Sovereignty hinges on economic autonomy: MQM

Four industrialists Feroze Alam Laari, Saeed Usman Ali, Muhammad Rehan Zeeshan and Sadiq Muhammad have announced joining MQM at a press conference at Muthidda Qaumi Movement Headquarters, Nine Zero, in Karachi.

 

MQM deputy convener Dr Farooq Sattar and other officials were also present at the press conference.

 

The industrialists said that only MQM chief Altaf Hussain can take the country out of the current political and economic crisis and they have become the part of MQM to join hands with Altaf Hussain.

 

Dr Farooq Sattar said that industry and trade are the key sectors of any country and national sovereignty depends on economic independence.

 

Sattar said that the days have gone when politics overwhelmed the economy.

 

More and more people are joining the MQM in order to strengthen and support the economic programmes of Altaf Hussain, he said.
 

Suu Kyi continues election-campaign trip

 

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi hit the campaign trail near her hometown of Yangon on Saturday, travelling to the constituency where she is standing for parliament for the first time.

 

The democracy icon has already made two campaign trips outside the city ahead of April s by-elections, but this is her first day taking to the streets of the rural township of Kawhmu, where she is contesting the vote.

 

Hundreds of cheering supporters lined the roads as her convoy left Yangon, waving flags of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party and photos of Suu Kyi and her father, Myanmar s independence hero Aung San.

 

The NLD cannot threaten the army-backed party s ruling majority even if it wins all of the 48 available seats, but the vote has important symbolic value as the first time Suu Kyi has been able to directly participate in a Myanmar election.

 

“I hope they will be free and fair. There have been a few hitches but I hope that these will be sorted out,” she told AFP on Friday.

 

A widely-expected win for Suu Kyi would lend strong legitimacy to the country s parliament, which first convened early last year and is dominated by former generals who kept her in detention for much of the past two decades.

 

The NLD won a landslide victory in an election in 1990, but the then-ruling junta never allowed the party to take power. Suu Kyi was a figurehead for the party s campaign despite being under house arrest at the time.

 

She was released from her latest stint in detention a few days after a much-criticised election in 2010, and the upcoming polls are being held to fill places vacated by those who have since become government ministers and deputy ministers.

 

Ahead of the campaign day, Suu Kyi insisted her party — which boycotted the 2010 election — was taking nothing for granted.

 

“We will work very hard to win all 48 seats. It s not a matter of expectations, it s a matter of hard work,” the Nobel Peace Prize winner said.

 

Controversy surrounding the 2010 vote means the by-elections will be heavily scrutinised.

 

But the new regime has impressed even sceptics with its reform process, which has included welcoming the NLD back into the political mainstream and signing ceasefire deals with ethnic minority rebels.

 

The release of hundreds of political prisoners has been particularly welcomed by Western powers — which imposed strict sanctions on Myanmar — leading the United States to begin restoring full diplomatic relations.

 

On Monday, Washington also announced a waiver to allow it to support assessments in the country by international financial institutions including the World Bank.

 

Despite Myanmar s progress, the brief detention of a leading dissident monk on Friday sparked concern among observers, coming less than a month after his release from a jail term imposed for his role in a 2007 anti-junta uprising.
 

Zardari calls for expanding Pak-Sri Lanka bilateral trade

 

President Asif Ali Zardari Friday called for stepping up efforts to fully realize the potential of Free Trade Agreement with Sri Lanka and building a mutually beneficial economic and trade partnership to jack up the bilateral trade from current $375 million to $2 billion target in the next three years.

 

The President urged for further exploring the currency swap agreement with Sri Lanka, which, he said would provide huge incentives to business houses in both the countries to actively explore and enhance business linkages as they use local currencies for trade.

 

The President said this during one-to-one meeting with his Sri Lankan counterpart, President Mahinda Rajapaksa followed by delegation level talks here at the Aiwan-e-Sadr.

 

Those who were present during the delegation level meeting included among others Hina Rabbani Khar, Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator A. Rehman Malik, Federal Minister for Interior, Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, Advisor to Prime Minister on Finance, M. Salman Faruqui, Secretary General to the President, Saleem H Mandviwala, Salman Bashir, Foreign Secretary, Maj ® Haroon Rashid, Special Secretary, Seema Ilahi Baloch, Pakistan Ambassador to Sri Lanka and other senior officials.

 

The Sri Lankan President was assisted by Prof G.L Peiris, Minister for External Affairs, Duminda Dissanayake, Deputy Minister, Sajin de Vass Gunawardena, Monitoring MP, Lalith Weerathunga, Secretary to the President, Karunatilaka Amunugama, Secretary Ministry of External Affairs, ACM Jayalath Weerakkody, Sri Lankan High Commissioner in Pakistan.

 

Briefing the media spokesperson to the President Farhatullah Babar said matters regarding Pak-Sri Lankan bilateral relations, mutual cooperation with special reference to trade and commercial ties besides regional and international issues were discussed during the meeting.

 

The President welcomed President Mahinda Rajapaksa and members of delegation to the Presidency and expressed hope that the visit would help boost the bilateral ties between the peoples of the two countries which date back to the days of Buddhist civilization and have been marked by a shared interest in regional peace and stability and fight against militancy.

 

The Spokesperson said that the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa thanked the President and the government of Pakistan for according warm welcome and said that Sri Lanka attaches great importance to its strategic and special relations with Pakistan and desires to further strengthen bilateral trade and commercial ties based on mutual respect, shared civilisational heritage and shared perceptions on a host of issues.

 

He thanked the President and government of Pakistan for the support and cooperation extended to Sri Lanka in curbing the menace of terrorism and added that Sri Lanka-Pakistan relations have matured and diversified with the passage of time, encompassing key areas of contemporary relevance.
 

Syrian opposition responsible for violence: Russia

MOSCOW: Russia on Friday said the Syrian opposition bore full responsibility for the ongoing violence and accused the West of being an “accomplice” that pushed the regime’s opponents into armed conflict.
  
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the ITAR-Tass news agency the opposition’s refusal to enter direct talks with the Syrian government meant it “bears full responsibility for improving the situation,” accusing the West of being “accomplices in the process of inflaming the crisis.” AGENCIES

Uncertainty prevails over Afghan security handover

 

The push by Afghanistan s president to nationalize legions of private security guards before the end of March is encouraging corruption and jeopardizing multibillion-dollar aid projects, according to companies trying to make the switch.

 

President Hamid Karzai has railed for years against the large number of guns-for-hire in Afghanistan, saying private security companies skirt the law and risk becoming militias. He ordered them abolished in 2009 and eventually set March 20 of this year as the deadline for everyone except NATO and diplomatic missions to switch to government-provided security.

 

Afghan officials are rushing to meet the cutoff with the help of NATO advisers. But with fewer than six weeks to go, it s likely that many components will still be missing on March 20. And even once everything falls into place, higher costs and issues of authority over the government guards will remain.

 

The change imperils billions of dollars of aid flowing into Afghanistan, particularly from the United States. In a country beset by insurgent attacks and suicide bombings, the private development companies that implement most of the U.S. aid agency s programs employ private guards to protect compounds, serve as armed escorts and guard construction sites.

 

On March 21, approximately 11,000 guards now working for private security firms will become government employees as members of the Afghan Public Protection Force, or APPF. They will still be working in the same place with the same job. Except now they ll answer to the Interior Ministry.

 

“We don t want to have security gaps. This is really important to our customers and to us,” said the head of the APPF, Deputy Minister Jamal Abdul Naser Sidiqi. It will happen, he says, because the presidential order says it has to.

 

Officially, everyone is optimistic.

 

“The APPF is now open for business,” a U.S. embassy official said, speaking anonymously to discuss private agency contracts.

 

But many are still worried that the entire plan could fall apart. Development contractors for the U.S. Agency for International Development told The Associated Press they were explicitly told not to discuss the changeover with reporters because media attention could endanger the delicate process. Everyone critical of APPF insisted on speaking anonymously for this article.

 

Last week the chairman of the House subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations wrote a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressing concern that the APPF may not be ready to take over security for aid projects.

 

Even so, no one expects that there will be a visible problem on March 21.

 

“The guys who guard our gates today wear a certain baseball hat, and on the 21st of March they ll come wearing a different uniform. It should be pretty seamless,” said Bill Haight, head of an infrastructure-building project run by Louis Berger Group and Black and Veach. He said his projects are nearly finished and so he doesn t expect many problems.

 

But companies with long-running projects are worried. New contracts and operating rules will probably still be in the works when the deadline hits.

 

The APPF has yet to sign a contract to provide security for any of the approximately 75 companies expected to switch over to government guards in March, according to Noorkhan Haidari, the APPF business manager.
And international firms that are expected to act as middlemen managing the guards are having trouble getting licensed.

 

Though about 20 companies have said they plan to register as so-called Risk Management Companies, or RMCs, only one license has been issuedreportedly after a wait of about two months. Others trying to get licensed say the required documents change every day.

 

Meanwhile, the Afghan Foreign Ministry has also denied visas to foreign workers for at least three security companies that are trying to get registered as RMCs or are working on one of the exempt contracts, according to a security adviser for a major development contractor. These firms have been told they have to wait for new procedures under the new APPF system. But given that they don t have much time to get everything in line, they re increasingly looking at what bribes they can pay to make it happen, the same person said.

 

Firms don t have to hire RMCs, but they add a level of management and oversight that meets the standards of international organizations.

 

Companies have long hired private guards precisely because they don t trust the Afghan police to protect them in a crisis. The United Nations used Afghan police to guard its staff housing until an 2009 attack on a residential hotel in which Taliban assailants quickly made it past police guards and killed five U.N. staffers. The U.N. has since increased its security to include foreign guards.

 

Afghans working with APPF have gone so far as to urge the business licensing agency to “stop stalling the process,” according to a letter sent to U.S. government officials by a development company and obtained by the AP.
“The painfully slow momentum of the various Afghan government entities may have scuppered the chances of a timely handover to the APPF,” the letter argues.

 

Sidiqi said the complaints of delays were overblown, noting that there is a standard three-day licensing process. If there are delays, he said it is because the would-be RMCs are dragging it out.

 

“We need the RMCs,” Sidiqi said. “They have the experience.”

 

He dismissed the possibility of bribery. “This is a legal government organization, so corruption is not going to be possible,” Sidiqi said.

 

But with so much undecided, some development organizations are opting to hunker down inside their compounds until the details are worked out.

 

A manager with one U.S. government development contractor said the company expects to delay visits to projects in dangerous places until all documents are finalized. The official spoke anonymously to avoid endangering contracts still being negotiated.

 

Going forward, the development company manager worried about recruiting for projects in places like the insurgent-heavy south. Some employees have already said they won t sign on to projects if their only security is going to be APPF guards.

 

But even once the RMCs are licensed and in-country, it is unclear that they will provide an easy transition.
These companies will not be able to directly control the guards that they manage. They can only give advice to an Afghan supervisor. If there s a dispute between the two, it will have to be taken to a government-run arbitration panel.

 

The issue has already caused problems on APPF-guarded projects before the mandatory switch. During the 2010 parliamentary elections, Afghan police pulled a group of APPF guards who were protecting a railroad construction project in the northern province of Balkh off their posts to guard polling stations, according to the former APPF commander.

 

“I told them it was a violation of the law but they said you have to do it. I was obliged,” said Sayed Asghar Asgari. So he gave over 50 of his 462 guards. The guards were returned four days later, but the incident shows the potential for a blurring of lines between the Afghan security forces and guard units.

 

And as budgets for aid projects are decreasing, the APPF program is likely to increase security costs substantially.
An APPF guard will cost at least $770 a month, according to an AP analysis of official government figures, while private security providers contacted for this story say they usually charge $510-$630 a month per guard.

 

To avoid pay cuts for guards, individual companies will have to supplement salaries. And any costs for RMC managers will be on top of this. Once these expenses are figured in, security costs could easily double under the APPF.

 

It is still not clear what these changes will mean for existing USAID contracts. The aid agency has given no overarching guidance for how it will deal with delays or higher costs, though it has urged its partners to review their individual contracts to decide what their obligations and rights will be, the U.S. embassy official said.

 

Meanwhile, the Afghan government won t officially have all the APPF guards trained for more than a year. By March 20, about 1,840 of the existing guard force will have gone through the formal training program, which graduates about 220 people every three weeks, according to a NATO official who spoke anonymously to discuss an Afghan government program.

 

The hope is that on-the-job training will be enough in the near term, especially since most private security guards will probably agree to join the APPF. But like much with the APPF right now, it is just a hope.
“It is very complicated and very difficult, but we are trying our best,” Sidiqi said.
 

Afghan troops to take over by end-2004: US

 

They will take over even though only a small number of them now operate independently from NATO-led troops, a top US general said Wednesday.

 

Lieutenant General Curtis Scaparrotti, deputy commander of US forces and the head of the NATO-led force s joint command, acknowledged that Afghan army and police still had a way to go before overseeing security without major assistance from foreign troops.

 

But he rejected a more pessimistic view voiced by some in and outside the US military, including US Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, who accused his superiors of glossing over the failings of Afghan forces in an article published this week.

 

Some US soldiers in the field have been critical of their Afghan partners, Scaparrotti told a news conference, but the Afghan forces have been built up over a short period and could not be compared to a US standard.

 

“At times, a (US) private will tell me they re not that good. But a private s looking at it from the perspective of how he s trained, or the Marine s trained, and the standards are very different,” the general said.

 

“I can tell you personally from experience and from feedback from others, these soldiers will fight, particularly at the company level. There s no question about that,” he said.

 

“And they re going to be good enough, as we build them, to secure their country and to counter the insurgency that they re dealing with now,” he said.

 

The state of Afghanistan s security forces has taken on growing importance as the United States and its allies pursue a troop drawdown and after Washington announced last week it would shift from a combat to a training role as early as mid-2013.

 

President Barack Obama was briefed on efforts to build “capable” Afghan security forces at a meeting on Wednesday that focused on Afghanistan, including efforts to broker a possible peace settlement with the insurgency, the White House said in a statement.–AFP

 

Turkey may move as Syria presses assault in Homs

AMMAN: Syrian forces thrust into the rebellious city of Homs on Wednesday, killing dozens of civilians by the accounts of opposition activists, and Turkey appeared to be preparing a new push against President Bashar al-Assad.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who on Tuesday said he was making ready an initiative uniting those Western, Arab and other

states which have called for Ankara’s former ally Assad to step down, was due to speak to Russia’s president, whose government has angered many by blocking a move against Assad at the U.N.

Moscow’s foreign minister, however, having visited Assad in Damascus on Tuesday, made clear Russia was still opposed to any peace talks that were conditional on Assad first stepping aside.

A newspaper close to the Erdogan government said Turkey planned to organize a conference with Arab and Western governments in Istanbul, part of a broader initiative that may be outlined later on Wednesday. A NATO member and rising Muslim power in the region, Ankara is sheltering Syrian rebel army commanders and has spoken of creating safe havens for refugees.

As the diplomatic gears turned, the military offensive in Homs and elsewhere showed no sign of let up, while activists in the city also accused militiamen of slaughtering three families in their homes – the sort of incident that is fueling fears of a descent into more widespread, Iraq-style sectarian killing.

The day’s total death toll stood at 67, activists said.

The onslaught on Homs, one of the bloodiest of the 11-month-old revolt against Assad, has not relented despite a promise to end the bloodshed that the Syrian leader gave to Russia, which saved Damascus from U.N. Security Council action on Saturday.

In the latest assault on Homs, troops fired rockets and mortars while tanks entered the Inshaat neighborhood and moved closer to Bab Amro, the district hardest hit by bombardments that have killed at least 150 people in the last two days, activists in the city and opposition sources said.

“Electricity returned briefly and we were able to contact various neighborhoods because activists there managed to recharge their phones. We counted 47 killed since midnight,” activist Mohammad Hassan said by satellite phone.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said countries with influence over the Syrian opposition should press them to enter a dialogue with Assad, comments that made clear Moscow had no immediate intention of abandoning its long-time ally.

Lavrov was speaking in Moscow a day after he met Assad in Damascus, where he said both nations wanted to revive an Arab League monitoring effort that was suspended due to violence.

Erdogan would speak about Syria with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev later on Wednesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. Erdogan described the Russian and Chinese veto of the U.N. resolution as a “fiasco.”

Syrian opposition figures, who said Lavrov had brought no new initiative, spurn Assad’s promises of reform as meaningless while his troops are killing civilians and say he must go.

Walid al-Bunni, a senior member of the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC), dismissed Lavrov’s dialogue proposal.

“The Arab initiative is clear. Assad must step down and Syrians will then be ready to sit together at a table with whoever succeeds him to discuss a democratic transition,” the head of the SNC’s foreign policy committee told Reuters.

Western and Arab states frustrated by the Russian and Chinese vetoes of their draft U.N. resolution are seeking to isolate Assad and bolster those opposed to his 11-year rule.

MILITIAMEN

Pro-Assad militiamen shot dead at least 20 civilians in Homs when they stormed their homes on the outskirts of opposition areas overnight, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Rami Abdelrahman, who heads the British-based Observatory, told Reuters the unarmed victims were a family of five, one of seven and one of eight.

There was no immediate comment from Syrian authorities and the report could not be verified. The authorities have placed tight restrictions on access to the country.

Activist Hassan said bombardment intensified in the early morning, targeting the Sunni Muslim districts of Bab Amro, al-Bayada, al-Khalidiya and Wadi al-Arab, all hostile to Assad, whose minority Alawite sect has dominated Syria for five decades.

“Mortar and rocket fire has subsided, but heavy machineguns and anti-aircraft guns are still strong,” he said. “Tanks are in main thoroughfares in the city and appear poised to push deep into residential areas.”

The state news agency SANA said “armed terrorist groups” had attacked police roadblocks in Homs and fired mortar bombs at the city, with three falling on the Homs oil refinery, one of two in Syria. It gave no details of any damage.

SANA said funerals had been conducted on Tuesday for 30 members of the security forces.

Army deserters and insurgents, at least nominally commanded by officers based in Turkey, are fighting back against Assad’s violent response to what began as a mostly peaceful protest movement and now threatens to slide into sectarian civil war.

DIPLOMATIC PRESSURE

“Assad is seeing the civilized world turn against him and he thinks he will win if he uses more brutal force before the world could act,” said Catherine al-Talli, a senior SNC member.

The attack on Homs has intensified Western and regional diplomatic pressure on Assad. The six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council recalled their ambassadors from Damascus on Tuesday and expelled Syrian envoys from their own capitals.

Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd called in Syria’s charge d’affaires Jawdat Ali on Wednesday and told him it was time for Assad to “find an exit strategy before the situation in Syria degenerates further and more lives are lost.”

Russia’s veto of the Security Council resolution on Syria went beyond protecting an ally and arms buyer, analysts said. It showed Moscow’s determination to crush what it sees as a Western crusade to use the United Nations to topple unfriendly governments.

The same holds true for China, which followed Russia’s lead and joined Moscow in striking down a European-Arab draft resolution that would have endorsed an Arab League plan for Assad to transfer power to his deputy to prepare free elections.

“There are all sorts of political interests involved but there is also a basic difference about whether the international community should be involved in internal conflicts against the will of the government,” said David Bosco of American University in Washington. AGENCIES

Punjab Deputy Speaker attacked, driver hurt

Punjab Assembly Deputy Speakers Rana Mashhood told News Trends by telephone that he was coming to Lahore from Multan in his car when six people forcibly stopped him near Manga Mandi.

 

As soon as driver slow downed the car, the gunmen opened fire at the car due to which diver got injured, Mashhood said.

 

The injured driver drove away the car and took a U-turn towards Multan again, a step that saved their lives, he said.
 

Karachi pharma factory raided; 4 nabbed

TrendPK.com
KARACHI: Police in a raid on a pharmaceutical factory manufacturing fake medicines in the city, arrested at least four people including the owners.

Police conducted raid on a pharmaceutical factory located in Malir cantt area of Gulshan Mehran and seized fake drugs and fertilizers, according to Shaukat Jokhio, Deputy Commissioner Malir.

A case has been registered in Shah Latif Town Police Station against the accused. TrendPK

Please click ‘Video’ button to watch this news.

US closely monitoring contempt case against PM

 

The United States administration is keeping a close eye on the contempt of court proceedings against the Pakistani Prime Minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani, in which he faces the threat of conviction on the next hearing before the Supreme Court on February 13.

 

The US State Department s deputy spokesperson, Mark Toner Friday said “although this is clearly Pakistan s internal political matter, but we are following as the situation unfolds.” He, however, did not answer whether the US was concerned at the internal situation of Pakistan.

 

“This case (NRO case) in the Supreme Court is not new and we expect the situation in Pakistan to be resolved as per the Pakistani law and constitution, in a democratic manner.”

 

He did not reply to another question whether the US government agreed with the assessment that the existing Pakistani government was on its way out in this case.

 

When asked to comment if the current impasse in Pakistan was limiting the ability of US administration to engage with the Pakistani leadership at a crucial juncture, he disagreed and said “we are in constant touch with Pakistan and Ambassador Munter in Islamabad is engaged with Pakistani leadership regularly on a variety of levels.”

 

“On a broader bilateral relationship level, we understand that Pakistan is still working on a parliamentary review,” Toner said while assuring of the US administration s intent “to sit down and talk to Pakistan about all the issues as and when they are ready.”

 

“We have said many times after the tragic attacks of November 26 that we are ready to discuss all issues,” he stressed. A NATO airstrike on Salala check-post in Pakistani tribal area of Mohmand had killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on November 26, sparking an escalation of bilateral tension.

 

When the spokesman s attention was drawn to President Obama s first on-the-record admission of drone strikes in Pakistan and foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar s statement during Afghan visit about trying to bring Haqqani network to peace, he said “both countries are trying to bring greater focus on threats that we both face.”

 

“Terrorists operating in those areas are an existential threat for Pakistan, Afghanistan and the whole region”, he warned and stated that cooperation in terrorism-related issues was in national security interest of both Pakistan and the United States.

 

“As long as we can come together to discuss these issues, that s a good thing.” he pointed out while expressing the hope that discussion on parliamentary review recommendations will provide a way forward for both countries, who have been more like estranged allies of late.

 

- Contributed by Awais Saleem, News Trends correspondent in Washington, DC
 

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