‘PM should know the consequences of defying SC’

ISLAMABAD: Attorney-General Pakistan Anwarul Haq on Friday told the Supreme Court that Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had approved the summary regarding the reopening of Swiss cases against President Zardari. However, the summary's contents could not be disclosed.

The Attorney-General presented a report in compliance with the apex court's orders regarding the reopening of cases against President Zardari.

He told the court that the summary’s content will not be made public. However, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry ordered the Attorney-General to present the summary in the court.

Chief Justice Iftikhar said that Prime Minister Gilani should know the consequences of defying the apex court's verdict.

He said the verdict’s implementation rests with the prime minister, adding that the ruling must be implemented.

Earlier on Thursday, the law ministry had sent the five-point summary to the prime minister on the court's directives.

Sources said the summary suggested that no cases could be initiated against President Zardari in the Swiss courts.

The summary further stated that the president enjoys immunity under Article 248 of the Constitution of Pakistan.

The court then adjourned the hearing till Monday as the Attorney-General requested for time to present the summary.

Israel raises possibility of compromise on settlements

JERUSALEM: Israel on Friday raised the possibility of a compromise just ahead of the scheduled ending of curbs on settlement construction that threatened to derail three-week-old Middle East peace talks.

Just two days before the conclusion of the 10-month partial moratorium on settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, the government indicated it was willing to cut a deal acceptable to the United States and the Palestinians, who both want an extension of the restrictions.

“Israel is prepared to reach a compromise acceptable to all parties to consider extending the freeze on construction, provided that the freeze will not be total,” a senior government official said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “making intensive efforts to reach such a compromise before the expiration of the moratorium on September 26,” he told AFP, asking not to be named.

This marked a significant shift for Israel which was previously adamant the restrictions would not be renewed even though Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas had threatened to walk out of the peace talks over the issue.

US President Barack Obama on Thursday firmly restated his conviction the moratorium should be extended.

Abbas welcomed Obama’s remarks, “especially his call for a halt of the settlement activities and for the creation of a Palestinian state.” “We also welcome the huge efforts exerted by President Obama and his administration to push forward the peace process,” he told AFP.

The US administration also said on Thursday it was proposing “ideas” to Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in a bid to break the stalemate over settlements.

“You have stated positions on both sides that are incompatible and we are offering our ideas on how we might see movement on both sides that could allow us to continue to move forward,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said.

In recent days, Netanyahu has discussed the issue with US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders, the Israeli official said.

The Obama administration had already played a key role in getting the two sides back to the negotiating table on September 2 after a 20-month pause in the peace talks.

The previous round of direct negotiations collapsed when Israel launched a devastating military offensive on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip in December 2008.

Abbas and Netanyahu did not appear to have made any progress towards narrowing their differences during talks last week in Egypt and in Jerusalem attended by Clinton.

In a bid to resolve the row, US officials have suggested a three-month extension to the moratorium during which time the two sides could agree on borders, which could neutralise the settlements dispute, a senior Palestinian official said.

The Palestinians and US negotiators want a complete halt to settlements while Israel is insisting on continuing to build in major blocs it hopes to keep in any final peace accord.

Abbas said he was “not opposed to a settlement freeze for a month or two.” “If Israel stops the settlement and shows goodwill, then we can reach an agreement on borders and security, and agreement on other matters like the status of Jerusalem, water and settlements will follow,” he told AFP this week.

The United States and the European Union have urged Israel to extend the moratorium.
The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including annexed east Jerusalem, to be illegal. The settlement issue has long been among the thorniest in the peace process.

Some 500,000 Israelis live in more than 120 Jewish settlements across the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories expected to form the bulk of a future Palestinian state. – AFP

Pakistanis furious over Aafia Siddiqui’s sentence

KARACHI: Pakistanis burned tires and chanted anti-US slogans after a New York judge handed down an 86-year sentence to an American-trained Pakistani scientist convicted of trying to kill US agents and military officers in Afghanistan.

The strange case of Aafia Siddiqui has long stirred passions in Pakistan, a key US ally in the fight against Terrorist militancy but also a place where anti-American sentiment is widespread.

Many Pakistanis believe the US abducted Siddiqui and kept her in a secret prison for years as it pursued its war on terror. US officials deny those claims, though they long listed Siddiqui as a suspect wanted for alleged links to al-Qaida.

After vanishing for five years, Siddiqui was caught in Afghanistan in 2008, where she is said to have shot at US interrogators.

During a three-hour hearing in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday, Siddiqui tried to dispel rumors she was being tortured while in New York, and urged calm over her plight.

“Tell the Muslims, please don’t get emotional,” she said, addressing reporters in the audience.

But in Pakistan, news of the harsh sentence immediately sparked anger and disbelief.

In the northwestern city of Peshawar, dozens of people took to the streets, burning tires and shouting ''Down with America!'' and slogans against Pakistan's president and prime minister. Some hit a portrait of President Barack Obama with their shoes.

“This sentence is a slap in the face of our rulers, who have pledged and made promises to bring back Aafia,” Siddiqui’s sister Fauzia said at her home in the southern city of Karachi.

The Pakistani government, which helped bankroll Siddiqui’s defense, was “disappointed at the sentence and sad that our efforts to get her back to Pakistan did not succeed,” said Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit. ''We are in touch with the US administration to see what possible options are available. We are not giving up.''

Calling Siddiqui an ''enigma,'' US District Judge Richard M. Berman started the sentencing by outlining Siddiqui's history, noting that she was educated in the United States at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brandeis University in the early 1990s.

Berman said she returned to her native Pakistan in 2003 and married a purported al-Qaida operative, a nephew to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Both men are held at Guantanamo Bay.

Her whereabouts between 2003 and 2008 are unclear, though Siddiqui told the court she was held in a secret prison in Afghanistan for many years. She turned up in Afghanistan in the summer of 2008 carrying notes referencing a ''mass casualty attack'' on New York City landmarks and some sodium cyanide.

At her trial earlier this year, jurors heard eyewitnesses describe how, after she was detained by Afghan police, Siddiqui grabbed a rifle and tried to shoot US authorities who had gone to interrogate her. They said she yelled, ''Death to Americans!'' before she was wounded in return fire and subdued.

Siddiqui testified in her own defense at the trial, saying charges that she purposely shot at soldiers were ''ridiculous.''

Just before she was sentenced, Siddiqui said she was at peace. Afterward, she insisted that her lawyers not appeal.

''It's useless, pointless,'' she said. ''I appeal to God.'' – AP

Afridi to re-consider Test retirement as Pakistan return

KARACHI: One-day captain Shahid Afridi Friday called Pakistan’s scandal-marred tour of England the “most difficult” of his career as the team staged a low-key return home after four gruelling months away.

Coach Waqar Younis also conceded that it had been a punishing tour “on and off the field” after corruption investigations engulfed the side, triggering a barrage of condemnation from the press and public.

An exhausted-looking Afridi flew in to Karachi with three team-mates while the rest of the squad arrived in Lahore in the early hours, with a phalanx of gun-toting policemen escorting the players out of both airports.

“It was tough because of the controversies and became very difficult to cope with, because every time we went out of the hotel people passed remarks against us,” Afridi told a scrum of reporters in Karachi.

“Because of the controversies on the tour, it was the most difficult tour of my 14-year career,” the explosive all-rounder added.

The tour ended on Wednesday with Pakistan losing the one-day series 3-2.

England also took the Test and Twenty20 series.

The tour will be remembered less for the on-field play and more for the off-field revelations by British tabloids that sparked investigations by Scotland Yard and the International Cricket Council (ICC).

Allegations of spot-fixing in the Lord's Test against England engulfed Test captain Salman Butt along with bowlers Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif. All three were questioned by British police and returned home early to Pakistan.

The ICC launched another probe into a suspicious scoring pattern by Pakistan in the third one-day match at The Oval on September 17, prompting Pakistan's cricket chief to hurl corruption allegations in turn against England.

The Pakistan Cricket Board on Thursday hired lawyers to reply to a legal notice filed by English officials demanding an “unreserved apology” over the allegations by PCB chairman Ijaz Butt.

Butt had accused England players of deliberately losing The Oval match in return for “enormous amounts of money”, prompting passionate denials by England. There was also an off-field altercation between rival players.

Afridi said team unity had remained intact despite the storm of controversy.

“The best part of the whole tour was that the players showed unity even in difficult times and gave a good fight in the one-day series against England,”he said, while also hinting at a return to Test cricket.

“I will think about it and if the team needs it, I may consider playing the Test series against South Africa,” he said, ahead of the Proteas encounters starting late next month on neutral turf in the United Arab Emirates.

Foreign teams have shunned tours of Pakistan since Sri Lanka were attacked by gunmen near Lahore's Gaddafi stadium in March 2009. Seven Sri Lankan players and a coach were wounded in the attack, which killed eight Pakistanis.

Pakistan began their troubled summer tour with matches against Australia in England, winning both Twenty20 matches and squaring the two-Test series 1-1.

Waqar, one of Pakistan's greatest bowlers, said the tour's length had taken its toll.
“If you take into account the tour to Sri Lanka before we went to England, it was four months on the trot and the tour of England was difficult both on and off the field,” the coach said on his arrival in Lahore.

“We had successes against Australia which were pleasing,” Waqar added.

“But because of the controversies it was tough against England, because you need to go to extra effort to gee up the players when you see a report in the newspaper every other day.” – AFP

Nato frees Al Jazeera cameraman

KANDAHAR: An Al Jazeera television cameraman was released from a Nato-run prison on Friday, the journalist said, after spending two days in detention in southern Afghanistan.

Another Al Jazeera cameraman and a local TV reporter detained by the US-led Nato force this week are yet to be released.

“I'm freed,” Mohammad Nader told AFP as he left Kandahar Airfield, the biggest Nato base in southern Afghanistan. “They said I can go, 'you're free',” Nader said.

The journalist was picked up from his home in Kandahar city early Wednesday and Nato’s International Security Assistance Force said it had “captured a suspected Taliban media and propaganda facilitator, who participated in filming election attacks”.

After the detention of its staff, the Doha-based television network accused Nato of trying to suppress its coverage of the war in Afghanistan.

US, Britain pledge long-term flood aid for Pakistan

WASHINGTON: Vice President Joe Biden and visiting British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg on Thursday pledged their countries’ “sustained long-term” support to Pakistani flood victims.

Meeting for the first time here since Britain’s Conservative-Liberal Democrats coalition was formed in May, the two said their governments were “committed to ensuring the most effective possible international response to Pakistan's ongoing flood disaster.”

In the wake of devastating monsoon rains that have left some 10 million Pakistanis homeless, “the US and the UK affirm their commitment to sustained long-term post-flood reconstruction in Pakistan, beyond the immediate humanitarian needs,” they added.

“Stability in Pakistan... is vital for the stability of the region and for security in the wider world,” they said.

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.” Ban requested a record two billion dollar international aid effort for the Asian country four times his initial request. – AFP

US walks out of Ahmadinejad UN speech

UNITED NATIONS: Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad provoked yet another controversy Thursday saying a majority of people in the United States and around the world believe the American government staged the Sept. 11 terror attacks in an attempt to assure Israel's survival.

The provocative comments prompted the US delegation to walk out of Ahmadinejad's UN speech, where he also blamed the US as the power behind UN Security Council sanctions against Iran for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a technology that can be used as fuel for electricity generation or to build nuclear weapons.

Delegations from all 27 European Union nations followed the Americans out along with representatives from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Costa Rica, an EU diplomat said.

Ahmadinejad said the US has allocated $80 billion to upgrade its nuclear arsenal and is not a fair judge to sit as a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council to punish Iran for its nuclear activities. Iran denies it is seeking a nuclear weapon.

The Iranian leader _ who has in the past cast doubt over the US version of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks _ also called for setting up an independent fact-finding UN team to probe the attacks. That, he said, would keep the terror assault from turning into what he has called a sacred issue like the Holocaust where ''expressing opinion about it won't be banned''.

Ahmadinejad did not explain the logic behind blaming the US for the terror attacks but said there were three theories:

_That a ''powerful and complex terrorist group'' penetrated US intelligence and defenses, which is advocated ''by American statesmen.''

_''That some segments within the US government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime. The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view.''

After Ahmadinejad uttered those words, two American diplomats stood and walked out without listening to the third theory: That the attack was the work of ''a terrorist group but the American government supported and took advantage of the situation.''

Mark Kornblau, spokesman of the US Mission to the world body, issued a statement within moments of the walkout.

''Rather than representing the aspirations and goodwill of the Iranian people,'' he said, ''Mr. Ahmadinejad has yet again chosen to spout vile conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic slurs that are as abhorrent and delusional as they are predictable.''

Ahmadinejad said the US used the Sept. 11 attacks as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of people. He argued that the US, instead, should have ''designed a logical plan'' to punish the perpetrators and not occupy two independent states and shed so much blood.

He boasted of the capture in February of Abdulmalik Rigi, the leader of an armed Sunni group whose insurgency in the southeast of Iran has destabilized the border region with Pakistan. He praised Iranian security forces for capturing him in an overseas operation without resorting to violence. Rigi was later hanged.

Ahmadinejad's attacks on the United States and the dispute over Iran's nuclear program dominated the opening of the General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned kings, prime ministers and presidents in his keynote address of the growing political polarization and social inequalities in the world and implored UN members to show greater tolerance and mutual respect to bring nations and peoples together.

''We hear the language of hate, false divisions between 'them' and 'us,' those who insist on 'their way' or 'no way,''' he said.

In times of such polarization and uncertainty, Ban said, ''let us remember, the world still looks to the United Nations for moral and political leadership.''

President Barack Obama, speaking soon after, echoed the secretary-general, warning that underneath challenges to security and prosperity ''lie deeper fears: that ancient hatreds and religious divides are once again ascendant; that a world which has grown more interconnected has somehow slipped beyond our control.''

The US president's 32-minute speech _ more than twice the allotted 15 minutes _ covered global hotspots from Iran and Afghanistan to the Mideast and North Korea.

Obama said Iran is the only party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty ''that cannot demonstrate the peaceful intentions of its nuclear program'' and as a result the UN Security Council has imposed four rounds of increasingly tough sanctions.

''The United States and the international community seek a resolution to our differences with Iran, and the door remains open to diplomacy should Iran choose to walk through it,'' he said. ''But the Iranian government must demonstrate a clear and credible commitment, and confirm to the world the peaceful intent of its nuclear program.'' – AP