Pakistan

The political game in Pakistan’s Punjab Province is taking a new turn, with neither the PPP nor the PML-N willing to compromise or budge on their respective stances.

The Nation quotes political observers as saying that the distance between PPP Governor Salman Taseer and PML-N Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif is widening with the passage of time and warns that a direct confrontation between them may create a new problem, especially for the province and for the country in general.

The United States has asked Pakistan to prosecute the perpetrators of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.

The Bush administration has told Islamabad that it would like it to initiate “prosecution with sufficient efforts to ensure conviction,” the Dawn reported.

However, it seems that Washington has softened its stand on the extradition of the perpetrators to India.

In a latest development, Washington has asked Islamabad to punish the attackers inside the country instead in India.

A pro-Obama American think tank has said that Pakistan needed to act aggressively against militant groups operating from their territory and sever all ties between all levels of the Pakistani military establishment and intelligence services with these outfits.

Caroline Wadhams, senior policy analyst for national security, Center for American Progress, said that Pakistan has still not decided to aggressively go after these Kashmiri militant groups, and that they needed to do more, but “we still have to see what happens.”

A bipartisan group of American experts on Pak-US relations has called for a rethink in Washington’s approach towards Islamabad, depicting a dismal picture of the country and expecting Pakistan to prove to be the single greatest foreign policy and national security challenge for President-elect Barack Obama.

“A grant of $400 million to Pakistan is continuing quarterly and America has no intention to block the aid as it is necessary for Pakistan to rid itself of terrorism” Patterson said in a TV interview, reported The News.

The US Ambassador also said that the terror war did not mean that Pakistan had been declared unsafe. She added that Pak-US strategic relations were progressing in a positive direction, with the new US administration also eager to promote ties. (ANI)

The US State Department has said that Pakistan must disentangle terrorist groups having their base in the country.

State’s Department Deputy Spokesperson Robert Wood said that the United States, has learnt from its own experience that some of the charitable organizations in Pakistan were tied to terrorist groups.

"This is something that they (Pakistan) are going to have to disentangle," he said adding, “But they''ve given us a very solemn commitment."

There is an urgent requirement for the Pakistan Army to improve its gear if it wants to neutralize and eliminate the Taliban from the country, says the Newsweek.

The magazine quoted top Pakistan military officials as saying that the US would need to augment supplies of this gear, as the pressure on the country was huge to crackdown on the Taliban in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks.

Javaid Iqbal, a Pakistani TV technician working in Long Island, New York, at the time of the 9/11 attacks, has challenged his arrest, interrogation and expulsion from the country in a suit filed by him before the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

Meanwhile, a Government lawyer has pleaded that the US attorney general and the FBI chief should not be subjected to lawsuits filed by Arab Muslims held after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a Daily Times report says.

Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arun Jaitely today said that Pakistan is trying to befool the world community by living in a world of denial.

Speaking to reporters here ahead of the fifth round of elections in Jammu and Kashmir, Jaitely said: “When the world is watching that such a big terror attack has been carried out on the behest of Pakistani establishment, which is evident from the equipment they used and the rigorous training they have gone through, this clearly indicates that without the help of Pakistan, it is impossible.

Israel''s Ambassador to India, Mark Sofer, has claimed that the Pakistan-based terrorists that masterminded last week’s massacre in Mumbai may be linked to the al-Qa''ida international terror network.

The Independent quoted Ambassador Sofer as saying: "Is this small organization (Lashkar-e-Toiba), part of a much wider global jihadi group, such as al-Qa''ida? I fear the answer to that is yes."