Pakistan

Pakistan has once again assured the world that it is devoted towards fighting extremism and maintaining peaceful relations with all its neighbours.

Pakistan Minister for Information and Broadcasting Sherry Rehman met British High Commissioner to Pakistan, Robert Brinkley and stated that “Pakistan is steadfast in its commitment towards elimination of extremism and for maintaining peaceful relations with all its neighbors.”

Indian-born Salman Rushdie, the author of famous novels like “ The Satanic Verses” and “Midnight''s Children”, has categorically laid the blame for November terror attacks on Mumbai at Pakistan’s doorstep, by saying that all signs pointed to that fact.

A leading daily in Pakistan has contradicted the statement of a Foreign Office spokesman which said that Pakistan has no terrorist infrastructure on its soil.

According to an editorial in ‘The News’ the statement of the official was no were near the reality. The fact that Pakistan provided a safe haven to the terrorist groups and that its territory is being used as a breeding ground of these outlawed groups can not be denied.

Transportation on the Landikotal Highway, the main route used for supplying rations and ammunition to the allied forces in Afghanistan, resumed after the military operation to flush out the Taliban from the area concluded on January 2.

“300 trucks, several carrying NATO supplies, passed into Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass,” the Daily Times quoted local administration chief Tarq Khan, as saying.

Authorities have claimed that the ‘Operation Daraghlam’ against the Taliban and criminals in the Khyber Agency achieved ‘80 percent’ of its target,

Pakistan has arrested a former Taliban spokesman, who was released by Afghanistan in 2007 in exchange for a kidnapped Italian journalist.

The Dawn quoted security officials as saying that Ustad Mohammed Yasir was detained in Peshawar, near the Afghan border.

Yasir was Taliban leader Mullah Omar''s spokesman after the regime''s fall in Afghanistan in 2001, an official said Saturday.

He said Pakistan first arrested Yasir in 2005 and sent him to Afghanistan, where he was released along with four other Taliban figures for journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo.

Sindh National Front (SNF) leader Sardar Mumtaz Bhutto was arrested on Saturday morning in Larkana and shifted to Karachi for interrogation.

Earlier, he was placed under house arrest in Mirpur for allegedly ordering his workers to attack on the office of a Sindhi newspaper in Karachi, reports The Nation.

According to the paper, the situation is stated to be very tense in many cites of Sindh province after his arrest and the workers of his party have come out on to the streets. They are demonstrating and chanting slogans for his early release.(ANI)

The tension between India and Pakistan notwithstanding, trade on the cross-Line of Control (LoC) point at Chakan-Da-Bagh continues.

Traders in Jammu and Kashmir''s Poonch District sent ten quintals tomatoes and 500 woollen shawls to importers in Pakistan on demand.

They admitted that the demand from Pakistan for Indian goods is more, even though supply is on the lower side.

The fate of the proposed Sri Lanka tour to Pakistan will be decided on Saturday, December 27 as the officials of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) and the Sri Lankan Cricket Board (SLCB) will meet here to take the final decision.

“The PCB officials will meet the Sri Lankan cricket officials on the occasion of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) meeting at Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, December 27” the chief operating officer of PCB Saleem Altaf said.

India today termed Pakistan''s claim of arresting an Indian national in connection with the Lahore blasts on Wednesday, as mere hogwash which mean to confuse people.

In the backdrop of the Mumbai terror attacks and growing international pressure on Pakistan to arrest the perpetrators of the Mumbai carnage, Islamabad had claimed to arrest an Indian national Satish Anand Shukla, a move however denied by Lahore police officials.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has said that Pakistan would provide best security to everyone involved in the forthcoming series against Sri Lanka.

"From the ICC''s perspective, what would be required is that the match officials are afforded the same level of security as any or everyone else involved in the series and the ICC would expect that to be the case in the forthcoming series between Pakistan and Sri Lanka," The News quoted an ICC spokesman, as saying.