The World We Live In !!

The Zardari government cited budgetary constraints to refuse uranium from Kazakhstan. But the real story is that the government has accepted aid in exchange for what appears to be a freeze on Pakistan’s advanced nuclear and strategic programs. These were Washington’s conditions. And it is part of a wider pattern.

By AHMED QURAISHI

WWW.AHMEDQURAISHI.COM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—After cutting down funding for Pakistan’s strategic and nuclear programs by more than a third, the government of President Asif Ali Zardari has refused to sanction the purchase of fuel for nuclear plants, turning down a rare opportunity to buy uranium from the international market.

Pakistani officials won’t confirm the report, which is being made public here for the first time. But sometime around late 2008, interlocutors from Pakistan and Kazakhstan apparently reached an agreement under which uranium-rich Kazakhstan agreed to sell nuclear fuel to Pakistan.

A government source referred to a Central Asian nation without naming it during an off-the-record conversation. She was most probably referring to Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan has the world’s largest reservoirs of uranium and will soon become its biggest producer. Pakistan is the world’s seventh declared nuclear power and has an ambitious civilian nuclear energy program meant to help fuel Pakistan’s economic growth. The country’s biggest stock exchange at Karachi has been one of the best performing markets in Asia for the most part of this decade, fetching high profit margins for Pakistani and foreign investors. Pakistan cannot continue growth without more energy.

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(Total Costs: about Rs 9,000 Crore/543 MNAs/5 yr)

“God loves those who are humble in their personal life too!”

The Fox New TV (US) asked the Iranian President Ahmedi Najad; “When you look into the mirror in the morning what do you say to yourself”?
He answered: I see the person in the mirror and tell him “Remember, you are no more than a small servant, ahead of you today is the heavy responsibility, and that is to serve the Iranian nation”.

Ahmedi Nijad, the Iranian President astonished many when he first reached to the office of the Presidency by donating all the high valued Iranian carpets to one of the mosques in Tehran by replacing them with low cost ordinary carpets.

He observed that there was a huge extravagant lounge for receiving and welcoming the VIPs and he ordered it to be closed and asked the protocol office to arrange for an ordinary room instead with the wooden chairs.

On many instances he joins the cleaning staff of the municipality for cleaning the streets in the area where his home and the Presidency are located.

Under his authority whenever he appoints any minister to his post he gets a signed document from him with many points, particularly highlighting that he shall remain poor and that his personal and his relatives accounts will be watched and the day he leaves the ministry shall be with dignity, and therefore it is not lawful for him or his relatives to take any advantage of his office.

First of all he himself declared all the “Big” wealth and property he owned. It was a Peugeot 504 car, model 1977, an old small house inherited from his father forty years ago, in one of the poorest zones in Tehran, where he still lives. His accounts had a zero balance and the only money coming into his account was an amount of US$ 250 from his salary from the university as a lecturer. This is all what he owns – the president of one of the world’s most important countries; strategically, economically, politically and with regard to its oil and defense. He even doesn’t draw his salary as president arguing that all the wealth belongs to the nation and he is only a guardian of it. Read more…

IT takes a special kind of wretched criticism to feel sorry for Asif Zardari. Fifteen months since his party came to power and eight since he became president, the Asif Zardari era is marked by disappointment and a distressingly cavalier attitude in the face of a grave threat to the state.

And yet, the Americans, by berating Zardari and his government in the run-up to his visit to the White House, have done just that — made Asif Zardari look like the victim of American petulance.

Let’s get this straight: the Zardari government has been damningly unable, or unwilling, to focus on governance and its brand of politics has alienated the electorate. The only area in which the government has managed a half-decent performance is on the economic front, but macro stabilisation has come under the strict vigilance of the IMF. And it has come at a great cost; by paring back subsidies and stripping out large chunks of development expenditure, the party’s popularity at the grassroots level has plummeted.

The Americans are right to be worried, but then what did they expect? Pakistan hardly stands alone internationally in its inability to ‘deliver basic services’, as Obama chided in his 100-day press conference.

The question is, what exactly were the Americans hoping to achieve by beating up on Zardari before his arrival in Washington and then trotting out eulogies to democracy once he was in town?
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LONDON: Imran Khan, the Chief of Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf in a letter sent to Prime Minister Gordon Brown has alleged that a British citizen, Altaf Hussain, who styled himself as the leader of a Pakistani political party, Muttahida Qaumi Movement, sitting in London, sought to incite ethnic violence and vigilantism by calling on his supporters to arm themselves and fight ‘talibanisation’ – a label he tried to put on the two million Pashtun workers of Karachi.

‘As a result 36 people were killed over two days of violence. When the Sindh Inspector General of Police implicated the MQM in his inquiry, they demanded his immediate removal,’ the letter released to the press on Friday alleged.

The letter also charged that on Altaf Hussain’s call from London the MQM was involved in the 12th May 2007 carnage in Karachi where 48 people were killed and 200 sustained bullet wounds, including 10 workers belonging to the PTI. Mr Khan asked the British PM to refer to Britain’s Karachi Consulate’s report on the incident.

The letter said it was shocking to find that no investigation had been conducted into the activities of Mr Hussain despite his public criminal record in Pakistan, ‘considering that the British government has arrested people on mere suspicion in the Heathrow case and the recent Pakistani students’.

Story Via :- Dawn News

To Read a copy of the letter continue reading click Read more…

Article Via :-  Asia Times Online

It’s a classic case of calm before the storm. The AfgPak chapter of Obama’s brand new OCO (“Overseas Contingency Operations”), formerly GWOT (“global war on terror”) does not imply only a surge in the Pashtun Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). A surge in Balochistan as well may be virtually inevitable.

Balochistan is totally under the radar of Western corporate media. But not the Pentagon’s. An immense desert comprising almost 48% of Pakistan’s area, rich in uranium and copper, potentially very rich in oil, and producing more than one-third of Pakistan’s natural gas, it accounts for less than 4% of Pakistan’s 173 million citizens. Balochs are the majority, followed by Pashtuns. Quetta, the provincial capital, is considered Taliban Central by the Pentagon, which for all its high-tech wizardry mysteriously has not been able to locate Quetta resident “The Shadow”, historic Taliban emir Mullah Omar himself.

Strategically, Balochistan is mouth-watering: east of Iran, south of Afghanistan, and boasting three Arabian sea ports, including Gwadar, practically at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz.
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Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf Chairman, Imran Khan, has said that there is no threat to Karachi from the recent fear of  Talibanisation but the real threat is from MQM Chief Altaf Hussain.

Tehrik-i-Insaaf Chairman was talking to the media at the Lahore Airport after the authorities stopped him from boarding a Karachi-bound flight, DawnNews reported.

He said that there is no writ of the government in Karachi and asked the government to explain under which law he has been stopped from travelling to Karachi.

Imran Khan went on to say that the MQM is not a party; it’s a mafia.

The PTI Chairman said that the government is trying to protect Altaf Hussain and the May 12 Karachi carnage case. Read more…