<b>RAWALPINDI - For the first time in the history of country, a large number of youths, including former military corps commanders and generals, Tuesday held a demonstration near the GHQ to protest against President Pervez Musharrafâs policies and asked him to resign from the office.</b>
Besides a larger number of retired generals, former chief of the army staff Gen Mirza Aslam Beg, Ex-Servicemen Societyâs President Gen ® Faiz Ali Chishti, ex-corps Commander Gen Jamshed Gulzar Kayani, Admiral Fasih Bukhari, Lt-Gen ® Ali Quli Khan, Lt-Gen ® Salim Haider, Lt-Gen ® Hamid Gul participated in the demonstration and chanted full-throat slogans like âGo Musharraf Goâ, âNo Musharraf Noâ, âConstitute a commission on Kargil issueâ, âPresident Musharraf must resignâ while marching towards the General Headquarters.
The ex-generals were also holding banners and placards inscribed with similar slogans. The protestors reached Army Museum and Library on Iftikhar Road and lambasted the present governmentâs policies in strongest possible words. Former chiefs of Pakistan Army, Pakistan Navy and Pakistan Air Force were emotional on the occasion. The ex-generals vowed that they would continue their protest until President Musharraf quits power.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Ex-officers hold protest near GHQÂ
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Woh, this is surprise, this is Bollywood influence on Paki officer, Mushy should impose ban on Bollywood and internet.
<b>KARACHI, Feb 5 : How much the government added to the external debt is much more important than the build-up of a heap of new record domestic debt, adding a trillion rupees to the total.
The huge external debt, which witnessed an addition of about $7billion to the total of over $40 billion in just four years, is set to start a vicious cycle of borrowing â servicing â borrowing.
The rising bill of external debt-servicing gets more importance in the wake of widening current account deficit.</b>
This deficit curtails the governmentâs ability to pay external bills, forcing it to borrow to meet the requirement or sell the assets it has for yielding foreign exchange.
<b>The government has been paying about $3 billion each year as debt-servicing despite rescheduling of Paris Club consortium debt which has the largest share in the total debt.
The latest figures issued by the State Bank showed that the total external debt reached $40.322 billion from $33.352 billion since 2003-04.
The addition of about $6.9 billion in just four years showed that the government borrowed massively to meet its external payment.</b>
This has increased the cost of debt-servicing. The future government is bound to borrow more to keep itself able to make external payments. This could be the second biggest task of the future government after de-freezing the petroleum prices.
The future government will have to carry out another task to launch Global Depository Receipts (GDRs) to raise dollars for its increasing demand. The dollar demand has multiplied after record oil prices which hit $100 per barrel.
The slow export growth and high import growth is another difficult area which demands more dollars.
The countryâs foreign exchange reserves have stared depleting but still these are about $15 billion.
This will be the toughest task for the future government to maintain reserves and keep the payment system smooth.
The foreign exchange reserves have been a trade mark of success of the previous government.
Both the Prime Minister and President referred the forex reserves as one of the biggest successes in numerous speeches they made in last couple of years.
The SBPâs data showed that the government of Shaukat Aziz went beyond all records of increasing domestic debt which rose by almost one trillion rupees in five year to make the total as Rs2.7 trillion.
According to the report, the previous government which completed its five-year tenure increased the domestic debt by 58 per cent in five years.
The government broke all records of previous governments to add such huge debt on the back of the weak economy.
The previous government added both the external and domestic debt on such a scale which never happened before.
The caretaker government has followed the same path and has been borrowing at the fastest speed.
<b>The State Bank in its monetary policy criticised huge borrowing from the State Bank.
The SBP accused the government of accelerating inflation through huge borrowing and destroying all efforts of the SBP to control inflation. The government borrowed about Rs237 billion from SBP in six months.</b>
<b><span style='color:blue'>Mly helicopter crashes in South Waziristan killing 8 army officers</span></b> <b>PESHAWAR, Feb 6 (AP) : <span style='color:red'>A Pakistani military helicopter crashed Wednesday in South Waziristan killing a major general and seven other military officers, an intelligence official said.</span></b>The cause of the crash was unknown, the official said on condition of anonymity. The dead include Major General Javed Sultan, a top regional military commander, the official said. The dead also include two brigadiers, a military spokesman said. The crash was believed to have been caused by a technical fault, spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told Dawn News television channel.(Posted @ 17:07 PST, Updated @ 17:20 PST
Or Pious people were showering flowers? <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
ISLAMABAD: <b>Police on Tuesday found two suicide jackets in a sewerage drain</b> <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tongue.gif' /><!--endemo--> in a northwestern Pakistani town, where a teenager was arrested last month for alleged involvement in former premier Benazir Bhutto's assassination.
<b>The jackets were found in the drain at Madina Colony in Dera Ismail Khan town of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP).</b>
On Sunday, police had arrested a would-be suicide bomber from the same town, who <b>was planning to attack Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman.</b> {Fazlu is soon going to be taken out by an vaccum burst in an closed room.}
Security was further beefed up in Dera Ismail Khan after the suicide jackets were found, officials said. Police also registered a case against unknown persons and started an investigation.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has partially lifted restrictions on disgraced nuclear scientist A Q Khan, who was placed under house arrest after he confessed to heading a secret proliferation ring, to enable him to meet close friends and some old colleagues.
Requests from persons intending to visit Khan are routed through Lt Gen (retired) Khalid Kidwai, the chief of the Strategic Planning Division, the organisation that controls Pakistan's atomic arsenal and the nuclear establishment. Kidwai and his department decide who should be granted permission, 'The News' reported on Tuesday.
Earlier PML-Q Secretary General Mushahid Hussain Sayed had said <b>the next government would set Khan free.</b> Khan has been under detention in his home in the heart of Islamabad for four years.
According to a family source, there is a list of people who can meet Khan and even this list keeps changing. The source said Khan's daughters, his sister Razia and brother Abdul Qayyum are allowed to meet him.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>11 Chinese women among 18 arrested in capital </b>
ISLAMABAD: Police on Tuesday arrested 18 people, including 11 Chinese women, in separate raids here for being allegedly involved in immoral activities. The Shalimar police conducted a raid at a massage centre in Sector G-10 and arrested 10 people, including five Chinese women, and also recovered 100 bottles of wine. Meanwhile, the Margalla police raided a house in Sector G-9/4 and arrested six Chinese women and two local men.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Toba Toba, Since when Harem became illegal and when kufir are involved.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Musharraf allows Nuclear Blackmarketeer A Q Khan to meet 'close friends'<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Mushy is trying to improve his rating and prolonging his stay in Pakistan.
Interesting news. Paki taliban announces an cease-fire with paki army. That is for now. This cease-fire is going to be used by the paki taliban to arm themselves to the teeth and again start implementing sharia among the pakis by their jihad.
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) â Two Pakistani officials said Thursday that their government held secret talks with Taliban fighters and tribal elders near the Afghan border before a cease-fire just announced by the militants.
The officials familiar with the talks said they took place at an undisclosed location in South Waziristan, a semiautonomous region that is home to scores of al-Qaida and Taliban fighters, many of whom fled there from neighboring Afghanistan after the U.S-led invasion in 2001. The officials would not say who represented the government or how long the dialogue had been going on.
Militant representatives included Siraj Haqqani, a prominent Afghan militant blamed for attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan, one official said. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
<b>Few other details have emerged about terms of the cease-fire, announced Wednesday by a spokesman for Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, a militant umbrella group, after weeks of heavy fighting.</b>
The government of President Pervez Musharraf did not confirm a truce but Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz said <b>the national leadership was ready for a dialogue with the Taliban.</b> {Paki leadership is ready to hold talks with terrorists.}
Ismail Khan, a journalist who reports on the border area for the newspaper Dawn, said both sides appeared to be respecting the truce. But <b>he said the military's apparent decision to halt its operation against militants in South Waziristan raised questions about whether Pakistan was committed to crushing the Taliban.</b>
In Washington, the State Department signaled it would oppose any agreement that resembled the last truce.A cease-fire in North Waziristan in September 2006, which collapsed in July, was widely seen as a setback in the war against terror, giving the Taliban and al-Qaida a freer hand to stage cross-border attacks into Afghanistan and extend their control of areas within Pakistan.
The Pakistani government has repeatedly tried to strike peace deals with local pro-Taliban militants, urging them to expel foreign al-Qaida militants the U.S. has warned may use their sanctuary inside Pakistan's tribal regions to plot terror attacks around the globe.
Militant spokesman Maulvi Mohammed Umar said the truce would include the tribal belt along the Afghan border and the restive Swat region to the east where the army has also battled pro-Taliban fighters.
White House officials have lauded Musharraf as an indispensable ally in the war on terror. But the former general has seen his support among Pakistanis steadily erode. Even retired generals have joined lawyers and other professionals in demanding that he step down.
On Thursday, a private TV news station accused the government of blocking its transmissions after it aired a program featuring a critic of Musharraf. The satellite transmission of Aaj television was blocked late Wednesday after commentator Nusrat Javed appeared on-screen, said Aslam Dogar, an assignment editor at the station.
Aaj television had been banned in November when Musharraf declared a state of emergency and put curbs on the media.
<b>A truce with the Taliban may help the government maintain order during the Feb. 18 balloting, although numerous other extremist groups throughout the country may not consider themselves bound by the truce.</b>
Two men were killed and 10 others were wounded when a bomb exploded Thursday in southwestern Baluchistan province. <b>The blast, which authorities said may have been a suicide attack, occurred in the town of Dera Murad Jamali in front of shops owned by Hindus</b>, police said. {Now that there is a cease-fire between two isalmic terrorist entities they are killing Hindus in pakisatan since both the entities want Hindus and non-muslims to be eliminated from pakisatan.}
Ceasefire announcement, Rice and UK David Miliband made surprise visit to Afghanistan.
I think NATO is planning for spring action and smart Paki army protected its asset by ceasefire.
Pakistan Army is playing nice music and NATO is dancing on fine tune.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Thousands attend Benazir's Chehlum at Garhi Khuda Bakhsh </b>GARHI KHUDA BAKHSH, Pakistan, Feb 7 (AFP): Tens of thousands of people beat their chests in anguish at Benazir Bhutto's tomb Thursday as they marked the end of 40 days of mourning (chelum) for the slain former premier. Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir's widower and political successor, said in a speech to the massive crowd outside the white marble building that he feared he would be assassinated like his late wife. âWe will avenge Benazir Bhutto's martyrdom in a democratic way,â said Zardari.<b> âIf I succeed, you will see me alive. If I am martyred like her, you will be the ones to take my coffin to the grave.â </b>Heavy security was in place for the rituals in the rural southern village of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, where Benazir Bhutto was buried the day after her assassination on December 27. Hundreds of paramilitary troops and police stood guard, while walk-though scanners were set up to check the crowds flooding into the mausoleum to throw rose petals over her grave. Despite the warnings, and the bitter cold, many visitors including women and children stayed overnight in tents before rising at dawn to recite verses from the Holy Quran. People arrived on foot - some from towns hundreds of kilometres away - and others by trucks and buses. Many were listening to cassettes of Bhutto speeches. PPP provincial leader for Sindh province Nisar Khauro lamented what he called the government's âdouble standardsâ following reports that it was negotiating with those blamed for Benazir's killing. The PPP has said it will officially begin campaigning from Thursday for the polls. (First Posted @ 13:00 PST, Updated @ 14:20 PST)
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->KARACHI (February 08 2008) : <b>The country's foreign exchange reserves have dipped to the lowest level of current fiscal year, $14.77 billion, by recording 10 percent decline during the last three months.</b>
High import bill of oil and slow privatisation processes is putting negative impact on the country's foreign exchange reserves, which have shrunk by $296.4 million in the last week and some $1.59 billion during the last three months.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-Mudy+Feb 8 2008, 12:09 PM-->QUOTE(Mudy @ Feb 8 2008, 12:09 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Ceasefire announcement, Rice and UK David Miliband made surprise visit to Afghanistan.
I think NATO is planning for spring action and smart Paki army protected its asset by ceasefire.Â
Pakistan Army is playing nice music and NATO is dancing on fine tune.
[right][snapback]78161[/snapback][/right]
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<b>The main reason for the dip in violence in Afghanistan was the opening of another front by the taliban in pakistan.</b>
<b>Turmoil in Pakistan helping NATO in Afghanistan</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Fri Feb 8, 2008</b>
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Political turmoil in Pakistan may have stemmed the flow of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters into neighboring Afghanistan, as militants shift their focus to the government of President Pervez Musharraf, U.S. officials say.
"They (militants) are now facing the other direction and sending some resources to try and attack, to try and undermine Pakistani stability," Gates told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee.
<b>The reduced flow of fighters -- down as much as 40 percent since November, according to U.S. officials -- could mark a significant opening for the Afghan government, some officials said.</b>
<b>"It's getting worse in Pakistan," said Michael Vickers, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict.</b> "I think it's fair to say. And there's been some turning inward."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>Now that the pakistan front is being closed by the declaration of an ceasefire between taliban and the paki army, all the resources will be used in Afghanistan to fight the 15,000 NATO troops.</b>
Pakistan: The Pakistan Army held its 106th Corps Commanders Conference today in Rawalpindi, which was chaired by Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Kayani, according to multiple local news services. Kayani directed that all serving officers occupying civilian posts will relinquish their military posts within six months. <b>âThere are around 300 serving military personnel currently on deputation to civil departments,â </b>Director-General Inter-Services Public Relations Major General Athar Abbas told The News. Under the new policy, some general officers may revert to the Army, but others apparently can stay in their lucrative civilian jobs after resigning their commissions. Each will be reviewed on a case-to-case basis.
This is Kayaniâs first major decision to reverse the worst of the patronage abuses by Musharraf who padded the government payroll with supporters and forced his detractors into retirement. <b>Todayâs report is the first to provide a sense of the scale of the senior officers doing civilian jobs. </b>
Security. The interim Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz fenced with words in his statements to the press today about developments in South Waziristan. Agence France-Presse reported Nawaz said <b>"There is no announced cease-fire; there is a de facto cease-fire between militants and government troops." </b>A tribal council comprising government representatives and tribal elders will be formed to handle the peace negotiations, he said.
What is instructive about the above item is it shows the formality with which the federal government enters talks with the tribes.<b> Many western analysts presume that Pakistan can assert control over the Agencies as the US Army did over the American Indian lands. </b>That is a mistaken notion for many reasons which include the Constitution, formal treaties and even recruitment into the Army. The recruiting regiments of the Pakistan Army are regional, not national. For example, the Frontier Force Battalions in the Army are recruited from the North West Frontier Province.
The other instructive point is that the ceasefire and talks signify that the leaders of the fighters have accepted the wisdom of the tribal elders that it is far better to fight in Afghanistan than for the tribe to incur shelling by the Pakistan Army. In other words, Pakistani negotiators succeeded in redirecting the destructive impulses of the Mahsud youth into Afghanistan. That is a welcome portent for a benign security environment as Pakistanâs general elections approach.
The Pakistan Army now can concentrate on backstopping election security instead of having to worry about counter insurgency operations in South Waziristan.
<b>For Afghanistan, it means that the fighters have secured their base. One of the most notorious Taliban leaders, Siraj Haqqani was present in todayâs jirga</b>. Haqqaniâs men, for example, can now focus on fighting the Americans at their front in Afghanistan without having to maintain sufficient forces in Pakistan to resist Pakistan Army pressure in the rear.
At the Brookings Institution, an assemblage of American and Pakistani luminaries discussed conditions in Pakistan today and US relations. Former Pakistan ambassador to the United States General (retd) Jehangir Karamat said sees a sustained long-term strategic relationship between the two allies as any transient developments should not be allowed to overtake their overall goal towards security and stability. The former Army chief said ideas of "covert or overt" US intervention in the tribal areas "are not going to address the threat" of terrorism on the Western border with Afghanistan
As Chief of the Army Staff General Jehangir Karamat worked with President of Pakistan Farooq Leghari to back a constitutional maneuver to force former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her cronies from power in 1996 for corruption. Jehangir Karamat is one of an elite few Pakistani general officers who acted to clean up the government during a time of crisis without ordering the Army to seize the government and without advancing his personal fortunes.
General Karamat worked within the constitution by backing the President of the republic. He resigned in 1998 to protest abuses by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. He is a graduate of the US Army Command and General Staff College and the former Colonel Commandant and Colonel-in-Chief of the Armored Corps. He would make a steady and reliable leader, depending on his health, who could restore constitutional government and respect for the Pakistan Army.
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<b>Experts to investigate reasons for chopper crash in Waziristan</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->According to the officials, the experts would look at three things. âThe helicopterâs technical history,<b> the type of ammunition used to bring it down (if it were shot down)</b> and the technical fault (if any) that caused the crash,â they added.
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fess up, we know what happened. <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Now that the pakistan front is being closed by the declaration of an ceasefire between taliban and the paki army, all the resources will be used in Afghanistan to fight the 15,000 NATO troops.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That is also possible.
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tongue.gif' /><!--endemo--> in a northwestern Pakistani town, where a teenager was arrested last month for alleged involvement in former premier Benazir Bhutto's assassination.