Category: Foreign Affairs

The cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan has finally been accepted as Pakistan’s next prime minister. I say “finally” because the election commission managed to add to widespread concerns about the elections by inexplicably delaying its announcement of the outcome. Almost all of Pakistan’s parties, other than Khan’s, have contested the results; Shehbaz Sharif, the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, which won the last general election, tweeted about “manifest and massive irregularities” and argued that Pakistan’s democratization has been “pushed back decades.”

Sharif is right. The past year saw the disqualification of his brother Nawaz, the democratically elected prime minister, and then an election campaign that was throughout very far from fair. Most outside Pakistan will agree with Sharif and his colleagues in other parties, and question whether a government brought to power in this manner should be considered legitimate.

But where does that leave the rest of the world? Pakistan’s military establishment has, through its skillful management of this election, presented the world with a problem that has no easy solution.

Khan has been in the public eye for decades — for more than 20 years as an aspirant prime minister, and before that as the charismatic captain of Pakistan’s cricket team. When that team won the World Cup more than 25 years ago, Khan famously delivered a speech that was stunning in its egotism: He actually forgot to thank his young teammates. After his election victory, his teammates in the powerful establishment — the “boys,” as some Pakistanis euphemistically refer to them — will surely expect more tangible thanks.

But here’s the dilemma the rest of us face. On one hand, we have to continue to support Pakistan’s democratization — which means engaging with its civilian leadership, rather than the generals in Rawalpindi. On the other hand, do we want to help legitimize a government elected with the open support of the military?

You could argue that we should wait to see what sort of prime minister Khan becomes. But, frankly, our expectations should be low. Khan’s political positions in the past have been troubling — particularly his flirtation with the obscurantist religious right, which in Pakistan is very obscurantist indeed. For example, he has voted in favor of religious laws that make it impossible to prosecute rape cases.

During his campaign, he projected himself as a defender of Pakistan’s stringent and illiberal blasphemy law. It’s hard to imagine a Khan-led administration starting off doing anything other than what the military would want it to do — which is to protect those who carry out attacks in Afghanistan and India, defend the army’s entrenched economic interests, and keep the fires of anti-American sentiment burning.

None of this is good news for ordinary Pakistanis, or for the rest of the world. Khan’s anti-West speeches may have been strident, but reality will overtake his rhetoric. Pakistan’s economy is teetering on the brink of a balance-of-payments crisis; sooner or later, and probably sooner, the new government will have to turn to the International Monetary Fund for support. Sooner or later, but probably later, the new prime minister will also realize that the robust “new Pakistan” that he ha he has promised his voters will need him to complete the structural reforms that his predecessors have left unfinished.

After all, Nawaz Sharif himself was once a creature of the military: He rose to power as an acolyte of the military dictator Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, who ruled Pakistan in the 1980s. Sharif’s relationship with the Army, however, soured once he was in power and developed a small-business power base of his own that expected him to take on the entrenched interests that dominated Pakistan’s economy. It is not impossible that a similar dynamic will play out over the first years of Khan’s term.

India and the West, therefore, should be cautious. Embracing Khan too early would be a mistake, as it would signal support for the military’s management of the electoral process. But we should be awake to any sign that Khan — a man with enough ego for an entire cricket team — is breaking with his powerful backers. After all, how long will a man like Imran Khan be satisfied by not being the captain of his own team?

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Trump administration has told its top diplomats to seek direct talks with the Taliban, a significant shift in American policy in Afghanistan, done in the hope of jump-starting negotiations to end the 17-year war.

The Taliban have long said they will first discuss peace only with the Americans, who toppled their regime in Afghanistan in 2001. But the United States has mostly insisted that the Afghan government must take part.

The recent strategy shift, which was confirmed by several senior American and Afghan officials, is intended to bring those two positions closer and lead to broader, formal negotiations to end the long war.

The shift to prioritize initial American talks with the Taliban over what has proved a futile “Afghan-led, Afghan-owned” process stems from a realization by both Afghan and American officials that President Trump’s new Afghanistan strategy is not making a fundamental difference in rolling back Taliban gains.

While no date for any talks has been set, and the effort could still be derailed, the willingness of the United States to pursue direct talks is an indication of the sense of urgency in the administration to break the stalemate in Afghanistan.

Not long after he took office, Mr. Trump reluctantly agreed to provide more resources to his field commanders fighting the Taliban, adding a few thousand troops to bring the American total to about 15,000. But a year later the insurgent group continues to threaten Afghan districts and cities and inflict heavy casualties on the country’s security forces.

The government controls or influences 229 of Afghanistan’s 407 districts, and the Taliban 59. The remaining 119 districts are contested, according the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, which was created by Congress to monitor progress in the country.

Providing more authority to American diplomats, a move that was decided on last month by Mr. Trump’s national security aides, is seen as part of a wider push to inject new momentum into efforts to end the war.

Those efforts include a rare cease-fire last month, increased American pressure on Pakistan to stop providing sanctuary to Taliban leaders and a rallying of Islamic nations against the insurgency’s ideology. Grassroots peace movements in the region have also increased pressure on all sides.

Over the past few weeks senior American officials have flown to Afghanistan and Pakistan to lay the groundwork for direct United States-Taliban talks. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo briefly visited the Afghan capital, Kabul, last week, and Alice G. Wells, the top diplomat for the region, spent several days holding talks with major players in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Efforts have particularly focused on trying to persuade the Afghan leadership that such talks are not a replacement for negotiations with the country’s coalition government, but are meant to break the ice and pave the way for those.

Because the previous Afghan government felt left out of peace efforts during the Obama administration, it resisted direct talks, which was one reason peace efforts at that time collapsed.

Neither the State Department nor a Taliban spokesman would comment on the shift of policy toward engaging the Taliban directly.

Ms. Wells, during her trip to Kabul, reported a new “energy and impulse for everyone to renew their efforts to find a negotiated settlement,” largely as a result of the cease-fire. Days earlier, Mr. Pompeo, in a statement, said that there would be no precondition for talks — and that everything, including the presence of American and NATO troops in Afghanistan, was up for discussion.

“I think Secretary Pompeo was very clear — we are prepared to facilitate, to support, to participate in — so there is nothing that precludes us from engaging with the Taliban in that fashion,” Ms. Wells said. “What we are not prepared to do is at the exclusion of the Afghan government — that is the critical difference.”

“We are doing everything we can,” she added, “to ensure that our actions help the Taliban and the Afghan government to the same table.”

With the focus now just on getting negotiations started, it is too early to assess what a final deal acceptable to both sides might look like.

President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan said last month at a news conference that the peace process would be a complicated, layered effort rolled out in phases that were still in the preparatory stage.

He left open the possibility of a more direct American role in the early efforts.

“Various ideas, creative ideas are floating on how to break this logjam and get started,” Mr. Ghani said.

Afghan officials and political leaders said direct American talks with the Taliban would probably then grow into negotiations that would include the Taliban, the Afghan government, the United States and Pakistan.

“If we look backwards, the Bonn process is a pretty good paradigm for what ultimately a peace process is going to look like,” Ms. Wells said, referring to the 2001 talks in the German city that established the post-Taliban government in Afghanistan.

“You are going to start off — the Afghans speaking to one another, but obviously the United States and Pakistan were critical in that inner core, and then you build out.“

A near-consensus has grown among American and Afghan officials involved in earlier and current efforts to fire up a peace process that the only way out of the war is for the United States to take a more direct role in negotiations.

That realization rests on several facts: that the Taliban are a stubborn insurgency, that they have not budged on their demand to talk directly with the Americans, and that the Afghan government, mired in infighting and marred by political opposition, would struggle to lead a cohesive peace agenda without American help.

Douglas E. Lute, a former ambassador to NATO who advised Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush on Afghanistan, said he supported the new marching orders for American diplomats, although he was not privy to deciding on them.

“We’re in diplomatic gridlock right now,” Mr. Lute said. “We ought to look for creative ways to move this forward.”

Officials have been moving with a sense of urgency because Mr. Trump has expressed his frustration with the war and is desperate to see its end, said a senior American official who, like many spoken to for this article, requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss confidential diplomatic discussions.

During last week’s NATO summit meeting in Brussels, Mr. Trump expressed agreement with a reporter’s question that contained the notion that “people are fed up” with the Afghan war.

“Yeah,” Mr. Trump said Thursday. “I agree with that. I very much agree. It’s been going on for a long time. We’ve made a lot of progress, but it’s been going on for a long time.”

An important distinguishing factor of the recent push, according to officials involved in previous efforts, is that the United States military seems very much on board.

In 2011, when the Obama administration first shifted to a policy of ending the war through negotiations, military commanders still believed they could defeat the Taliban. Now, they define their goal more modestly: keeping the Taliban from victory until a political settlement is reached.

Gen. John W. Nicholson, the commander of United States and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was instrumental in initiating last month’s rare cease-fire. As further indication that he is an active part of the new peace effort, he has as an adviser a member of the team that made the initial contacts with the Taliban around 2011.

Those early efforts fell apart after disagreements with the Afghan government, then led by President Hamid Karzai. Still, the Taliban established a political commission by moving some of their officials to Doha, Qatar, in the Persian Gulf.

In 2014, the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the American prisoner of war who had been kidnapped by the Taliban after he walked off his base, was negotiated through the Doha office.

Another brief moment of hope occurred in 2015, when Afghan officials and representatives of the Taliban met at a resort town in Pakistan. But the credibility of the Taliban representatives who came to the table was questioned, and the process collapsed when news emerged that the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Omar, in whose name they were negotiating, had actually been dead for three years.

Even if talks do begin again, many observers point to how difficult they will be.

Seth Jones, who heads the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said there was little evidence that the Taliban’s senior leaders were seriously interested in settlement terms acceptable to Afghan and American officials.

“Most Taliban leaders believe they are winning the war in Afghanistan and that time is on their side,” Mr. Jones said.

David Sedney, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense who dealt with Afghanistan and Pakistan, said that while grass-roots peace movements in Afghanistan could upset old calculations, progress on the battlefield and in talks with the Taliban remains dependent on effective pressure on Pakistan, where the insurgent leaders have sanctuary.

What undermines that pressure, he said, is a lack of patience and a “reflex impulse” to judge the new American strategy as doomed so soon after it began.

Signals from the Trump administration and exceptions made to military sanctions on Pakistan indicate that the United States is already backing away from the pressure in the hope that Pakistan delivers Taliban leaders to urgent talks.

“If so, the Pakistanis will once again have taken the measure of a vacillating United States,” Mr. Sedney said. “If that was the only factor at play, then I would say that the U.S. move to engage with the Taliban again, as we did a number of times, would be another U.S. government misstep that exacerbates violence and enhances the Taliban’s hopes for a military victory.”

Mujib Mashal reported from Kabul, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Gardiner Harris contributed reporting from Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.

The Dawn News in Pakistan has rejected a report attributed to the news outlet suggesting that the Afghan National Security Adviser Mohammad Hanif Atmar has recognized Durand Line as the official international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“A fake Facebook post screenshot doctored to pose as Dawn.com surfaced on social media on Thursday,” Dawn News said in a report.

The report further added that “The fake post attempts to mislead the public and stakeholders by suggesting that Afghanistan accepted the Durand Line as an official border.

It presented an image of Afghan National Security Adviser Hanif Atmar and Chief of Army Staff Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa and falsely claims this was discussed in a meeting.”

The National Security Council of Afghanistan in a statement said the Afghan officials have neither met with General Qamar Javed Bajwa during their recent visit to Pakistan nor the officials of the two countries had any discussion regarding the Durand Line.

The statement further added that the report published on social media is totally baseless and is a fake propaganda.

According to the National Security Council, the issue of Durand Line has never been shared during any meeting, emphasizing that the issue must never be shared during any bilateral meeting.

The Office of the National Security Council says the issue of Durand Line relates to the nation of Afghanistan and no government has the right to hold talks in this regard.

Rumors and reactions regarding the recognition of Durand Line

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group has claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed at least 36 people and wounded 65 others in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar.

The group’s Amaq website said the attack on Saturday targeted “a gathering of Afghan forces” in Nangarhar, but gave no details.

According to Attaullah Khogyani, the provincial governor’s spokesman, the attack happened in Rodat district, some 25km from Jalalabad.

Civilians, security forces and Taliban members were among the casualties as people celebrated the second day of Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Speaking from Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, Al Jazeera’s Jennifer Glasse described the bombing as a “very devastating blow” for the “unprecedented gathering of the Taliban and Afghan security forces in Jalalabad”.

Extension of government ceasefire
The attack came as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced the government’s extension of a ceasefire with the Taliban, without giving a timeframe.

Rare Eid of ‘calm and peace’ as Taliban, government truce holds
In a televised address to the nation, Ghani called for the Taliban to also extend the truce, which is due to expire on Sunday after both sides agreed to halt hostilities for Eid.

Ghani also said that in the spirit of Eid and the ceasefire, the attorney general’s office had released 46 Taliban prisoners.

The Taliban had announced a ceasefire for the first three days of Eid, which started on Friday, promising not to attack Afghan security forces for the first time since the 2001 US invasion.

That came after Ghani said that security forces would temporarily cease operations against the Taliban for eight days, starting last Tuesday – though he warned that operations against other fighters, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, would continue.

Governors in Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul said both sides had adhered to the ceasefire.

In his speech, Ghani also touched upon the subject of regional influences and international forces in Afghanistan.

“The Afghan government is ready to discuss the roles of neighbouring countries and the presence of international forces, their roles and the future destiny of them,” he said.

Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, welcomed Ghani’s remarks.

“We support President Ghani’s offer to extend the ceasefire and begin peace talks,” Pompeo said in a statement.

“As President Ghani emphasised in his statement to the Afghan people, peace talks by necessity would include a discussion of the role of international actors and forces. The United States is prepared to support, facilitate, and participate in these discussions.”

NATO forces also expressed their support for an extension to the ceasefire.
“This is a unique opportunity for the Taliban to show they want the peaceful future that the Afghan people demand and deserve,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.

“There seems to be some momentum for peace,” Al Jazeera’s Glasse said.

“The government’s gamble to issue a unilateral ceasefire paid off with this Taliban ceasefire, and now everyone is going to wait and see what the Taliban is going to do.”

Omar Samad, a former adviser to the chief executive of Afghanistan, told Al Jazeera that the suicide bombing was a reminder to everyone in the country, including the Taliban, of the “existentialist threat on our doorstep”.

What we saw today is a reminder that ISK (the Islamic State branch in Afghanistan) is a potent threat, that something needs to be done about it,” Samad said, speaking from Washington DC.

“Maybe the Taliban and the Afghan government can come to terms on how to deal with the Islamic State,” he added.

“That could be a historic point for maybe a dialogue between the two sides. If that happens then I think that Afghanistan has better days ahead. ”

SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un are the unlikeliest of statesmen, but fate has thrown the US President and the North Korean tyrant an opportunity granted to few historic figures — together they can change the world.

Their summit in Singapore on Tuesday — which will begin with a one-on-one meeting, alongside translators — represents an opening awaited for 70 years but that was unthinkable just months ago as they traded insults that sparked fears of a slide into nuclear war.

It could launch a process that could open the world’s last Cold War frontier, finally usher in a permanent peace to end the 1950-53 Korean war, reshape the geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific region and bring millions of North Koreans out of famine and isolation.

Trump arrived in Singapore following a bitter showdown with US allies over his trade tariffs that caused the G7 summit in Canada to break up in acrimony.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged on Monday there are strains in relations between the US and its closest allies but was optimistic the relationships would survive.

“There are always irritants in relationships. I am very confident the relationships between our countries — the United States and the G7 countries — will continue to move forward on a strong basis,” Pompeo said while briefing the press in Singapore.

Nonetheless, the meltdown potentially raised political pressure on the President to come home from his summit with Kim with some genuine progress.

But if successful, the summit will be mentioned in the same breath as President Richard Nixon’s journey to meet Chinese patriarch Mao Zedong and the superpower talks between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev that precipitated the end of the Soviet Union.

But it also represents a massive risk, since a failed summit could short-circuit diplomacy and bring the two countries closer to a disastrous military conflict.
Each side enters the talks in a plush resort on Singapore’s Sentosa island expressing optimism.

The official North Korean news agency said Sunday that Kim was ready to talk about “denuclearization” and a “durable peace” at a summit held “for the first time in history under the great attention and expectation of the whole world.”

Trump said Saturday that Kim has a “one-time shot” to make history.

“I feel that Kim Jong Un wants to do something great for his people,” he said.

The first face-to-face meeting between the leaders of the US and North Korea is the culmination of years of tension, North Korean nuclear and missile tests, and thwarted diplomacy involving the US, South Korea, Japan and China to try to contain the North Korean threat.

It brings together a former real estate magnate and reality television star with a ruthless dictator half his age who was once seen as a precocious madman but who has emerged as a shrewd diplomatic operator.

The meeting comes at an auspicious moment: with the US President who says he’s the world’s best dealmaker but seeks a legacy-defining achievement, a popular South Korean President Moon Jae-in who has made dialogue across the DMZ his life’s work, and Kim, who hopes to avoid the grizzly fate of toppled autocrats and to enshrine his rule for decades.

The situation is so urgent now because a blitz of nuclear and missile tests that last year brought the North Koreans close or past the point of capping an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the US mainland with a nuclear bomb.

That new reality left Trump facing a fateful choice of taking military action against the rogue nation that could spark a war that could kill thousands, or even millions of people, on the Korean Peninsula, or to launch a daring diplomatic bid to negotiate away the nuclear threat.

Has anything changed?

Trump’s history of dealmaking guides his quest for the biggest deal of his life
The long history of failed diplomacy between US administrations and North Korea has many skeptics wondering if anything has changed.

Pompeo noted the checkered history Monday, saying the US “has been fooled before” but the two countries must come together and have “sufficient trust in each other,” to get a deal done.

“The United States has been fooled before. There’s no doubt about it. Many presidents previously have signed off on pieces of paper only to find that the North Koreans either didn’t promise what we thought they had or actually reneged on their promises,” Pompeo said.

“We’ll each have to ensure that we do the things, we take the actions necessary to follow through on those commitments and when we do we’ll have a verified deal and if we can get that far we will have a historic change,” he added.

In the short-term, the summit offers Kim the prospect of easing biting sanctions.

Longer term, it’s possible he could lure US investment to chart a way to greater prosperity for the hermit state while keeping his oppressive rule intact — perhaps on the model of China or Vietnam.

Trump faces the grave responsibility of dealing with a national security threat that could put the lives of tens of millions of Americans at risk. And the summit could be a rare unifying moment in a presidency that is certain to be remembered as one of the most divisive in history.

The President has already mused about his chances of winning a Nobel Peace Prize. Eradicating the North Korean nuclear threat would indisputably rank among America’s top diplomatic wins since World War II.

Success in Singapore, twinned with the booming US economy, would also give Trump a strong argument in tough midterm elections. Supporters would cite it as another reason why Robert Mueller’s Russia probe is a massive distraction.

The fact the summit is happening at all is a win for Trump, though it likely has more to do with the severe sanctions imposed on North Korea by the administration with buy-in from China than his threats last year to rain “fire and fury” on “Little Rocket Man.”

But Kim is also reaping rewards.

His meeting with the US President fulfills one of North Korea’s premier goals — sharing a stage with the world’s top superpower. Such recognition is in itself a de-facto admission that by the United States that Pyongyang merits respect as it is now effectively a nuclear power.

And apart from releasing a trio of US prisoners and staging what most experts believe is a public relations stunt by dismantling a nuclear test site, Kim has offered no meaningful concessions.

No one who understands North Korea believes Kim will easily cede his nuclear weapons.
“My own sense is that he would only be ready to (totally disarm) at the end of a very long process and that his goal at the present time is to remain a de facto nuclear power while reducing the sense of worry and threat about that so he can begin to develop the economy,” said Kathleen Stephens, a former US ambassador to South Korea.

“I do think he is very serious about wanting to make North Korea a more normal country, looking more like its neighbors, more like a successful Asian economy,” said Stephens, now with the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University.

Kim’s strategic choice
Much will rest on whether Kim has made a strategic choice to use his nuclear arsenal as leverage in return for security guarantees and investment from the United States or whether North Korea is playing a familiar game of demanding concessions for pseudo disarmament.

Many analysts point out that nukes are Kim’s ultimate safety net and any deal with the US would require intrusive inspections by foreign assessment teams over a period of years that he may find impossible to accept.

“Every statement, every utterance from Kim Jong Un has not even conveyed a hint of his inclination to denuclearize,” said Evans Revere, a former senior State Department official with long experience of negotiating with North Korea.

But Revere added that there was some reason for hope.

“The North Koreans, for various reasons, are closer to being willing to freeze or even give up their program than they have ever been, and that is not a bad thing,” he said.
Huge gaps remain between the sides, however.

North Korea sees denuclearization as entailing the exit of US troops from the peninsula and the withdrawal of the US nuclear umbrella for South Korea and Japan.
Kim has also called for a “phased and synchronous” approach to disarmament — code for financial concessions from the US and its allies for reciprocal steps from the North.

The Trump administration initially opposed that approach, which failed for previous White Houses and demanded swift, comprehensive and irreversible denuclearization.

But after meeting North Korea’s senior envoy Kim Yong Chol at the White House earlier this month, Trump showed signs of flexibility.

“We’re not going to go in and sign something on June 12 and we never were. We’re going to start a process,” Trump said.

The worst-case scenario is that the summit becomes little more than a photo-op that fails to kickstart a viable diplomatic process. The best outcome may be a joint statement that calls for denuclearization and future US security guarantees for North Korea and the eventual normalization of relations.

Both sides could offer to take confidence-building steps as signs of good faith. Trump has said he could possibly invite Kim to the US, and it’s also possible Kim could invite the US President to make a historic journey to Pyongyang.

But it will be impossible to truly evaluate the success of the summit for months or years to come.

CNN’s Kevin Liptak, Allie Malloy Jeremy Diamond contributed to this report from Singapore.

At least seven people were Monday killed by a suicide attack on a meeting of several thousand Islamic scholars in Afghanistan who were discussing issuing a fatwa, or religious ruling, against such attacks.

The bomber, who was on foot, detonated the explosives at around 11:30 a.m. local time near the Loya Jorga hall at the Kabul Polytechnic University, Interior Ministry spokesman Najib Danish told CNN. At least nine more people were injured in the blast, which targeted Afghanistan’s Ullema Council.

It is not yet known who was behind the attack.

Security officers secure the road leading to the venue of the scholars’ meeting in Kabul on Monday.

Terrorists have killed dozens of people in Kabul in recent months, including 10 journalists in April.

On May 30, it was the turn of the Interior Ministry to be targeted. A policeman was killed along with a suicide bomber and all seven gunmen.

Both attacks were claimed by the Islamic State.

Meanwhile, the Taliban has also increased attacks across the country. The US-backed government in Kabul has been found itself increasingly struggling against terrorist assaults since the withdrawal of the majority of NATO troops in 2014.

ISLAMABAD: An aircraft that arrived at the PAF’s Nur Khan Airbase in Rawalpindi to reportedly fly out Colonel Joseph Emanuel Hall of the United States’ embassy has returned after the diplomat failed to obtain clearance from pertinent authorities.

Sources told The Express Tribune that officials at the airbase reached the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to determine if the diplomat was allowed to leave the country. Hall, the defense and air attache at the US embassy, was jumping traffic lights when he hit a motorcyclist on April 7. 22-year-old Ateeq Baig died on the spot. Another was injured in the Margalla Road traffic accident.

US envoy placed on ‘blacklist’ for killing biker

The Ministry of Interior later placed Hall’s on a ‘blacklist’, prohibiting him from leaving the country without prior permission. FIA officials told The Express Tribune the prospects of Hall leaving Pakistan were remote. “His name is on the blacklist. He won’t be allowed to fly out,” an FIA official said.

Motorcyclist responsible for accident with US Embassy car: police
Muhammad Idrees, the father of the deceased motorcyclist, had earlier moved the Islamabad High Court in connection with the episode. Idrees petitioned the court to have Hall’s name placed on the ECL and a police probe conducted.

The IHC on Friday gave the Interior Ministry two weeks to reach a decision on placing the diplomat’s name on the ECL. The court also observed that Hall did not enjoy full diplomatic immunity.

TEHRAN, Iran — President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal has left a bitter taste in the mouths of many people here in the Islamic republic.

Many Iranians hoped the Obama-era pact would lead to prosperity and closer ties with the West.
But with the agreement now on the rocks, some Iranians feel double-crossed by America and say they are pessimistic about their country’s future.

Many Iranians feel they haven’t seen the economic benefits of the nuclear deal. While it allowed Tehran to sell its crude oil and natural gas on the international market, Iran’s economy remains weak with high unemployment and inflation.

Azita Moghadam, a 25-year-old student, described Trump as a “racist and dishonest person who doesn’t care about the people of Iran.”

She added: “Iran’s economy will take a hit by Trump’s decision. A poor sense of security and poor economy are my biggest fear for the future.”

Foreign firms doing business in Iran may face sanctions, U.S. warns
Hamid Salehi, 27, a car salesman, said he felt Iranians would face fewer opportunities to improve their livelihoods now that the nuclear deal was in doubt.

“We had high hopes of better relations with the world and easier business after the deal” he said. “That’s all gone now.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also criticized Trump for his decision.

“This man will turn to dust and his body will become food for worms and ants, and the Islamic republic will still be standing,” he said, referring to the U.S. president. “I said many times from the first day: Don’t trust America.”

Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University who is a former spokesman for Iran in its nuclear negotiations with the West, said it was inevitable that Iranians would lose trust in the U.S. because of Trump’s decision to violate the agreement.

He predicted that the country would no longer be prepared to “engage with the U.S. to negotiate on other disputed issues like weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and the regional conflicts.”

Mousavian also suggested that Iran is now likely to turn its back on the West and instead build closer diplomatic and trade ties with Russia and China.

Dr. Mohammed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and a political analyst, agreed.

“No group, no political faction that once said we should talk to America holds that position anymore, as a result it strengthens the argument that Iran should move closer to Russia and China,” he said.

Marandi said there had been a huge rise in the number of Iranian students and business owners going to China, accompanied by an increasing number of direct flights between the two countries in recent years. More Mandarin language courses have also become available in the country, including a degree program at the University of Tehran.

What is the Iran nuclear deal?
Marandi said Trump’s withdrawal from the pact leaves America being seen as “dishonest and unreliable, and unwilling to abide by its own commitments.”

A telephone survey of 1,003 Iranians conducted in April by IranPoll, a Toronto-based firm, found 67 percent of respondents felt the country should “retaliate” if the U.S. violated the nuclear deal. The survey had a margin of error of 3.1 percent.

Iranian lawmakers set fire to a paper U.S. flag in the Parliament Wednesday, while shouting “Death to America!” They also burned a piece of paper representing the nuclear deal and stomped on the papers’ ashes.

Although the burning of U.S. flags is common in Iran and harsh criticism of America has been a staple of Iranian politics for years, that was the first time observers could remember anything being set alight inside the Parliament.

And while chants of “Death to America” are commonplace in Iran, most Iranians frequently interact with the West, even if only through online videos and illegally obtained movies.

Many also have family members abroad, with Los Angeles a popular destination for Iranian ex-pats.

Ali Arouzi reported from Tehran, Saphora Smith reported from London, and Rima Abdelkader reported from New York.

ISLAMABAD: Desperate to boost foreign exchange reserves over the $11-billion mark, Pakistan has received another loan of $1 billion from the China Development Bank as authorities remain adamant, at least in public, not to read the writing on the wall.

Pakistan secured on Saturday financing of $1 billion, said Dr Miftah Ismail, the newly-appointed finance minister, while addressing a post-budget press conference. He did not officially disclose the name of the Chinese institution.

However, sources in the finance ministry said the China Development Bank has given $1 billion out of an estimated $1.5 billion. In its revised estimates, Pakistan has budgeted about $2 billion injection from Chinese financial institutions alone. This includes $1.5 billion from the China Development Bank and $500 million from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC).

With the fresh injection, Chinese financial institutions have so far given $2.2 billion to Pakistan to help the country steer through difficult times. Earlier, the ICBB gave $1 billion at three-month floating interest rate of London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) plus 3.02%.

Earlier this month, the Bank of China also gave $200 million.

Disbursements of foreign loans remained at $7.53 billion from July through March of this fiscal year due to delay in release of some loans by Chinese financial institutions. The China Development Bank loan was initially expected to be disbursed in March.

Pakistan’s economy has come under pressure with external account worries remaining the focus of economic managers. With a widening current account deficit, foreign exchange reserves have slipped below $10.9 billion at the mid of this month. Chinese loans would temporarily stabilise reserves to close to a three-month import cover.

To a question, Ismail again said on Saturday that Pakistan would avoid knocking the doors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). “We are trying our best to avoid the IMF package and today, have secured $1 billion financing from China,” said Ismail.

The government has been trying to contain the current account deficit and the increase in custom duty rates by another 1% is one such measure that will help control imports, said Ismail.

Independent economists predict that Pakistan will return to the IMF by September or October this year, as it cannot sustain the external account pressure without combined support of the IMF, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

The government is so far navigating the crisis by taking expensive short-term foreign commercial loans. For the outgoing fiscal year, the government had budgeted $8 billion in loans that it has now officially revised upwards to $10.6 billion.

However, the finance ministry’s internal plans talk about $12.5 billion minimum foreign borrowings for this fiscal year, ending June 30.

The public debt to Gross Domestic Product ratio has estimated to peak to 70.1% by the end of fiscal year 2017-18. This is the highest level in the past 15 years and also in violation of the Fiscal Responsibility and Debt Limitation Act of 2005.

For the next fiscal year 2018-19, the finance ministry has budgeted $9.6 billion in external loans, which are $3.4 billion less than the foreign financing plan Pakistan shared this month with Moody’s International, said sources in the finance ministry.

For the next fiscal year, the government has budgeted $3 billion foreign commercial loans and $2 billion worth of Eurobonds, according to Estimates of Foreign Economic Assistance 2018-19 that the government shared with the National Assembly on Friday.

It also expects slightly over $1 billion from Islamic Development Bank and $1.4 billion from the ADB