| 27 February 2004 | Friday | 06 Muharram 1425 |
Making a farce of justice
Unfair restrictions?
One must welcome Pakistan's resolve to "reinvigorate" its relations with Russia. As a press release issued after talks in Islamabad between delegations led by Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokar and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Anatoly Safanov said, the two sides have decided to expand bilateral relations "in all fields, particularly defence and communications."
Other areas of cooperation mentioned were counter-terrorism, investment, trade, inter-bank relationship, debt restructuring, drug trafficking, and scientific and technical cooperation.
In the latter field, special emphasis has been placed on energy, metallurgy, telecommunications and infrastructure development projects. Pakistan has a lot to learn from Russia in these fields because the latter has very high scientific and technological standards. Cooperation with Russia in technical matters, thus, should help Pakistan enormously.
While welcoming this positive development, one is appalled to note that Pakistan's relations with Russia even in this post-Soviet era are still at a low level of development. Even though Pakistan and the USSR were neighbours, relations between them soured when the former joined the American-sponsored military pacts in the fifties.
Pakistan, then, not only started getting American economic and military aid, it also gave bases to the US. The U-2 spy plane that was shot down over Soviet territory had flown from the American military base in Badaber. This led to a further deterioration of ties between the two, with Moscow pouring military hardware into India and lending categorical support to New Delhi on the Kashmir question.
During the early seventies, Islamabad made a determined bid to improve relations with Moscow, but their ties hit a new low when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. For the second time Pakistan became America's "front-line ally" with Washington giving billions of dollars in overt and covert aid to this country.
The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the breakup of the Soviet Union and Pakistan's ill-advised support to the Taliban during the Afghan civil war now belong to history.
But the post-9/11 situation seems to have provided Pakistan and Russia with a new opportunity to improve bilateral ties. In February last year, President Pervez Musharraf visited Moscow to demonstrate Pakistan's keenness to develop friendly relations with Russia.
Today there are no areas of conflict between the two countries. Both Islamabad and Moscow support the Karzai government and are committed to the international community's war on terrorism. What Russia has welcomed most is the government's war on religious extremism and militancy.
This has served to address Moscow's concern about religious militancy in Central Asia and within Russia, which has nearly 20 million indigenous Muslims. The importance which Russia attaches to the Muslim world is evident from Russia's bid to join the Organization of Islamic Conference, whose last summit meeting in Kuala Lumpur was addressed by President Vladimir Putin.
As an important member of the OIC, Pakistan should make every effort to develop close and warm relations with Russia. In the field of defence cooperation, Russia has a lot to offer to Pakistan. At present, Pakistan's military establishment is western oriented, though undeniably China is a major source of arms supplies to Pakistan.
It is, however, in Pakistan's interest to diversify the sources of arms purchases and to develop the capability to produce most of its arms requirements within the country. From this point of view, cooperation with Russia can be of great value to Pakistan.
Making a farce of justice
Sindh Chief Minister Ali Mohammed Mahar's call to the Sindh High Court to order a judicial inquiry into this week's murder of two young girls in Gadap is a step in the right direction.
It is very important for the facts of this gruesome double murder to be brought to light and those responsible to be given exemplary punishment. What is worrisome, though, is the manner in which the Sindh government itself has reacted to this incident.
Reports say that the police officers who have been suspended and charged with murder in this case have not been put behind bars and instead have been given a room with facilities at a police station.
The contention of the Sindh police chief that this time the police are "serious about setting an example" rings hollow in view of the special treatment being meted out to police officers presumed guilty. The father of one of the murdered girls has said he doubts a police investigation in the matter would bring the criminals to justice.
It was only after members of a party that is a coalition partner in the provincial government took up the matter that the administration swung into action. There have been several instances where policemen are involved but such cases are generally swept under the carpet once the public uproar subsides.
The incident involving 12-year-old Mohammed Owais, who was criminally assaulted by four policemen in Shah Faisal Colony in March 2003, is a case in point. The culprits have still not been caught despite the lapse of a year. One wonders where the sympathies of our police force lie in such cases and what message the police high-ups are sending to a perturbed society by such strange conduct.
The Sindh CM would do well to ask the police authorities to take the two police officers in question into custody or put them in prison while a judicial inquiry into the case is conducted.
Unfair restrictions?
As the European Union gets ready to slap a punitive, five-year anti-dumping duty of 13.1 per cent on Pakistani bed linen imported by its member states, there are fears that the textile industry at home will find itself in dire straits.
At the behest of Eurocoton, which represents Europe's textile industry, the EU has alleged that a large quantity of Pakistani bed linen was being sold in European markets at prices below the normal rate, thus hurting the local industry.
At present, Pakistan is the EU's largest supplier of bed linen with a 25 per cent share of the market. However, with the imposition of the anti-dumping charges and a further levy of an import duty, manufacturers will face a slash in exports.
Stiff competition arising from the liberalization of trade in 2005 will further compound their problems. The government must do all it can to counteract what is being largely seen by exporters as an unfair step taken by the European body.
This would mean exploring new markets as well as capitalizing on existing trade opportunities with countries such as the United States that has lifted quota restrictions on certain textile products of Pakistan as part of a three-year package of trade bonuses.
However, at the same time it should be kept in mind that the EU remains Pakistan's largest trading partner, and as such, all efforts must be made to boost trade with the Europeans while talking to EU officials for a mutually satisfactory solution to the current crisis.
To protect its domestic industry, the EU has resorted time and again to levying anti-dumping charges on a number of countries producing a variety of consumer goods. In the present case, investigations by the European body of dumping allegations against Pakistan appear to be incomplete and faulty.
It is important for Pakistan to know how exactly its bed linen exports are hurting the European industry and why, in the first place, the EU allowed a surge of cheap Pakistani imports to flood its market in spite of quota restrictions.