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Arab sheikhs banned from bustard hunts by Pakistani province

One of Pakistan’s four provinces has banned Arab sheikhs from hunting a protected species of bird, defying Islamabad’s longstanding policy of giving hunting licences to key regional allies.

Swaths of habitat used in the winter by the migratory houbara bustard are allocated in blocks to the some of the most senior people in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, who come armed with specially modified vehicles and radar systems to track the birds.

But an official in the government of the north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province said it had rejected a request from a party of Qatari princes to shoot houbara bustards and would no longer allow such hunts.

On Sunday the politician Imran Khan, whose Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) partly runs the province, had said he would not allow anyone to hunt houbaras “as it is a protected bird and hunting them is illegal.”

Arab hunters first started coming to Pakistan in the 1960s after houbara stocks in the Arabian peninsula were decimated.

Pakistan’s three other provinces all permit hunting, in spite of opposition from conservationists who say the fast-dwindling houbara population will not survive the annual onslaught.

Although the hunters are only permitted to kill up to 100 birds each, it is difficult to control powerful visitors who reportedly hand out gifts of cash and jewellery to local notables.

More than 30 permits were issued to in 2014 to visitors including presidents, ambassadors and ministers.
In recent years there has been growing public and judicial criticism of the special dispensation given to rich and powerful Arabs to kill birds that Pakistanis have been banned from hunting since 1972. Last year the supreme court ruled that no more hunting licences could be issued.

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Officials at the foreign ministry argue the hunts are a longstanding tradition and that conservation policies must be balanced against Pakistan’s need for good relations in the region.

The Sunni kingdoms of the Gulf enjoy enormous influence in Pakistan given the millions of Pakistanis who work there and remit vital foreign currency to their home country.

Nawaz Sharif, the Pakistani prime minister, is especially close to Saudi Arabia, where he lived in exile after losing power in a military coup in 1999.

Houbara bustards, a small fast-flying bird, migrate each winter from the central Asian steppe to their breeding grounds in the deserts of Pakistan. Unfortunately for the houbara, its meat is prized in the Arab world for its supposed aphrodisiac qualities, which has led to the birds being almost wiped out in the Gulf.

Under the convention on international trade in endangered species they are considered to be at risk of extinction, and various countries in the region – including the UAE and Saudi Arabia – have set up breeding programmes to try to revive numbers.

The royal hunting expeditions can last for weeks and require extraordinary logistical operations to keep the sheikhs in the comfort to which they are accustomed.

In some isolated corners of Pakistan the Arab visitors have paid for their own roads and airports to bring in tons of equipment, including adapted vehicles and everything required for their luxuriously appointed camps. Some have built vast desert palaces that sit behind towering walls.

Defenders of the tradition point to the benefits to impoverished communities who have been rewarded by the hunters with new schools and hospitals. But in a rare outbreak of dissent last week, chickpea farmers in Bhakkar district of Punjab province fought with police when they attempted to protest against a group of Qatari houbara hunters who they said had damaged their crop.

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Industrial phase of CPEC to kick off soon

FAISALABAD, Dec 11: The industrial phase of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is going to kick off soon under which Chinese investors would be allowed to set up only high tech industries, which would not have any negative impact on Pakistan’s existing industry, said CPEC Acting Project Director Hasan Dawood.

Speaking to a delegation of the Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FCCI), he said that CPEC has three major perspectives including geo strategic, regional integration and industrial cooperation, adding that Chinese investors cannot afford any clash at any stage with Pakistani industrialists; hence, they prefer to concentrate on Gwadar Port.

The delegation, which was headed by FCCI Vice President Ahmed Hasan, met with the director and apprised him about the reservations of the local industrialists.

Three routes have been proposed to link China with Gwadar Port including eastern, western and central routes, which are expected to be completed by the year 2018, informed Dawood.

Talking about the industrial cooperation under CPEC, he said that working groups are being established to determine the needs of both countries. Four meetings between National Development and Reforms Commission of China and Planning Commission of Pakistan have already been held, said the director.

He said that working groups will have representation of all provinces and encouraged FCCI to present its proposal through their related province for discussion in the working group.

He further told that 36 economic zones would be established under CPEC which would not only create thousands of jobs but also gear up the pace of progress and prosperity.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 11th, 2016.

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Changing ties

ONE of Pakistan’s greatest diplomatic achievements during the Cold War was to simultaneously enjoy strong ties with the United States and China. With the end of the Cold War and the retreat of Soviet forces from Afghanistan, this triangular relationship has changed. Pakistan’s ties to Beijing have never been stronger, while ties to Washington are once again troubled. Nothing symbolises this shift more than CPEC.

China has offered Pakistan over $50 billion in investments for critical infrastructure projects as prospects for greater financial and military assistance from Washington dim. Washington has good reasons to be supportive — or at least not negative — about CPEC. If Pakistan can raise its game and make the most of this opportunity, CPEC will not just be one more external lending stream, it can help Pakistan achieve sustainable economic growth, one predicate for national, if not regional stability.

There are, however, challenges to be overcome before extravagant visions of CPEC can be realised. Thriving port cities depend on location and historic patterns of commerce. Habitual Pakistani frictions between provinces and civil-military relations are complicating the takeoff stage. Beijing does not have a track record of philanthropy with respect to foreign investments. CPEC is not a gift; it’s a mutual opportunity, accompanied with interest rates. And Pakistan is in no position to drive hard bargains.

The US may not compete with China for influence in Pakistan.

The upswing in China-Pakistan relations extends well beyond CPEC. Beijing is also helping Pakistan by placing road blocks before India’s entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group and preventing the UN from adding Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar to its listing of terrorists. In contrast, the US Defence Authorisation Act passed by the Congress conditions half of the assistance given to Pakistan on demonstrable steps against terror groups.

Not that long ago, in 2009, Washington decided to make a major effort to improve relations with Pakistan and to bolster a newly elected civilian government. Now it is very hard to envision another major initiative by Washington, which is sceptical of Islamabad’s promissory notes, or by Pakistan, which is accustomed to being on the receiving end of Washington’s initiatives, not the other way around. Absent a source of new propulsion, bilateral ties will continue to lose altitude.

Islamabad, Washington, and even Beijing have something to lose from these dynamics. No matter how generous Chinese infrastructure and military support turn out to be for Pakistan, having one major power benefactor is half as good as having two. Washington will have less influence to change Pakistani choices for the better, and will now need more of Beijing’s help with crisis management. And while Beijing’s gains are likely to be real, so, too, will the responsibilities of being Pakistan’s top benefactor.

Washington is not inclined to compete with China for influence in Pakistan. Nor is the prospect of more Russian engagement with Pakistan likely to alter US calculations. Washington’s current mood is to continue offering assistance to support common interests — while conditioning a growing portion of aid to demonstrable steps that confirm long-promised changes in Pakistan’s national security policies. All this can be upended with another major act of terrorism that can be traced back to Pakistan.

A legitimate question is whether Washington is capable of acknowledging changes for the better in Pakistan’s national security policies after such a long period of complaint. There has been clear acknowledgement of Pakistan’s counterterrorism campaign against the Pakistan Taliban, and the sacrifices this has entailed. But there is deep scepticism that the scope of this campaign will be widened.

Some in the incoming Trump administration might be inclined to pursue the ‘nuclear option’ — declaring Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism. This would be a grave mistake, not just for Pakistan and the United States, but also for India. Severing ties will not improve Pakistan’s choices, nor help the United States to encourage nuclear-armed neighbors to improve ties or defuse tensions. Washington does more of the latter than the former because, when New Delhi occasionally seeks to turn the page, an attack on India by cadres of groups based in Pakistan typically follows.

One challenge for Washington during the Trump administration will be to keep the door open and to recognise changes in policies that have weakened Pakistan’s well-being. A second challenge will be to not fly off the handle in ways that badly affect ties. The challenge for Pakistan is to keep moving forward rather than to fall back on bad habits. And to recognize that standard talking points will fall flat without changes in national security policy. Even in the absence of changes in Pakistani policies, the US continues to have important reasons to remain fully engaged on common interests. That sounds easy enough, but sensible steps cannot be taken for granted in the Trump administration.

The writer is co-founder of the Stimson Centre.

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Russia ‘tried to help’ Donald Trump win the election, CIA concludes

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has determined that Russia did in fact try to help Donald Trump win the US presidency rather than work to simply interfere with the election, according to a secret report conducted by the agency.

US intelligence officials from multiple agencies have found connections between the Kremlin and Wikileaks. The former provided the latter with countless hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, and many others, the Washington Post reported.

The spectre of an ongoing email controversy lurked over Ms Clinton’s campaign from the onset of her candidacy. But in the final months, the massive leak of thousands of emails closed the gap between the former Secretary of State and Mr Trump by double digits. Cybersecurity experts, as well as intelligence officials, had found evidence that linked the hacks to Russia.

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favour one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” a senior US intelligence official briefed on information shared with US senators told the Post. “That’s the consensus view.”
Still, there is some disagreement among some of the officials from all 17 intelligence agencies. They lacked evidence that showed a direct connection between Russia and Wikileaks.The actors they found were “one step” removed from the Russian government, the officials said. 

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange had said Russia was not the source of the leaks in an interview published on the state-owned broadcaster Russia Today.

“The Clinton camp has been able to project a neo-McCarthyist hysteria that Russia is responsible for everything,” he said. “Hillary Clinton has stated multiple times, falsely, that 17 US intelligence agencies had assessed that Russia was the source of our publications.
“That’s false – we can say that the Russian government is not the source.”

President Trump protests
Earlier in the day, the Obama administration ordered a “full review” of election-related hacking. 

The President’s counterterrorism and homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, made the announcement to reporters at an event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. 

“We may have crossed into a new threshold and it is incumbent up on us to take stock of that, to review, to conduct some after-action, to understand what has happened and to impart some lessons learned,” she said. 

Mr Obama expects a full report before he leaves office on 20 January.

US officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence officially accused Russia of hacking the DNC and other organisations “to interfere with the US election process”.
 
The reiterated their accusations earlier this week.

“The US Intelligence Community is confident that the Russian government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organisations,” officials said in a statement.

“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorised these activities.”

In a perplexing response, the Trump transition team outright dismissed the validity of the report and the intelligence committee they will soon be running.

“These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” the team incorrectly said in a statement. “The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again’.”

Officials held a secret briefing with congressional leaders in September, but House Majority Leader Mitch McConnell doubted the legitimacy of the assessment.

Additionally, the Post says Mr McConnell made his opposition to such intelligence clear, and if the White House spoke publicly about the Russians’ role in the hacks, he would simply consider it a partisan political stunt.

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Imposter Express Tribune Facebook page spreading fake news

The Express Tribune has been inundated with hundreds of messages from our readers and well-wishers regarding a fake Facebook page that is impersonating the publication.

The Facebook page, which has stolen design elements from us, including The Express Tribune’s trademark red ‘T’, has garnered over 3,000 Facebook likes.

While we strive to remedy the problem, we thank our readers for informing us about the serious violation of our intellectual property.

We have already reported the impostor page to Facebook and hope quick action will be taken against those who have sought to harm The Express Tribune’s image as a trusted news source across Pakistan and the world.

Unfortunately, there is only so much we can do at this time. The problem of fake news on social media platforms such as Facebook is a real and damaging one. In this case, it hurts not just The Express Tribune but also creates chaos and confusion among the public.

The Express Tribune’s official Facebook page has a verified blue tick and nearly 2 million followers.

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Aviation experts suggest pilot error to blame for PK-661 crash

They believe that engine failure “should not have led to the plane crash as the aircraft was still flyable on the operative engine”.

Pakistan International Airlines’ flight PK-661 crashed on the way to Islamabad from Chitral on Wednesday.
Air Marshal (retd) Shahid Lateef insisted that the crash could have been avoided. According to him, the aircraft could still fly if one of its engines failed, adding that the aircraft could then be diverted to a nearby airfield for an emergency landing.

“Since it was a single engine failure, as we know, the captain of the aircraft should have flown and landed it safely. The aircraft does not even require a proper landing strip in case of emergency landing. The aircraft captain should have handled the emergency in a proper manner.”

He said that he believed that the crash had occurred because of pilot error, adding that pilots were unable to cope with the emergency situation.

“The crash also may have occurred because of lack of coordination between the pilot and co-pilot,” Lateef added.
Highlighting plane crashes under unavoidable circumstances, he said that if the aircraft caught fire and burnt in midair, it was considered ‘unavoidable circumstances’.

Another UK-based Pakistani aviation expert Malik Riz Awan said that although this was the first air crash in Pakistan, one needed to rule out a few things before making any assertion.

“The possibility of a lightning strike or storm must be ruled out. The last message sent by the captain to the control tower is also very important,” he said.

Agreeing with the assertion that multi-engine aircraft were capable of flying with just one working engine, he said that the pilot only needed to “adjust the throttle and control fuel flow”.

Informing that investigation into aircraft crashes generally took months to complete, he said that the aircraft’s load factor also needed to be checked, adding that improper loading might create a fatal center of gravity.
He claimed that even if the “aircraft is out of fuel, it may fly for 20 minutes”.

AirBlue Crash Affectees Association (ACAA) and Bhoja Air Crash Families Association demanded a transparent and impartial investigation into the latest crash on Thursday. They said that the probe should not be under the influence of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

Stressing the need for compiling the report as soon as possible, they said they were disappointed with the attitudes of carriers and regulators of civil aviation matters.

They said that over the past six years, there have been a number of accidents in the country in which more than 350 lives had been lost.

“This latest tragedy has once again exposed the gaping holes in the system and standard operating procedures currently in place (or lack thereof) in the (domestic) civil aviation sector,” they said.

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‘No survivors’ after plane crash in northern Pakistan mountains

PESHAWAR/ISLAMABAD, Dec 7: There were no survivors after a plane carrying 47 people crashed into a mountain in northern Pakistan on Wednesday, the airline’s chairman said, as recovery operations continued late into the night at the remote crash site.

The military said 40 bodies had been recovered and rescue efforts involved about 500 soldiers, doctors and paramedics. The bodies were shifted to the Ayub Medical Center in nearby Abbottabad, about 20km (12 miles) away.
“There are no survivors, no one has survived,” said Muhammad Azam Saigol, the chairman for Pakistan International Airlines. PIA-operated flight PK661, which crashed en route from Chitral to the capital, Islamabad.

Junaid Jamshed, a well-known Pakistani pop star turned evangelical Muslim cleric, was among those feared dead, an airline official said.

PIA said the captain of the flight had reported losing power in one engine minutes before its plane lost contact with the control tower en route to the capital.

The airline said the plane crashed at 4:42 pm local time (1142 GMT) in the Havelian area of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, about 40km (25 miles) north of Islamabad. Chitral, where the flight originated, is a popular tourist destination in Pakistan.

Saigol said the ATR turboprop aircraft had undergone regular maintenance and in October had passed an “A-check” maintenance certification, performed after every 500 flight hours.

He said a full investigation of the crash, involving international agencies, would be conducted.

“All of the bodies are burned beyond recognition. The debris are scattered,” Taj Muhammad Khan, a government official based in Havelian, told Reuters.

Khan, who was at the crash site, said witnesses told him “the aircraft has crashed in a mountainous area, and before it hit the ground it was on fire”.

Pakistani television showed a trail of wreckage engulfed in flames on a mountain slope.

Irfan Elahi, the government’s aviation secretary, told media the plane suffered engine problems but it was too early to determine the cause of the accident.

THREE FOREIGNERS ON BOARD
In a late night statement, PIA said the plane was carrying 47 people, including five crew members and 42 passengers. Earlier, the airline had said there were 48 people on board.

The airline said two Austrian citizens and one Chinese citizen, all men, had been on board. The flight manifest showed three people on board with foreign names.

The Austrian foreign minister’s spokesman later confirmed two Austrians had been killed in the crash.

A local trader at the site of the crash said the fire was still burning nearly two hours after the crash.
“They are removing body parts,” Nasim Gohar told Geo TV.

The military said it had sent in troops and helicopters.

“PIA is doing everything possible to help the families of passengers and crew members,” the airline said in a statement.

The pop singer Jamshed, a member of one of Pakistan’s first successful rock bands in the 1990s, abandoned his singing career to join the Tableeghi Jamaat group, which travels across Pakistan and abroad preaching about Islam.
In his last tweet, Jamshed posted pictures of a snow-capped mountain, calling Chitral “Heaven on Earth”.

Plane crashes are not uncommon in Pakistan and safety standards are often criticized. In recent years, media have reported on multiple near-misses as planes over-ran runways and engines caught fire.

In 2010, a passenger plane crashed in heavy rain near Islamabad, killing all 152 people on board. Two years later, a plane operated by a private Pakistani company, with 127 people on board, crashed near Islamabad. All on board were killed.

PIA has also suffered major disasters in the past.

In 1979 and 1992, PIA jets crashed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and in Kathmandu, killing 156 and 167 people, respectively.

In 2006, a PIA plane crashed near the central city of Multan, killing 45 people.

(Additional reporting by Mehreen Zahra-Malik and Amjad Ali in ISLAMABAD and Gul Hamad Farooqi in CHITRAL,; Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Larry King)

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Pakistan PM celebrates scientist from minority sect, risking hardliners’ fury

Pakistan’s prime minister has risked enraging religious hardliners by ordering one of the country’s top universities to honour a Nobel prize-winning physicist from a minority sect whose members are banned from describing themselves as Muslims.

In an announcement that surprised many, Nawaz Sharif said he had given approval to rename the National Centre for Physics at the capital’s Quaid-e-Azam University as the “Professor Abdus Salam Centre for Physics”.
A fellowship programme to support five physicists a year to study abroad for their doctorates will also be named after Salam.

The recognition comes 20 years after the death of a scientist who won the Nobel prize in 1979 for his work in theoretical physics.

Despite the international esteem in which he was held – and his role in helping Pakistan develop nuclear weapons – governments in his homeland have not dared embrace a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community.

The sect, established in British India in 1889, is regarded as heretical by strict Muslims because Ahmadis believe the movement’s founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was a prophet. A central tenet of Islam is that Mohammad, the religion’s seventh-century founder, was the final prophet.

Because of the theological dispute, Ahmadis were declared to be non-Muslims in a 1974 constitutional amendment and further criminalised in 1984 when they were banned from “posing as Muslims”.

It means Ahmadis run the risk of imprisonment if they are caught calling their places of worship “mosques”, participating in the annual Eid animal sacrifice or even using common Islamic greetings.

Like those of many others buried in the town of Rabwah, a major centre for Ahmadis, Salam’s gravestone has been defaced so that the word Muslim is not visible.

In a recent reminder of the enduring passions surrounding the issue, the new chief of Pakistan’s army was falsely accused in the days before his appointment last month of having Ahmadi relatives.

Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physicist who has campaigned for 20 years for the facility at Quaid-e-Azam to be renamed after Salam, said Sharif’s action was a “tremendous development” that came after the prime minister saw him talking about the issue on a television show. Later, Sharif’s office urged Hoodbhoy to make a formal request to the government for Salam to be honoured.

“This shows that the most persecuted community in Pakistan is getting some kind of recognition,” he said. “Nawaz Sharif has shown courage and an astonishing degree of enlightenment.”

He added that the former leaders Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, both avowed liberals, had never risked praising an Ahmadi.

During general elections in 2013, the opposition leader Imran Khan went out of his way to reassure voters that he had no intention of changing the laws that discriminate against Ahmadis.

Sharif however praised Salam as a “great Pakistani” in January this year. A month previously police in the prime minister’s political base of Lahore took down anti-Ahmadi posters in one of the city’s shopping markets.

Hasan Munir, deputy education director for the Amhadi community in Pakistan, said it was a “small but positive step in the right direction”.

“There is not even a single road or university that has been named after him, all because of pressure from the clergy,” he said.

Although there is a centre named after of Salam at Government College University Lahore, the name board has been taken down from public display.

Maulana Allah Wasaia, head of Tahaffuz-e-Khatm-e-Nubuwwat, an anti-Ahmadi group, accused the government of trying to “please its foreign masters”.

“If a matter has been constitutionally decided then the government should not make it part of larger debate,” he said. “We should recall that Dr Salam himself left Pakistan in protest after Ahmadis were declared non-Muslims. Naming a physics centre after a person who did not like Pakistan is strange and is a wrong message here.”

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Mastermind of Quetta Civil Hospital carnage killed, says Sarfraz Bugti

Security forces on Monday killed the mastermind of the Quetta Civil Hospital bombing along with four other high-profile militants during an operation in Balochistan’s Pishin district, said Balochistan’s Home Minister Mir Sarfaraz Ahmed Bugti.

“Jehangir Badini, mastermind behind the attack on Quetta’s Civil Hospital was killed during the operation,” said Bugti.

Bugti was talking to the media at a press conference in Quetta.

The militants were involved in a series of terrorist acts, including the attack at Hazara women and the murder of Barrister Amanullah Achakzai, the principal of University of Balochistan’s law college.

“So far three of the five terrorists have been identified,” the home minister said.
Balochistan Police Chief Ahsan Mehboob and other high-ups also flanked him during the press conference.

Security forces also claimed to have recovered a large quantity of arms and ammunition from the possession of the militants.

“Security forces recovered 30 to 40 kilogrammes of explosives, four suicide jackets and other weapons,” said Bugti.

One suspect was detained during the operation and was being interrogated by security forces.

The suicide bomber, who exploded himself in the hospital in Quetta on Aug 8, was also identified with the help of DNA tests.

His name was Ahmed Ali and he was a resident of Quetta, Bugti added.

Ali had targeted the emergency services ward at Quetta’s Civil Hospital, killing at least 70 people and leaving scores injured.

Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) splinter group, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), had claimed responsibility for the bombing, which occurred at the gates of the building housing the emergency ward.

The bomber struck as more than 100 mourners, mostly lawyers and journalists, crowded into the emergency department to accompany the body of Advocate Bilal Anwar Kasi.

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Ghani, Modi lash out at Pakistan on terrorism at Heart of Asia moot in Amritsar

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined hands to lash out at Pakistan on terrorism as the subject took centre stage at the inauguration of the sixth Heart of Asia ministerial conference on Sunday in Amritsar.

The theme of the conference is ‘enhanced cooperation for countering security threats and promoting connectivity in the Heart of Asia region’, and speculation was rife that India and Afghanistan would seek to pin Pakistan on terrorism.

Ashraf Ghani opened the conference by snubbing a $500 million pledge from Pakistan for development projects in Afghanistan, saying Afghanistan ‘needs aid to fight terrorism’, Times of India reported.

“We need to identify cross-border terrorism and a fund to combat terrorism. Pakistan has pledged $500m for Afghanistan’s development. This amount can be spent to contain extremism,” Ghani said, directly addressing Foreign Affairs Adviser Sartaj Aziz who was in attendance at the two-day moot.

“Afghanistan suffered the highest number of casualties last year. This is unacceptable… Some still provide sanctuary for terrorists. As a Taliban figure said recently, if they had no sanctuary in Pakistan, they wouldn’t last a month,” the Afghan president thundered.

“I don’t want a blame game, I want clarifications on what is being done to prevent the export of terror,” Ghani said.

He emphasised the need to “confront the fifth spectrum in the room, which is terrorism” and called on Pakistan to “verify cross-border activities”.

The Afghan president appreciated India’s support to Afghanistan, which he said comes “with no strings attached”.

“The relationship is based on shared values and beliefs,” Ghani said.

Must counter terrorists: Modi
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his opening remarks termed terrorism “the biggest threat to Afghanistan’s peace and the region,” Indian media reported.

Although the Indian premier did not refer explicitly to Pakistan in his speech at the Heart of Asia conference, Modi has vowed to step up a drive to isolate Pakistan diplomatically following the Uri army base attack in September, which it blames on Pakistan ─ an allegation Islamabad denies.

Hours after the Uri attack occurred, Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh termed Pakistan a ‘terrorist state’ and accused Pakistan of involvement.
Addressing the moot, Modi said, “We must counter terrorists and their masters. We must demonstrate strong collective will to defeat terror network that cause bloodshed and spread fear.”

“Silence and inaction on terror in Afghanistan and the region will only embolden terrorists and masters and those fund them,” he said.

Modi said India is committed to ‘durable peace’ in Afghanistan, and announced plans to connect India and Afghanistan via an air link, as well as discussed the possibility of trilateral cooperation over Iran’s Chahbahar port.

“India-Afghanistan-Iran cooperation on the Chahbahar port will help Afghanistan to connect its economy to the rest of the world,” Modi said.

Aziz slams Ghani’s ‘baseless accusations’, says Pakistan wants peace with India
Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz slammed Ghani’s ‘baseless accusations’ on Pakistan and called for evolving a joint and purposeful strategy for lasting peace in Afghanistan, Radio Pakistan reported.

“It is simplistic to blame only one country for the recent upsurge in violence. We need to have an objective and holistic view,” he said.

“Peaceful resolution to all the longstanding issues is the only way forward for regional cooperation and connectivity,”

“Pakistan is ready to extend every kind of cooperation for lasting peace in Afghanistan,” he said, adding that Afghanistan should avoid levelling false and baseless accusations at Pakistan.

He underlined the need to address through effective and collective efforts the continuing wave of terrorism and violence in Afghanistan which had claimed scores of human lives and observed that the signing of a peace agreement between the Afghan government and Hizb-i-Islami may serve as a model for talks with other groups in the future.

The adviser said that peace talks between the Afghan government and Taliban had not produced positive results, adding that Pakistan was making a serious effort to facilitate peace talks through the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG).
He urged all QCG members to continue their efforts for talks between the Afghan government and Taliban. “In our view, there is no military solution to the Afghan conflict and all our efforts should be to achieve a politically negotiated settlement through an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned process,” he said.
Aziz also regretted the postponement of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) summit scheduled in Islamabad, by saying that it was a setback to efforts for promoting regional cooperation and undermined its spirit.

Speaking to journalists in Amritsar earlier, Aziz said Pakistan prioritises peace and is ready for talks with India if New Delhi desires the same, the Press Information Department said in a statement.

“Terrorism is one of the issues to be discussed under the composite dialogue with India,” Aziz said, adding that both countries should sit together and discuss issues instead of engaging in heated debate in the media.

“If we do not have structured dialogue, then the dialogue through media increases hostility and negative perceptions,” he said.

“Pakistan is committed to peace and security of the region and to promote multilateral peace for this purpose,” he said, adding that this was one of the reasons he attended the conference in India.

Aziz arrives in Amritsar
The two-day moot kicked off amidst a media frenzy as a handshake between Foreign Affairs Adviser Sartaj Aziz and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sparked speculation regarding the possibility of a Pak-India meeting on the sidelines of the event.

Reports speculated whether Sartaj Aziz’s early arrival in India on Saturday presaged a ‘chance’ bilateral meeting with Indian PM Modi, who is hosting the multilateral conference on Afghanistan.

Indian Ministry of External Affairs Spokesman Vikas Swarup has, however, rubbished the rumours citing “a climate of continued terrorism” as the reason bilateral talks may not take place. “India will never accept continued terrorism as the new normal of the bilateral relationship,”

Prior to the meet, Modi and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani held bilateral talks focusing on a range of issues, including trade, investment, infrastructural development and increasing defence and security ties.

Sartaj Aziz also met Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Ashraf Ghani separately on the sidelines of the ministerial conference.

Heart of Asia process
The initiative was launched in 2011 in Istanbul, Turkey for encouraging economic and security cooperation between Afghanistan and its neighbours for dealing with the common problems of terrorism, extremism and poverty

A senior officials’ meeting of the Heart of Asia process, themed ‘Addressing Challenges, Achieving Prosperity’, was held on Saturday and their deliberations were to feed into the ministerial session today.
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and the United Arab Emirates are part of the Heart of Asia initiative.

Six key areas in which the 14 countries have been pursuing confidence-building measures since the 2013 Almaty meeting are disaster management, counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics, trade and investment, regional infrastructure, and education.

The process is supported by 17 other, predominantly Western, countries, and 12 international organisations which are also sending senior representatives.