SOUTH ASIA NEWS

     US NEWS SOURCES -June 30, 2003

HEADLINES
 

STORIES
 

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June 30, Wagah, India -- Pakistan's new ambassador to India arrived Monday to take up his post, saying his country was ready to restore normal ties with its nuclear rival after a gap of 18 months. India withdrew its ambassador to Pakistan following a Dec. 13, 2001, attack on parliament by suspected Islamic militants. New Delhi blamed Pakistan's spy agency for the assault, but Islamabad denied involvement. Pakistan's former ambassador was asked to leave in May 2002 as tension escalated and the hostile neighbors came close to a fourth war.

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June 30, Karachi, Pakistan -- A Pakistani anti-terrorism court sentenced two Islamic militants to death Monday for organizing a suicide bomb attack that killed 11 French naval technicians in the port city of Karachi last year. A car packed with explosives blew up outside the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi on May 8 last year, killing the Frenchmen, who were helping Pakistan build submarines. Three Pakistanis, including the bomber, also died. Two of the men convicted, Asif Zaheer and Rizwan Ahmed Basheer, appeared for the sentencing at Karachi's Central Prison.

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June 30, Berlin -- Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf arrived in Germany Monday for talks with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and other top officials. The talks are expected to focus on the global war against terrorism and Pakistan's troubled neighbor Afghanistan as well as bilateral relations. Germany currently commands the international peacekeeping force in the Afghan capital, Kabul, together with the Netherlands. Musharraf's German visit follows a trip to Washington last week during which U.S. President George W. Bush proposed a US$3 billion package of military and economic aid for Pakistan, in addition to an agreement to ease trade barriers.

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June 30, Islamabad -- Pakistan is ready to send peacekeeping troops to Iraq, but under an international command such as the United Nations, foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan said on Monday. Both Britain and the United States have asked Pakistan to send troops. But Pakistan's powerful Islamic hardliners have threatened nationwide demonstrations if Pakistani soldiers are deployed in Iraq under the command of the United States. There were widespread demonstrations in Pakistan against the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

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June 30, New Delhi -- Police and intelligence officers questioned a man who allegedly tried to enter the prime minister's residence through a high security back gate because he wanted to discuss a grievance, an Indian news agency reported Monday. The 25-year-old man from western Rajasthan state was nabbed as he tried to get through the gate at about 1:30 p.m. on Monday, Press Trust of India said, quoting unidentified police sources. They said the man told them he wanted to meet Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee regarding a grievance, but no further details were given.

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June 30, Peshawar, Pakistan -- A lawmaker with the ruling religious coalition was disqualified after a court in northwestern Pakistan ruled Monday that his university degree was invalid, lawyers said. The Peshawar High Court ordered fresh voting in the constituency after Mufti Abrar Sultan was disqualified, said Iftikhar Hussain Gilani, a lawyer who had lost to Sultan in elections last year and later challenged his opponent's educational qualification. Sultan graduated from a madrassa, or Islamic seminary. He is appealing the ruling. Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf last year changed the rules for election candidates, demanding they be university graduates to qualify. However, he said degrees from madrassas would be eligible. Elections were held last October.

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June 30, Lahore, Pakistan -- Police raided a house in eastern Pakistan and arrested the nephew of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after three other family members defied an order to leave the country, a family member said Monday. Hamza Sharif was arrested in a wealthy neighborhood of Lahore late Sunday, his younger brother Salman Sharif told reporters. The arrest came three days after authorities ordered his mother, Nusrat Sharif, and two sisters to leave Pakistan. The women arrived in Lahore in April to attend a family wedding, which police said never took place.

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Turning the other cheek is not one of President Bush's best-known traits. But he is ready to forgive a lot in the case of Pakistan, where a skillful political alchemist is transforming a record of failure, extremism and betrayal into gold from the U.S. Treasury. A year after U.S. intelligence confirmed that Pakistan had supplied North Korea's rogue regime with nuclear weapons technology, Bush lavished a much-coveted Camp David welcome on President Pervez Musharraf last week. The general also won a $3 billion aid package. Bush did this at the urging of his defense and spy chiefs, who face the day-to-day demands of hunting down al Qaeda and other terror groups. They are desperate for whatever immediate cooperation they can squeeze, cajole or buy from Pakistan. But they risk confusing the urgent with the important.

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Though he once criticized what he saw as the excessive personalization of diplomacy by his predecessor, President Bush continues to lean heavily and exclusively on a handful of heads of state to advance crucial American interests. He's still courting Russia's Vladimir Putin, despite Mr. Putin's curtailment of democracy and obstruction of the U.S. mission in Iraq. In Afghanistan, the White House counts on one man, Hamid Karzai, who rules little more than the palace he lives in. Now Mr. Bush has placed another huge stack of chips on Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the self-appointed president of Pakistan, which since 9/11 has become the world's single largest haven of Islamic terrorists -- including most likely the fugitive Osama bin Laden. Last week Mr. Bush invited Mr. Musharraf to Camp David and offered him $3 billion in military and economic aid over the next five years, as well as what a White House briefer called "a long-term commitment to build a relationship." That is a huge boost for a man who overthrew Pakistan's last elected civilian government in a military coup, presided over his country's delivery of nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, directed its last military offensive against India and broke his promises to restore democracy and crack down on extremist Islamic groups. It's fair to ask what the Bush administration will get in exchange.

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              --- South Asian News, June 30, 2003 ---

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