Turkey, Armenia move toward diplomatic ties, opening of border (click title to entry - thank you)
Tue, Sep 01 2009 16:24 CET
Turkey and Armenia are to hold six weeks of intensive domestic consultations and will ask the approval of their respective parliaments in a move towards a deal, brokered by Switzerland, on establishing diplomatic relations and opening their mutual border.
The key dividing factor between the two neighbouring countries has been an episode in history that Armenia and its backers describe as a genocide of its people under Ottoman rule, a claim that Ankara rejects, saying that the mass deaths were a result of a breakdown of order as the then-empire crumbled.
The countries agreed on April on a process to take them in the direction of diplomatic relations....
There is no reason for 100 trucks in an organized convoy passing through Pakistan with supplies for NATO should be stopped for inspection at all. The governments of NATO, Pakistan and Afghanistan should have full manifests of the trucks, their cargo, their license plate numbers or other identifying marks and their credentialed drivers in their possession before the convoy even moves one mile to its destination. This is nothing but sloppiness in protecting NATO's supplies and the personnel that protect the convoy. This is nonsense !
...Sources say at least one person was wounded in the incident. (click here)
Witnesses report hearing gunfire before the explosion, and police say emergency crews were fighting the fire into Sunday night.
Hundreds of trucks, many loaded with NATO supplies, have been stuck on Pakistan's side of the border. The Chaman crossing had been closed for two days because of a dispute between Pakistani and Afghan customs officials relating to the inspection of goods.
Pakistani police say they foiled an attack on supply trucks earlier Sunday when they found and defused a bomb.
The Chaman crossing is one of two main crossing points for supplies destined for American and NATO troops in Afghanistan....
At least 41 more corpses found in Swat (click here)
PESHAWAR: At least 41 bodies, mostly of Taliban militants, have been found in Pakistan's Swat valley over the past 24 hours, officials said Tuesday, describing them as revenge killings by residents.
The corpses, six of them beheaded, were dumped on the roadside, riverside and fields in different areas.
Pakistan's military claims to have cleared Swat of extremists in an offensive launched earlier this year after militants extended their grip into the northwest valley, terrorising residents with public beheadings and other violence.
Officials said a total of 251 people had been found dead in similar circumstances since July, and believed that the militants were killed by residents who feared a Taliban comeback.
‘Among the 41 dead bodies, six were beheaded, almost all of them were militants,’ Atifur Rehman, the top administrative official of Swat district, told AFP, adding that the rest had bullet wounds.
‘According to my information they were militants and were killed by residents,’ Rehman said.
Fourteen police cadets were killed Sunday in a suicide attack in the main town in Swat valley which police blamed on Taliban militants....
...Pakistan’s extremist Taliban movement is badly divided (click here) over who should be its new leader, and analysts and local tribesmen say the al Qaida-linked group may be in danger of crumbling.
A wave of defections, surrenders, arrests and bloody infighting has severely weakened the movement since its founder, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed Aug. 5 in a U.S. missile strike. The announcement this weekend that Hakimullah Mehsud, a 28-year-old with a reputation as a hothead, would succeed him is likely to further widen the split. …
Pakistan authorities arrested the Taliban’s high-profile spokesman, Maulvi Umer, in the tribal areas, while a key interlocutor between the Taliban and al Qaida, commander Saifullah, was also detained at a house in Islamabad where he was receiving medical treatment.
Separately, 60 Taliban fighters gave themselves up in the Swat valley in Pakistan’s northwest. Many Taliban in Waziristan have defected since Baitullah Mehsud’s death.
In a further sign of internal discord, Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik claimed Sunday that militants had killed Baitullah Mehsud’s in-laws, including his father-in-law, on suspicion of giving away his location. The former Taliban leader had been staying at his father-in-law’s house in Waziristan when he was killed by a missile fired from a U.S. drone....
Perhaps it is time for Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan to tell the COMPLETE story as to whom else was involved with his nuclear escapades?
A Q Khan: Nuclear hero to Pakistan, villain to west (click here)
...‘I saved the country for the first time when I made Pakistan a nuclear nation and saved it again when I confessed and took the whole blame on myself,’ Khan told AFP in an interview last year while under effective house arrest....
India is uneasy about the lethary Pakistan has shown in regard to prosecutions of the perpetrators of November 26th attacks on Mumbai. Realizing Pakistan has their hands full with the resolve in places like Swat, there might be a chance the security will increase if criminals are captured and brought to justice.
There should not be militias developing training camps in Pakistan. That only puts the military and police in danger. Perhaps what would be best is for NATO, the USA, Pakistan and India to work out a prioritized schedule that allows for a timeline to complete the disruptions to objectionable militants. With Pakistan's security in the balance there needs to be an understanding that criminals will be dealt with in a way that doesn't disrupt the progress the Pakistan military has made within the country. Surely, India can appreciate the steps the Pakistani government has made to secure its borders and stop the militants. I am confident Pakistan has an appreciation for India's worries.
Pakistan’s anti-terrorism moves a chimera: India (click here)
By Jawed Naqvi Tuesday, 01 Sep, 2009 05:39 AM PST
NEW DELHI: With no concrete steps against the plotters of the Mumbai attack in view, Pakistan’s anti-terror claims were tantamount to a chimera, India’s National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan has said.
His comments coincided with similar views expressed by unnamed foreign ministry officials in New Delhi who were quoted on Monday as saying that no new dates had been set for the foreign secretary-level talks in view of Islamabad’s alleged reluctance to act against Hafiz Saeed, who has been named by New Delhi in the November 26 assault on Mumbai.
The Hindu quoted Mr Narayanan as saying in his first ‘substantive comments on relations with Pakistan since the Sharm el-Sheikh summit’ that averting another major Mumbai-like incident was the government’s top priority and that unless Islamabad took ‘real action’ against those involved in terrorism, the progress it had reported so far in the Mumbai case would amount to ‘a chimera’.
In an interview to The Hindu published on Monday, he painted a picture of official frustration at Pakistan’s unwillingness to act against the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Muhammad ‘despite the fact that there was concrete information about these groups re-establishing training camps’.
It would seem as though India and Kashmir have mutual issues. There has been less violence in Kashmir. Kashmir is still attempting to secure its independence from both India and Pakistan. At least all parties are talking, instead of military conflict and violence. The region is changing. There is less hostilites. Pakistan has to be given some credit.
Petition filed in IHK HC to seek number of Kashmiri detainees (click here)
Srinagar, August 31 (KMS): Srinagar-based International Forum For Justice And Human Rights (IFJHR) has moved a petition in the High Court of occupied Kashmir to seek the exact number of Kashmiri detainees in jails and interrogation centres.
The Chairman of the forum, Ahsan Untoo, in a statement issued in Srinagar, said that the number of detainees under the black law, Public Safety Act, stated by the puppet administration in the so-called assembly was incorrect. He maintained that hundreds of innocent Kashmiri youth were languishing in different interrogation centres in India.
Revealing the details, Untoo said that in Tihar jail, 61 Kashmiris were illegally detained while at least 51 other Kashmiris were detained as under trials, many of them without any trial for the past 15 years.
In Kanpur jail, he said, Gulzar Ahmad and Gulam Mohi-u-din Shah were under detention for the past 10 years. “Three Kashmiris were languishing in Varanasi, four in Bangalore, three in Gujarat, four in Kolkata, five in Uttranchal, four in Benaras and seven in Rajasthan jails,” he added.
He appealed the court to direct concerned Indian authorities to provide the details of Kashmiri detainees in different jails and interrogation centres.
Giving Kashmir independence will resolve the quarrels between two nuclear countries and provide a DMZ between Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and China so long as there is no migration of criminals into the region.
Kashmiris oppose Pakistan's Northern Areas package (click here)
Mon Aug 31, 2009 8:55am EDT
By Zeeshan Haider
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Kashmiri politicians opposed a Pakistani plan on Monday they say is aimed at integrating the strategic but disputed Northern Areas into Pakistan, arguing it will undermine their case for independence from India.
The Northern Areas of Gilgit and Baltistan were bundled in with Kashmir and demarcated as disputed territory under U.N. resolutions passed after Pakistan and India fought the first of their three wars in 1948.
Bordering China on one side and the mainly Buddhist Indian region of Ladakh on the other, Pakistan's sparsely populated Northern Areas are known to mountaineers as the home of many of the world's highest peaks.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan and India fought a brief but intense border conflict in the Kargil sector of this region in 1999.
Although Pakistan has held the northern territories since the first war with India, their status was hitherto undefined as Pakistan had not wanted to compromise its case in the broader dispute over Kashmir....
