The News Thread

[Sackboy]

There is info about brand , it is a YUG TV

[playstation]

China blames terror camps in Pakistan as 20 killed in Xinjiang

 

WASHINGTON: China on Monday blamed "extremists" trained in terror camps in Pakistan for orchestrating attacks on civilians in the troubled Xinjiang province, where 20 people, including alleged militants, were killed in violent incidents over two days.

 

While nine people were killed in a violent attack on Saturday, another 11, including five suspected militants, were killed in another attack on Sunday night.

 

A statement by the Kashgar municipal government said militants trained by the 'East Turkistan Islamic Movement' in Pakistan were responsible for the recent flare up in violence.

 

"A group of religious extremists led by culprits trained in overseas terrorist camps were behind the weekend attack on civilians in China's far-western Xinjiang," state run Xinhua news agency quoted the statement as saying.

 

"Initial probe has shown that the heads of the group had learned skills of making explosives and firearms in overseas camps of the terrorist group East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) in Pakistan before entering Xinjiang to organise terrorist activities," it said.

 

The Xinjiang region witnessed massive riots in 2009, when almost 200 people were killed in its capital Urumqi, following which China launched a major crackdown against Uyghur Muslim separatists.

 

On July 18 this year, 14 "rioters" were killed when they reportedly attacked a police station and killed four people in the province's Hotan city.

 

This is perhaps the first time that China has pointed fingers at its close ally Pakistan while referring to ETIM camps there. Xinjiang shares its borders with Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) and a lot of trade between China and Pakistan is routed through Kashghar as it is located close to the border.

 

There was panic in Kashgar city after militants attacked a restaurant on Sunday evening before setting it on fire. The incident left six civilians and five militants dead. The attack came after nine people were killed in another incident on Saturday.

 

While five 'suspects' were shot dead by police on Sunday night, four others were caught. Fifteen persons, including three policemen, were injured in the attack, Xinhua reported.

 

The regional publicity department said in a statement that a "group of armed terrorists" broke into a restaurant in the city centre in Kashghar about 4 pm yesterday and killed the restaurant owner and a waiter besides setting fire it.

 

"They then ran out and hacked civilians indiscriminately, leaving four dead and 12 injured, while police and fire fighters were striving to put out the fire," it said.

 

Terming it a "premeditated terrorist attack", it said police opened fire and killed four suspects at the scene, while another suspect died later in hospital.

 

The area was cordoned off and traffic restrictions were imposed on major roads and squares.

 

Many people were seen fleeing in horror from the downtown area as police cars, fire engines and ambulances whizzed by to tackle the second violent incident within a day.

 

The attacks resembled the 2009 riots and following up incidents in which Uyghurs had attacked Chinese Han settlers in Urumqi in what police called "a severely violent terrorism case" organised and premeditated by terrorist groups.

 

A crackdown ensued by security forces on ETIM, which China accuses of fomenting trouble in the region, besides Uyghur leader Rebiya Kadeer, who lives in US in exile.

 

Yesterday's attacks were also reportedly directed against Han settlers, and the attacks left the mainland Chinese scared to do business in the province.

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/China-blames-terror-camps-in-Pak-as-20-killed-in-Xinjiang/articleshow/9440242.cms

 

 

Everyone blames pakistan only

[Solitaire]

Everyone blames pakistan only

 

 

They also help pakistan a lot when they see fit to .

[megzworld]

Dangling fake testicles get woman in trouble

 

CHARLESTON, South Carolina — The police chief of a small South Carolina town will ask a jury to decide if a woman broke the state's obscenity laws by driving a pickup truck with plastic testicles hanging from the back.

 

Bonneau Police Chief Franco Fuda ticketed Virginia Tice, 65, in early July at a local convenience store after spying the adornment dangling from her truck.

 

South Carolina law considers a bumper sticker, decal or device indecent when it describes, in an offensive way as determined by contemporary community standards, "sexual acts, excretory functions, or parts of the human body."

 

The offense carries a maximum fine of $445 but no jail time, Fuda said.

 

"This is certainly not a staple of my ticket writing in Bonneau," the police chief told Reuters on Wednesday.

 

The Charleston law firm Savage & Savage will represent Tice for free, attorney Scott Bischoff said. The trial had been scheduled for next week but was delayed because the defendant will be out of town.

 

"She's such a sweet lady and she just says 'I don't want to pay the fine.' We'll let a jury decide whether this is really criminal behavior. I don't want to take away from the importance of free speech, but it's really comical," he said.

 

Lawmakers in some states have sought to ban the colorful plastic or rubber devices that go by brand names such as Bulls Balls and Truck Nutz.

 

Fuda said if the fake testicles were a free speech issue, "I don't know what they would be trying to express."

 

"I went to (a) few websites that said, excuse the expression, 'show your nuts,'" he said. "I didn't see anywhere it said support your local proctologist or farmer."

 

 

 

 

 

[playstation]

They also help pakistan a lot when they see fit to .

yes. they are all weather friends .

[Man In The Box]

Australian radio host calls India 'sh*t hole', Ganga a 'junkyard'

[playstation]

Australian radio host calls India 'sh*t hole', Ganga a 'junkyard'

tbh.....Ganga is a junkyard.... ganga part is very true.....forget her....people here only call ganga mela and kachara and ganda nali .......and this is so true....i can say this personally ....because i have seen it with my own eyes....man it really become so polluted ...that when i first got close to it....i was like WTF! ....why are people even taking bath in this....though honestly i also went in there...just a dip not much and water still had its charm also...felt nice chill and relaxed ........but still it is highly polluted... ....i feel sad when i see it coz more than religious thing ...it really is a nature's amazing wonder....

[playstation]

Foxconn to Replace Employees with 1 Million Robots

 

Taiwan-based technology giant Foxconn, which manufactures electronics and computer components on a contractual basis for leading computer and phone companies such as Apple Inc., Dell, Sony Corp. Hewlett-Packard and Nokia, has announced that it would be replacing its workers with 1 million robots in the coming three years.

 

 

Enlarge

(Photo: REUTERS / Stringer)

Foxconn to replace employees with Robots

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"The move aims at cutting the rising labor expenses and improve efficiency," said Terry Gou, founder and chairman of the company, late on Friday, reported Xinhua news agency.

 

Simple tasks that are currently done by human workers, such as welding and assembling parts will be assigned to the robots, said Gou at a workers' dance party Friday night. Currently, the company has 10,000 robots and the number is expected to jump to 300,000 in the next year and up to 1 million in the next three years.

 

Foxconn, has been in the spotlight since a number of its workers committed suicide, which prompted HP, Apple, Sony and other companies to launch an investigation into Foxconn's business practices. The suicides are blamed on stressful working conditions.

 

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So are the replacement of workers with robots a step to avoid future suicides?

 

The company currently employs 1.2 million people, with about 1 million of them based on the Chinese mainland, said the report.

 

On May 20, an explosion in Foxconn's Chengdu plant in China left two people dead and 16 injured.

 

Foxconn's move to replace its 'human' employees with robots could be just the beginning of turning the industry into completely robot-employed. After all, its workers have been repeatedly pushed to the extent of committing suicides, not being able to withstand the work pressure and environment.

 

New York-based worker's rights group China Labor Watch had last year alleged that Foxconn enforces "military-style administration and harsh working conditions," making its workers, most of whom are in their early 20s with little or no social support, labor for up to 12 hours at a stretch on highly-repetitive, assembly-line tasks without any break and sometimes the workers are forced to work even on weekends. The workers, the group said, have often complained to them that they are "extremely tired, with tremendous pressure." Li Qiang, the group's executive director, said Foxconn "tramples" workers' personal values for the sake of efficiency.

 

According to labor group Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, Foxconn is notorious for enforcing harsh, military-style work culture to maximize output. "From our recent research outside a Foxconn's facility in Shenzhen, most of the workers agree that they feel stress in the production lines," the labor group had said. "They are not allowed to talk to each other when working. Even in the same production line, workers do not have chance to get to know their colleagues."

 

Apple, Dell and HP spokesmen in the past expressed their shock by the "tragic events" and Apple and HP have set out guidelines on work conditions to their suppliers and if violated, terminate contracts with them.

 

However, some analysts feel that Foxconn's clients, though distraught, have little option but to keep the relationship going.

 

"They can't be happy about it," said Andy Hargreaves, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities. "They promote themselves as far as being forward thinking in terms of conscience - and this (suicides) is damaging to their reputation along those lines."

 

But Hargreaves said companies like Apple, Dell, HP or Sony have little choice because there are very few manufacturing companies like Foxconn that are capable of producing electronic products or computer components at a rate required to satisfy demand. Giving an example, Hargreaves said Apple sold 8.75 million iPhones in the last quarter alone and "if you want to build a lot of handsets and you want them to be competitively priced, you don't have a lot of options."

 

Some analysts also claim that the suicides at Foxconn facilities underscore China's growing labor problem.

 

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/190260/20110801/foxconn-robots-employees-suicides-replacement-next-year-human-workers-manufacturing.htm

 

Reminds of this Famous Quote by George Dyson.

 

‘In the game of life and evolution, there are three players at the table: human beings, nature, and machines. I am firmly on the side of nature. But nature, I suspect, is on the side of the machines.’

[Shantz]

Reminds of this Famous Quote by George Dyson.

 

‘In the game of life and evolution, there are three players at the table: human beings, nature, and machines. I am firmly on the side of nature. But nature, I suspect, is on the side of the machines.’

Awesome quote..

[playstation]

Awesome quote..

yea...never forgot this quote.....heard it many years ago.....but it touched me right there and then only when i first time heard it ...

[playstation]

Bill Gates and His $10 Billion Vaccine Scam

 

(August 01, Asmara-Eritrea, Sri Lanka Guardian) A couple of years ago Bill Gates, then still “the richest man in the world”, announced that he was “donating” $10 billion to fund “vaccine research” for some of the worlds worst diseases.

 

About $1 billion of Bill Gates donation/tax deduction was ear marked for research to find a vaccine to prevent malaria which is the number one killer in Africa.

 

I live in Eritrea in the Horn of Africa and the government here has reduced malaria mortality by over 80% in the last decade. This is the biggest breakthrough in preventing malaria mortality in history yet there has yet to be a single story on this in any of the major international media.

 

This historic breakthrough has been accomplished in Eritrea by the use of good old fashioned public health methods, that tried and true science that is responsible for the major increase in longevity that took place in the 20th century. That's right, public health, meaning first of all, clean drinking water, sanitation and hygiene has been the biggest breakthrough in human health in history, not antibiotics or vaccines or drugs of any sort. Yet Public Health is increasingly under attack in much of the western world.

 

Eritrea has developed a three pronged approach to preventing malaria mortality. First, the Eritrean Ministry of Health provides free insecticide treated mosquito nets to all of its population in the areas where malaria is endemic. Insecticide treated mosquito nets repel mosquitos, keeping them from biting a person while they are sleeping and come in contact with the mosquito net, something almost inevitable. Insecticide treated nets also prevent mosquitos from entering inside the nets via holes or gaps in the nets coverage.

 

The problem with insecticide treatment is it only lasts 3 months after which the net loses much of its effectiveness. The Eritrean Ministry of Health has instituted a mandatory re-treatment program for all of its population and if the people do not bring their nets in for re-treatment, the health teams go to the peoples homes and make them re-treat their nets.

 

The second part of the Health Ministry’s malaria program has been the establishment of community based medical clinics where the population can go to get a free blood test to determine what variety of malaria they may have and to get the proper treatment for it. Almost every village in the Eritrea malaria belt is within a few hours walk or ride from a community medical clinic and immediate treatment for those who have contracted malaria is now accessible for almost all of Eritrea's malaria belt residents.

 

The third part of the program is mosquito habitat eradication by filling in breeding sites and/or spraying insecticide on these areas.

 

These 3 simple, basic public health practices have resulted in the biggest breakthrough in malaria mortality prevention in history yet to this day there hasn't been a single major story covering this in any of the major media internationally.

 

Why is it that worldwide headlines greet Bill Gates announcement of his “vaccine” program while the biggest breakthrough in one of the major threats to life in much of the world remains unknown?

 

Maybe, just maybe, this is because Eritrea’s public health approach to preventing malaria mortality is not going to put tens of billions of dollars in the pockets of the drug company cartels, one of the most profitable industries in the world.

 

Malaria is caused by a parasite, actually a family of parasites, and has a history of quickly developing resistance to medication. After over three decades of research no one has been able to develop a “vaccine” for malaria or some form of permanent prevention. After so many have tried and failed in the past there are more than a few in the field of malaria research who doubt that any form of conventional “vaccine” will be found. They believe that even if some form of “vaccine” is developed by the drug companies malaria will most likely develop resistance to it and a new, patented “vaccine” will have to be bought by Africa’s poor every few years.

 

A “donation” of $1 billion or so to develop a malaria “vaccine” could turn into “a gift that keeps on giving” in the form of tens of billions of dollars in new, patented “vaccine” sales in Africa alone and Bill Gates, through his investment portfolio of drug company stocks will quietly pocket a continuos flow of African blood money. What Bill Gates “donation” amounts to a malaria drug addiction program for Africa’s people.

 

It is impossible to say just how many hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of lives could have been saved in the two years or so since Bill Gates announced his multibillion dollar “donation” to vaccine research if just a small percentage of his “gift” had been spent on implementing the Eritrean model of malaria mortality prevention.

 

Bill Gates didn't get to be a multibillionaire by being a nice guy, far from it. He and his ilk are perfectly willing to sit back and wait for their “donation” to pay off while millions die in Africa, deaths that could almost be eliminated by implementing Eritrea’s historic breakthrough in malaria mortality prevention.

 

So don't believe Bill Gates has anyone else's best interests at heart when he donates $10 billion to “vaccine” research, far from it. And don't forget that in this world no good deed goes unpunished, as the UN inSecurity Council is once again considering how to implement new sanctions to try and cripple the Eritrean economy and hurt the Eritrean people.

 

http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2011/08/bill-gates-and-his-10-billion-vaccine.html

 

dont know how true this it....

[godspeed4476]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/34-killed-in-ongoing-wave-of-violence-in-Karachi/articleshow/9455596.cms

Welcome the new Taliban

[Snake]

Operation: Geronimo

 

What went down that day

 

 

- three of the seals in the bin laden kill squad also took part in that operation where they took over a boat hijacked by somali pirates, killed all the pirates, and freed the captain

- the codename given to bin laden was crankshaft

- obama ordered extra helicopters be added to the mission in case the team had to "fight their way out of pakistan"

- they were worried about bin laden having an escape tunnel out of the house but a ground survey showed a flood basin just below the soil so they figured that was impossible

- the training including a replica of the bin laden compound was built in north carolina

- translator had to be taught how to repel down a rope out of a helicopter

- the attack dog's name was Cairo and it was a Belgian Malinois

- obama shelved the bombing option because it would have caused [equivalent of] an earthquake

translator's main purpose was to be able to keep neighbours from entering the compound and assure them everything was ok (not to translate bin laden's surrender? quelle surprise!)

- SEALs asked their briefing officers if they should be willing to shoot and kill civilians if they mobbed the compound, article doesn't say what the answer was

- raid was chosen for the night it was because there was no moonlight over the city, making aerial entry more covert.

- war room snacks for obama were provided by costco

- video link was white house -> cia headquarters -> pentagon -> american embassy in islamabad

- only live footage was a drone 15,000 feet up

- the north carolina compound had chain-link walls because they didn't have time to replicate the full walls properly, and they believe that's why the first helicopter crashed (because in training the rotor wake flowed through the chain-link fences, but in the real thing the walls obstructed it and the helicopter got caught in its own wake)

 

the actual mission timeline:

- second helicopter landed in a field across the street rather than fast roping because they weren't sure if the other helicopter crashed or got shot down. they used c4 to blow open the main gate and the residential gate. three seals cleared the guest house, 9 on the main house. the courier in the guesthouse grabbed a gun

- courier's brother inside the main house had ak. both were shot before getting off a single pull.

- courier's brothers wife was unarmed and shot and killed during that exchange.

translator did get engaged by civilians, claimed it was a "routine security operation" (so obviously they were passing themselves off as pakistani forces rather than US forces)

- bin laden's son was at top of first set of stairs, ak-47

- managed to fire, didn't hit anyone, two seals killed him

- c4 metal cage to get to third floor stairs, bin laden was peeking out the bedroom door. bin laden's 5th wife was yelling. seal shot her in the calf and bear hug tackled her and another wife.

- seal in question thought they had suicide belts and so was intentionally sacrificing his own life

- bin laden shot point blank in chest with m4 with laser sight

- “There was never any question of detaining or capturing him—it wasn’t a split-second decision. No one wanted detainees,” is the exact quote in the article.

- Seal radioed to operations: “For God and country—Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo. EKIA” (enemy killed in action)

- Obama's immediate reaction was, apparently in a neutral tone, "We got him."

 

After the kill

- nylon bodybag for osama, flex cuffs for the women, four men given 20 minutes to pull hard drives and cds and other computer intel

- one of the seals spoke arabic and interrogated the kids/women (i guess the translator they brought with them was pashto only?)

- a doctor did an injection bone marrow sample on bin laden at the compound. the injections went in one helicopter, the swab dna tests and the body in the other helicopter

- hammer, c4, and thermite on the crashed helicopter

- Obama said "I won't be happy until those guys are out safe". Mike Mullen was saying a rosary. Joe Biden said "we should go to mass".

- Refueled just inside pakistan border. Went to Jalalabad. No tape measure, so a CIA officer laid down next to bin laden for a visual height confirmation. Photos of face and body. Commander confirmed vocally that it was bin laden to sit room.

- The dumping-the-body-in-the-ocean thing... the SEALs had apparently done that several times before.

- John Brennan called the Saudi Arabian government, told them "We killed bin Laden. We are dumping his body at sea. He is a Saudi citizen. Do you want the body?" They said no. He gave the go-ahead to dump the corpse.

- Exact Saudi quote was "your plan sounds like a good one."

- V-22 Osprey with full compliment of military police to move the corpse, SEALs not in attendance. To get to the dumping ship they again breached Pakistani airspace

- corpse dropped from 25 feet above water after given proper rites

 

Meeting with team after:

- Obama and Biden, and about a dozen senior national security personnelmet with everyone involved in raid. Obama gave McRaven, who was the on-the-ground guy in Afghanistan where they initially brought the body, a tape measure in case he needed an easier way to measure corpses in the future.

- After the full debrief, Obama asked how the translator kept civilians out of the compound, and whether the weather or temperatures contributed to the helicopter crash. Obama was not told there was a dog, so when he found out he immediately asked to meet the dog.

- dog's muzzle was left on when obama met the dog

- obama did not ask who fired the kill shot, seals did not tell.

- they gave him the flag that was on the raid helicopter, signed by the whole team and pilots with the inscription "For God and Country. Geronimo."

 

Equipment included:

Silenced Sig Sauer P226 pistols. Most picked MP7s, commander picked an M4, blow out medical kidt, laminated copies of the map of the compound, laminated photos of everyone believed to be living there, "digital desert camo", a "camelbak", "gel shots", and noise cancelling headsets.

 

Source: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/08/110808fa_fact_schmidle?currentPage=all

 

Thanks to GAF for the transcribed notes

[Sackboy]

Wow

[Bird Bird Bird]

Study proves IE users are dumber than users of Chrome & Opera !

Hoax !

[playstation]

[WhiteWolf]

United States loses prized AAA credit rating

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/06/us-usa-debt-downgrade-idUSTRE7746VF20110806

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2021782/US-debt-deal-China-downgrades-Americas-AAA-credit-rating.html

 

[Solitaire]

Now the US is Standard and Poor!

[supersim]

In the deadliest day for American forces in the nearly decade-long war in Afghanistan, insurgents shot down a Chinook transport helicopter on Saturday, killing 30 Americans, including some Navy Seal commandos from the unit that killed Osama bin Laden, as well as 8 Afghans, American and Afghan officials said.

[playstation]

Ms Khar’s journey to India

 

Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar’s short visit to India was not without embarrassing moments. At the dinner hosted for her by the Pakistani high commissioner, Ram Jethmalani, a BJP member of the Rajya Sabha who is a former Indian law minister, decided to make an impromptu speech. Turning to Foreign Minister Khar, he said, “I wanted to be invited today after I saw your pictures in the newspapers.” And then, in the presence of the Chinese ambassador, he blurted out: “Do not accept China as your friend, China is an enemy of both India and Pakistan. Beware of the Chinese.”

 

High Commissioner Shahid Malik retorted that Pakistan did not subscribe to these views while Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and the Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Rajiv Shukla rushed over to the Chinese envoy to apologise. The ambassador could have walked out of the dinner but refrained from doing so out of respect for Pakistan. An eminent Indian intellectual and constitutional lawyer phoned me from Mumbai and said, “Your high commissioner has been here long enough and should have known better. Jethmalani is extremely controversial and often behaves like a bull in a china shop. He should never have been invited.”

 

Former foreign secretary Riaz Khokhar, whose knowledge of India is encyclopaedic, expressed similar views. He said that the octogenarian Jethmalani, one of India’s highest-paid lawyers, has the reputation of being partial to the bottle and was probably speaking under the influence of Bacchus (the Greek god of wine). One can only hope that the Pakistani High Commission is chastened by this experience and will in future refrain from extending invitations to eccentrics with bacchanalian proclivities.

 

Foreign Minister Khar acquitted herself reasonably well. Admittedly, there were no spectacular achievements, but a diplomat can only be as ingenious as his or her brief and the rest depends on articulation which, in the words of a former Pakistani foreign minister, is “the hallmark of diplomacy.” Ms Khar said what she was required to say with precision and clarity, but at times seemed to forget that diplomacy is all about euphemisms and skilful nuances.

 

For instance, she termed her visit as the harbinger of “an era of cooperation between the two countries” and, “the new generation of Indians and Pakistanis will see a relationship that will hopefully be different from the past.” This is as it ought to be, but unfortunately the Pakistan-India equation is frightfully accident- prone.

 

Ms Khar’s Indian hosts were irked by her meetings with hard-line Kashmiri separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani and the more moderate Hurriyat leader, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. In an interview after the meeting she brushed the Indian objections aside and said: “Every Pakistani foreign minister who has come here has met the Hurriyat leadership...They are part of the democratic process that we all uphold, aspire to.”

 

The chief minister of Indian-administered Kashmir, Omar Abdullah, had a different take on the meetings which he said were “nothing to worry about.” He elaborated that for a negotiated solution of the Kashmir dispute, Islamabad will eventually “have to talk to the mainstream leadership also.”

 

An editorial in one of the Pakistani newspapers has recommended that this proposal should not be brushed aside if Islamabad and New Delhi are serious about a peaceful settlement in Kashmir. The argument is advanced that ultimately all stakeholders in Kashmir will have to be taken on board. The Indians should reach out to “the dissident Kashmiri” groups while Pakistan should not confine itself to talking only with the Hurriyat leadership but also broaden its engagement to include the entire spectrum of “political forces” in Kashmir.

 

The Calcutta Telegraph of July 3 put another spin on the meeting with the Hurriyat leadership. In an article with the sensational title, “Geelani shocker for Hina,” Sankarshan Thakkur developed the narrative that “Syed Ali Shah Geelani left Khar and her delegates a little stumped by demanding, for the first time, that the self-determination exercise should include Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as well.”

 

Geelani, according to Thakkur, confirmed to The Calcutta Telegraph that this was precisely what he had told foreign minister Khar, but there was nothing new in what he had said. The right of self-determination, he explained, applied to the “entirety of Kashmir as it existed before Aug 14, 1947.” This is also completely in line with Pakistan’s position on Kashmir, which has always been that it is a disputed territory and its final disposition is to be determined through a plebiscite under the auspices of the United Nations, as stipulated in several resolutions of the Security Council.

 

However, reports of Ms Khar’s briefing to the media in Lahore on her return from India are a trifle baffling. An English newspaper claimed that she “had made it clear to the Indians that Kashmir was an integral part of Pakistan and no efforts could succeed until a longstanding solution to the conflict was found.” If this is correct, and till now there has been no official rejection of the report, then it signifies a significant departure from Pakistan’s stance on the disputed territory. In the absence of a denial, Islamabad’s policy becomes the same as that of India, which also claims Kashmir as its integral part.

 

Surprisingly, as noted by former ambassador Asif Ezdi in his column on Monday, it was Indian External Affairs Minister S M Krishna, and not his Pakistani counterpart, who raised the issue of Kashmir at their joint press briefing. Other analysts have been vehemently critical of the 21-point joint communique because of its repeated emphasis on counterterrorism, with only a peripheral mention of Kashmir as an issue that needed to be resolved “by narrowing divergences and building convergences.”

 

Similarly, there have been acerbic comments that other issues such as Siachen, Sir Creek, the Wullar Barrage/Tulbul navigation project on which there could have been some progress were also dealt with perfunctorily in the joint statement.

 

But despite these shortcomings, Ms Khar’s maiden visit to India was successful. This was not because she scintillated with her own “spark of divine fire.” Nor did her brief contain anything more than the usual unimaginative formulations of Pakistan’s India policy. The reason lies elsewhere.

 

A perception seems to have emerged in India, as is evident from Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao’s recent statement, that it was a mistake to discontinue the dialogue with Islamabad after the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks. She also conceded that “the prism through which Pakistan sees the issue of terrorism has definitely altered.” This welcome change is probably based on the assessment that Pakistan has realised that the non-state actors it once sponsored as instruments of its regional policy now pose the gravest threat to its own survival.

 

The Indian leadership, therefore, did not succumb to its usual knee-jerk reaction of blaming Pakistan for the terrorist attacks in Mumbai on July 13, and did not allow the incident to derail the talks between the two foreign ministers. This is a good beginning, because the only beneficiaries of tensions between the two countries are Al-Qaeda, its affiliates and other terrorist outfits.

 

The emphasis on combating terrorism in the Khar-Krishna joint statement may not be altogether misplaced because it is Pakistan’s foremost priority. However, an effective Pakistan-India counter-terrorism strategy will require: (i) mutual and balanced troop redeployment away from each others’ borders to strengthen Pakistan’s ongoing military operations against terrorist groups; (ii) real-time intelligence sharing which will also ensure that the dialogue process is not undermined by future acts of terrorism; and (iii) serious negotiations for a Kashmir settlement acceptable to the two countries and, above all, to the Kashmiri people.

 

http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=61541&Cat=9