The summit meetings

This letter is meant to fill the gaps in Mr Anwar Syed's narration in his article "The summit meetings" (January 4) held primarily to resolve the Kashmir dispute between the two countries.

Immediately after the entry of Indian troops into Srinagar on October 27, 1947, Pakistan took the initiative to propose a conference between the governors-general and the prime ministers of India and Pakistan in a bid to resolve the dispute peacefully.

However, only Lord Mountbatten had a meeting with the Quaid-i-Azam in Lahore on November 1, 1947. Pandit Nehru expressed his inability to attend the conference on grounds of illness.

The Quaid-i-Azam made a set of proposals for the settlement of the dispute through plebiscite under the joint control of the governors-general of India and Pakistan. The proposals were rejected by India.

Mr Liaquat Ali Khan went to Delhi on April 2, 1950, at the peak of communal riots and mayhem in West Bengal and East Pakistan. His visit resulted in the Liaquat-Nehru Pact. It focused exclusively on problems of minorities in the two countries. Pandit Nehru paid a reciprocal visit to Karachi in April 1950.

Mr Liaquat Ali Khan met Pandit Nehru in trilateral talks with Sir Owen Dixon, United Nations representative in the Kashmir dispute, in New Delhi on July 20, 1950. After five days' parleys, Sir Owen Dixon announced the failure of his mission to resolve the Kashmir deadlock.

Pandit Nehru and prime minister Mohammad Ali Bogra met at the sidelines of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in London in June 1953. In an airport interview to pressmen on June 24, 1953, Mr Bogra stated there was a possibility that the Kashmir problem would be solved by the end of the year.

Mr Nehru on return from the coronation told pressmen at Bombay airport on June 27, 1953, that he shared the Pakistan prime minister's optimism that the Kashmir problem would be solved shortly.

Formal official-level talks between Mr Nehru and Mr Bogra took place in Karachi on July 25-27, 1953. The talks were inconclusive and were resumed in New Delhi on August 17, 1953. The four-day talks were rounded off with the following joint communique issued on August 21, 1953:

"The prime ministers of India and Pakistan have decided that a Plebiscite Administrator for Kashmir should be appointed by the end of April next year. It was also decided that committees of military and other experts should be appointed to advise the prime ministers on the implementation of preliminary issues."

Mr Nehru went back on his promise when the ink had hardly dried on the joint statement. In a statement in the Lok Sabha on December 28, 1953, he said the situation under which he and the Pakistan prime minister had reached certain agreement to solve the Kashmir problem would completely change if military aid came to Pakistan from the United States. The deadlock continued, notwithstanding governor-general Ghulam Mohammad's visit to New Delhi.

SYED AFZAL HUSAIN ZAIDI

Former principal information officer, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad

Heritage status for Faletti's Hotel

I was delighted to read a detailed note on Lahore's Faletti's Hotel in the Dawn Advertiser (February 1) in which a number of guests who stayed in this great hotel have been quoted. But the list of guests is not complete without mentioning two more names: Justice Alvin Robert Cornelius, former chief justice of Pakistan, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Justice Cornelius remained in room No. 2 of the hotel for well over 50 years till his death. He was an authority on Mohammedan law, although himself a Christian. One could find him moving in his Humber on The Mall.

I met the retired judge in 1969, shortly before his elevation as law minister by President Yahya Khan. I found him very knowledgeable, modest and straightforward.

He was living with his wife, as his sons had settled abroad. He looked content with his stay in the hotel, his needs being fulfilled there. Although he was an old ICS, he had no house of his own anywhere in Pakistan.

Similarly, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto used to stay at the hotel, while in Lahore, despite the coming up of the Intercontinental (now the Pearl Continental) Hotel. I met him on March 3, 1970, five days before his historic public appearance in Lahore. He impressed me much.

He had a full grasp of the people's mood. He knew their problems and wanted to solve them. He addressed the people of Lahore on March 8, which until now is the biggest gathering in Lahore. Starting from Shahalami to Adda Crown Bus, one could find a flood of people. The Mochi Gate park was packed.

I met him again in January-February 1971 when he had been elected as the majority party leader of West Pakistan, again in Faletti's Hotel. This time around, he was talking about the framing of a constitution, a task given to the elected politicians by Yahya Khan.

When he came back from China, as head of a delegation, shortly before the 1971 war, he reached Lahore by train and addressed the people assembled there. It was there that he uttered the historic sentence that in case of war, it would be Damadum Mast Qalander.

Later he went to stay in Faletti's. So one could safely say that Faletti's played its part in the formation of the Pakistan People's Party and its aftermath till ZAB took over power in December 1971.

The hotel is witness to 123 vital years of our history. I agree that this 'senior citizen' deserves a better treatment. According to a Dawn report, the place where the Civil & Military Gazette, used to be published is now occupied by a market. Thus very few people now know about that great newspaper of the subcontinent.

It is suggested that Faletti's should be declared a national heritage and turned into a museum. Its upkeep should be left to the earnings of a commercial unit to be erected in the open space of the backyard of the hotel on the Montgomery-Cooper Road junction.

HAFEEZ AKHTAR

Lahore

Child executions

I am deeply concerned about child executions in Pakistan. In 2000 use of the death penalty against child offenders, people under 18 at the time of the crime, was banned in most of Pakistan, but scores of child offenders have been awarded capital punishment.

In November 2001 Sher Ali, who was hanged for a murder committed when he was 13 years old, became the third child offender executed in the country since Pakistan ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990. The convention forbids execution of child offenders.

I urge Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali to commute death sentences of all child offenders and ensure that no further child offenders are awarded capital punishment, in accordance with Pakistan's obligations under international law.

In October 2003 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended that Pakistan should take immediate steps to ensure that the prohibition of the death penalty under the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2000 (JJSO) is guaranteed for all child offenders, and the death sentences awarded before the promulgation of the JJSO are not carried out.

Child offenders continue to be sentenced to death in the provincially- and federally-administered tribal areas where the JJSO is not applicable. The prime minister is requested to take the following measures:

1. The JJSO should be extended to the tribal areas, and it is ensured that if death sentences are imposed on child offenders there or in other parts of the country, they should be commuted.

2. The government should ensure that police officials immediately ascertain the age of any child in conflict with the law. A systematic registration of all births in all parts of the country, including the tribal areas, will provide help to investigation officers in this respect.

It is hoped the prime minister will not disappoint the nation.

FRIEDHELM KUHL

Via email

Poultry market

The recent slump in poultry market generated by the scare of "bird flu" which originated in Southeast Asian countries, was unfortunate as it was based on false assumptions that the bird flu could spread to humans and start a pandemic.

In fact, the avian flu reported around Karachi in November last was not the H5NI type which was blamed for passing infection to human beings in Thailand. Even there, there were very few reported, albeit suspected, cases of direct transmission of bird flu to humans as the pig is considered a notorious mixing vessel for avian and human flu viruses causing a mutant strain.

It is common knowledge that in South Asian countries pigs and poultry are often raised in close proximity, making it possible for cross transmission of flu from birds to humans via pigs.

There is, however, no possibility whatsoever of such an occurrence in Pakistan as the medium of pigs does not exit near the poultry farms which are confined in case of intensively raised birds.

Avian flu outbreaks have been recorded in the past also in Pakistan, which have been contained by vaccinations and bio-security measures without a single recorded case of humans being infected.

The undue scare has severely damaged the poultry meat market which in fact meets almost 0.2 million tons shortage of mutton yearly, in addition to producing an equal extra quantity of meat with a potential of multi-million dollar exports.

The public ought to be assured that the bird flu strains recorded in the past in Pakistan have been of H9 and H7 types which have no history of passing on to humans.

Moreover, under our cooking at high temperature the risk of any virus surviving the heat is non-existent. The alarm about bird flu ought to be dispelled to save the billion-dollar poultry industry of Pakistan that employs half a million people.

DR M. YAQOOB BHATTI

Lahore

Bahria Town scam

I fully agree with the contents of the letter "Bahria town scam" (February 6) by "A victim".

I am also an aggrieved person. I made full and final payment for my plot on July 6, 1999, but possession of the plot was not given to me in spite of a series of letters by me to Bahria Town Pvt. Ltd.

After years of silence the project authorities sent me a letter, dated February 6, 2003, intimating that the cost of the plot has been increased by Rs200 per square yard.

They also changed the number of my plot without my consent, though the plot was allotted to me through a ballot draw. This is the second escalation in the cost of the plot which brings the total cost to Rs1,672 per square yard.

The movements and manoeuvrings of Bahria Town Pvt. Ltd. seem scandalous, giving a bad name to the Pakistan Navy, the originators of the Bahria Foundation project.

I request the authorities to look into the matter to protect the interests of the allottees.

ANOTHER VICTIM

Karachi

Care and concern for the aged

The advertisement recently published in Dawn for belated Behbood savings certificates for the aged claims: "Our way of saying 'We care!'" It demonstrates the ministry of finance's ignorance of the Quranic injunction that aids to the needy, like zakat and khairat, should be free of the element of ehsan

When the British rulers noticed that the majority of the people of the subcontinent lived off charity in their old age, they introduced the government's postal savings bank account and postal life insurance.

Soon after partition when the government found that old retired employees needed further help, it created the national provident fund and made it a part of the revised, more beneficial p pension-cum-gratuity scheme in 1954.

For the general public national savings schemes were introduced, which simultaneously served as investments for rebate in income tax.

The 1954 pension scheme, subsequently revised twice, was also extended to the Pakistan Railways employees on April 23, 1954. Over 90 per cent of the employees retired without the benefit of this scheme because they were under the impression that they had, with this order of the finance ministry, automatically become entitled to it, whereas the order specifically required each employee to opt for it. The railways department failed in its duty to bring this condition to the notice of its employees.

The Karachi bench of the Supreme Court in its judgment (August 31, 1986) in the civil appeal No. 91-K/1984 (PLD 1987 SCMR 642) ruled that the "concerned employees" had no notice of the directive, and granted pension to the railway employee 17 years after his retirement, prescribing at the same time the principle for dealing with the cases of all retired railways employees denied pension with the use of words "concerned employees".

Based on this judgment the SC's Lahore bench granted pension on March 12, 1996 to a chief engineer of the Pakistan Railways 29 years after his retirement. Similarly, the divisional bench of the Sindh High Court in its judgment (August 16, 1989) granted pensions to 13 railways employees 20 years after their retirement.

The employees who could not afford legal expenses approached the wafaqi mohtasib for getting similar relief, but their cases were mishandled in the mohtasib's secretariat, the railways board and the ministry of law and justice.

The matter can be righted by considering all railways employees who were in service on April 23, 1954, as entitled to the pension benefit with or without an option.

The Behbood savings certificates have caused a 94 per cent decline in the national savings certificates (Dawn, January 16), though it contains penalty clause of service charges for early withdrawal.

It claims to afford "financial freedom and comfort for old age" but recovers service charges when banks exempt such charges from pension accounts. The people of about 80 years will be forced to withdraw large amounts before the full period (10 years) for their medical treatment and thereby suffer financial losses.

The government should, therefore, consider increasing the rate of interest of national savings accounts of people over 60 years to 10 per cent, without service charges and withholding tax deduction. At present they are paying a 10 per cent tax on their entire income.

The Senate has recommended stoppage of recovery of the withholding tax. The aged people who have held national savings accounts for a decade must be permitted to operate this account as before, i.e. without service charges and withholding tax.

H. A. HAJI

Karachi

Beating the system

It is indeed a source of great national sadness that we should have to face this embarrassment of nuclear leakages. Unfortunately, rather than letting a system work, we are proudly bent upon beating it. In fact, it has become our national characteristic.

The lack of a disciplined approach in life which gives way to a cavalier disposition has been inherent in our nation ever since its inception. Little wonder then that the resultant shenanigans have landed us in this hop soup.

With regards to Dr A. Q. Khan, why can't we reconcile ourselves to the fact that we can have both a hero and a wrongdoer in one person? For us to mature as a nation, we have to learn to be able to hold two contradictory, yet concurrent, ideas in our minds, and to live to deal with such dichotomies.

MOHSIN HAFEEZ

San Francisco, CA., USA

Stadium's name

One is shocked and dismayed over the disgraceful betrayal by one of our so-called friends, Libya, over the recent dispute of proliferation of nuclear technology by our scientists. One is amazed that such an act of betrayal by Muammar Qadhafi has not generated even the slightest criticism from our local media.

It is time we started acting on such matters that damage our national pride. The least we can do is to change the name of the Lahore cricket stadium from Qadhafi. However, one cannot be in different to the national trust reportedly betrayed by some of our scientists.

KHURRAM KIDWAI

Karachi

SPSC exams

This refers to Mr Imtiaz Ali Kalhoro's letter "SPSC's combined exams" (January 28) regarding inefficiency of the Sindh Public Service Commission.

I also applied for the combined competitive examinations, fulfilling all requirements and formalities. But my candidature was rejected on the ground that I had not submitted the pass certificate of my graduation, though I had enclosed all required testimonials.

The administration of the Sindh Public Service Commission does not check and maintain the record properly. Rather they mishandle it, as a result of which the candidates suffer irreparably for no fault on their part.

Is there anyone to take notice of the working of the SPSC?

TUFAIL AHMED MASHORI

Larkana

Financial crisis in Sindhi Adabi Board

The news (Dawn, February 5) regarding a financial crisis the Sindhi Adabi Board is facing is disheartening. After Sindh's separation from Bombay, a need was felt to have an institution that could promote awareness about education through research and publication of history and literature in the Sindhi language.

With these ideals the board came into existence in 1940, with the following scholars and intellectuals as its first members:

Shams-ul Ulema Allama Muhammad Omer Daudpota, Maulana Din Muhammad Wafai, Hakim Fateh Muhammad Sehwani, Khan Bahadur Muhammad Sidik Memon, Sayed Miran Muhammad Shah, Pir Ali Muhammad Shah Rashidi, Dr Gurbakhshahni, Bhiromal Mehar Chand, Lal Chand Amardino and Diwan Sobhraj Nirmaldas.

The board rendered invaluable services in the field of education by publishing numerous books on history and literature. Moreover, several popular books of English literature were introduced through their translation into the Sindhi language. This played a pivotal role in the spread of education and learning in the province.

The late '70s, however, experienced a continual decline in the activities of the board for the purpose it was created. Non-availability of funds was one of the many reasons for this decline.

On the one hand the present-day crisis faced by the board shows lack of interest on the part of the authorities, and on the other a sad reflection on intellectuals' silence about the decay of such a great institution.

The authorities concerned and our educationists and intellectuals are requested to help revive the board to which we are indebted for the spread of education in the province.

MANZOOR H. KURESHI

Karachi