Govt only seems to own Lahore, Rawalpindi: Khursheed Shah

ISLAMABAD: Opposition leader in the National Assembly, Khursheed Shah Tuesday said failure to take timely decisions on part of the government has led to a clash among institutions which is ‘extremely dangerous’.

“Mr Prime Minister, lets join hands and save the country,” Khursheed Shah asserted while addressing the legislators from the floor of lower house.

He lamented that the incumbent government only seems to own Lahore and Rawalpindi.

“Had the government invested Rs40 billion on electricity project instead of Metro Bus it would have served the people better,” he argued, adding when the urban centers are enduring up to 12-14-hour duration of power outages per day what to talk of the rural parts of the country.

He said Khawaja Asif, dressed in a suit and tie, used to frequent the Supreme Court to take the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to task during the previous government. “Today he (Khwaja Asif) himself is the Minister for Power, what is stopping him now to resolve the electricity crisis,” he asked.

Khursheed Shah said his party stands with the present government for strengthening the democracy. But, the government will have to abandon the anti-people policies, he warned.

Army tells Nawaz no more talks with Taliban, takes matter in its own hands

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Army chief General Raheel has told Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that the time for talks with Taliban was over.
“We will avenge the blood of every last soldier. Talks or no talks, the army will retaliate,” one military official told the influential Reuters news agency in Islamabad.The Reuters report, filed by reporter Mehreen Z Malik and edited by Mike Collett-White and Maria Golovnina, gave a revealing picture of civil-military relations in the Nawaz government.

The report said: “At Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s palatial offices in Islamabad this week, the army chief sat down to deliver the head of government a message he did not want to hear: The time for talks with the troublesome Pakistani Taliban was over.”

Nawaz Sharif came to power a year ago promising to find a peaceful settlement with the Islamist militant group, but as round after round of talks failed, the powerful armed forces favoured a military solution.

Their patience finally ran out and, late on Tuesday afternoon, during a tense meeting, the army effectively declared it would override a crucial plank of the government’s strategy and take matters into its own hands.

“The army chief and other military officers in the room were clear on the military’s policy: the last man, the last bullet,” a government insider with first-hand knowledge of the meeting told Reuters.

Asked to sum up the message General Raheel Sharif wanted to convey at the gathering, he added: “The time for talk is over.”The next day, Pakistani forces launched rare air strikes against the militants holed up in the remote, lawless tribal belt near the Afghan border. It is not clear whether Sharif authorised the operation.

On Thursday, they backed that up with the first major ground offensive against the Taliban there, undermining Nawaz Sharif’s year-long attempt to end a bloody insurgency across the country through peaceful means.

Disagreement over the militant threat is the latest row to flare up between the government and military, and relations between the two branches of power are at their lowest ebb for years, according to government officials.

The government did say talks with the Taliban would go on. “We will talk with those who are ready for it and the (military) operation is being launched against those who are not ready to come to the negotiating table,” spokesman Pervaiz Rashid told local media on Thursday.But the operations put the military, which has a long record of intervening in civilian rule through plots and coups, firmly back at the centre of Pakistan’s security policy.

The balance of power is shifting at a time when foreign troops are preparing to withdraw from Afghanistan and arch-rival India has just elected a Hindu nationalist leader promising to be more assertive on the international stage.“This is the clearest signal yet that the army will dictate its terms now,” a member of Nawaz Sharif’s cabinet said.

The Pakistani Taliban, as distinct from the Afghan Taliban which is actively targeting the Nato forces in Afghanistan, is believed to be behind attacks on Pakistani soldiers and civilians that have killed thousands in recent years.

The Pakistan Army has distinguished between “good” Taliban like the feared Haqqani network — who do not attack Pakistani security forces but fight in Afghanistan — and “bad” Taliban, indigenous Pakistani militants who are seeking to create an Islamic state.

While Pakistan’s military wants to go after the “bad” Taliban, it has, despite pressure from Washington, largely avoided taking on groups who launch attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan from Pakistan’s North Waziristan region.

Prompting the latest intervention, the Pakistani Taliban have become increasingly bold, striking the army in tribal areas including a recent battle in which an army major died. Earlier this month, nine soldiers were killed in an explosion near the Afghan border.“We will avenge the blood of every last soldier. Talks or no talks, the army will retaliate,” said one military official, who, like most others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject.

The army has ruled Pakistan for more than half of its history.Nawaz Sharif himself was toppled by the army in 1999 during his previous tenure as prime minister.But, humiliated after a secret 2011 US raid that killed Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil, the army stood back from politics and supported the last year’s first democratic transition of power which brought Nawaz Sharif back to office.

Sharif manoeuvred carefully, hand picking a new army chief and trying to forge a partnership with the military in the early days of his tenure, but the overtures had little lasting impact.

There are other signs of civil-military discord.Sharif came to power promising to rebuild relations with India, but has been under pressure to toughen his stance from hardliners at home, particularly within the army.The nuclear-armed neighbours have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over the still-disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir.

Nawaz Sharif’s policies towards India have been heavily scrutinised; some in the army justify its hefty budget by pointing to — and, critics say, playing up — the potential threat from India.

And despite signs the military has become more amenable to overtures from its old foe than in the past, a trade deal pushed by the prime minister and aimed at improving ties with India was cancelled at the last minute after pressure from the army, top government officials said.

Sharif now faces a dilemma over whether to accept an invitation by Indian Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi to attend his inauguration next week.The army is also bitter about the trial of former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, who ousted Sharif from power in 1999 and was arrested after he returned to Pakistan to take part in last year’s election.

Ties with Afghanistan have never been easy, but some officials believe the army wants to torpedo the government’s relationship with a future Kabul administration, risking deterioration in regional security as Nato troops prepare to leave this year.

Generals have jealously guarded the right to dictate policy on Afghanistan, seeing friendly guerrilla groups as “assets” to blunt the influence of India there.

Though simmering under the surface, tensions between the government and the army spilled into the open last month when a popular journalist was shot by unknown gunmen and his channel, Geo News, blamed the army’s powerful spy agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Public criticism of the shadowy ISI is almost unheard of in Pakistan. In a rare public response, the army demanded that Geo News, the country’s most-watched news channel, be shut down.The government’s media regulator has since resisted the army’s demands to cancel the channel’s license, which the military sees as a direct sign of defiance.

“Everyone was looking out to see how the government would treat the army in this crisis — as a friend or foe?” said a senior military official. “But the government allowed this to become a free-for-all, army-hunting season.”

For Sharif, buckling under military pressure is a major risk. “This is not about one TV channel but about freedom of expression and about living in a democracy,” Rashid said. “We should live and let live.”But despite putting on a brave front, officials say the government is feeling under siege.

“Never in the last year has the government felt weaker or more vulnerable,” one of Sharif’s key economic advisers said. “Now every time we have to take a major decision, on India, on Afghanistan, we will have to think ‘How will the army react?’”

A serving general said the army chief would always pick the “institution over the Constitution if push comes to shove,” adding: “As a society and a state, we have to avoid a context in which the army is pushed to do something it doesn’t want to.”

Russia floats own solution to Ukraine crisis

MOSCOW: Russia vowed on Monday to unveil its own solution to the Ukrainian crisis that would run counter to US efforts and would appear to leave room for Crimea to switch over to Kremlin rule.
The unexpected announcement came as Ukraine's new pro-European leaders raced to rally Western support in the face of the seizure by Kremlin-backed forces of the strategic Black Sea peninsula and plans to hold a Sunday referendum on switching Crimea's allegiance from Kiev to Moscow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's threat to invade Ukraine after a wave of deadly protests toppled a pro-Kremlin regime last month has set off the most explosive crisis in East-West relations since the Cold War.
US President Barack Obama and his European allies are urging Russia to call its troops in Crimea back to their barracks and launch immediate negotiations with the new Ukrainian leadership, which Putin claims rose to power thanks to an "unconstitutional coup".
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Putin in a televised meeting Monday that proposals he had received from US Secretary of State John Kerry on resolving the standoff "do not suit us very much" and were "framed as if there exists a conflict between Russia and Ukraine."
He said Russia had prepared a series of counter-proposals that would "take into account the interests of all Ukrainians".
Lavrov said Washington was basing its solution on a recognition of Kiev's new leaders while Russia still considered the ousted Viktor Yanukovych as the legitimate president of Ukraine.
But Lavrov gave no indication about when or where Russia's proposals would be made public.
Putin backs Crimea referendum:
Putin added new urgency to the standoff on Sunday by telling German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron that he fully backed the actions being taken by the self-declared rulers of Crimea -- in power since an end-of-February seizure of the government by pro-Kremlin gunmen.
The Kremlin said Putin stressed "the steps undertaken by the legitimate authorities of Crimea are based on the norms of international law" a comment strongly hinting that Moscow was ready to annex Crimea after handing the peninsula to Ukraine as a "gift" when it was a part of the Soviet empire in 1954.
Merkel whose cautious approach to imposing sanctions on Moscow has clashed with the more hawkish positions of eastern European nations and Washington bluntly responded that the Crimean referendum was "illegal."
US ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt told reporters in Kiev on Monday that Washington "is not prepared to recognise any result of the so-called referendum".
The public vote will ask the predominantly ethnic Russian population to choose between swearing allegiance to Moscow and declaring greater autonomy from Kiev while remaining a part of Ukraine.
Ukraine's interim Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsya said that if Crimea's leaders "want more rights and authority, then we are ready to do this."
The country's interim Defence Minister Igor Tenyukh meanwhile said the nation's army already on full combat alert had launched training exercises aimed at evaluating how the heavily outnumbered force could resist an offensive from its nuclear-armed neighbour.
The diplomatic wrangling continued as Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk prepared to fly to the United States to meet Obama and address the UN Security Council.
His first meeting with the US leader on Wednesday should add credibility to Yatsenyuk's untested government and provide Ukraine with a chance to iron out the details of crucial economic relief for its struggling economy.
The White House said Obama will discuss an economic support package that has already seen Washington pledge a quick infusion of more than $1 billion and the European Union promise to issue 11 billion euros ($15 billion) over two years.
Kiev says it needs about 25 billion euros ($35 billion) through 2015 to keep the country running after Russia froze a $15-billion bailout it promised Yanukovych as his reward for rejecting an EU trade deal in November that initially sparked the protests.
Split between Russia and China:
The escalating crisis has seen Obama vow to impose travel bans and asset freezes on Russian officials held responsible for endangering the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
US officials have stressed that Putin himself is not on that list but have also warned that Washington could pull out of a G8 summit the Russian leader is hosting in Sochi in June.
The European Union for its part has halted visa talks and threatened to impose tough economic sanctions unless Putin quickly opens talks with Kiev.
The UN Security Council later on Monday will hold another meeting on Ukraine amid a rare but potentially significant split between allies China and Russia.
Beijing on Sunday affirmed its support for the "sovereignty and territorial integrity" of Ukraine a stance that appears to signal that its own concerns about separatist movements in China outweigh the importance of preserving a united front with Russia on foreign affairs.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday warned against "provocative rhetoric and hasty actions" as he appealed for dialogue on Ukraine.
In a separate development, NATO announced it would deploy reconnaissance flights over Poland and Romania to monitor the crisis in Ukraine.
Crimea's separatist government said on Monday it had invited the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor the referendum even while keeping the group's military observers from entering the region at gunpoint.
The European security body said it did not recognise the invitation as valid because it had not come from an OSCE members state but only an autonomous region of Ukraine.