Pakistan Views

At least two powerful explosions have been heard in Rawalpindi Cantonment area on Monday morning.According to media reports, a blast occurred in Rawalpindi Cantonment area, while the location of the other bomb is being searched for.The blast was so powerful that the windowpanes of buildings here broke down. The relief teams of different institutions including sensitive institutions have been called. According to reports, the explosions occurred near Airport and Army House.Following these explosions here, the security has been put on red alert in federal capital especially Constitution Avenue, which has been closed for traffic.

Moreover, the emergency has been declared in hospitals here including PIMS hospital.
DG ISPR said that the blast did not occur near sensitive installations. Police are searching for the blast site. The ambulances are witnessed to be moving towards the army house.
According to Rao Iqbal said all the sensitive installations including Army House and airport are safe. According to Edhi sources, the blast occurred in Pindi Cantonment area, adding the ambulances have been dispatched. SP Khurram Shehzad said the cantonment area has been cleared.

A key meeting of leadership of military and other security agencies presided by Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Tariq Majeed is underway at Joint Staff Headquarters here on Monday.Army Chief General Ashfaq Kiyani, Air Chief Marshal Tanveer Mahmood Ahmad and chief of Pak Navy Admiral Afzal Tahir are attending the meeting.The meeting is reviewing international and domestic security situation as well as border and strategic situation. Further details would be released officially at the end of the meeting.

Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on Sunday announced to suspend all the agreements with government including Swat peace agreement with  government besides suspension of all kind of negotiations amid security forces’ operation in Bara, Khyber Agency.

The meeting endorsed the decision of Baitullah Mahsood regarding suspension of all ind of negotiations and Swat Peace Agreement with the provincial government. The security forces also destroyed an FM Radio station.

The Shura, executive committee of the movement, its meeting suspended all agreement with the government after accusing it of violating the allready signed peace agreements with the militants in Swat and Dara Adamkhel with initiating operation in Khyber Agency.

The government will not allow the running of parallel administration and will come hard against miscreants and outlaws for establishment of peace in the area,” declared Habibullah Khan, a senior official of the Governor’s FATA Secretariat while talking to media here on Sunday.

He said that despite of the government’s sincere efforts, the law breakers did not give positive response and they established a parallel system in Bara. He said such kind of activity was not acceptable for any civilised society and responsible government.

The militants had announced that they will not offer any resistance to the movement of the security agencies. The official said that tribesmen have given full support and warmed welcome to law enforcing agencies and paramilitary forces in Bara as they were fed up with miscreants’ activities. He said that there is hardly any tension among people of Tehsil Bara due to ongoing action. He said that writ of government will be established at any cost.

Meanwhile Senior Minister in NWFP cabinet Bashir Ahmad Bilour reiterated firm pledge that peace and security situation in all settled areas of the province will be ensured while Swat peace agreement will be implemented in letter and spirit.

Government claimed on Sunday that it had saved Peshawar from militants as troops pushed forward on the second day of a major offensive against the militants. Soldiers backed by armoured vehicles retook control of the main town in the Khyber tribal district, on the outskirts of Peshawar, and also demolished a building belonging to a insurgent group, officials said.

The government, under pressure from Western allies over its peace talks with militants, launched the operation on Saturday to counter militant threatening Peshawar and raiding supply convoys for Nato and US troops in Afghanistan.

“The government has been successful in the operation in Khyber which was carried out to safeguard Peshawar,” interior ministry chief Rehman Malik told a high-level meeting in Peshawar. He did not say when the offensive would end. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani separately denied the government was under pressure from Washington to launch the operation and said negotiations with militants would continue.

“This is our war and it is for our own survival,” Gilani told reporters after a meeting of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in Lahore. “Nobody will be allowed to execute others publicly, kidnap minorities, set fire to girls’ schools and barber shops in Pakistan,” said Gilani.

He added: “We do not take any pressure and I have also explained my policy to US President (George W.) Bush that we believe in dialogue and want development, health, education and to eliminate terrorism from the country.”

In Bara, the main town in Khyber, paramilitary troops patrolled with tanks and set-up sand-bag checkpoints after retaking control of the town, an AFP photographer saw. Soldiers in a village near Bara on Sunday blew up a building belonging to a Taliban-linked group, Ansar-ul-Islam, which has been accused of sending fighters into Afghanistan, a security official told AFP.

Troops were also advancing to other areas in the district including Ansar-ul-Islam’s stronghold in the Tirah Valley, officials said. On Saturday troops demolished the house and headquarters of Mangal Bagh, the leader of the separate Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) group, which officials said was not linked to the Taliban.

Bagh’s group has been accused of robbing vehicles on the Khyber Pass, the main supply route for international forces in Afghanistan, although officials said his men were not responsible for cross-border attacks. His followers had however threatened Peshawar, burning CD and barbers’ shops deemed un-Islamic and carrying out several kidnappings, the officials said.

Bagh reportedly said he did not know why he was being targeted. “I have told LI volunteers to go home and not to resist any action,” he was quoted as saying by a newspaper. Meanwhile, militants struck back in the Swat on Sunday, killing two soldiers in a bomb blast and shooting dead four people including a pro-government tribal elder, officials said.

Pakistan’s government launched peace talks with rebels soon after defeating allies of US-backed President Pervez Musharraf in February elections. Pakistan’s top Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud said on Saturday that he was halting two-month-old peace talks with the government because of operations against his men.

Top Bush administration officials drafted a secret plan late last year to make it easier for US Special Operations forces to operate inside Pakistan’s tribal areas, but Washington turf battles and the diversion of resources to Iraq have held up the effort, the New York Times reported on Monday.

The Times quoted a senior Defense Department official as saying there was “mounting frustration” in the Pentagon at the continued delay in deployment of special operations teams into Pakistan’s mountainous and lawless western tribal regions, where senior al Qaeda operatives are thought to be hiding.

The Times report, based on more than four dozen interviews in Washington and Pakistan, said al Qaeda’s new safe haven in Pakistan was in part due to the administration’s accommodation to President Pervez Musharraf, whose advisers have long played down the terrorist threat.

It was also a story, the report concluded, of infighting between US intelligence agencies and a shifting in White House priorities from counter-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to the war in Iraq.

The Times quoted a retired CIA officer as estimating that al Qaeda training compounds in Pakistan now host as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.

Infighting within the CIA included battles between field officers in Kabul and Islamabad and the counter-terrorism center at CIA headquarters in Virginia whose preference for carrying out raids remotely, via Predator missiles strikes, was derided by field officers as the work of “boys with toys,” the Times reported.

GROWING THREAT

Turf battles between CIA officials in Afghanistan and others in Pakistan have also impeded progress, the Times reported, with officers in Kabul expressing alarm at what they see as a growing threat from the tribal areas and those in Islamabad, who are more prone to accept the Pakistani government’s argument that the tribal areas are beyond anyone’s control.

The level of expertise among CIA officers in the region was also a drag on operations, the report said. “We had to put people out in the field who had less than ideal levels of experience,” it quoted a former senior CIA official as saying.

The Times said the Pentagon’s top commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, ordered military officers, Special Operations and CIA operatives to assemble a dossier in late 2006 showing Pakistan’s role in allowing militants to establish a safe haven in the tribal territories.

The general’s order reflected a “broader feeling of outrage” within the Pentagon that the war on terror “had been outsourced to an unreliable ally, and at the grim fact that America’s most deadly enemy had become stronger.”

In response to Eikenberry’s dossier, the White House sent Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy CIA Director Stephen Kappes to Islamabad in March 2007 to register US concern.

That visit, the Times said, was the beginning of a more aggressive effort by the administration to pressure Pakistan into stepping up the fight. Last year’s decision to draw up the Pentagon order authorizing a Special Operations campaign in the tribal areas was part of that effort, it said.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in unequivocal terms has declared that there would be no compromise on the sovereignty of the country. Talking to journalists at the State Guest House here on Sunday, the Prime Minster dilated about the policy of his government on dialogue. Gilani said the government had not budged away from the policy of holding talks as it strongly felt that political dialogue on issues was necessary. Regarding the recently launched operation in tribal areas, the Prime Minister said that they were not in favour of it, but as the agreement was flouted there, the provincial government had no other option, but to opt for the operation. He denied the impression that there was any pressure on the government regarding operation in tribal areas.

The Prime Minister said foreign elements with the aid of locals were involved in terrorist activities in the tribal region, which he added was totally unacceptable. Referring to the government’s policy on operation against the terrorists, the Prime Minister said that Army Chief General Kayani had aptly briefed him, the President and allied parties on the situation.

The Prime Minister made it clear that the government was fully determined to provide basic amenities, education, health facilities in the tribal areas. He, however, firmly declared that no parallel government would be accepted there.

The Prime Minister stated that their government had complete support of the entire nation on tackling the issue of terrorism. Responding to a query on restoration of judges, the Prime Minister averred that they had endeavoured for their release and would have them restored too.

The Prime Minister told that on completion of their 100-day in government, they would take the nation into confidence. He said prices of oil and other essential commodities were on rise universally, and those who possessed oil reserves were surviving in the crisis. The Prime Minister visited Mausoleum of Hazrat Mian Mir Saheb (AR) during the day and will also attend Valima reception of son of Defence Minister Ahmad Mukhtar in a local hotel later on the day.

US Assistant Secretary of State for Central Asia and South Asian affairs, Richard Boucher arrived in here on Monday morning. He is expected to hold talks with Pakistani officials regarding situation in tribal areas.

During his Pakistan visit, he will call on Nawaz Sharif in Lahore on July 2 just prior to the start of his make-or-break talks between the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) on the restoration of the deposed judges.

Sources said here that Boucher’s recent visit is being seen as one of great importance in the face of the brewing political crisis in Pakistan in the month of July.

Boucher’s visit is a part of the ongoing series of his “routine visits” to Islamabad.

He will also expected to meet PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari during his four-day long sojourn as the latter will be out of the country till July 5.

Boucher will also discuss the ongoing operation on the Pak-Afghan border with Pakistani political leadership, an official said.

Previously, Boucher had met with the PPP and the PML-N leaders in London on May 11 when the talks to resolve the judicial issue between the two major parties were on the verge of collapse.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan on Monday adjourned the hearing of a petition against the disqualification of former premier and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Nawaz Sharif from standing in a parliamentary by-election.

Earlier, the three-member bench headed by Justice Moosa K. Laghari heard the arguments raised by the other side over the candidature of Nawaz Sharif for by-election.

The bench asked the Federation’s lawyers, the petitioner of the case, to file their concise statement by examining the objections raised before the court and adjourned the hearing of the case for two weeks.

Nawaz Sharif has already said he will ignore an order to appear in court because he does not accept the legitimacy of the judges, who were appointed by President Pervez Musharraf during a state of emergency last November.

The government filed an appeal on Sharif’s behalf last week after Lahore High Court barred him from contesting last Thursday’s scheduled poll in Lahore because of previous criminal convictions relating to events surrounding the coup.

The Supreme Court ordered the vote to be delayed in Sharif’s constituency.

But it also ordered Sharif, who has been campaigning for the reinstatement of dozens of judges sacked by Musharraf last year, to turn up at court, saying it was difficult to deal with the case in his absence.

His lawyers and Pakistan Muslim League-N party (PML-N) have both said that he will not appear before the judges.

It was not clear how the court would react if Sharif defies the order.

The dispute over Sharif’s candidacy has added to the sense of paralysis surrounding the coalition, which defeated allies of the US-backed Musharraf in elections in February and came to power in the following month.

An explosion destroyed the home of a militant in Khyber Agency on Monday, killing seven people, but the cause of the blast was not clear, residents said. Security forces launched an offensive in Khyber Agency on Saturday to push back militants who have been threatening the city of Peshawar.”The house belonged to a member of the Haji Namdar group and seven people were killed,” said Sher Khan, a resident of the town of Bara where the blast took place. Haji Namdar leads a militant faction in Khyber, home to the Khyber Pass through which supplies for Western forces in Afghanistan pass.

Torrential rains and stormy winds lashed several areas of Punjab including the provincial capital here plunging low-lying areas in knee-deep water, deserted the roads and dipped down the mercury. Lahore this morning remained overcast with dark clouds blurring the visibility to the extent of giving the impression of night scene, while the vehicles had to switch on their headlights on the roads. Meanwhile, heavy downpours with strong winds started and the low-lying areas jiffy went under accumulated water. The people felt relieved from the scorching heat, as the temperature significantly went down due to rains.

Weather turned pleasant as torrential rains and stormy winds swept through several parts of Punjab including Sahiwal, Gojranawala, Kamonki, Sheikhupura, Pakpatan, Kasur, Kasowal and Chechawatni also. This spate of rain continuing intermittently, while the wall of a house at Model Town area of Sahiwal caving in due to rains injured one woman.