The country’s top economic team has failed to persuade the US to restore the aid under the Kerry-Lugar Bill and Coalition Support Fund (CSF) for Pakistan, an official said.
“The US has linked the restoration of Kerry-Lugar Bill and Coalition Support Fund with the resumption of supply line for NATO troops in Afghanistan,” the official in the Finance Ministry said, adding that in the recent Pak-US officials’ meeting held at Washington, the US officials response was not positive when Pakistani authorities raised the issue of aid restoration for Pakistan.
Finance Minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh in his recent meetings with the US official reiterated the demand for payment of US grant under the Coalition Support Fund to Pakistan and informed them that Pakistan had placed the CSF in the budget, and if it did not receive the amount during the rest of the current financial year, the economic troubles of the country would increase as Pakistan had projected $800 million in receipts. In an attempt to restore the aid of Kerry-Lugar Bill and Coalition Support Fund for Pakistan, the country’s top economic team had reached Washington on April 17 and is scheduled to return today (Thursday).
Analysts and pundits of a jiyala persuasion have taken much delight in circulating excerpts from a report issued by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) that is somewhat critical of the Supreme Court. Is the criticism justified? Not entirely, at least, not in my view.
The ICJ report makes a number of points regarding Pakistan’s superior judiciary. It is critical of the judgment in the Nineteenth Amendment case relating to the appointment of judges; it notes criticisms regarding the quality of judges appointed under the current Chief Justice; it raises a number of concerns regarding the use of suo-motu powers; and it asks whether the judiciary’s recent fondness for activism has caused it to encroach upon the province of the executive.
In my view, the fundamental problem with the ICJ report is that it approaches matters from an overly academic perspective. The ICJ report thus criticises the Supreme Court’s views regarding the appointment of judges by arguing, in effect, that (i) international best practices allow for a degree of political involvement in the appointment of judges; (ii) the Supreme Court’s hostility towards political involvement in judicial appointments was unwarranted; and (iii) the Supreme Court acted wrongly in the Munir Bhatti case by “reduc[ing] drastically” the powers of the parliamentary committee in relation to appointment of judges.
There are multiple problems with this approach. To begin with, the appointment of judges is not an ahistorical political choice that can be contrasted with some bland list of international precedents. Furthermore, Pakistan is a common law country and hence references to appointment mechanisms in Civil Code countries like Bolivia and Switzerland are irrelevant. More importantly, Pakistan shares a particular Anglo-Indian legal culture with India and Bangladesh and it is within that context that Pakistan’s jurisprudence must be analysed. Had the ICJ undertaken that exercise, it would have noted that the current appointment mechanism is no different in its fundamentals from the appointment mechanism prescribed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 1996 (via the Al Jehad case) and by the Supreme Court of India in 1994 (via the Advocates on Record case).
One point on which I do agree with the ICJ report relates to the shortage of judges. However, while the report only deals with the issue in passing, for me this is the ground on which the judiciary deserves to be most heavily criticised.
The power to appoint judges is a power that the judiciary has repeatedly fought for. With the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and the decision in the Bhatti case, there is no legal or formal obstacle in the path of the various chief justices in appointing persons of their choice. And yet, the situation in both the Lahore and the Sindh High Courts is that there are a vast number of vacancies. I am sure that the various chief justices have no greater priority in their lives than the appointment of new judges. At the same time, the fact remains that almost 50 per cent of the Sindh High Court, and about 30 per cent of the Lahore High Court are missing.
The superior courts in Pakistan do not hesitate in reminding government officials that with power comes the responsibility to properly exercise that power. That advice applies equally well to their Lordships. It is also worth noting that the situation could have been a lot better had the Supreme Court not insisted on the wholesale removal of all “PCO judges”, but instead attempted to sift through the appointments and retain the properly qualified.
Most of the ICJ Report is taken up with a discussion of the problems arising from the Supreme Court’s embrace of judicial activism, inter alia, through the use of suo-motu cases. The discussion is finely nuanced and it makes a number of important points. For example, I agree it would be a good idea if the Supreme Court was to formulate clear rules regarding the acceptance and hearing of public interest cases. The relationship between the Supreme Court and the media is indeed one that needs to be examined. And the Supreme Court’s embrace of judicial activism does regularly encroach upon the policy prerogatives of the executive.
Where I part ways from the ICJ report is again in relation to its failure to provide a broader context. More specifically, public interest litigation and judicial activism in Pakistan need to be examined, both within a broader South Asian context, as well as within the specific context of Pakistan’s history.
Within the broader context of South Asia, the point to note is that judicial activism has been a consistent response to governmental failure. As activist as the judiciary in Pakistan has been, our embrace of public interest litigation pales to all that the superior judiciary in India has done (and continues to do). Pakistani courts rely regularly on Indian precedents in deciding uncontroversial matters. That same reliance carries over into matters of public interest.
Within the narrower context of Pakistan’s recent history, it is important to note that many of the current judges were returned to power by a popular movement: like freshly elected members of Parliament, they have debts to pay. The votaries of the Judicial Revolution swore up and down the length and breadth of this country that, from war to pollution, the return of the ‘asli munsif’ would fix all our problems. Yes, the judges themselves made no such promises, but they watched and heard those promises be made. If today they err on the side of judicial maximalism, it is an understandable response.
The people of Pakistan are often told that the solution to bad democracy is more democracy. Much the same approach applies to judicial overreach. Just like we have no option but to grin and bear the antics of our political leaders, our political leaders have no option but to grin and bear the foibles of the Supreme Court. I concede that in the case of the judiciary there is no mechanism of accountability similar to the ballot box. Nonetheless, judges do operate with one eye turned towards posterity and judicial fashions do change over time, much like rising and falling hemlines.
Today is the era of judicial activism. This too will pass. Till then, we have to grin and bear it.
The Pentagon is creating a new intelligence agency that will focus on Iran and China as it begins to pivot away from war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, the New York Times reported.
The newspaper said late Monday that the new Defense Clandestine Service would make use of existing agents, authorities and assets and work closely with the Central Intelligence Agency to track emerging threats. “It will thicken our coverage across the board,” it quoted a senior defense department official as saying.
Case officers from the Defense Intelligence Agency already secretly gather intelligence outside of conventional battle zones, the Times said, and the latest move further cements cooperation between the military and the CIA.
The new intelligence service is expected to grow “from several hundred to several more hundred” agents in the coming years by shifting personnel and funding from existing assignments, the Times quoted the official as saying.
Defense officials did not immediately respond to AFP requests for further information. The announcement of the new agency comes a week after the Pentagon nominated Lieutenant General Michael Flynn — who previously served with the secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) — to head military intelligence.
The selection of Flynn — who had been a strong critic of military intelligence when he served as the top intelligence officer in Afghanistan in 2010 — reflects the ascendancy of special forces in recent years. The JSOC has been behind the killing of numerous suspected top insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years and carried out the raid that killed Osama bin Laden nearly one year ago.
Just days after India successfully test fired its first Inter Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), Agni-V, Pakistan has informed India that it plans to conduct a long-range missile test very soon.
Pakistan told India that they plan to conduct a ‘long-range missile test in the Indian Ocean’ anytime over the next five days. It has asked the Indian civil aviation authorities to issue a NOTAM (notice to airmen) to warn commercial airlines and pilots to steer clear of the area, reported Deccan Chronicle.
The move by Pakistan comes just five days after India test fired Agni-V to join the elite club of ICBM nations. AP
The move by Pakistan comes just five days after India test fired Agni-V and joined an elite club of ICBM nations. Only the permanent members of the UN Security Council – China, Russia, France, the United States and the United Kingdom – have such long distance missiles.
Agni-V, the ICBM test fired by India five days ago, is capable of carrying nuclear warheads and has been touted as being crucial for India’s defence against China. The missile can carry a pay-load of 1 tonne, is 17 m long, 2 m wide and weighs 50 tonnes. After the missile is inducted into India’s strategic forces by 2014-2015, India will acquire a strong deterrent capacity against China.
The missile has a range of 5,000 kilometres, a marked improvement over India’s current missiles which can hit potential enemy targets over a distance of just 3,500 kilometres.
BOGOTA: US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Monday dismissed claims by Iran that it had gleaned data from a downed US drone and was now building a copy of the robotic spycraft.
“I can tell you from my experience that I would seriously question their ability to do what they said they’ve done,” Panetta, a former CIA director, told reporters before landing in Bogota.
The commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ aerospatial division, General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, said on Sunday that Iran had discovered “codes” from the bat-winged RQ-170 Sentinel that fell into Tehran’s hands in December.
Panetta scoffed at Iran’s account but said he could not discuss details of such a sensitive subject.
“It’s, obviously, a classified program. I don’t want to get into the particulars,” he said during a briefing on his flight to Bogota, at the start of a Latin American tour.
Iran’s gleeful military proudly displayed the unmanned Sentinel drone on state television apparently intact, though with what appeared to be damage to one of its wings.
Iran claimed one of its cyber warfare team hacked the drone’s controls by confusing its GPS guidance system, and has since claimed it would reverse-engineer the drone.
US officials acknowledged losing the drone on a spying mission over Iran, but asserted the stealth aircraft came down because of a technical problem, not any Iranian intervention.
Panetta, in his first visit to Latin America as Pentagon chief, said the United States was concerned about the Guards’ alleged attempts to expand their influence in the Middle East as well as in South America.
“That in my book relates to expanding terrorism, and I think that’s one of the areas we’re all concerned about,” he said.
Speaking later at a joint press conference in Bogota with his Colombian counterpart Juan Carlos Pinzon, the US defense secretary announced the sale of 10 military helicopters to Colombia, including five Black Hawks, to help the government in its fight with FARC leftist rebels.
Hebrew media sources reported, on Monday, that the US sortes military equipment worth U.S. $800 million in Israel, noting that this quantity will increase soon reaching $1.2 billion.
The Hebrew TV Channel2 said, citing a report issued by the U.S. Defense Ministry, the US ordnance, including missiles, armored vehicles and artillery ammunition, is allowed to be used by Israel in the event of a military emergency.
The storage of military equipment came within the strategic partnership between the two countries which began early nineties. The report revealed that during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, US allowed Israel to access its military emergency stores.
It is noted that the US began stockpiling $100 million in military equipment in Israel in 1990, then it increased to $800 in 2010, and it is predicted to reach $1.2 billion in the coming years.
Source: Palestine Information Center
Afghanistan and the United States have agreed on a draft of a long-awaited deal that will define the scope and nature of a US presence in the country for up to a decade after the pullout of most NATO combat troops in 2014.
Ryan Crocker, US ambassador to Kabul, and Afghan national security adviser, Rangin Spanta, initialed copies of the agreement on Sunday, paving the way for US President Barack Obama and his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, to review it.
“After much hard work together, we are pleased that we are close to completing negotiations on [the] Strategic Partnership,” a US Embassy spokesman in Kabul told reporters.
“Our goal is an enduring partnership with Afghanistan that strengthens Afghan sovereignty, stability and prosperity and that contributes to our shared goal of defeating al-Qaeda and its extremist affiliates. We believe this agreement supports that goal,” he said.
Negotiations delayed
The deal, under negotiation now for more than nine months, comes at a time when relations between Washington and Kabul remain badly strained by a number of incidents involving US soldiers that have infuriated public opinion.
It spells out the framework for a future U.S. role in Afghanistan, including aid assistance and governance advice.
But it will not specify whether a reduced number of US troops, possibly special forces, and advisers will remain in the country after NATO’s 2014 withdrawal deadline, with that issue to be covered in a separate status of forces agreement.
Negotiations on the Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) were delayed for months until US negotiators agreed to Karzai’s demands to hand over operation of American prisons in the country to Afghan control and to hand over leadership of night raids on homes to Afghan forces.
Western aid
Both sides have been keen to allay Afghan fears that they are about to be abandoned by clinching a deal that they hope will calm nerves ahead of NATO’s planned pullout and a phasing out of Western aid.
Insurgents staged coordinated attacks in Kabul and elsewhere a week ago that paralysed the capital’s centre and diplomatic area for 18 hours. The Taliban claimed the attacks, but US and Afghan officials blamed the militant Haqqani Network.
The US embassy spokesman said the agreed wording of the deal would now enter “internal consultation processes” on both sides and would be examined by the US Congress if needed before finally being reviewed by Obama.
“Both President Obama and President Karzai have said they hope to sign this agreement before the NATO Summit in Chicago,” the spokesman said.
Details undisclosed
The Chicago summit, scheduled for later in May, will see Western leaders try to agree on future funding and support for the 352,000-strong Afghan police and army.
That support is expected to amount to $4bn a year, with the Afghan government contributing around $500m a year of that.
The Afghan government is separately negotiating similar deals to SPA with other NATO member states and US allies, who contribute to the 130,000-strong coalition force.
Karzai recently said he wanted the US to contribute $2bn a year under the US-Afghan SPA, but an Afghan government source said on condition of anonymity that the deal negotiated by Crocker and Spanta contained no firm numbers.
Until the agreement is finalised, the US embassy spokesman said he could not discuss its content.
India likely conveyed a very pointed statement to the international community, most notably China, with Thursday’s successful launch of its Agni-V Long Range Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. After all, the new ICBM can strike deep into China as well as Eastern Europe. However, a reality check is in order before analysts get too excited.
Though India has demonstrated its technological, scientific and military prowess by successfully launching its 5,000 kilometer range Agni-V missile,at a development cost of $480 million, it won’t be formally inducted into the Indian armed forces before 2016, defense sources have said. While it’s true that the successful launch of Agni-V has in many ways brought India into an elite club of nations that have proven ICBM technology, India still lags far behind China. In terms of the number of missiles, their range and type, India is no match for China and cannot – and should not – expect to match China missile-to-missile.
In the meantime, the diplomatic fallout of the launch can be expected to be a hardening of Chinese attitudes even though officially, China maintains that India isn’t a rival. Indeed, China’s semi-official Global Times on Thursday warned India, saying: “India should not overestimate its strength. Even if it has missiles that could reach most parts of China that does not mean it will gain anything from being arrogant during disputes with China. India should be clear that China’s nuclear power is stronger and more reliable. For the foreseeable future, India would stand no chance in an overall arms race with China.”
“A number of new technologies developed indigenously were successfully tested in today’s Agni-V mission,” the Indian Ministry of Defense said in a press release, adding, “The redundant Navigation systems, very high accuracy Ring Laser Gyro based Inertial Navigation System (RINS) and the most modern and accurate Micro Navigation System (MINS) ensured the missile reach the target point within few meters of accuracy. The high speed onboard computer and fault tolerant software along with robust and reliable bus guided the missile flawlessly.”
In many ways, the Agni-V test launch is akin to India’s second generation nuclear tests of 1998, tests that triggered the Chinese intensified diplomatic and strategic rivalry with India. China may put up a brave front diplomatically, but the truth is that Thursday’s event will only exacerbate anti-India feeling within the Chinese establishment. The Global Times commentary is simply a harbinger of things to come in Sino-India relations.
During his campaign aimed at responding to the increasingly harsh challenge of the PML-N in Punjab, President Asif Ali Zardari has been touring the stronghold of the ruling party, shoring up the PPP’s position. When he reached Okara he spoke near the old Sulemanki border post with India, declaring that “Pakistan is willing to have dialogue with India on all issues, and is also open to trade with the neighbouring country”.
He was speaking against the background of the recent visit to New Delhi and Attari by the commerce minister, confirming an initial agreement between the two countries to enhance bilateral trade and soften the visa regime. The two sides are preparing negative lists of commodities so that free trade can take place and they can begin the transformational process to dwarf long-standing bilateral disputes. Beyond the bilateral focus, there is the prospect of South Asian trade across Pakistan to Central Asia and across India to East Asia.
Are we standing at the gateway of a big change? A look at history tells us that wars and trade have always brought about big changes. In our day, wars are difficult to wage as the global order is firmly bound to the status quo. Trade remains the only medium of radical change. It removes the national frontier as a locus of tension and conflict, and reintroduces it as the medium of developmental synergy between sovereign states. Pakistan anticipates big traffic on the roads that traditionally connected the two states and is already expanding the road leading to the Wagah border.
Initially, the attraction of this new project is for those industries and traders who export: Pakistan expects to export 1,650 items — woven fabrics, garments, bed linen, footwear, dates and chickpeas. India expects to export 3,286 items — automobiles, diesel trucks, black tea, pneumatic tyres, antibiotics and reactive dyes. Pakistani exporters will gain from the negative differential between the currencies of the two countries: the Pakistani rupee is half the value of the Indian rupee. India expects Pakistani investments to land in East Punjab pending the bad law and order situation in Pakistan.
President Zardari cannot have missed the rapid progress Bangladesh has made with respect to the opening of multiple routes connecting India with other neighbours across its territory. It has crossed the psychological barrier that bedevilled Dhaka because of the primacy of bilateral disputes in its relations with India. Bangladesh intends to provide transit facilities to India, along with Nepal and Bhutan by March 2013. It has already allowed a wide transit road joining India with its states in the northeast.
Opponents of trade opening often say that there is no big potential in the free-trade regime that is being inaugurated. After all, the export potential from India to Pakistan is $9.5billion, while that from Pakistan to India is $2.2billion. It is apparently nothing compared with India’s trade with China at $75billion. They say trade with Central Asia through Pakistan will be of small value because Central Asia does not have the population that could be counted as a big market for Pakistani and Indian goods. This position is belied by the rising energy needs of South Asia and the potential of energy export from Central Asia based on regional surplus now going from Central Asia through Russia to Europe. If Pakistan looks closely at the smuggling of its agricultural commodities through Afghanistan, it will realise that a regional network of roads to Central Asia will transform Pakistan’s economy, which is now admittedly strong in agriculture. A landlocked Central Asia is bound to grow economically with higher standards of living, which means it will need trade outlets to the sea through Pakistan.
Pakistan is shifting from its ‘military’ view of geopolitics — prevent transit trade to gain advantage — to a civilian view, which allows transit to gain economic advantage and prosperity of the people. The new paradigm is late in coming and this delay is being felt by Pakistan, as other South Asian states are currently posting high growth rates.
Iran claimed that it had reverse-engineered a US spy drone captured by its armed forces last year, and that it had been building a copy. It cited as proof details of the aircraft’s history, which, it said, included a surveillance mission over the home of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan just two weeks before he was killed.
The US dismissed the claim as “bluster”, but it would be an embarrassment for the US military and intelligence community if Iran was able to produce a replica.
After the loss of the drone in December, the US claimed there was little in the software that could be exploited for intelligence purposes and that it was in any case encrypted.
The commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, told the Iranian Fars news agency that they had succeeded in reverse-engineering the drone.
A spokesman for the CIA, which operates the drones, declined to comment. The drones have been used for monitoring and assassinating suspected terrorists in Pakistan and for intelligence-gathering in Iran, mainly of its nuclear sites.
The US blamed the loss of the RQ-170 Sentinel drone on a technical problem. Iran claims it brought it down electronically, by disrupting its GPS system. President Barack Obama asked for the device to be returned, a request that Iran rejected. The former vice-president, Dick Cheney, criticised Obama for failing to take a more robust approach, such as destroying the drone on the ground before the Iranians could get to it.
Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate homeland security committee, who receives regular intelligence updates, told Fox News on Sunday that he was sceptical about Hajizadeh’s claims: “There is some history here of Iranian bluster, particularly now when they’re on the defensive because of our economic sanctions against them.
“Look, it was not good for the US when the drone went down in Iran, and not good when the Iranians grabbed it. [But] I don’t have confidence at this point that they are really able to make a copy of it. It’s a very sophisticated piece of machinery and has served our national security well, including, I would guess, being used to look all over Iran, particularly at areas where we have reason to believe that they are working on a nuclear weapon.”
In support of his claim to have penetrated the drone’s secrets, Hajizadeh said Iranian engineers had successfully retrieved information from the aircraft’s memory. As a result, he said, they knew that it had flown a surveillance mission over Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan hideout two weeks before he was killed, and that drone parts had been sent to California for work in October 2010 before the drone was transferred to Kandahar, in Afghanistan. The drone then experienced technical problems during operations from Kandahar and was sent back to the US, to Los Angeles, for tests on its sensors and other parts.
“Had we not accessed the plane’s software and hard disk, we wouldn’t have been able to uncover these facts,” Hajizadeh said.
Although the US insisted in December that the drone carried little useful intelligence, concern was expressed about reverse-engineering of its radar-deflecting paint coating and special optics used for spying.
Hajizadeh’s claim was made against a backdrop of international tension over western suspicion that Tehran is seeking nuclear weapons capability. Israel hags issued repeated threats that it will bomb Iran’s nuclear installations rather than allow it to obtain a nuclear bomb.
Iran engaged in diplomatic negotiations in Istanbul earlier this month and a further round is scheduled for 23 May in Baghdad.
Pakistani Army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani said Wednesday that his country favoured talks with India to demilitarize the Siachen Glacier — dubbed as the world’s highest battleground.
“Peaceful coexistence between the two neighbours is very important so that everybody can concentrate on the well-being of the people,” he told reporters.
The general was speaking at Skardu airport in northern Pakistan after visiting the Gayari army base in Pakistani Kashmir, which was hit by a massive avalanche April 7.
Rescuers are still searching for nearly 140 people buried under snow and rock at the camp, some 13,000 feet above sea level, Geo TV reported.
He said Pakistan was open to talks with India to demilitarize Siachen.
“Both countries should sit together to resolve all the issues including Siachen.”
He added that Pakistan’s pursuit for peace should not be mistaken for its weakness.
The general said the reason why Pakistan Army was maintaining its forces in extreme weather condition such as in the Siachen region was no secret to the world.
“It were Indians who carried the war onto Siachen forcing us to get up there and stop them in their tracks, we only mounted a natural tactical response,” Kayani said.
“We are only manning the border on this frigid outpost 22,000 feet above the sea-level in the line of duty.”
Pakistan and India invest significant resources in maintaining a military presence on the Siachen Glacier.
Earlier, former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif had said that both countries must immediately pull out their troops from Siachen.
Sharif, who heads the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, urged Pakistan and India to immediately start negotiations to resolve the Siachen issue and pull their troops out of the region, the Dawn reported.
He suggested that Pakistan should take the initiative in this regard and urge India to hold talks.
Gen Kayani refused to comment on Sharif’s remarks.
NVO News
Posts
