The Londoner

President Asif Ali Zardari needs a mere £6 billion to avoid defaulting on his debts and stave off the immediate threat of bankruptcy. This sum is only 0.3 per cent of the amount now devoted to saving the global financial system. For the amount that Britain is prepared to spend to salvage its banks - £500 billion - Pakistan could be rescued no less than 83 times over. Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, America has given Pakistan £5 billion of aid. This is barely one per cent of the £458 billion that Washington may be forced to spend on saving Wall Street. Bereft of oil and possessing little natural wealth, Pakistan has suffered decades of economic failure and stagnation. Ten years ago, it came within a whisker of formally defaulting on its debts and declaring itself bankrupt. So the country's leaders have become perennial seekers of bailouts. Yet for once, the stigma attached to being an international beggar has entirely disappeared. Today, almost every government is besie

Lies, denials and propaganda don’t change realities. Truth has a nasty habit of sneaking out. And sometimes it even bombards. In the last two weeks it blasted like a hailstorm on Bush administration’s Afghanistan policy. First it was the Brigadier General Mark Carleton Smith, the outgoing top commander of the British forces in Afghanistan who admitted to Sunday Times in London that absolute military victory in Afghanistan is impossible. This bombshell from the good general soon lost its value with the news that Saudi King has arranged a meeting between the representatives of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President, and those of Mullah Omar, elusive fugitive leader of the former Taleban regime and that the former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, the most popular of the Pakistani politicians, is somehow part of these negotiations. Whatever doubts could have been there were removed by Karzai himself who offered, in an interview on GEO Television, that he will personally guarantee the se

ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari has said that Pakistan's economy is not weak and the country will not bankrupt. He said that those who said Pakistan would become bankrupt were not sincere to the country. Asking the people not to heed the rumours of bankruptcy, he said that the PPP government would keep politics clean and transparent. "We cannot tolerate any foreign interference and nor want to interfere in internal affairs of any other country according to rule of to live and let to live," he told senior journalists on Sunday. About his upcoming visit to China, the president said that Pakistan enjoys support and cooperation from China in every sector, besides enjoying cordial relations with the People's Republic. Zardari said that some elements want to sabotage political system of the country and vowed to boost the economy. He hoped the Friends of Pakistan Group would help in improvement of foreign investment in the country. He said that their stance was clear a

Assamese Salute The Green And The Crescent This should come as news for Pakistani defeatists. After Kashmir, the rest of the dozen or so freedom movements in India see Pakistan as a symbol of liberty and freedom. Pakistan’s media and intelligence agencies should project these incidents and stoke more support inside these Indian states as retaliation for Indian terrorism inside Pakistan’s Balochistan, tribal belt and other cities. Depressed from how New Delhi is suppressing local Assamese people who want to carve a separate homeland out of India, people in Assam waved Pakistan's flags in five districts. The eastern Indian state is one of a dozen Indian states in the north and east where ferocious freedoms movements are in full swing, demanding the right of self determination from Indian rule. As usual, the Indian government, blaming Pakistani agencies for the violence, has ordered an immediate enquiry for this incident. The officials in New Delhi are so disturbed by this that they

The events of the last four months have shown that sidelining the Kashmiri nationalists is not an option. Peace will only be restored in Kashmir, and between Pakistan and India, when they, and the 40 per cent of the valley that has always boycotted the elections since 1987, rejoin the political process, says Prem Shankar Jha The second imposition of a valley-wide curfew turned out to be a token affair. By 10:00 at night on Monday, 6 October, no one had been killed and very few had been roughed up by the police. Hours later the government had lifted it. As a result life in Kashmir is returning to normal even as I write. The Rasputins in Delhi see it as a vindication of their crackdown on 22 August. Hadn't they always said that the separatist leaders were men of straw; that all they needed was a touch of the whip? Now all Delhi needs to do to is set a date for the state elections, probably in early November. They could not be more wrong. The near-complete absence of violence d

By Shaik Ahmed Ali / CNN-IBN Hyderabad: The arrests of some Muslims professionals in Delhi and Mumbai on the charges of terrorism appears to have shocked the entire Muslim community in Hyderabad. Earlier students of some Madarsas or some poor unemployed youth used to figure in the list of arrested suspects, but now with the list including software engineers and others with higher education, Muslim students in Hyderabad feel that the new face of terror will spell trouble for them. "If you have strong proof we'll believe you. But you are not proving anything. You are just picking up people from their homes, from their normal lives, disorganising their lives, spoiling their lives. What fun do you get out of this? I want to ask the law makers," says student, Hafeezullah Siddiqui. Hafeezullah Siddiqui may or may not get an answer. But Muslims students in Hyderabad do fear that the present wave of suspicion could also affect them. "Muslim professionals are being targeted

Hyderabad, Oct 12, 2008: Six members of a Muslim family including a two year old toddler were burnt alive by a rampaging Hindu mob in Adilabad district in Andhra Pradesh. The gruesome incident took place merely two days after a mob attacked Muslim neighborhoods in nearby Bhainsa town. The violence seems to have spread to a large area in Adilabad district of Andhra Pradesh. The state seems to be the new target of the communal forces who have failed to make any inroads in the state for the last more than a decade. Despite all their efforts they have not been able to either increase their number in the Andhra Pradesh assembly or their representation in Parliament from the state. Despite all their efforts they failed to either attract any major political faction in the state including Tilangana Rashtriya Samiti or the film star turned politician Chiranjivee. This seems to have made them desperate. Rioters who had earlier killed four people in nearby Bhainsa town Friday swooped down on the