, water has become extremely critical even more than the Kashmir dispute.”
The Irsa, he said, has clearly established its incapability to reconcile provincial differences and ensuring equitable distribution of water. “We will have to settle water disputes on permanent basis if the federation is to be kept integrated,” he said.
The water sharing, he said, needed political settlement on the platform of the Council of Common Interest (CCI). “Amicable way out is possible only at the CCI level as the federation consists of four units rather merely one or two.”
“Balochistan is presently sustaining 900 cusecs a day water shortage in the on-going Kharif despite the fact that the province is exempted from sharing scarcity and the country has huge water inflows besides storage at Tarbela and Mangla dams,” he complained.
“The authorities are concentrating on CJ Link Canal with no one paying heed towards the grievances of Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provinces,” he said. The CCI, he said, was the lone body with chief ministers on board to end the deprivation between two smaller irrigation provinces. “If not to disband as a whole, the Irsa’s role can be confined to give only technical input to the CCI for just water distribution,” he added.  www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=30164

7. Nawaz warns against HEC chief’s ‘victimisation’
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif has warned the government against what he called the victimisation of the chairman of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) for carrying out verification of legislators’ degrees.
“I warn the government to refrain from its threatening conduct against a dutiful officer who has set examples of truthful working in evaluating academic degrees of lawmakers that ought to be emulated by all government officials in discharge of their duty,” Mr Sharif said in a statement issued from London and released by the party’s media office here on Sunday.
The statement says that Mr Sharif “has taken serious exception to coercion and intimidation that the Pakistan People’s Party-led government is perpetrating on HEC chairperson Javed Leghari in a bid to prevent him from performing his duty with honesty and a sense of highly professional and national obligation”.
It is interesting to note that the PML-N leaders have been issuing statements condemning the government for allegedly victimising the HEC chairman, but Mr Leghari himself has not made any complaint in this regard. Instead, sources close to the HEC chairman quoted him to have said that he was being unnecessarily dragged into politics.
Mr Sharif in his statement said the way the government was using “coercive tactics” against the HEC chairperson spoke high of its vested interests that it wanted to serve in the degree assessment process. “The arrest and release of his brother Farooq Leghari and attempt to assault his village in Sindh only exposes the government design of exploiting the process to serve vested interests of the government,” Mr Sharif said.
“The government will be well-advised to shun its behaviour that points out to deriving certain nefarious political design out of the degree evaluation process,” he said. http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/front-page/16-nawaz-warns-against-hec-chiefs-victimisation-970-hs-05

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