Pakistan denies India land transit route to Afghanistan
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has denied India land transit route to Afghanistan while Trade Minister Amin Fahim has said that Afghanistan has been allowed to use land route to India for trade.
At the 7th round of talks for Afghanistan Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement (APTTA), the head of Pakistan delegation Himayatullah said the agreement has been reached.
He said under the agreement India cannot be allowed to use land route to Afghanistan and that India could only use air and see routes.
Doha trade talks at ”impasse”: WTO chief
PARIS: The Doha Round of trade liberalisation talks is at an “impasse,” the head of the WTO said on Thursday, as the United States urged Brazil, China and India to help break the deadlock.
“We are in an impasse,” World Trade Organization director general Pascal Lamy said after informal talks with trade ministers on the sidelines of a meeting of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris.
Lamy stressed that global trade liberalisation was “a low-cost package of stimulus” for economies in trouble over public finances, adding: “The reason for concluding the round is more appealing now than at any point before.”
US Trade Representative Ron Kirk meanwhile said it was up to Brazil, China and India to accelerate a deal, signalling that Washington was not prepared to make any further concessions in the negotiations.
“The real question is whether India, China and Brazil frankly are ready to assume a role and responsibility commensurate with the benefits that they have realised under global liberalisation,” he said.
“We are not going to negotiate against ourselves. It”s now time for others to be creative. We have gone far and above what is expected… to break this impasse,” he added.
The Doha Round of negotiations began in 2001 and has over-run a number of deadlines for completion. The latest deadline is the end of this year.
Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean said: “There is still too much that remains unresolved.”
But he added: “Even if you accept it”s not possible to complete it this year, that”s no reason not to advance it this year.
Doha Round negotiations have focused on further liberalising world trade by dismantling obstacles to trade for poor nations through an accord that would cut subsidies for agriculture and tariffs on industrial goods.
Discussions have been dogged by discord, including over how much the US and the European Union should reduce aid to their farmers and the extent to which countries such as India and China should lower import tariffs.
NRO Case: members advisory committee directed to call off trips
ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari has directed the members advisory committee; formed to deal with issues pertaining to NRO case to immediately call off foreign trips, Geo news reported Sunday.
According to sources, president Zardari constituted a committee comprising senior ministers from PPP, which will be responsible for assistance of Law Minister Babar Awan during proceedings of NRO cases in Supreme Court.
It may be mentioned the advisory committee consists of Naveed Qamar, Khursheed Shah, Ameen Faheem, Nazar Mohammed Gondal and other senior ministers.
In compliance to directions given from president Zardari, Trade Minister Ameen Faheem has postponed London visit, which was to be commenced on May 25.
Australia Warns China Over Iron Ore Pricing
SYDNEY: Australia has warned Beijing not to interfere in difficult commercial iron ore price negotiations and urged China to act as a market economy.”We’ve been consistent in this regard. Negotiations are for the market. We will not interfere in the market,” Trade Minister Simon Crean said in an interview late Friday.
“We’ve made the point to China ‘We have recognised you as a market economy, act as one, don’t seek intervention from the government when it comes to market exchanges’,” he said according to the transcript issued by his office.
Crean was responding to local media reports that a senior official from China’s industry ministry had met with an Australian embassy official to press the point that China paid the highest prices for iron ore, despite being the world’s largest customer.
The trade minister said “all sorts of conversations take place” on a government-to-government level, but iron ore pricing was not one that was regularly discussed.
“We are reminded of the size of their market but that’s an important dimension of our trade relationship anyway,” added Crean.
China’s Iron and Steel Association in December said it would seek to streamline the number of importers and their prices in a bid to boost China’s leverage as global miners sought a 20-30 percent price hike in what were proving “quite difficult” 2010 benchmark talks.
China’s relations with the world’s biggest miners — Anglo-Australian companies BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto and Brazil’s Vale — remain tainted by the July arrest of Rio executive Stern Hu and three Chinese colleagues in Shanghai.
Their detention came during fractious iron ore contract talks which later lapsed and just weeks after Rio Tinto snubbed a near 20-billion US dollar cash injection from a state-run Chinese company.
Crean emphasised that Canberra had not sought to have the case dropped against Hu, an Australian passport-holder, and would not investigate Rio as a result of his formal indictment Thursday on charges of bribery and illegally obtaining trade secrets.
“We recognise the Chinese legal system has to run its course, it’s a different legal system to ours,” said Crean. “That’s the circumstances in which people go in there to do business or travel in there.
“We’ve treated it as a consular case, not seeking to interfere with the course of justice, only to bring it to a conclusion expeditiously and transparently,” he added.
There were “no allegations” against Rio, he said, and therefore “no justification or reason on the evidence before us” to warrant an Australian government probe of the miner’s practices in China.
Australia Warns China Over Iron Ore Pricing was first posted on February 13, 2010 at 4:42 pm.
Britney Spears “upset” over Australian tour complaints
November 9, 2009 by Trend PK
Filed under Entertainment
Britney Spears has done it again, hitting the headlines during her first Australian tour over a row about lip-synching and a lacklustre performance that her tour promoter said had left her “extremely upset”.
Australian media reported that fans walked out of the first of Spears’ 14 Australian performances that was staged in Perth on Friday after just a few songs, describing it as “boring”, “stiff”, mimed and lacking interaction with the audience.
But the promoter of Spears’ Australian “Circus” tour, her manager and some fans rushed to her defence, saying this savaging has left the U.S. pop singer traumatised.
“Britney is aware of all this and she’s extremely upset by it,” Paul Dainty, Spears’ tour promoter, told The Australian newspaper on Monday.
“She’s a human being. I’m embarrassed, with such a big international entourage here with Britney, to be part of the Australian media when I see that kind of totally inaccurate reporting.”
Dainty said it was a total fabrication to suggest that fans had stormed out of the show as early as the third song after paying between $200 to $1,500 to see the 27-year-old singer who has rebuilt her career after a high-profile meltdown.
Before her world tour started in March to promote her sixth studio album, Spears had only done a handful of live concerts in recent years as her personal life ran out of control.
This included stints in psychiatric care, an ugly divorce, losing custody of her two sons, shaving her head and partying without panties.
Spears has been at the centre of debate over lip-synching since she arrived in Australia last week, even though it’s no secret that she mimes as she dances in her circus-themed show.
The Fair Trade Minister for the state of New South Wales, Virginia Judge, ignited the debate by saying Australians would not tolerate a “Mickey Mouse” performance by Spears, who rose to fame as a member of Disney’s “Mickey Mouse Club” TV series.
Judge suggested concert tickets should carry disclaimers about whether parts of concerts were pre-recorded and mimed.
Dainty said it was well known that part of Spears concert was lip-synched and blasted any inference that this was hidden.
“It’s been all over the Internet for nine months,” Dainty said. “This show is about an incredible spectacle, which it is.”
Spears’ manager Adam Leber took to Spears’ Twitter account to defend the singer to her 3.7 million followers.
“Its unfortunate that one journalist in Perth didn’t enjoy the show last night. Fortunately the other 18,272 fans in attendance did. – Adam” he wrote.
The management from the Burswood Dome in Perth, where Spears’ show was staged, told local reporters that they had not received any complaints from the 17,000 people who were at the show. A similar number attended Spears’ show the next night as well.
Britney Spears “upset” over Australian tour complaints was first posted on November 9, 2009 at 5:07 pm.
