Pakistan's special envoy who met the Sudanese president on Wednesday has confirmed Khartoum's willingness to implement UN Security Council and African Union resolutions seeking an end to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.
However, President Omer Hassan Ahmed El Bashir has expressed reservations about his country's ability to meet the 30-day deadline given to it by the UNSC under its July 30 resolution.
He has argued that a clean-up in the troubled region is not possible within the stipulated timeframe, saying that the 18-month-old crisis began as a rebellion against his government.
While the UN resolution demands that Sudan disarm and bring to justice members of the Arab-supremacist Janjaweed militiamen, it makes no mention of disarming the African rebels. Clearly, there are complex political problems at the root of this crisis that need to be sorted out.
But while political issues take time to get resolved, the worsening humanitarian situation in Darfur cannot be left to fester. Khartoum will have to take into account the international community's concerns in this regard.
Sudan should welcome the offer made last week by the African Union to provide a 2,000-strong peacekeeping force to help protect and rehabilitate over one million people forced out of their homes by the crisis.
The West, for its part, should encourage an inter-African mechanism rather than threatening Sudan with sanctions or military intervention. The Ethiopian and Rwandan experiences in the 1990s have shown that an approach based on persuasion and humanitarian considerations works better in ending such ethnic conflicts as opposed to one based on military force, which failed miserably in Somalia in the 1980s.
With the adventure in Iraq having gone awry, Palestine still bleeding, Afghanistan unstable and Al Qaeda flexing its muscle, the world can ill-afford another Arab/Islamic flash point in the heart of Africa. Any international response to the crisis in Sudan must take stock of all these factors.
Fate of PIA planetarium
The PIA planetarium in Karachi, which has been functioning at its present site for the past two decades, is now in danger of being closed down. The Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) says that the land on which the planetarium has been built is its property and that it needs the plot for the second phase of its expo-centre project.
There it plans to build a five-star hotel, airline offices, banks, fast food outlets and other facilities. For its part, the PIA management says that the land was given to it by then president General Ziaul Haq under a presidential order. Any change in the planetarium's location is bound to prove unsettling for this facility and may even threaten its very existence.
The planetarium has enthralled thousands of Pakistanis, mostly students, who come here to learn more about the solar system. Owing to its non-commercial nature, PIA offers students this facility at subsidized rates so that a maximum number of them can benefit from what is essentially an educational service.
The PIA management says that it is not possible now to shift the planetarium to a new site because it does not have alternative land for this purpose. It would be best to allow the planetarium to stay at its present location and expect the EPB to find an alternative site for its exhibition and other projects.