Sure, we'll hold a plebiscite in Siachen

ramana wrote:ISLAMABAD (AP) - CIA director Leon Panetta is in Pakistan for talks with the head of the country's main spy agency.A Pakistani intelligence officer confirmed that Panetta was meeting Wednesday with Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha (PBVUH).e did not give his name in line with agency policy.Pakistani officials say the spy chiefs are in frequent contact to coordinate cooperation in targeting al-Qaida and other militant groups.The officials say such coordination has led to more than a hundred joint raids on militant targets by officers of Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence and the CIA this year.CIA drone strikes are also at their highest level ever, with more than 20 suspected attacks on Pakistan's lawless North Waziristan region this month.
European Union officials have warned that a new generation of Western citizens, including whole families, have traveled to Pakistan, and some appear determined to return home to carry out terrorist attacks.
"A not insignificant number of radicalized E.U. nationals and residents are traveling to conflict areas or attending terrorist training camps and returning to Europe," said Gilles de Kerchove, the E.U.'s counterterrorism coordinator, in a report to be released Friday.
THE RED LINE
PAKISTAN
Zardari's Paris shopping trip
26/08/2010 - Pakistan and France are secretly negotiating a major arms deal for equipment destined for use against Taliban camps.(...) [ 358 words ]
Here's the edited video of speech delivered at UN:Nandu wrote:The report was that he said it in the Asia Society speech, not at the UNGA.Vashishtha wrote:CramS, its a media hype. Full text of his speech is available here... Full text: Foreign Minister SM Krishna's speech to UN General Assembly
http://asiasociety.org/policy-politics/ ... r-kashmir-
If you are short of time, we suggest you read only the yellow highlights, which represent Mr. Amin's comments.Mr. Amin is a retired Pakistan Army officer who has worked in Afghanistan for many years after 9/11)
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President Obama dispatched his national security adviser, retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, and CIA Director Leon Panetta to Pakistan for a series of urgent, secret meetings on May 19, 2010.
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Less than three weeks earlier, a 30-year-old U.S. citizen born in Pakistan had tried to blow up an SUV in New York City's Times Square. The crude bomb - which a Pakistan-based terrorist group had taught him to make - smoked but did not explode. Only luck had prevented a catastrophe.
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"We're living on borrowed time," Jones told Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari at their meeting in Islamabad. "We consider the Times Square attempt a successful plot because neither the American nor the Pakistani intelligence agencies could intercept or stop it."
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If it is borrowed time that USA is living on, it is a singular US failure! You have high sounding agencies like Homeland Security, DIA ,CIA, FBI, DEA, BATF and then you cannot deal with people like Faisal Shahzad, a so-called terrorist who could not assemble a decent explosive device in Times Square.
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Jones thought that Pakistan - a U.S. ally with an a la carte approach of going after some terrorist groups and supporting others - was playing Russian roulette. The chamber had turned out to be empty the past several times, but Jones thought it was only a matter of time before there was a round in it.
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General Jones is naive. How has he explained why Pakistan’s 1500 Km Baluchistan border through which major Taliban infiltration is not guarded by no Pakistani troops? Or explained why only some groups in FATA are being attacked by USA while the vast bulk of Taliban fighting the vast bulk of US forces with bases in Pakistani Balochistan are not being touched.
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Fears about Pakistan had been driving President Obama's national security team for more than a year. Obama had said toward the start of his fall 2009 Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy review that the more pressing U.S. interests were really in Pakistan, a nuclear power with a fragile civilian government, a dominant military and an intelligence service that sponsored terrorist groups.
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What has the USA done tangibly to strengthen democracy in Pakistan in the last 60 years? Nothing. It has all along supported military regimes, has financed agitation against the first democratically elected Prime Minister Z.A Bhutto, and actively acted as mother of terrorist groups created in Pakistan with US aid and weapons to destabilize the de facto and de jure government of Afghanistan from 1978 to 1992. Later the USA supported the Taliban because the Taliban were supporting a US Oil company UNOCAL which had the blessing of the US Government.
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Not only did al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban operate from safe havens within Pakistan, but - as U.S. intelligence officials had repeatedly warned Obama - terrorist groups were recruiting Westerners whose passports would allow them to move freely in Europe and North America.
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The solution to terrorists recruiting westerners is not to attack FATA because the recruiters are not based in FATA. The recruiters are based worldwide so attacking FATA won’t change anything.
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Safe havens would no longer be tolerated, Obama had decided. "We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan," he declared during an Oval Office meeting on Nov. 25, 2009, near the end of the strategy review. The reason to create a secure, self-governing Afghanistan, he said, was "so the cancer doesn't spread there."
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This is a political statement designed to impress Mr. Obama’s voters. The statement has no military or strategic value. Safe havens from where Taliban operate are not in FATA alone. Rather FATA contains less than 10 % of save havens. The real safe havens are in Pakistani Balochistan, which has never been attacked.
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Jones and Panetta had gone to Pakistan to tell Zardari that Obama wanted four things to help prevent a terrorist attack on U.S. soil: full intelligence sharing, more reliable cooperation on counterterrorism, faster approval of visas for U.S. personnel traveling to Pakistan and, despite past refusals, access to airline passenger data.
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"Full Intelligence sharing" is never done by any state. Even close allies hide information from each other. Leading US strategic thinkers agree that Afghanistan or FATA do not represent any existential threat to US. Indeed after 9/11 US soil has not been attacked by terrorists so why this storm in a tea cup. All kinds of Americans are already being issued visas in Pakistan and they have achieved little. All flight data is already in full US control through a UAE based US company and this applies to all international flights originating from two third rate vassal states called Pakistan and Afghanistan. The four conditions Mr. Woodward talks about make no sense.
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If, God forbid, the SUV had blown up in Times Square, Jones told Zardari, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Should a future attempt be successful, Obama would be forced to do things that Pakistan would not like. "No one will be able to stop the response and consequences," the security adviser said. "This is not a threat, just a statement of political fact."
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So Mr. Obama is back to President Bush’s threat after 9/11 to bomb Pakistan into the Stone Age. But can he carry out his threat, with the US already dumbfounded and directionless after occupying Iraq and Afghanistan? Does he now want to occupy Pakistan?
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Jones did not give specifics about what he meant. The Obama administration had a "retribution" plan, one of the most sensitive and secretive of all military contingencies. The plan called for bombing about 150 identified terrorist camps in a brutal, punishing attack inside Pakistan.
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Can Mr. Woodward tell us where these 150 camps are? If they are in FATA, please note that almost all of the region has been subjected to continuous attack for years by US drones, Pakistani jets, TOW-Cobra sorties, 155 mm artillery salvos, 120 mm mortars and many more types of direct and indirect fire! So bombing these alleged 150 camps will achieve what, considering 80% of the Taliban’s forces fighting in Afghanistan are Baluchistan based, and are not in the NWFP?
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Wait a second, Zardari responded. If we have a strategic partnership, why in the face of a crisis like the one you're describing would we not draw closer together rather than have this divide us?
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Now, America, you wait a second. President Zardari does not run Pakistan’s security policy. So its pointless asking this poor soul already under attacks engineered by Pakistani military who despise him for being a Sindhi and not a Punjabi.
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Zardari believed that he had already done a great deal to accommodate his strategic partner, at some political risk. He had allowed CIA drones to strike al-Qaeda and other terrorist camps in parts of Pakistan, prompting a public outcry about violations of Pakistani sovereignty. He had told CIA officials privately in late 2008 that any innocent deaths from the strikes were the cost of doing business against senior al-Qaeda leaders. "Kill the seniors," Zardari had said. "Collateral damage worries you Americans. It does not worry me."
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Long before Zardari a cheap social climber called General Pervez Musharraf had meekly submitted to US drone attacks and Pakistan has actually been housing many US operatives launching Quixotic Drone attacks on windmills they see as Al Qaeda and terrorist monsters in Pakistan’s FATA. How naive to state that the American puppet Zardari agreed to drone attacks when he was never even asked?
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As part of the partnership, the Pakistani military was billing the United States more than $2 billion a year to combat extremists operating in the remote areas near the Afghan border. But that money had not prevented elements of the Pakistani intelligence service from backing the two leading Afghan Taliban groups responsible for killing American troops in Afghanistan.
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Eighty percent of the Taliban attacking US forces in Afghanistan are Balochistan-based. US has done nothing to attack them.
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"You can do something that costs you no money," Jones said. "It may be politically difficult, but it's the right thing to do if you really have the future of your country in mind. And that is to reject all forms of terrorism as a viable instrument of national policy inside your borders."
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"We rejected it," Zardari responded.
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Jones and Panetta had heard such declarations before. But whatever Pakistan was doing with the many terrorist groups operating inside its borders, it wasn't good or effective enough. For the past year, that country's main priority was taking on its homegrown branch of the Taliban, a network known as Tehrik-e-Taliban, or TTP.
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Here again Woodward misses the real point. He states that "Pakistan’s priority is its home grown Taliban TTP " but fails to note that US has also been droning only the areas where the Pakistani TTP is located and that the USA has never droned the Balochistan bases which house 80 % of the Taliban. Mr. Woodward and the Americans badly need to study a map of the region.
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Panetta pulled out a "link chart," developed from FBI interviews and other intelligence, that showed how TTP had assisted the Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad.
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"Look, this is it," Panetta told Zardari.
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"This is the network. Leads back here." He traced it out with his finger. "And we're continuing to pick up intelligence streams that indicate TTP is going to conduct other attacks in the United States."
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Again a storm in a teacup. Faisal Shahzad was a shabby, ill trained man who seems to have miserably failed his basic explosive training.
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This was a matter of solid intelligence, Panetta said, not speculation.
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Solid intelligence? Surely this is a joke. The CIA are so incompetent that they could not even body search sources entering their secret facilities in Khost which resulted in some 11 CIA fatal casualties.
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Zardari didn't seem to get it.
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"Mr. President," said Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who was also at the meeting, "This is what they are saying. . . . They're saying that if, in fact, there is a successful attack in the United States, they will take steps to deal with that here, and that we have a responsibility to now cooperate with the United States."
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Poor foreign minister Qureshi only deals with Botswana and the like. The rest of foreign policy is run by Pakistans military bureaucracy.
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"If something like that happens," Zardari said defensively, "it doesn't mean that somehow we're suddenly bad people or something. We're still partners."
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Afterward, the Americans met privately with Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, chief of the Pakistani army and the most powerful figure in the country.
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In Pakistan it is the army chief that runs the show. Pakistan after all is an army with a state and not a state with an army.
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Although Kayani had graduated from the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., he was a product of the Pakistani military system - nearly 40 years of staring east to the threat posed by India, its adversary in several wars since both countries were established in 1947.
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This was part of a Pakistani officer's DNA. It was hard, perhaps impossible, for a Pakistani general to put down his binoculars, turn his head over his shoulder and look west to Afghanistan.
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Jones told Kayani that the clock was starting now on Obama's four requests. Obama wanted a progress report in 30 days, Jones said.
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Kayani would not budge much. He had other concerns. "I'll be the first to admit, I'm India-centric," he said.
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Panetta laid out a series of additional requests for CIA operations. Obama had approved these operations during an October 2009 session of the Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy review.
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The CIA director had come to believe that the Predator and other unmanned aerial vehicles were the most precise weapons in the history of warfare. He wanted to use them more often.
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Pakistan allowed Predator drone flights in specified geographic areas called "boxes." Because the Pakistanis had massive numbers of ground troops in the south, they would not allow a box in that area.
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"We need to have that box," Panetta said. "We need to be able to conduct our operations."
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Kayani said he would see that they had some access.
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Now where do the Americans need boxes? My sources state that they have never demanded any boxes other than FATA.
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Jones and Panetta left feeling as though they had taken only baby steps. "How can you fight a war and have safe havens across the border?" Panetta asked in frustration. "It's a crazy kind of war."
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What can poor Panetta change? Every war is crazy and USA is already a party in negotiations with the Taliban. So where is the war? The insignificant number of Americans dying in Afghanistan is not a war? After the Taliban was overthrown, nothing the US has done in Afghanistan can be considered more that a pin-prick.
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The United States needed some kind of ground forces to eliminate the safe havens, Panetta concluded. The CIA had its own forces, a 3,000-man secret army of Afghans known as Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams. Some of these pursuit teams were now conducting cross-border operations in Pakistan.
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Now where is this famed force? I did see Americans training some clowns in the Commando school in Rishkor near Kabul. The Wazirs and Mehsuds (from where much of the Pakistan Taliban is recruited) are brilliant marksmen. They still prefer bolt action Lee Enfields and would welcome a chance to fight these 3000. Any effectiveness claimed by Panetta for this force is a fantasy!
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"We can't do this without some boots on the ground," Panetta said. "They could be Pakistani boots or they can be our boots, but we got to have some boots on the ground."
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Army Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the National Security Council coordinator for Afghanistan and Pakistan, also traveled with Jones and Panetta to Pakistan. He supervised the writing of a three-page trip report to the president that Jones signed.
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It contained a pessimistic summary, noting first the gap between the civilian and military authority in Pakistan. The United States was getting nowhere fast with these guys. They were talking with Zardari, who could deliver nothing. Kayani had the power to deliver, but he refused to do much. Nobody could tell him otherwise. The bottom line was depressing: This had been a charade.
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Jones said he was alarmed that success in Afghanistan was tied to what the Pakistanis would or would not do. As he saw it, the United States could not "win" in Afghanistan as long as the Pakistani safe havens remained. It was a "cancer" on the plan the president had announced at the end of 2009.
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Interesting rhetoric with no connection with reality. Despite the near trillion dollars the US has spent in Afghanistan, I have entered Kabul, as recently as August, so much expense that the US taxpayers have made in trillions in Afghanistan , and not been checked at any security point after 11 o clock at night !
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Second, the report said the Pakistanis did not have the same sense of urgency as the Americans. There were regular terrorist strikes in Pakistan, so they could not understand the traumatic impact of a single, small attack on the U.S. homeland.
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If the Americans get traumatized by so little, then God help this so called super power. What a disgrace!
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The options for Obama would be significantly narrowed in the aftermath of an attack originating out of Pakistan. Before such an attack, however, he had more options, especially if Pakistan made good on his four requests.
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After the Jones-Panetta trip, Pakistan's cooperation on visa requests did improve. When I interviewed Obama two months after the failed Times Square bombing, he highlighted Pakistan's recent counterterrorism efforts. "They also ramped up their cooperation in a way that over the last 18 months has hunkered down al-Qaeda in a way that is significant," he said.
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"But still not enough," I interjected.
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"Well, exactly," Obama said.
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Does this not show how helpless the US is in this war?
There have been positive signals in the past few weeks, but both US and TSP have infinite capacity to make u-turns.Anujan wrote:Finally it dawned on Unkil who the real terrorists are
Nato helicopters target security check post in Kurram
The conventional wisdom is that Pakbarian animals have played the game with great skill and get dividends from both sides. Now it looks like they are getting bums and soosais and drone attacks from both sides...may the great game continue!Anujan wrote:Finally it dawned on Unkil who the real terrorists are
Nato helicopters target security check post in Kurram
Will Unkil take this hit without reply? Or will he supply mango crate to pasha and assfcuk Kiyanahishravan wrote:JUST IN: Pakistani Government have ordered to block oil tankers and trucks carrying NATO supplies after 3 soldiers were killed in NATO helicopter attack at Pak Afghan border.
Source pleaseshravan wrote:JUST IN: Pakistani Government have ordered to block oil tankers and trucks carrying NATO supplies after 3 soldiers were killed in NATO helicopter attack at Pak Afghan border.
PESHAWAR: Pakistani government officials say senior authorities have ordered them to block oil tankers and trucks carrying Nato supplies at a checkpoint bordering Afghanistan.
The two officials say they were not told the reason for the order at the Torkham border post. However, it comes after threats by Pakistani officials to stop providing protection to Nato convoys if the military alliance's choppers hit Pakistani targets again.
Earlier Thursday, Pakistani officials alleged a Nato airstrike hit a border post, killing three Pakistani troops.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information to the media. – AP
Ghar ka bhedi Lanka Dhahaye!Rangudu wrote:NYT tonight finally reports on the
A Pakistani employee of The New York Times contributed reporting.
Hence, the "gun pointed to one's own head" strategy.SSridhar wrote:The moral of the story is that the greater the reckless behaviour, the more the aid one would receive.
A family that sticks together, blows together.Anujan wrote:Pakistan's educational institutions attracting worldwide talent!!...including whole families have traveled to Pakistan... determined to return home to carry out terrorist attacks.
I would term it slightly differently. It is the start of a new beginning.Vril wrote:Three Pak soldiers killed in NATO airstrike, says PTV
http://news.rediff.com/report/2010/sep/ ... ke-ptv.htm
AoA.beginning of the end.
True. The Pakistanis had done worse things to the US and the Americans have yet continued with their relationship and it even got stronger. Can anybody forget the burning down of the US embassy in Islamabad during Gen. Zia's time and the deliberate delay in sending the rescuers as the JI & IJT thugs ransacked the premises even as Gen. Zia was enjoying cycling a few blocks away watching the billowing black smoke from the embassy ?anupmisra wrote:I would term it slightly differently. It is the start of a new beginning.Vril wrote:AoA.beginning of the end.
Excellent work.anupmisra wrote:Ghar ka bhedi Lanka Dhahaye!Rangudu wrote:NYT tonight finally reports on the
A Pakistani employee of The New York Times contributed reporting.
They pay Billlions of dollars per annum to "buy" that moral ground.anandsgh wrote:I have a silly question and wonder if somebody could answer.
"What is the moral ground US/NATO/ISAF forces hold when they impregnate the Pakis and forbid India to move forward and destroy the terror camps in POKand Pakjab?"
Brilliantly articulated, JEM saar. +1 only.This is a country that is crying out to be dismantled. The cancer source is clear and specific, and it is a relatively small community. If this community is thoroughly disrupted, and it can be done, then Pakisatan will cease to be a problem for the world - and will only be a problem for what remains in that geographic space. The issue is that radiation therapy is not an option. At least not yet.
With their tactical brilliance, Pakisatan may solve this conundrum too.
Acharya wrote:The Pentagon on Tuesday said recent cross-border strikes by NATO helicopters in Pakistan were marked by "communication breakdowns," as allied officers were not able to contact their Pakistani counterparts about the operation until afterward.
"Well, you see the photographs of the meeting of the General, President and the Prime Minister and I can assure you that they were not discussing the weather," the former General told a Q&A at the forum.
"There was a serious discussion of some kind or the other and certainly at this moment all kinds of pressure must be on this Army chief," Musharraf, who had hand-picked Kayani, said.
Musharraf, who would officially announce his political comeback tomorrow by launching his party here, recalled that there were similar pressures on him prior to his sacking Nawaz Sharif.
"That year Pakistan was going down and a number of politicians, women and men, came to me telling me 'Why are you not acting?'" Musharraf told the forum.
According to him, the recipe for Pakistan was to give the Army a constitutional role in governing the nation, which has spent more than half of its independent existence under the jackboots.
"If you want stability in Pakistan, checks and balances in the democratic structure, then the Army ought to have some role," he said.
No need for creativity! Just use the same standard excuse, so often used in American movies and TV.Acharya wrote:The Pentagon on Tuesday said recent cross-border strikes by NATO helicopters in Pakistan were marked by "communication breakdowns," as allied officers were not able to contact their Pakistani counterparts about the operation until afterward.
NEW YORK: In an unusual face-off, Indian and Pakistani diplomats engaged in heated exchanges in the UN General Assembly ( UNGA) over Jammu and Kashmir.
The sharp exchanges of words started after deputy envoy of Pakistan to UN charged India with sponsoring terrorism in the neighbouring countries. This led to Indians attacking Islamabad for raising Kashmir to deflect attention from its internal problems which needed to be addressed for the common good of Pakistanis, and thereby the entire region.
The Pakistan side appeared to have come with prepared remarks on many of these contentious issues, while Indians seemed to have taken off-guard initially and did not offer comments on specific allegations raised by the other side.
"The Indian government is well advised to take careful stock of its own polices and conduct that includes supporting terrorist elements in neighbouring countries which contributes to the problems facing South Asia," said Amjad Hussain B Sial, deputy envoy of Pakistan to the UN.
"India is also the country which conceived, created and nurtured the most lethal terrorist organisation, which introduced suicide bombings in our region. Still India has the nerves to give lectures on morality to others," he said in an indirect reference to LTTE.
These charges by Islamabad came hours after External Affairs Minister S M Krishna, at the UN yesterday, slammed Pakistan for sponsoring terrorism and militancy in Jammu and Kashmir and said it should not impart lessons to New Delhi on democracy and human rights.
Reacting sharply to Sial's remarks, Manish Gupta, a diplomat in the Indian Mission to the UN, said "Such unsolicited and untenable remarks will not and indeed, cannot divert attention from the multiple problems Pakistan needs to tackle for the common good of its people, and indeed of the entire region."
"Pakistan should seriously concentrate on addressing the enormous challenges confronting it: terrorism, extremism and sectarianism, to name a few and the dismantling of the terrorist infrastructure that exists on territory under its control," Gupta said.
The confrontation at the UN happened after more than a week of critical remarks and retaliations from both sides, which scuttled any possibility of an Indo-Pak bilateral on the sidelines of the opening session of the General Assembly.
While India and Pakistan have often exchanged barbs at the UN over the issue of Kashmir and terrorism, several observers noted that the language of this exchange was much stronger than what had been used in nearly a decade.
Read more: Face-off between India, Pak delegates at UNGA - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... z111FffYk1
Steve Coll's 'Ghost Wars' has an excellent account of this. There was a last minute scrambling to destroy sensitive documents and escape to the rooftop. USA and Pak - made for each other.SSridhar wrote:True. The Pakistanis had done worse things to the US and the Americans have yet continued with their relationship and it even got stronger. Can anybody forget the burning down of the US embassy in Islamabad during Gen. Zia's time and the deliberate delay in sending the rescuers as the JI & IJT thugs ransacked the premises even as Gen. Zia was enjoying cycling a few blocks away watching the billowing black smoke from the embassy ?
Pakistan today accused India of adopting an "untenable, illegal and amoral" position on the issue of Kashmir and said New Delhi should come forward for meaningful and result-oriented talks aimed at resolving the decades-old issue.
Responding to external affairs minister SM Krishna's comments at the UN General Assembly about the need for Pakistan to focus on internal concerns like terrorism instead of imparting lessons on democracy and human rights to India, foreign office spokesman Abdul Basit said India should take steps to resolve the Kashmir issue.
Basit told a weekly news briefing that Pakistan found Krishna's suggestions "strange, to put it mildly".
"We are surprised that India, instead of resolving the long-standing Jammu and Kashmir dispute in accordance with the relevant UN resolutions and aspirations of Kashmiris, is not ready to dispense with its untenable, illegal and amoral position on Kashmir," he said.
"No doubt Pakistan is facing domestic difficulties and so is India. But that does not mean that we become indifferent and not raise our voice against grisly operations and grave violations of human rights in Jammu and Kashmir," he added.
In the past few weeks, Pakistan has stepped up its criticism of India's handling of protests in Jammu and Kashmir. The foreign office has said New Delhi should review its policy of describing Jammu and Kashmir as an integral part of India and give up efforts to find a solution to the Kashmir issue within the Indian constitution.
Basit noted that foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had said that Pakistan wants to engage with India in a sustained, result-oriented and meaningful dialogue process.
"Pakistan is ready to proceed with this dialogue but obviously we are not interested in photo ops. What we are interested in is that our two countries get together, discuss the issues involved, especially the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir, and work together for lasting peace and stability in South Asia," he said.