Military taking aid worker threat seriously: Mullen

CLEVELAND: A Taliban threat against aid workers helping flood victims in Pakistan must be taken seriously and shows that insurgents have no moral boundaries, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Friday.

''I share the concern that was stated yesterday by the State Department,'' US military chief Adm. Mike Mullen told reporters after a luncheon speech to the City Club of Cleveland.

Mullen said he has seen no evidence of attacks against aid workers in Pakistan or US military forces helping the relief effort.

Still, he said, ''the insurgents, they have no moral bounds, from my perspective, and in that regard that they might do something like that certainly isn't out of the realm of possibility.''

The Pakistani Taliban hinted they might attack the foreign aid workers. The militant network has a history of attacking aid groups, including agencies under the UN umbrella. Militant spokesman Azam Tariq said the US and other countries were not focused on providing aid to flood victims but had other motives he did not specify.

Mullen said ''significant precautions'' have been ordered to protect US forces supporting the relief effort.

''We would hope that all of those who are providing aid in this very difficult set of circumstances would certainly not be impeded with respect to that,'' he said.

Mullen wrapped up a Midwest tour in which he urged audiences in Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland to provide support and job-assistance for veterans. The swing came just after the final US combat troops left Iraq.

Mullen, whose Navy career dates to the Vietnam era, said the positive response ''validates the sea of good will which is out there.'' – AP

Pakistan orders evacuation of southern town

THATTA: Pakistan ordered 300,000 people to evacuate a southern city after waters breached its defences as the United Nations warned Friday the country's worst humanitarian crisis was deepening.

For nearly a month, torrential monsoon rain has triggered massive floods steadily moving from north to south, affecting a fifth of the volatile country -- an area roughly the size ofEngland -- and 17 million people.

The United Nations estimated that around one million people had been displaced in the southern province of Sindh in 48 hours, where rising waters threatened a string of major towns.

“We ordered people of Thatta city on Thursday night to move to safer places after floods breached an embankment at Faqir Jogoth village,” administration official Manzoor Sheikh told AFP.

About 70 per cent of Thatta's approximately 300,000 people had so far moved to safer areas and the deluge is bearing down on the city, he said.

“We hope that (army) engineers will be able to repair the breach or otherwise floodwaters will inundate Thatta city,” Sheikh said.

He said the surrounding towns of Sujawal, Mirpur Bathoro and Darro -- which had a combined population of 400,000 -- had already been evacuated.

People were fleeing Thatta, where streets were deserted and shops shut, to nearby Makli and Karachi with their livestock and luggage as engineers tried to repair the six-metre (20-foot) wide breach, an AFP reporter said.

In Makli, which is a hilly area, devastated people were seen sitting out in the open with their children and cattle.

“It is the worst tragedy.... We are leaving our homes in miserable condition,” said Abdul Karim Palejo, a government schoolteacher in Thatta.

“I leave behind a house which is more than a century old.... My heart bleeds when I think of this house inundating in floodwaters,” he added.

A spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) inIslamabad estimated that one million people were displaced in a 48-hour period in Sindh alone.

“An already colossal disaster is getting worse and requiring an even more colossal response. The magnitude of this crisis is reaching levels that are even beyond our initial fears,” said the spokesman Maurizio Giuliano.

“The number of those affected and those in need of assistance from us are bound to keep rising.”The orders to evacuate Thatta threw into chaos plans by hundreds of people already on the move, fleeing flooded villages and hoping that the district's biggest city could provide relief and shelter.

Abdul Razak, a lanky 55-year-old heading towards Thatta, said he was leaving nothing to chance when it came to salvaging his possessions, weighing down a solitary cart with mattresses, blankets and clothes and “two days” of food.

“Afterwards, it will be in God's hands,” he said.

Pakistan's worst humanitarian disaster has left eight million dependent on aid for their survival and washed away huge swathes of the rich farmland on which the country's struggling economy depends.

The Pakistani government has confirmed 1,600 people dead and 2,366 injured, but officials warn that millions are at risk from disease and food shortages.

The country's disaster agency said Friday there would be a “significant rise” in the death toll as waters recede and the numbers of missing are counted.

Amid the global humanitarian effort US aid chief Rajiv Shah said he faced a threat when visiting a relief camp but pledged that extremists would not deter assistance.

Shah, administrator of the US Agency for International Development, said he quickly exited the camp he was touring in the southern city of Sukkur on Wednesday at the urging of his security guards.

Shah, who believed militants went to the camp because he was there, told reporters after returning to Washington it was “deeply saddening that others would choose to use these environments to propagate themselves.” US officials have warned of threats by extremists against foreign workers assisting in relief.

In terms of surface area, Sindh is now the worst-affected province of the country. Out of its 23 districts, 19 have so far been ravaged by floods, a UN OCHA statement said Friday.

The United Nations has warned that 800,000 people in desperate need of aid had been cut off by the deluge across the country and appealed for more helicopters to deliver supplies to those people reachable only by air.

Officials say around 4.5 million people urgently need shelter and Giuliano expressed serious concerns about rising malnutrition among children, with up to 20 per cent of children in affected areas now suffering from diarrhoea-related diseases. – AFP

US drone strike kills four militants in Pakistan

PESHAWAR: A US drone strike Saturday killed four militants in Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt near the Afghan border, security officials said.

The strike hit Shahidano village in the violence-wracked Kurram tribal district, 100 kilometres (62 miles) southwest of Peshawar.

“Four militants have been killed in this drone attack,” a security official in Peshawar told AFP by telephone.

Another security official in Peshawar said the US drone fired four missiles, hitting two vehicles near a house.

“All those killed were militants of Tehreek-e-Taliban,” the official said.

US drones have mostly targeted North and South Waziristan tribal districts, known hubs for Taliban and Al-Qaeda linked militants.

Kurram is the neighbouring tribal district of Orakzai, the home town of Hakimullah Mehsud, Pakistan's Taliban chief who escaped a US missile attack on January 14 in North Waziristan.

Officials said militants were crossing in two vehicles from Orakzai to Kurram but were hit when they stopped in front of a house.

Both the vehicles were destroyed in the attack, officials said.

Kurram tribal district has for three years been a flashpoint for violence between Shiite and Sunni communities.

US forces have been waging a drone war against Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked commanders in Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt, where militants have carved out havens in mountains outside direct government control.

Washington has branded the rugged tribal area on the Afghan border -- part of which has now been hit by Pakistan's catastrophic flooding -- a global headquarters of Al-Qaeda and the most dangerous place on Earth.

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

More than 1,000 people have been killed in over 100 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.

The United States has been increasing pressure on Pakistan to crack down on Islamist havens along the border.

Pakistani commanders have not ruled out an offensive in North Waziristan, but argue that gains in South Waziristan and the northwestern district of Swat need to be consolidated to prevent their troops from becoming overstretched.

Waziristan came under renewed scrutiny when Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American charged over an attempted bombing in New York on May 1, allegedly told US interrogators he went to the region for terrorist training.

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. – AFP

Presidency meetings focus on rebuilding infrastructure

ISLAMABAD: A number of meetings held at the presidency on Friday discussed the havoc wreaked by floods across the country and decided to take effective measures to rebuild the devastated areas.

In one of the meetings, President Asif Ali Zardari urged the housing sector to adopt innovative technology, design and material to rebuild the houses destroyed by floods so that these could withstand future disasters.

Mr Zardari advised the government to consider appointing Nespak as lead consultant to undertake rehabilitation and reconstruction of the infrastructure and houses destroyed by the floods.

William Lacy Swing, Director General of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), informed the president at a meeting that the organisation was leading the Emergency Shelter Cluster of 40 international and national aid agencies and was working closely with the National Disaster Management Authority in distribution of tents, plastic sheets and non-food items.

The IOM also acts as the consignee for all international assistance flights bringing relief goods.

The meeting was informed that the IOM would implement a number of ‘quick impact projects’ to repair damaged infrastructure.

‘Airblue cockpit had a third person’

ISLAMABAD: A team investigating the crash of the ill-fated Airblue jetliner on July 28 in Islamabad has detected the possible presence of a third person in the cockpit. Under normal circumstances, a cockpit is not supposed to have anyone other than the pilot and the co-pilot.

“The investigators have reportedly heard the voice of a third person in the cockpit of the Airblue jetliner,” a source close to the investigation told Dawn on condition of anonymity.

The voice has been extracted from the Cockpit Voice Recorder, according to the source, and the investigators were looking into various possibilities and aspects.

The CVR, which is part of the ‘Black Box’, is a flight recorder used to document the audio environment in the cockpit of an aircraft. In order to record and document the audio environment, microphones are installed in the pilots’ headsets and in the roof of the cockpit.

The source said that the data of communication between the control tower and the pilot were available with the investigators. Dawn has also learnt that the pilot and control tower communicated with each other for two minutes and 25 seconds.

Two teams are currently investigating the air crash in which 152 people were killed. One of them is headed by Air Commodore Khawaja Abdul Majeed, president of the Civil Aviation Authority’s Safety Investigation Board. It is focussing on human factors, possibility of technical fault and weather conditions.

The second team, headed by Federal Investigation Agency Director General Zafarullah Khan, has been assigned the task of investigating the possibility of ‘sabotage’.

The source said that investigators were trying to determine why the aircraft drifted five nautical miles away from its original route. “The late pilot was very experienced and professional with thousands of flying hours under his belt; hence the fact that the plane strayed five nautical miles from the original route is also a cause for concern for investigators,” he said. The source said that six investigators were yet to hold a joint meeting.

When asked if there was a third voice in the audio recording of the cockpit, CAA director general Air Commodore (retd) Junaid Amin told Dawn: “I am not aware of the presence of a third person in the cockpit… you cannot judge from the audio whether there was a third person….”

No fault in Airblue aircraft

An analysis of the Black Box of the ill-fated Airblue aircraft which crashed on July 28 has revealed that it had no technical fault at the time of the accident.

In intimation to A-320 operators across the world, Airbus said there was no need to update the procedures or make fresh recommendations after the ED 202 crash because all flight systems were working normally before the aircraft slammed into the fog-covered mountains.

All 152 passengers on board were killed.

The advisory was based on a preliminary analysis of flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder by Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses.

A final outcome of the investigation may take months, but preliminary investigations have set the direction for the probe.

According to aviation experts, the Airbus communication implies that technical malfunctioning has been effectively ruled out as the cause of the incident and it is up to the investigation team constituted by the Civil Aviation Authority to determine if the crash occurred because of pilot error, bad weather, control tower fault or any other factor.

The cockpit voice recording readouts have also revealed that the pilots belatedly realised that they were flying into terrain. The first officer of the flight was heard screaming “Sir, pull up, pull up” moments before the crash.

This revelation has been supported by the findings of local investigators which show that before hitting the mountains the aircraft had climbed from 2,600 feet to 3,100 feet. The aircraft was circling for Runway 12, where it was to attempt visual landing.

Sources privy to the investigations believe the pilot got panicked after realising that he was flying into the terrain and had turned the autopilot ‘heading bug’ to the left at more than 180 degrees.

The aircraft, experts say, takes the shortest possible route in such situation and instead of turning left moved towards right.

Why did the aircraft go so close to the hills? Several explanations are being dished out, but the most commonly heard of in the aviation circles say that the pilot while circling for Runway 12 was on Flight Management Computer, but instead of following the prescribed route he had probably created a ‘visual circuit using place bearing distance waypoints’ that put him in the wrong place.

Insertion of place bearing distance waypoints is strictly prohibited by aircraft manufacturers because the Airbus FMC does not have a ‘fix page’ capability, wherein a defined distance can be superimposed on the existing route.

The standard instructions are that any route that is not supported by a ground navigational aid should not be used.

Govt wants IMF programme to continue: Hafeez

WASHINGTON: Pakistan intends to stay on track with its International Monetary Fund loan programme but also wants the world body to understand the impact of a catastrophic flood on its economy, says Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Sheikh.

“We want to remain on track with the IMF programme because that is a reform programme that we have ourselves undertaken,” said Mr Sheikh. “At the same time, we want a shared understanding of the emerging situation,” he told journalists outside the IMF on Thursday when asked whether he was seeking a relaxation of the conditions attached to the loan.

A mandatory review of Pakistan’s policies planned for June had been pushed back, blocking a disbursement under the loan that was approved two years ago, as the country failed to contain spending and fell behind schedule for implementing a sales tax.

Pakistan is holding technical talks with the IMF on salvaging the economy and on assessing the economic impact of floods that have displaced millions of people and damaged farmland.

Economists say that widespread devastations require massive external financing to meet basic needs of the flood victims and to save the Pakistani economy from a possible collapse.

The New York Times reported on Friday that the flooding could set Pakistani infrastructure back “years, if not decades, further weaken its feeble civilian administration and add to the burdens on its military” and “distract from American requests for Pakistan to battle Taliban insurgents”.

Punjab wants CCI to discuss flood funds

LAHORE: Punjab has requisitioned a meeting of the Council of Common Interests (CCI) to seek details of flood relief funds and fix the share of each province, while Pakistan Muslim League-N chief Nawaz Sharif has asked the federal government not to bypass the provinces in distribution of the funds.

“Don’t bypass the provinces as the move entails dangerous repercussions,” Mr Sharif warned while briefing the media here on Friday after a two-day meeting of the party and provincial administration on rehabilitation of the flood-affected people.

He said such a move would be against the 18th Amendment that guaranteed provincial autonomy. In reply to a question about a recent statement by Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief Altaf Hussain, the former prime minister said the previous eight-year martial law had been of no benefit to the nation.

“What did it give except a fragile economy, poverty, desecration of the Constitution, arrest of judges, a wave of terrorism which is getting out of control today and thousands of missing people. Does Altaf Hussain want a return of all that?” Mr Sharif said he had warned months ago that some actions of the government could endanger democracy, but neither martial law could end corruption nor failure of a government could be declared as the failure of democracy.

He said he had visited flood-affected area in various provinces and in his opinion rebuilding shelters was the biggest and most immediate requirement.

He said each affected family needed at least Rs100,000 for the purpose and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani should arrange payment of a part of the amount before Eidul Fitr.

The PML-N chief regretted that his proposal to set up a commission to oversee relief work had not been supported by the federal government.

He said joint efforts by the government and the opposition could have given a positive message of national unity to the world, motivating it to donate more for the cause. They would also have covered up the government’s lapses in the earlier phase of the calamity.

He said the PML-N had avoided politicking on floods, although its opponents had described his visits to affected areas as ‘photo sessions’.

He said that a meeting of the National Disaster Management Authority held last week had decided all relief and rehabilitation work would be carried out in coordination with the provinces, but the federal government had not yet consulted Punjab.

The PML-N chief demanded a judicial commission to probe allegations of breaches made in embankments to save land of influential people. “Those found involved in the heinous crime should be given exemplary punishment.”

Replying to a question, he said transparent governance could have attracted more donations. Donors would hesitate to hand over cash to people facing corruption charges, he added.

Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif said he had written to the prime minister to convene a meeting of the CCI so that details of donations could be shared with the provinces and a formula devised to distribute the funds among them in proportion to their losses.

“We should be taken into confidence on the volume of the donations and the formula for their distribution among the provinces,” he said.

The chief minister expressed reservations over the reported move of the federal government to directly provide relief to the affected people.

In reply to a question, he said he had talked to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Amir Haider Hoti who had agreed that the aid should be disbursed through the provinces.

The Punjab chief minister said it had been unanimously decided on Aug 19 that each affected family would be immediately paid Rs20,000 to help them rebuild their homes and buy essential goods. He said the federal and provincial governments had to contribute equally to the amount.

Modalities for implementing the decision were to be finalised at a meeting of finance managers on Aug 20, but federal Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh left for Washington.

The chief minister also said that bypassing the provinces in disbursing aid would be a violation of laws.

He said the federal government should pay at least Rs100,000 to each affected family, Rs20,000 of it immediately.

Answering a question, he said it had been decided that the provincial social welfare department would conduct a survey to assess the losses with the help of headmasters of schools, numberdars of villages, members of youth councils comprising volunteer students and junior commissioned officers of the army.