Drone strike kills four militants in North Waziristan

MIRANSHAH: A missile strike by a US drone Saturday killed four militants in Pakistan’s tribal belt, officials said.

The missile strike hit in Datta Khel village area near Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan tribal district, officials said.

“A US drone fired three missiles. The target was a vehicle carrying militants. Four militants were killed,” a senior security official in Peshawar told AFP.

An intelligence official in Miramshah also confirmed the attack and toll.

Sixteen US drone attacks have been carried in just 22 days in North Waziristan.

The US missile strikes have killed about 100 militants since September 3 in the rugged tribal belt, which Washington has branded a global headquarters of Al-Qaeda and the most dangerous spot on Earth.

Over 1,100 people have been killed in more than 130 drone strikes in Pakistan since August 2008, including a number of senior militants. However, the attacks fuel anti-American sentiment in the conservative Muslim country.

Al-Qaeda announced in June that its number three leader and Osama bin Laden’s one-time treasurer, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, had been killed in what security officials said appeared to be a drone strike in North Waziristan.

Officials in Washington say the drone strikes have killed a number of high-value targets including Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud and help protect foreign troops in Afghanistan from attacks plotted across the border.

The missiles have mostly targeted militants linked with the Haqqani network, based in North Waziristan.

The US military does not as a rule confirm drone attacks but its armed forces and the US Central Intelligence Agency operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy the pilotless aircraft in the region.

Gilani cancels visits to Paris and Brussels

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has cancelled visits starting this month to Europe, the foreign ministry said.

“In view of his pre-occupations with the post-flood situation, the Prime Minister has decided not to go ahead with his scheduled visits to Paris and Brussels,” said a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman in a statement.

“(The) Prime Minister's official visit to France is being re-scheduled.”

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi will lead Pakistan's delegation to the Asia-Europe summit in Brussels next month, said the statement.

Pakistani leaders have said the government has done its best to help flood victims given its limited resources and have appealed for international aid to help with reconstruction.

Gilani's press secretary, Shabbir Anwar, said he had been scheduled to leave at the end of this month for Paris with a delegation of 40 other officials to meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy and then travel from there on Oct 1 to Brussels.

Instead Gilani decided to stay behind and the size of the delegation was reduced to save on expenses after the floods.

“This had nothing to do with politics,” Anwar told Reuters. – Reuters

Accountability Court acquits Jehangir Badar

LAHORE: The Accountability Court in Lahore acquitted PPP Secretary General Jehangir Badar on Saturday.

The court acquitted Badar after hearing references made against him by the former government for making invalid and illegal assets.

Speaking to the media outside the Accountability Court, Badar said that Pervez Musharraf had made false reference against him.

Badar was acquitted after he showed his sources of income to the court.

All cases against Badar in the NAB court have been closed after the announcement of his acquittal.

No explosives found on PIA flight suspect

STOCKHOLM: Swedish police evacuated a Pakistan International Airlines jet diverted to Stockholm due to a bomb alert Saturday and detained a passenger on suspicion of preparing aircraft sabotage, officials said.

The Boeing 777 was traveling from Toronto to Karachi when the pilot asked to land at Stockholm's Arlanda airport after Canadian authorities received a tip that a passenger was carrying explosives. Arlanda spokesman Anders Bredfell said there were 273 people on board.

A SWAT team detained the suspect as he was evacuated from the aircraft along with the other passengers. Police described him as a Canadian citizen of Pakistani origin, aged about 30, but said they had not confirmed his identity.

A spokesman for the state-owned Pakistan International Airlines said the suspect was a 25-year-old Canadian national.

Police operation leader Stefan Radman said no explosives were found on the man, who was being questioned by investigators. He said a bomb squad was searching the aircraft, which was parked on a ramp at the end of a runway.

The tip was ''called in by a woman in Canada,'' Radman said, adding that Swedish police took the threat seriously.

Police officials said the man was not on any international no-fly lists and had cleared a security check in Canada. He didn't resist when the SWAT team took him into custody.

Investigators were questioning the man at a police station, and a prosecutor was to decide whether to formally arrest him.

Jan Lindqvist, a spokesman for airport operator Swedavia, said PIA was considering flying the passengers to Manchester, England, from where they would continue their journey to Karachi.

In Pakistan, a spokesman for state-run PIA confirmed the incident involved flight PK782 to Karachi.

''The plane has landed at the Stockholm airport due to security reasons,'' airline spokesman Sultan Hasan said.

The passengers were waiting at the ''international holding area'' at the airport as they and their luggage were scanned and searched, Hasan said. Pakistani diplomats were at the airport to coordinate with the security officials.

PIA said there were 255 passengers and 18 crew members on the plane. Of the passengers, 102 were Canadian nationals, 139 Pakistanis, eight US citizens, three Indians and one each from Japan, Malaysia, and Bangladesh.

Calls to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canada's public safety department were not immediately returned. – AP

This is not the time to create personal differences: Nawaz

LAHORE: Pakistan Muslim League - N Chief Nawaz Sharif said on Saturday that Pakistan cannot afford to be taken over by personal differences and everyone should instead unite to help Pakistan.

During a meeting with Muslim League Middle East president Chaudhry Noorul-Hassan Tanveer in Raiwind, Sharif said that long term plans for the next 25 years must be made to change the future of Pakistan.

He said that overseas Pakistanis have played a commendable role to help the flood victims of the country and soon they will be able to be directly involved in the restoration of the victims.

During the meeting, Tanveer said that a modern village consisting of 100 houses will also be constructed for the flood victims.

Tanveer gave Sharif a cheque for Rs.10 million while the the Japan Muslim League Secretary General Sheikh Qaiser Mahmood gave a cheque for Rs.65 million for relief work.

Two killed, seven injured in Bahawalpur mosque attack

BAHAWALPUR: Two persons were killed and seven others were injured after unidentified gunmen opened fire at a mosque in Bahawalpur early Saturday.

“Three men armed with pistols entered Al-Qamar mosque and fired at worshippers and as a result of firing two men died while nine others were wounded,” Bahawalpur district police chief Babar Bakht told AFP.

“Two of the wounded were in critical condition,” he said, adding that the motive behind the attack was not immediately clear, nor anyone had claimed responsibility.

Doctor Abu Ammar Aziz of Victoria Hospital in Bahawalpur confirmed that two men with bullet wounds had died and that the two seriously wounded men were undergoing surgery.

Residents of Satellite Town, the area where the mosque is located, blocked the neighbourhood’s main road and carried out protests against the attack.

Suicide bomber strikes in Russia’s Caucasus

MOSCOW: A suicide bomber blew himself up inRussia’s North Caucasus province of Dagestan, wounding at least 26 people, Russian news agencies reported on Saturday.

The attacker set off explosives after approaching police guarding a cordoned-off site where security forces had battled with suspected militant’s hours earlier, Interfax reported, citing a local law enforcement official.

The blast late on Friday wounded 13 police officers and 13 civilians, the report said. Other reports said as many as 30 people were hurt.

Unidentified assailants gunned down a school principal in her home in Dagestan earlier on Friday, while separate shoot-outs killed 12 people across the North Caucasus.

The suicide bomber approached an area police had cordoned off in a bid to isolate a group of suspected militants, Interfax reported, citing the National Anti-terror Committee. It said two militants and two law enforcement officers had been killed before the operation was suspended after nightfall.

A decade after separatists were driven from power in the second of two wars in Chechnya, adjacent to Dagestan, the North Caucasus is plagued by near-daily attacks, mostly targeting police and other government forces. – Reuters

UN speakers urge Pakistan to free up arms talks

UNITED NATIONS: Heaping pressure on Pakistan, a high-level UN meeting called on Friday for talks to start immediately on a treaty to ban production of fissile material used as fuel for nuclear weapons.

But Pakistan has insisted it will continue to block such talks, arguing that a ban would put it at a permanent disadvantage to its nuclear rival India. The dispute has led to deadlock at the 65-nation Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

At the UN meeting of some 70 states to discuss the paralysis at the conference, speakers avoided openly naming Pakistan, but several referred to “one country” that was causing the problem.

In a closing summary of the views expressed, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said there was “broad agreement on the need to immediately start negotiations on a ... treaty banning the production of fissile material.”

Continued impasse could result in states going outside the Geneva conference, known as the “CD,” to tackle the issue, Ban warned.

Support has appeared to be growing in Geneva to find another approach - possibly small-group talks in parallel to CD sessions. A precedent was set when Canada and Norwaymoved talks on a landmine ban out of the forum, eventually clinching the landmark 1997 Ottawa Treaty.

At Friday’s UN meeting, Western powers sharply attacked Pakistan’s blockage of the CD, which requires consensus for its actions.

“It strikes us as unwarranted for a single country to abuse the consensus principle and thereby frustrate everyone else’s desire to resume serious disarmament efforts,” said US

delegate Gary Samore, a special adviser to President Barack Obama.

Washington understood that all countries needed to protect their security interests, and with that principle in place, “no country need fear the prospect of (fissile material) negotiations,” Samore said.

NO CONSENSUS

British junior foreign minister Alistair Burt said blocking the negotiations was “damaging for multilateral arms control.”

Launched in 1978, the CD has clinched treaties banning biological and chemical weapons as well as underground nuclear tests. Its members include all five official nuclear powers - theUnited States, Russia, Britain, France and China.

But it has been unable to reach consensus on substantive work for the past 12 years.

Pakistan’s refusal since January to launch negotiations on fissile material like plutonium and highly enriched uranium is the latest obstacle.

Zamir Akram, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, said earlier this month his country would continue to hold out, arguing that India has an unfair advantage with bigger fissile material stockpiles and “discriminatory” nuclear cooperation deals with the United States.

“Pakistan’s security concerns can be addressed only once we have developed sufficient capacity to ensure our deterrent is credible in the face of growing asymmetry,” he told Reuters.

“My instructions are, ‘We continue to maintain our position’.”

Pakistan did not speak at Friday’s meeting in New York. No decisions were made, but Ban said he would ask a panel of advisers to review the issues raised.

Separately, French delegate Jacques Audibert said Paris would host a meeting of the five official nuclear powers next year to discuss their obligations stemming from a May conference on nuclear non-proliferation.

The conference called on the powers to pursue negotiations ultimately aimed at the total abolition of nuclear weapons. – Reuters

UN demands $180m dollars to feed Pakistan flood victims

ISLAMABAD: The United Nations on Friday called for 180 million dollars to feed six million flood victims inPakistan till the end of this year.

The UN is facing a shortage of money to meet the food requirements of victims of the disaster over the next two months, senior World Food Program official David Kaatrud said.

“We have a very large distribution program for six million people on the monthly basis, with a food basket of eight (essential) items,” he told a news briefing.

Kaatrud said the WFP would face a shortage of cooking oil and pulses in October and November.

“It is over 100 million US dollars for October and an additional 80 million dollars for November, let's say till the end of the year,” he said in response to a question about details of the shortages.

The United Nations has issued a record two-billion-dollar appeal for funds to cope with the disaster, which UN agencies say affected 21 million people and left 12 million in need of emergency food aid.

Kaatrud said the coming winter could be challenging for those affected by the flood because of the difficulties aid workers were having with communications and transport and the knock-on effect on the food supply.

Several roads have been cut off in the north and the quality of tents needs to be improved if they are to cope with the harsher weather, he said.

“There has to be an upgrading of the shelter that they are receiving right now,” he added.

Torrential rain began falling in northern Pakistan in July and the floods have since moved slowly south, wiping out villages and farmland, and affecting an area roughly the size ofEngland.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday called the floods in Pakistan “the worst natural disaster the United Nations has responded to in its 65-year history.” – AFP