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| January 24, 2008 | Thursday | Muharram 14, 1429 |
Updated round-the-clock, with major updates after 10:00 PST (05:00 GMT)
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Musharraf says he is prepared to work with any winning political party DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 24 (APP): President Pervez Musharraf Thursday said he is prepared to work with any political party that emerges winner and having majority in the parliament, following February 18 general election. “I assure the election will be free and fair in all possible manner whatsoever,” he said told a preliminary session, especially arranged for him at World Economic Forum (WEF) that was moderated by former US Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kassinger. “I do not find any difficulty to work with any political party and if needed I will be prepared to facilitate forming a coalition government for the sake of harmony and success of democratic process,” he added. He said a stable and progressive government in Pakistan is imperative to face future challenges including sustaining of rapid economic growth and addressing the problems of terrorism and extremism. President Musharraf also referred to Pakistan's position as a nuclear state and said its command and control system is highly strong and there is absolutely no question of falling of the nuclear assets in the wrong hands.(Posted @ 20:17 PST)
Pakistani tanks, choppers kill dozens of militants DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan, Jan 24 (AFP) Pakistani troops backed by tanks and gunships cleared militant hideouts near the Afghan border Thursday in a major offensive that left ten soldiers and 40 rebels dead, the army said. Thirty insurgents were also arrested during the fighting in the South Waziristan tribal district. Chief Pakistani military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said soldiers had cleared militants from their “hideouts and strongholds” in the Spinkai Raghazai, Nawazkot and Tiarza areas of the tribal zone. “Our forces are now consolidating their positions. The militants are using rockets, machine guns and Kalashnikovs,” Abbas told AFP. Tanks had moved in to protect the movement of army convoys, an army statement said. Officials said helicopters were also pounding insurgent positions. The statement said 40 “miscreants have been killed in the last 24 hours and 30 miscreants have been apprehended, many of them injured,” while eight soldiers were killed and 32 injured. Another two troops were killed and seven injured Thursday, Abbas said. The clashes occurred in areas mainly controlled by the Mehsud tribe, Abbas added. Abbas said he was not aware of the whereabouts of Baitullah Mehsud. “It is not known whether he was taking part in the fighting or present in those areas,” Abbas told AFP. Mehsud tribesmen have refused to seek shelter in a refugee camp set up by authorities in the nearby town of Jandola and had asked family in other districts to accommodate them, local tribesman Alam Khan said. (First Posted @ 09:30 PST, Updated @ 18:14 PST)
Musharraf says he will quit if unpopular ISLAMABAD, Jan 24 (APP): President Pervez Musharraf Thursday said he will quit as country's head if people do not want him to continue. “The day I realize that I can't contribute [for the country] and people don't like me to continue, I will quit,” he told the BBC in an interview in Davos, Switzerland. When questioned about his acceptance among the world leaders, President Musharraf said they had confidence in him. “I keep on talking to US President Bush and British Prime Minister and know what they feel about me,” he said. President Musharraf also mentioned his recent meetings with French president, Swiss president and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who expressed confidence in him. “There is a dichotomy what is media trying to say about me and what the leaders talk to me and tell me,” he said. President Musharraf maintained that “ if there is a hung parliament there will be a coalition, which would decide who is going to be the prime minister.”(Posted @ 21:21 PST)
Muslim university to be established by Aga Khan KARACHI, Pakistan, Jan 24 (APP): A Muslim university would be established by the Aga Khan and the Ismaili community with a total investment of about $ 500 million, the president of the Aga Khan Ismaili Council, Iqbal Waljee, said in Karachi on Thursday. He said 1,000 acres of land has been acquired for the purpose on Super Highway in Karachi. The Aga Khan will lay the foundation stone, he said adding that acadamic activity will start from 2011. Waljee said the silver jubilee year of the Aga Khan as the spiritual head of the Ismaili community is being marked from July 2007 to July 2008 and will be marked by a series of high profile programmes including the lecture series by Karen Armstrong on intellectual traditions in Islam.(Posted @ 21:11 PST)
US must push for independent judiciary in Pakistan: Imran Khan WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (AP) - Cricket legend and chief of Tehrik-i-Insaf party, Imran Khan, Thursday urged the United States to insist that Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf reinstate an independent judiciary. An independent judiciary, he said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, “is the only way out of the quagmire” Pakistan has been in since Musharraf's declaration of emergency rule last year and purging of the Supreme Court. Imran said he has met with U.S. lawmakers, including Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, and Joe Biden, the Democratic head of the Senate's foreign affairs panel, to convey his sense that the U.S. “strategy of backing one man, rather than the democratic process, is deeply flawed.” Khan, who was jailed in the turmoil following the emergency rule, predicted a “Kenya-type situation” in Pakistan if the elections are held without an independent judiciary. Imran Khan also predicted rigging in Feb 18 elections which his party has already decided to boycott.(Posted @ 20:48 PST)
Police find bomb on Nawaz Sharif’s convoy route PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan 24 (AFP): Police defused a roadside time-bomb just minutes before opposition leader Nawaz Sharif was due to pass the spot in the northwestern city of Peshawar Thursday, officials said. Former prime minister Sharif was travelling in a convoy to address a lawyers' convention and a political rally in the city ahead of elections on February 18. “We recovered a 400 gram bomb fitted with a timer beneath a main bridge near the high court on the route that Sharif was to take. We have defused it,” bomb disposal squad official Hukam Khan told AFP. Ijaz Khan, a senior police officer, said the bomb was found wrapped in a plastic shopping bag. “It was planted on the road that Nawaz Sharif was to pass. When policemen were searching the area they found it and immediately called in bomb disposal staff who defused it,” Khan said. A spokesman for Sharif said their convoy had been halted about a kilometre before it reached the area. “We are sitting in the car. Police have stopped our convoy. They have said there is a report of some explosives in the area where we were supposed to go,” the spokesman said. (Posted @ 13:30 PST)
Police tear-gas anti-Musharraf protest ISLAMABAD, Jan 24 (AFP): Riot police used tear gas and batons here Thursday to disperse hundreds of protesters chanting slogans against President Musharraf, AFP reporters witnessed. Around 400 people, including lawyers, activists and supporters of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf party were stopped by the police from visiting Pakistan's former top judge Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. The protesters tried to break through a police barricade outside the Marriott Hotel, which is near Chaudhry's house, but were forced back by baton-wielding police who then fired tear gas. (Posted @ 13:55 PST)
Kenya foes Kibaki, Odinga shake hands after meeting NAIROBI, Jan 24 (APP/AFP) - Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga smiled and shook hands Thursday after their first meeting since last month's disputed presidential election. The two men appeared in public after their landmark meeting at the president's office mediated by former UN chief Kofi Annan, who described the meeting as “a very encouraging development.” Odinga also praised the meeting as a crucial step towards ending the crisis. “We have taken the first vital steps in resolving electoral disputes,” he told reporters.(Posted @ 20:53 PST)
Suicide bomber kills north Iraq police chief BAGHDAD, Jan 24 (Reuters) - A suicide bomber in police uniform killed Nineveh province police director Brigadier-General Salih Mohammed Hasan Atiya al-Jubouri in the city of Mosul on Thursday as he toured the site of a blast a day earlier that killed 36 people and wounded scores of others, police said. U.S. and Iraqi military officials said the suicide bomber walked up to Jubouri as he toured the site and detonated a vest packed with explosives. The U.S. military said two Iraqi police were also killed in Thursday's blast. Police said an Iraqi journalist working for the Chinese state news agency Xinhua was among five others wounded. A U.S. soldier was also wounded. In other violence on Thursday, two policemen were killed and three others wounded by a roadside bomb in central Baghdad's Karrada district, police said.(Posted @ 13:00 PST, Updated @ 20:44 PST)
Execution-style victims in Sri Lanka mass graves COLOMBO, Jan 24 (AFP) - At least 16 bullet-riddled bodies of unidentified men were found in mass graves in north-central Sri Lanka Thursday, police said. Witnesses said some of the victims had their hands tied together and had bullet holes in their heads. The decomposed bodies were found by local residents in the district of Anuradhapura in the government-controlled part of the island.(Posted @ 20:27 PST)
Cricket: Sri Lanka offers to host Asia Cup if Pakistan opt out COLOMBO, Jan 24 (AFP) - Sri Lanka has approached Pakistan with an offer to host the upcoming Asia Cup cricket tournament, Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) chief Arjuna Ranatunga told AFP Thursday on the sidelines of a news conference to promote tourism. The six-nation limited-overs tournament o be participated by Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates and Oman is to be played in Pakistan in June. “We have written and asked Pakistan if we can host the Asia Cup,” he said. “It's a sensitive issue, but we will understand if Pakistan refuse us,” said Ranatunga. Replying to a question he said Sri Lanka was also willing to host the upcoming Test series between Australia and Pakistan “If both sides agree to a neutral venue, I hope they will play here,” said Ranatunga. When Australia refused to tour Pakistan in 2002, the series was played in Colombo and in Sharjah.(Posted @ 18:24 PST)
Musharraf asks world to help poor countries fight root causes of terrorism DAVOS, Jan 24 (APP) President Pervez Musharraf Thursday sought the support of developed states in helping poor countries fight against poverty, illiteracy and economic deprivation, being the major root causes of terrorism and extremism. “This is how they can help countries like Pakistan to eliminate the root cause of terrorism and extremism,” he said while addressing a special session of the annual meeting of World Economic Forum. Responding to three questions put by plenary session's moderator Dr Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State, which related to Pakistan's political scenario, its role in war against terror and the country status as an emerging economy, Musharraf said that despite facing ups and downs, conflicts and global changes, Pakistan had shown resilience in the changing scenario. He participated in another panel discussion that focused on Middle East and South Asia. The other panellists included Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, Chief advisor of Bangladesh, and Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq.(Posted @ 17:58 PST)
Tens of thousands of Gazans rush into Egypt after border wall is breached RAFAH, Gaza Strip, Jan 24 (AP) - Large shipments of cement, spare parts and fuel flowed from Egypt into Gaza across a wide-open border Thursday, a day after militants blew down the border wall and tens of thousands of locked-up Gazans streamed into Egypt for shopping and a whiff of freedom. Egyptian border guards at first stood by as huge crowds surged into Egypt, but on Thursday tried to direct the increasingly chaotic traffic of pedestrians, donkey carts and bicycles. Israel, meanwhile, said it would not send emergency shipments of fuel on Thursday, as it had initially promised earlier in the week. The fuel is needed to run Gaza City's power plant, which had shut down after Israel imposed a complete closure on Gaza last week, in response to rocket attacks.(Posted @ 12:50 PST, Updated @ 17:33 PST)
20 killed in Polish military plane crash including brig. gen. WARSAW, Poland, Jan 24 (AP) - A military plane carrying officers home from a flight-safety conference crashed in a forested area in northwestern Poland, killing all 20 people on board, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said early Thursday. He said the victims of the crash included a brigadier-general and a colonel The plane carrying 16 passengers and four crew members was just about 3 kilometers from the airstrip when it clipped trees on its approach, crashed in a wooded area and burst into flames, officials said.(Posted @ 09:10 PST, Updated @ 17:24 PST)
China grows 11.2 percent in 4th quarter BEIJING, Jan 24 (AP) - China's economy expanded by a robust 11.2 percent in the fourth quarter and fast growth should continue, the government said Thursday, in a possible positive sign for the world economy amid worries about a U.S. recession. For the full year, China's economy grew by 11.4 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics reported. That was the highest level since 1994 and put China close to overtaking Germany as the world's third-largest economy. “I believe the Chinese economy in 2008 should maintain stable and fast growth,” the bureau director, Xie Fuzhan, said at a news conference. (Posted @ 17:10 PST)
Tennis: Tsonga shocks Nadal to reach Aussie final MELBOURNE, Jan 24 (AFP) - Unseeded Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga stunned second seed Rafael Nadal to storm into the final of the Australian Open on Thursday. In an astonishing performance of clean winners and aces, the 38th-ranked Tsonga won 6-2, 6-3, 6-2 in an hour and 57 minutes to reach the decider in only his fifth Grand Slam. Tsonga now has the prospect of facing either champion Roger Federer or Serbian third seed Novak Djokovic in Sunday's final. Federer and Djokovic have a rematch of their 2007 US Open final in the other semi-final on Friday. (Posted @ 17:00 PST)
Cricket: Pakistan beat Zimbabwe to take 2-0 series lead HYDERABAD, Pakistan, Jan 24 (AFP) - Pakistan beat Zimbabwe by five wickets in the second one-day international here on Thursday to go 2-0 up in the five-match series. Brief Scores: Zimbabwe 238-8 in 50 overs; Pakistan 239-5 in 46.2 overs (First Posted @ 09:20 PST, Updated @ 16:50 PST)
Musharraf says judge Pakistan on economy, stability DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 24 (Reuters): President Musharraf said Thursday the world should judge Pakistan on economic progress and its fight against militancy, not western ideas of human rights. “Judge economic performance, the welfare of people and political stability,” Musharraf told business and political leaders at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. “Please don't judge (us) on maybe unrealistic western perceptions of democracy and human rights.” Regarding Pakistan’s forthcoming general elections, he said they “must be free, fair and transparent. And I've added another word - peaceful,” Musharraf said Thursday. “We will make sure that they are peaceful.” Musharraf declined to say whether he would be prepared to reinstate ousted Supreme Court judges to rule on any possible complaint of electoral fraud. “Look at Pakistan from Pakistani eyes and not from foreign eyes,” he said. “You should see our performance on ... whether the welfare of the people, the economic progress of the country is being addressed and whether we are moving forward.” Musharraf, sharing a platform with the head of Bangladesh's army-backed interim government Fakhruddin Ahmed, said both countries sought political stability and economic growth. (First Posted @ 12:25 PST, Updated @ 16:30 PST)
Bangladesh puts out gas pipeline fire DHAKA, Jan 24 (Reuters): An underwater pipeline supplying gas to homes and industries in and around the Bangladesh capital exploded Thursday, sparking a huge fire, officials said. The explosion happened in the river Turag at Amin Bazar, 30 km north of Dhaka. No injuries were reported, although witnesses said the flames reached up to 60 feet above the water. Firemen later halted gas supplies through the damaged pipeline and put out the blaze, they said. (First Posted @ 12:30 PST, Updated @ 16:10 PST)
Cricket- Pakistan rule out moving Australia series HYDERABAD, Pakistan, Jan 24 (AFP): Pakistan cricket chief Nasim Ashraf Thursday ruled out moving the upcoming home series against Australia to a neutral venue or relocating it Down Under. “The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has only one position on this tour and that is that Australia will play as per their commitment in Pakistan in March-April of 2008,” Ashraf told reporters. “There is no question of a neutral venue and no question of going to Australia at this point of time,” he said. “We are scheduled to tour Australia in 2009 and we will honour our commitment and they will honour their commitment.” (Posted @ 16:05 PST)
Justice Nawaz Abbasi takes oath as Acting Chief Justice ISLAMABAD, Jan 24 (APP): Justice Mohammad Nawaz Abbasi, the senior-most Judge of the Supreme Court after Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar took oath as Acting Chief Justice of Pakistan here Thursday. Justice Faqir Muhammad Khokhar administered oath to him. The oath taking ceremony was held in the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Islamabad. Justice Abbasi will act as Acting Chief Justice of Pakistan in the absence of Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar who has left for Saudi Arabia to perform Umrah. (Posted @ 15:10 PST)
Cricket-India 309-5 v Australia - close ADELAIDE, Jan 24 (Reuters): India were 309 for five in their first innings at the close of play on the first day of the fourth and final test against Australia at Adelaide Oval Thursday. Scores: India 309-5 (Sachin Tendulkar 124 not out, Virender Sehwag 63, Vangipurappu Laxman 51) v Australia.
Tennis- Sharapova, Ivanovic take contrasting routes to Australian Open final MELBOURNE, Jan 24 (Reuters): Maria Sharapova and Ana Ivanovic will meet in the Australian Open final after contrasting victories in their semi-finals Thursday. Russian Sharapova, seeded fifth, demolished Serb Jelena Jankovic 6-3 6-1, while Serbian fourth seed Ivanovic recovered from a first-set whitewash to oust Daniela Hantuchova 0-6 6-3 6-4. (Posted @ 13:40 PST)
Baghdad roadside bomb targets police patrol, killing two, wounding five BAGHDAD, Jan 24 (AP): A roadside bomb struck a police patrol about 8 a.m. Thursday in Baghdad’s Karradah neighbourhood, killing two officers and wounding five other people, police said. Three civilians and two policemen were among the five reported wounded. (Posted @ 13:25 PST)
One NATO soldier killed, two wounded in southern Afghan blast KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan 24 (AP): A blast in southern Afghanistan killed a NATO soldier and wounded two others Thursday, the alliance said. The troops were on patrol at the time of the explosion, NATO said. (Posted @ 13:20 PST)
Five people shot dead in Thai south YALA, Thailand, Jan 24 (AFP): Insurgents shot dead five people in attacks in southern Thailand, police said Thursday. A 46-year-old school teacher was gunned down in a drive-by shooting early Thursday in Pattani, police said. His death followed the killing of a 36-year-old man in Pattani late Wednesday, police said. Meanwhile, in neighbouring Yala province, three people were also killed in separate attacks, police added. (First Posted @ 10:00 PST, Updated @ 13:05 PST)
US-led air raid kills 11 in Afghanistan GHAZNI, Afghanistan, Jan 24 (Reuters): Nine police and two civilians were killed in an air strike by U.S.-led troops in a village outside Ghazni town southwest of Kabul Wednesday, Dr. Ismail Ibrahimzai, the head of Ghazni's public health department said Thursday. The U.S.-led coalition confirmed the attack and said several Taliban insurgents were killed in the raid involving small-arms and aerial-delivered conventional munitions. (First Posted @ 10:45 PST, Updated @ 12:55 PST)
Iran, Russia pushing for 'gas OPEC': newspaper MOSCOW, Jan 24 (AFP): A group of gas-exporting states led by Iran and Russia is moving towards creating a formal body similar to the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Nations, a Russian daily said on Thursday. The charter for the proposed “gas OPEC” would be presented for approval at the seventh annual meeting of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum in Moscow in June, the Kommersant broadsheet said, citing unnamed Russian government sources. (Posted @ 12:10 PST)
Karachi Stocks down 67.86 points: KARACHI, Jan 24: At close of trading, the KSE-100 index was at 13719.17, down 67.86 points. (Bureau Report) (Updated @ 14:20 PST)
Forex update: KARACHI, Jan 24: The Pakistani Rupee was traded at Rs 62.8 to the US Dollar in the open market. (Bureau Report) (Updated @ 14:20 PST)
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