islamabad — peshawar edition tuesday, 3 april, 2012 Jamadi-ul-awal 10, 1433Rs15.00 Vol ii no 276 22 pages

PAGE | 22 PAGE | 02

Fuel prices might go down, but just a little

Pakistan considersIndia a ‘threat’ but USdiffers: Leon Panetta

KARACHISTAFF REPORT

KARACHI is all set to have agarrison look as PresidentAsif Ali Zardari on Mondaytook a strong exception to in-cidents of targeted killings,

extortions and street crimes in the violence-hit commercial hub of the country.

Almost every day of the last week sawthe city witnessing cold-blooded killingsand socio-economic life coming to a grind-ing halt with over 50 people falling prey topolitically-motivated targeted killings,dozens of vehicles being set on fire andtrade and business incurring incalculablelosses during the weeklong violence.

Monday being no exception saw thetargeted killing of a PPP office bearer inthe gang-war-fame Lyari neighbourhood,one of the city’s most volatile localities.

Chairing a high-level meeting of offi-

cials from the government and law en-forcement agencies at Bilawal House,President Zardari ordered the securitypersonnel to deal with the criminals withzero tolerance.

The president said the city of 180 mil-lion had badly been plagued by the men-ace of extortion and other street crimeswith the life and properties of commonman paralysed the most.

The president directed the concernedquarters to equip the police with aerial pa-trolling equipment as well as heavy-dutyarmoured personnel carriers (APCs).

The law enforcers would also bedoing the “geo fencing” of various cityneighbourhoods infected the most.

Among others, the meeting was at-tended by Interior Minister RehmanMalik, Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul IbadKhan, Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah,Home Minister Manzoor Wassan, FinanceMinister Syed Murad Ali Shah, Law Min-

ister Muhammad Ayaz Soomro, LocalGovernment Minister Agha Siraj Durrani,the Sindh IGP, Pakistan Rangers SindhDG, IB DG and other senior federal andprovincial government officials.

Meanwhile, the interior minister,who arrived on Saturday, called upon themedia not to sensationalize the news re-garding violence.

In a talk on Monday, the PPP’s majortroubleshooter in Karachi, said the mediashould avoid spreading sensation by,what he termed it, the misreporting offacts regarding law and order in Karachi.

He claimed that there was no inci-dent of targeted killing on Sunday, but hesaw some of the newspapers reportingthe killing of six people in targeted killing.

The interior minister claimed thatthose reported to have fallen prey to po-litically-motivated killings had died nat-urally or were shot dead out of personalenmities or accidents.

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Public holiday in Sindhon Bhutto’s 33rd death anniversary

KARACHIAgEnciES

After two days of silence, the sequence ofviolence resurfaced in parts of Karachiagain on Monday, claiming the life of atleast seven people, including a PPP localleader. Police said that unidentifiedgunmen opened fire on the vehicle of PPPLyari Vice President Hassan Soomro. Theleader received a bullet to his head andwas rushed to a hospital, however, hecould not survive the injuries. AkhtarGorchani, a senior police officer, said awoman was shot dead on Jinnah Road. InSohrab Goth, a man was killed andanother injured in cross-firing betweentwo rival groups. President Asif Zardari,Faisal Raza Abdi and PPP KarachiPresident Nabeel Gabol condemned thekilling of their party leader. Gabol saidLyari, which was considered thestronghold of the PPP, had become abattlefield under PPP’s own regime. “Ourleaders have been killed. Now thetolerance of our workers is finished butthere is still no Rangers official deputed inthe area,” he said, demanding animmediate operation against terrorists.

Karachi violence finallygets president’s attentiong Zardari orders aerial patrolling, heavy-duty armoured personnelcarriers to maintain peace

PPP leader amongseven killed in freshKarachi violence

Continued on page 04

KARAcHi: Plainclothesmen engage in a gunfight with miscreants in Lyari after an operation was launched to curb violence. online

BOAOAgEnciES

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on Mon-day said Pakistan had paid a heavy price forinternational politics, as the country had hadto make challenging decisions.

Addressing the Boao Forum, PM Gilanihighlighted the role Pakistan had played inthe war against terrorism.

He regretted that Pakistan had to accom-modate more than 3.5 million refugees dueto Russia in the Afghan war. Highlighting thePak-Sino ties, the prime minister affirmedthat the relations between the two countrieswere strengthening by the day. Gilani reiter-

ated that Pakistan was facing major chal-lenges in restoring peace in the region.

He said the world economic recessionand increase in international oil prices hadalso left a bad impact on the economy ofPakistan. He called for more cooperationamong the regional countries for economicdevelopment. Highlighting his achieve-ments, Gilani said parliament had madelandmark legislations and restored the 1973constitution. He said there was an inde-pendent judiciary‚ free media and a vibrantcivil society. Gilani hoped that Pakistanwould achieve the targets of millennium de-velopment goal by 2015.

He said Pakistan was working to im-

prove its relations it the world, includingwith India. Gilani said being a new democ-racy, Pakistan faced many challenges anddue to the same reason, the government hadto make critical decisions. He called formore cooperation among the regional coun-tries for economic development.

Gilani said Pakistan played the role of afrontline state in the war against terror andsuffered a lot on its economic front. Theprime minister urged the Asian countries toestablish regional harmony and sustainabledevelopment through increased trade andeconomic growth. “If we do not establish re-gional harmony based on trade, investmentand economic growth, we fear we will re-

main hostage to the past. We can break freeof this past,” he said.

He said by 2050, Asia was expected toaccount for more than half of the globaleconomy, restoring the world’s largest con-tinent to its former position of economic pri-macy. “In short, we may well witness thebirth of a new world,” he said. The PMpraised the role of China for the establish-ment of peace in the region. Earlier‚ChineseVice Premier Li Keqiang inaugurated theopening session and said promoting internalgrowth drivers was the new trend in Asia’sopen economic development.

Osama’s family

handed 45-day

prison sentence ISLAMABAD

STAFF REPORT

A civil court on Monday indicted alQaeda founder Osama Bin Laden’sfamily members to a 45-dayimprisonment for illegally staying inPakistan. As three widows and theirchildren had already passed one monthin prison, they would be deported totheir respective countries after 15 days.Senior Civil Judge Shahrukh Anjumadhanded down a 45-day imprisonmentsentence along with a fine of Rs 10,000each, to Bin Laden’s three widows andtwo daughters under the Foreign Act.The proceedings of the case were carriedat a house located in sector G/6 of thecapital city where the al Qaeda chief’sfamily was kept and the house has alsobeen declared a sub jail. Talking toreporters, Zakarya Ahmad Abd al-Fattah, brother of Osama’s Yemani wifesaid the court had announced a one anda half month imprisonment to all thefive accused including Osama’s threewidows, Amal Ahmad Abdul Fatheh,Silham Sharif, and Kharia HussainSabir, and two daughters, Maryam andSumiya. He said the fine of Rs 10,000 onall the adult members had also beenimposed, adding that the court had alsodirected the government to arrangenecessary documents for the earliestrepatriation of the Osama’s familymembers, so that they can go to theirown country’s—Saudi Arabia and Yemen– after completing their imprisonment.Amal al Sadeh along with bin Laden’stwo other wives from Saudi Arabia andan undisclosed number of children wereamong the 16 people detained byPakistani authorities in the wake of theMay 2 raid on the al Qaeda leader’sAbbottabad compound. FIA AssistantDirector (Legal) Khalid Naeem saidAmal was also charged under Section419 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) forcheating and not providing her realidentity. Muhammad Aamir, lawyer forthe Bin Laden family told reporters thatthe period of detention of his widowsand children started on March 3, whenthey were formally arrested on chargesof illegal entry and residency in Pakistanand that they would continue to be heldat their house in federal capital. Headded that the directions had been givento the interior secretary for making allthe arrangements of Bin Laden’sdeportation and the said process may becompleted in two weeks.

3 soldiers, 14militantskilled inMohmand PESHAWAR/KURRAMAGENCY: Dozens of militantsattacked a paramilitary check-point overnight, sparkingclashes that left at least threesoldiers and up to 14 militantsdead, officials said on Monday.The attack in Mohmand Agencywas beaten off when troops re-sponded with artillery and heavyweapons, according to aspokesman for the FrontierCorps (FC). “Militants attacked aFrontier Corps checkpost inBaizai area of Mohmand Agencyon Sunday night, which trig-gered a firefight, killing threetroops and 14 rebels,” local offi-cial Siddiqullah said. Five troopswere also injured and the mili-tants had infiltrated Pakistanfrom Afghanistan’s northeasternKunar province, he said. Theidentity of the militants was notclear, but Afghan and PakistaniTaliban sympathisers havestrongholds on both sides of theporous border. The FCspokesman confirmed the inci-dent and casualties and said themilitants had attacked the postfrom three different directions.Meanwhile, a man was killed andanother 13 injured in a blast inKurram Agency on Monday, offi-cials said. According to officials,a bomb exploded near a taxistand, also damaging many vehi-cles. Security forces rushed tothe scene to cordon off the areaand conduct a search operation.The officials said it could be a re-mote-controlled bomb blast. Noone has claimed the responsibil-ity for the attack. Agencies

Pakistan paying heavy price for int’l politics: PMg Gilani calls for cooperation among regional countries for economic development g Seeks Chinese help to meet energy needs

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02tuesday, 3 April, 2012

News

Today’s

lookQuick

ISlAMABAd

Story on Page 09

NewS

Story on Page 06

CArtooN

Page 13

Begging activities rise to alarming proportion Ending load shedding, the ‘mitti pao’ way!

Marvi holds govt responsible

for Karachi violenceTHATTA: PML-N leader Marvi Memon on Monday said that the gov-ernment and its coalition parties are responsible for the miserable, de-structive and deteriorating law and order in Karachi.She was talking to journalists at Maklee Press Club. Marvi said thatthe rulers had pushed Sindh towards olden times even prior to Mo-hanjudoro. “The government has not done anything for welfare ofthe people except inflation, unemployment and strikes”, she said.The PML-N leader condemned torment of nurses in Karachi, vio-lence against women and underprivileged behavior to women inSindh games. She condoled with journalist Taza Gul Durrani and de-manded apprehending of the accused involved. OnLinE

Brigadier Ali boycotts courtmartial proceedingsRAWALPINDI: Court Martial proceedings against Brigadier Alihave ceased temporarily, according to his counsel Colonel (retired)Inamur Raheem. Speaking to Geo News, Advocate, Raheem, said hisclient boycotted court proceedings on Monday. Brigadier Ali in-formed the court in writing that military officials changed his lawyerfrom Colonel (retired) Raheem to Colonel Khizer which was not ac-ceptable to him. Brigadier Ali is accused of having links with out-lawed Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HuT). STAFF REPORT

Intelligence agencies warn of bloodshed

in Karachi ahead of elections KARACHI: A report compiled by secret agencies over the currentwave of target killings and arson in Karachi, point fingers at certainpolitical parties leaders, besides establishing links of police officialsin unrest. According to sources on Monday, the report leveled grossaccusations against some provincial ministers of a big political partyin Sindh. It has also been revealed in the report that the PPP minis-ters, SSP Malir Rao Anwar and other police officers were involved inencroachments. These personalities have allegedly constructed se-cret dens particularly in Malir, Dalmia and Pak Colony, the reporteradded. It has also been revealed in the report that political partiesmonopolize their hold with acts of target-killings. The report furthersaid that the coalition partners in Sindh government were also inpossession of sophisticated and modern weapons; that was the mainreason as to why police and Rangers were still unable to control thefast deteriorating situation. The sources, quoting figures in the re-port, said that about 900 people had been killed on mere linguisticbasis from January 2010 up till now while 57 people had beensplayed in sectarian riots. AgEnciES

Hazara women protest against

targeted killingsQUETTA: Around 100 activists of Hazara Democratic Party (HDP)Women Wing on Monday staged a protest in front of the BalochistanAssembly against the ongoing target killingd of their community onsectarian basis in the province, particularly in Quetta. The protestersmade a unique protest by throwing hundreds of bangles on the gateof the assembly and hung a hundred more on the signboard of theassembly building with the help of a rope. Nazneen Zaman told jour-nalists that the protesters presented bangles to MPAs to jolt theirsouls for being a lame duck in providing security to the Hazara com-munity and bringing the culprits to book. The protesters were carry-ing party flags and placards inscribed with different demands suchas “Down with sectarianism and incompetent Balochistan govern-ment”. The protesters said that the provincial government had com-pletely failed to provide them security killings of Hazaras was goingon since a decade, which had even forced women to come out onroads. STAFF REPORT

Fuel prices might go down, but just a little

ISLAMABADinP

AFTER feeling the heat of increas-ing public resentment againstthe recent hike in fuel prices, thefederal government has decidedto bring them down by a small

fraction, sources said on Monday. According to sources, upon the directive

of President Asif Ali Zardari, the concernedauthorities were mulling to bring the ratesdown and a notification in this respect wouldbe issued shortly. The sources disclosed thata reduction of about Rs2 per litre was ex-pected in the price of petrol, while a decreasein diesel prices by Rs 3 was also likely.

Meanwhile, the All Pakistan CNG Asso-ciation (APCNGA) announced to go on strikefor indefinite period, saying that it would notaccept the meagre reduction in the prices.

Addressing a news conference, APCNGAChairman Ghayas Paracha condemned thegovernment for the “unjust and illegitimate”

increase in fuel prices. On the other hand, commuters, trans-

porters, traders and politicians rejected thegovernment’s expected decision of meagrereduction in petrol prices.

The All Pakistan Transport Owners As-sociation (APTOA) has already warned that

fares would be raised if petroleum priceswere not brought down.

Traders set an ultimatum of 72 hours forthe government to reverse its decision andwarned of holding a countrywide campaignof civil disobedience in case the prices werenot brought down.

govt earns Rs 24.58 on each litre of petrolISLAMABAD: The government could have given relief to the double-digit inflationpressed masses by cutting down on the petroleum levy and sales tax that it collects onpetrol, diesel and kerosene oil. A private TV channel, citing the data of Oil and Gas Regu-latory Authority (OGRA), reported that the government was pocketing a total of Rs 24.58in sales tax and petroleum levy on each litre of petrol. Had the government reduced itsearnings to Rs 16.56 per litre, it could have avoided making petrol expensive by Rs 8.02,said a report by Geo News. On diesel, the government gets Rs 18.99 per litre in sales taxand petroleum levy. Similarly, if the government would have settled for Rs 14.29, the peo-ple could have been spared from an increase of Rs 4.70 per litre in the rate of diesel. Pe-troleum levy and sales tax on a litre of kerosene oil contribute Rs 18.85 to the nationalkitty. The poor people could have been safeguarded from the price hike of Rs 5.29 if thegovernment had shrunk it to Rs13.56. MOniTORing DESK

g All Pakistan CNG Association announces strike for indefinite period

MULTAn: PML-n activists block a road by burning tyres at

Kachehri chowk on Monday to protest against electricity

load shedding and the recent increase in fuel prices. ONLINE

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03tuesday, 3 April, 2012

NewsCoMMeNtHanded over to terrorists

Articles on Page 12-13

There still seems to be no respite to violence.The dismal scienceOil pricing cannot be explained easily.

Dr Faisal Bari says:Foundational cultural change: Cultural change is the challenge in education.

Syed Hassan Belal Zaidi says:Bold and balanced?: It is not easy to report a balanced story.

Rabia Ahmed says:The lone cyclist: Pakistan has gone backwards.

foreIGN NewS

Story on Page 18

ArtS & eNtertAINMeNtimran, Deepika win worst actors awards

Story on Page 14

SPortST20 event shows Pak ready for int’ls

Story on Page 18

Siberian plane crash kills 31 in oil town

US should pay circular

debt in return for NAto

supply: Kashmala ISLAMABAD

nni

Pakistan Muslim League Secretary Infor-mation and Member National AssemblyKashmala Tariq on Monday said on be-half of her party that the “government isin the mood to resume NATO supply”.She urged upon the rulers that if at lastthey had decided to resume NATO supply,they should get relief for the Pakistani na-tion in response. She said that keeping inview Pakistan’s major problems, the uSshould be made to pay Pakistan’s circulardebt, upgrade Railways, PIA and resolveelectricity problems. She said the uS hadgiven $33 billion to Turkey for only usingits route during the Iraq war and gave gi-gantic facilities to Egypt and Syria. Sheurged that the uS should give the samefacilities to Pakistan. Kashmala urgedupon the rulers to decide in favour of na-tional interest rather than giving priorityto their individual and personal inter-ests. She said that at the start of sum-mer, load shedding was increasing witheach passing day and these problemsshould be addressed on priority. “Ourparty will strongly oppose resolution inparliament for resuming NATO supply ifthese facilities were not demanded andconfirmed by the rulers,” she said. Shealso brought on record that the rulerswere giving rhetoric statements that theywould take in confidence all politicalparties regarding NATO supply, but de-spite of representation of our five partymembers in national assembly, the gov-ernment did not invite her party.

People dying in Karachi of ‘natural’ causes: MalikKARACHI

APP

There was no target killing Karachi onSunday and the people killed in thecity, who were shown killed in violentaccidents by the media, died of natu-ral causes, personal enmities and ac-cidents, Interior Minister SenatorRehman Malik said on Monday.

Talking to journalists, Malik saidthat the media should avoid spread-ing sensation by misreporting factsregarding law and order in Karachi.He said that the media had wronglyreported that six people had died intarget killing in the port city. Theminister requested the media to re-frain from `misreporting’ and added

that a system had been set up wherereporters can call up the authoritiesconcerned to find out the cause of any

incident occurred in the city. Malik said that Sindh Home

Minister Manzoor Wassan and po-licemen were always available toconfirm the cause of any incidentand if they were not available, thenthere was a Crisis Management Cell,which was open 24 hours and had allinformation about crimes takingplace across Pakistan.

He said that airing of an incor-rect report, like that of a targetkilling, can cause further tensionsamong people. The minister clarifiedthat no operation was being carriedout but targeted action against crim-inals without any discrimination wasbeing conducted to maintain law andorder in Karachi.

SC sets April 10 to frame contemptcharge against Babar Awan

ISLAMABADSTAFF REPORT

DuE to the unavailabilityof Attorney GeneralMaulvi Anwarul Haq, theSupreme Court (SC) onMonday again adjourned

the hearing of the contempt of courtcase against former law minister BabarAwan and fixed April 10 for framingcontempt charges against him.

The court was scheduled to framecontempt charges against Awan onMarch 20, however the unavailabilityof his counsel Ali Zafar delayed theproceedings. The court then set April2 as the new date for framing chargesagainst Awan for his media jibe at thejudiciary. However the proceedingswere delayed again after Deputy At-torney General Tariq Jahangiri in-formed the three-member SC benchheaded by Justice Anwar Zaheer Ja-mali that the AG had gone to Quetta,where Chief Justice Iftikhar Muham-

mad Chaudhry was hearing a case onworsening law and order situation inBalochistan.

During the hearing, Justice Ja-mali noted that the absence of AG didnot matter, as the charges had to beframed by the court and the attorneygeneral had nothing to do with it.

However, Awan’s counsel referredto Rule 7 of the Supreme Court Rulesand contended that at the time offraming charges, the attorney gen-eral’s presence was required. He saidthat if the court would prosecute hisclient without the AG’s presence, itwould not leave a good impression.By doing so, Zafar argued, the courtwould be performing the role of aprosecutor. Meanwhile, the court ad-journed the hearing until April 10.

Babar Awan, along with someother federal ministers, had launcheda tirade against the Supreme Court ata press conference held at the PressInformation Department (PID) onDecember 1 last year soon after the

court ordered an enquiry into thememo issue.

On March 1, a bench comprisingJustice Ejaz Afzal Khan and JusticeMuhammad Ather Saeed had re-served its judgment whether to dis-charge contempt notice or to framecharges against Awan. “After goingthrough the documentary record andvideo recording of the press confer-ence prima facie, a case of contempthas been made out against BabarAwan, former law minister and PPPVice-President, for addressing a pressconference at the PID,” the courtstated in its order. The court had de-cided to frame contempt charge andcommencing proper contempt pro-ceedings against Babar Awan onMarch 20.

Talking to media on Monday, AliZafar said that his client had notgiven any remarks, which ridiculedthe judiciary. He said the freedom ofspeech could not be barred in thename of the freedom of judiciary.

Zardari coming

to lahore

tomorrow

LAHORESTAFF REPORT

President Asif Ali Zardari is likely to visitPunjab on Wednesday (tomorrow) andwould address the Pakistan People’sParty Punjab parliamentary session.It is the first visit of President Zardariafter Senate election in March, in whichthe PPP-backed candidate from PunjabAslam Gill was defeated.Party sources said Zardari would addressthe members of provincial assembly atthe Governor’s House.They said the president would also ad-dress the leaders in connection with Zul-fikar Ali Bhutto’ death anniversary.He would also meet party leadership andworkers and discuss a number of issues.A number of provincial level leaderswould convey the problems of partyworkers and provincial members.The case of Aslam Gill’s defeat is alsolikely to be taken up.

Court summons police,rangers chiefs

KARACHIOnLinE

Hearing suo moto notice of the fresh un-rest in Karachi, the Sindh High Court, onMonday, issued summons to InspectorGeneral (IG) Sindh and Director GeneralRangers to appear before the court.Chief Justice SHC, Justice Mushir Alamheard the case, ordering the two key offi-cials to appear before the jury on April 18and submit a report on the frequent shut-downs and incidents of violence inKarachi that have left about 40 peopledead since Monday.Over 50 vehicles have been set on fireduring the days of ‘mourning’ an-nounced by MQM and ANP. Earlier, vi-olence prevailed in the metropolitan ofKarachi as at least six people includinga woman were shot dead overnight indifferent incidents across the city,sources said on Monday. Sources also stated that the violent in-cidents occurred in Sohrab Goth, BinQasim, Saddar, Sachal, North Naz-imabad, Gulshan Iqbal and Boat Basinareas of the city resulting in the killingof five people while several others wereinjured. Sindh Government has or-dered a thorough inquiry regarding thegun-fight.

ISLAMABADKASHiF ABBASi

Two gunmen of Gilgit-Baltistan Chief Minister SyedMehdi Shah have been bookedfor firing at lawyers, policesaid on Monday.

According to details, twogunmen deployed with theCM fired at a group oflawyers over a roadside dis-pute. The gunmen were ontheir way in a police vehicleto escort Mehdi from hishouse but when they reachedFaisal Avenue, the traffic wasjammed as some lawyerswere fighting with a cardriver over a minor accident.

On this, the commandosinterfered into the matter andgot the driver freed from thelawyers. The lawyers tried toscuffle with the gunmen onwhich they fired at them andleft the area.

The lawyers registered aFIR against the commandos.In the application, they saidthat two guards of the Gilgit-Baltistan Police deployedwith the CM fired at threelawyers, who survived the in-cident. Police registered aFIR under section 324/34and 506 of PPC. “It was a di-rect attack as policemenfired four shots, whichcrossed just over my head,”Advocate Kazim Jamil said.Lawyers announced to ob-serve a strike today (Tues-day) against the incident.

Separately, a resident ofGhauri Town was gunneddown by two unidentified mo-torcyclists. Police said thatFazal Waheed was on his waywhen two motorcyclists firedat him due to which he diedon the spot. The Koral Policeregistered a FIR and startedinvestigation.

gilgit-Baltistan cM’ssquad booked for firing

SC seeks Indian SC’s judgment

on rivers’ interlinkingISLAMABAD

STAFF REPORT

Hearing a petition seeking direction to thefederal government not to strike a deal withIndia for purchase of 5, 000MWs electricity,the Supreme Court (SC) on Monday directedthe counsel for the petitioner to furnish theIndian SC’s judgment on rivers interlinking2005. A three-member bench consisting ofJustice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, Justice EjazAfzal Khan and Justice Athar Saeed, ad-journed the hearing due to shortage of timeuntil April 5. The Watan Party on Saturdayfiled a petition through Barrister ZafarullahKhan, saying that Pakistan had acceptedIndia’s offer to get 5,000MWs electricity. Hesaid it was a shameful act that Pakistan wasgoing to purchase electricity which India pro-duced from illegally-constructed dams onPakistan’s rivers and their stolen water.Zafraullah said due to theft of water, Pakistanwas facing scarcity of water for the Kharifcrop. He said it was highly unfortunate that bybuying Indian electricity, Pakistan would ap-prove their theft and also accept violations ofthe Indus Water Treaty 1960.

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04tuesday, 3 April, 2012

PPP leader

killed in Karachi

Nine people, including twopolicemen, were also in-jured in the latest spree ofviolence. In another inci-dent, a man committed sui-cide by shooting himself inBin Qasim Town, claimedthe police. Police also saidthat some unidentified gun-men injured a PPP workerby opening fire on him inAziz Bhatti police precincts.“Some parts of the city arestill tense where police andparamilitaries are on pa-trol,” Sharfuddin Memon,spokesman for the SindhHome Department, toldAFP. The official said arson-ists had set more than 50vehicles alight during thelast week.The Human Rights Commis-sion of Pakistan said 1,715people were killed in suddenflare-ups of violence in thecity last year.

BRUSSELSAFP

NATO’s chief de-nied on Mon-day that thealliance wasspeeding up the

withdrawal of combattroops from Afghanistan ashe sought to clear up “con-fusion” over the pulloutplanned for the end of 2014.

Secretary General An-ders Fogh Rasmussen in-sisted that NATO wassticking to the timelineagreed at the Lisbon sum-mit in November 2010 afterrecent comments fromWestern and Afghan offi-cials indicated that 2013was a new target.

“There is nothing new inall this but maybe it is nec-essary to clarify these time-lines because sometimesthey are mixed up in a waythat creates some confu-sion,” Rasmussen told anews conference. “We willstick to the Lisbon roadmapand complete transition bythe end of 2014,” he said.Rasmussen explained thatto complete the transition ofsecurity responsibility toAfghan forces nationwide bythe end of 2014, control ofthe last provinces must behanded over in the middle

or the second half of 2013.“That’s why the year 2013has suddently been men-tioned,” he said. “It’s notabout accelerating the tran-sition process, but it’s actu-ally in order to stick to theLisbon roadmap that wehave to take 2013 into ac-count,” he said. It takes 12to 18 months to completethe transition of provincesto Afghan forces, he noted.Afghan security forces are inthe lead in provinces repre-senting half the country’spopulation, including thecapital Kabul.

Before meeting withNATO counterparts in Feb-ruary, uS Defence SecretaryLeon Panetta had indicatedthat uS troops would switchto a training role in 2013,but later stressed that theywould continue combatthrough 2014. Afghan Presi-dent Hamid Karzai toldPanetta last month that in-ternational forces shouldleave villages and that NATOshould handover to Afghanforces in 2013. Karzai’s of-fice later appeared to stepback, saying the demandwas nothing new. The wayforward in Afghanistan, in-cluding the alliance’s roleafter 2014, will be dis-cussed at a NATO summitin Chicago in May.

nATo denies accelerating troopwithdrawal fromAfghanistan

KOHAT: People try to extinguish fire which broke out in a local market and engulfed a large number of shops near Kohat

city Police Station. online

Continued fRom page 1

LAHOREnAUMAn TASLEEM

All cities continue to facepower load shedding for 10-16 hours while PEPCO keepsup with its old habit of hid-ing the facts about the short-fall, quoting wrong figures toreporters on Monday.

Sources told PakistanToday that PEPCO was fac-

ing a shortfall of more than6,000MW these days but itsmedia section said the cur-rent shortfall was only3,800MW.

Almost every large cityof the country is facing atleast 10 to 12 hours of loadshedding while in rural areasthis closure crosses 16 hoursa day. Electricity supplyeven in Lahore is shut for

one hour after every hourand it has become impossi-ble for the people to performtheir routine works.

Despite the fact that out-ages crossed 12 hours a day,everything in PEPCO’sbooks still remained good.

The generation remains10,214MW while demand is14,014MW. According toPEPCO, hydel generation is

2,569MW, thermal is1,862MW and IPPs are pro-ducing 5,783MW.

However, sources inthe Ministry of Power saidthe figures were forgedand did not reflect the ac-tual demand and supplygap.

If we consider these fig-ures, load shedding shouldnot exceed six to eight

hours but in reality it hascrossed 12-16 hours, said asenior ministry official,adding that generation isnot more than 8,000MWthese days while demand istouching 14,000MW. Hesaid hydel generation is lowthese days and is around2,500MW but thermal andIPPs jointly are not produc-ing more than 6,000MW.

PePco still duping public

KABULAFP

NATO’s uS-led mission inAfghanistan said on Mondaythere had been failures inAfghan security proceduresmeant to weed out potentialkillers of Western troops be-fore they join Kabul’s forces.

Since January 1, seven-teen foreign troops, includ-ing seven Americans and fiveFrench trainers, have beenshot dead by Afghan person-nel in 10 separate attacks.The fatalities represent morethan one in six of ISAF’s 96fatalities.

The International Secu-rity Assistance Force (ISAF),

which is training Afghans totake over responsibility for se-curity for the whole countryby the end of 2014, said thedeaths had sapped spiritsamong its troops.

“Although the incidentsare small in number we areaware of the gravity theyhave as an effect on morale,”ISAF spokesman BrigadierGeneral Carsten Jacobsonsaid in Kabul.

“Every single incidenthas an out-of-proportion ef-fect on morale and that goesfor coalition forces as it goesfor Afghan national securityforces.”

Recruits to the Afghanforces undergo an eight-step

vetting process carried out byAfghan authorities, includingidentification verification, rec-ommendations and criminalbackground checks.

But Jacobson said investi-gations into the shootings hadfound lapses.

“What we have found inindividual cases is that therewas a mistake done here, orthere, or there,” he told re-porters.

“The identity papersweren’t checked properly, thepapers that were coming fromvillage elders were not suffi-cient, drug tests were nottaken regularly or sufficientlyor something like that.

“Wherever we see that we

take that as measures to betaken and improved.”

Asked if some of the inci-dents could have been pre-vented, he responded:“Afterwards you always knowthat you shouldn’t have hadthat car accident.”

ISAF has around 130,000soldiers fighting alongside350,000 Afghan security per-sonnel in a bid to help Presi-dent Hamid Karzai’sgovernment reverse a Tal-iban-led insurgency.

Among the measuresbeing taken, Afghanistan’sintelligence services are hid-ing agents among new re-cruits at the country’s armyand police training schools

to try to spot potential gun-men, NATO said.

ISAF has also taken sev-eral security measures in re-sponse to the shootings,including assigning “guardianangels”, soldiers who watchover their comrades as theysleep. The concept “makessure that soldiers are not with-out protection at any stage”,said Jacobson.

He dismissed repeatedclaims by the Taliban thatthey were behind the attacks.

“The insurgency is claim-ing nearly every single inci-dent for itself. Our findingsare that in the vast majority...personal grievances are one ofthe major causes.”

Insurgent involvementhad been proved in only a fewcases, he said.

Instead, there were a“number of other causes in-cluding stress syndromes onsoldiers who are living in acountry that has been 30 yearsat war”.

An Afghan policeman poi-soned and shot dead nine ofhis colleagues in the easternprovince of Paktika last week.

As a matter of leadershipAfghan commanders need tokeep a close eye on their sol-diers to try to spot potentialproblems before they happen,Jacobson added.

“A soldier that has seenconsiderable battle stress has

to be observed and a soldierwho hasn’t been on leave for along time has to be looked atwhether it is time to give thema break,” he said.

“Somebody who hasbeen on leave with his familyin a refugee camp in Pakistanhas to be looked at when hecomes back, soldiers whohave problems at home, fi-nancial problems.”

A spokesman for theAfghan defence ministry de-clined to comment.

The relationship betweenAfghan and NATO forces isvital but tensions have alsomounted this year due to a se-ries of incidents at the handsof uS troops.

Pakistan paying

ENERGY: Talking to thechairman and chief execu-tive officer of Suntech PowerHolding, Shi Zhengrong,later, Prime Minister Gilanisaid Pakistan could benefitfrom Chinese technologicalbreakthroughs in solar en-ergy to help it meet its grow-ing energy needs. He invitedthe CEO of Suntech to visitPakistan to personally ob-serve the potential of solarenergy and the needs of theindustrial and domesticusers. Gilani also met EXIMBank of China President LiRuogu, seeking financing forthe construction of smalland medium dams to helpthe country to meet its agri-culture needs.

Continued fRom page 1

security failures in Afghan shootings: nATo

KUNDUZAFP

Twin bomb blasts tore througha market in northernAfghanistan’s Baghlanprovince on Monday woundingtwo dozen people, just over halfof them school children, offi-cials said.“Overall we have 24admitted to the hospital, 17civilians, 13 of them are schoolstudents,” said Abdul QaharQanit, a doctor in the local hos-pital. He said seven securitypersonnel, including two sen-ior district police officials, werealso among the casualties.

The explosions occurredone after another, with the sec-ond coming after securityforces arrived to investigate the

first blast, local administrationchief Amir Gul told AFP. “Therewas a blast in Sher Market inBaghlan-i-Markazi. The firstblast occurred and woundedsome civilians, the second onefollowed shortly after the firstone,” he said.

He earlier told AFP that 18people, five of them membersof the Afghan security forces,had been injured, adding thatthe explosions were from im-provised explosive devicesrather than suicide bombers.

There was no immediateclaim of responsibility, but theblasts were similar to attackscarried out by the Taliban aspart of their insurgency againstPresident Hamid Karzai’s gov-ernment and his Western allies.

Afghan market bombs injure

24, mostly children

transporters protest against abduction of truck drivers

QUETTA: Protesting thekidnapping of drivers,transporters blocked theNational Highway near Sibion Monday, causing greatinconvenience for the mo-torists. A group of armedmen had kidnapped fourdrivers, including Mustafa,Qadir, Gul Hassan andKhair Muhammad, fromalong the Quetta-JacobabadHighway in Bolan area ofBalochistan late on Sunday.However, Khair Muham-mad managed to escapefrom the captivity of kid-nappers, but the where-abouts of the rest areunknown. “There were ninekidnappers, armed with lat-est weapons who took awaythe drivers leaving behindthe trucks,” truck cleanerstold reporters. The trans-porters on Monday blockedthe highway by putting bar-ricades and raised slogansagainst law enforcementagencies as well as theprovincial government fortheir failure to curb inci-dents of kidnappings alongthe highways. STAFF REPORT

QUETTASTAFF REPORT

A bullet-riddled body wasfound and two people werekilled in various incidentsacross Balochistan on Mon-day.

According to details, theMastung local administra-tion recovered a dead bodyand moved it to a nearby

hospital where the victimwas identified as Riaz Shah-wani.

The victim had been shotdead and his body boremarks of torture.

His family said Riaz hadgone missing about threemonths ago.

Meanwhile, unidentifiedmen stabbed a man, identi-fied as Walid, at Golimar

Chowk.As a result, he sustained

serious wounds and wasbeing shifted to a hospitalwhen he died.

In another incident,unidentified armed menstormed into a house in Kha-ran town and opened indis-criminate fire on inmates,killing Muhammad Ismailon the spot.

2 killed, body recovered in Balochistan

HAGUEAPP

Pakistan Ladies Associationin the Netherlands (PLAIN)hosted “An evening withSharmeen Obaid-Chinoy” atPakistan House.

Patron of PLAIN, NajiaAizaz Ahmad, welcomedChinoy, and applauded herfor her singular achieve-ments. A large number of

Pakistani-Dutch ladies, es-pecially those who had dis-tinguished themselves insome public activity, at-tended. Pakistani Ambas-sador to the NetherlandsAizaz Ahmad Chaudhryand Director of the PrinceClaus Fund ChristinaMeindersma, who washosting Chinoy in theNetherlands, were alsopresent.

Pakistanis honour Oscar winner in Netherlands

g Shortfall has crossed 6,000Mw but PePCo insists it stands at only 3,800Mw

News

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05tuesday, 3 April, 2012

News

PESHAWARnni

FORMER Jamaat-e-Islamichief Qazi Hussain Ahmadhas rejected the notionthat the Taliban govern-ment in Afghanistan was

an Islamic one.“The Taliban regime cannot be

termed a model Islamic government, aslittle of what they did was Islamic,” QaziHussain Ahmad said.

The Taliban, he said, should seek

guidance from religious scholars. “Theyare students and need guidance fromscholars,” he told a news conference inPeshawar.

He, however, praised the Taliban’sefforts to force the uS to pull out ofAfghanistan.

Qazi said the Taliban were a force tobe reckoned with and a reality in geo-politics.

“until Afghan Taliban leader MullahMuhammad Omar is included, peacetalks between uS and the militant groupwill not be credible.”

He was sceptical of the uS with-drawal from Afghanistan, saying itwould be leaving at a time when the sit-uation in the region was still unclear.

“It is not clear what will happen ifthe uS troops leave Afghanistan,” hesaid, adding, “The Taliban want theirown government, while the Hizb-e-Is-lami and other Afghan parties want anelected government.”

He said Afghanistan’s neigh-bours, including Pakistan, Iran andTurkey, should arrange a dialogue inthe war-torn country before the uS

departs to save the region from fur-ther anarchy.

Qazi also lauded the Arab Springand the consequent victory of Islamistsin Egypt and Tunisia and also the Turk-ish resurgence. However, he regrettedthat while the Islamic world was makinggiant strides towards progress, Pakistanwas going the other way.

He also stressed on the early com-pletion of the Iran-Pakistan-India gaspipeline project to overcome the energyshortage in the country.

ISLAMABAD TAHiR niAZ

Parliamentary special commit-tees formed to tackle issuessuch as law and order, petro-leum prices and energy crisishave failed miserably in resolv-ing them as law and order, par-ticularly in Karachi is not undercontrol, petroleum prices havejumped to a record high andpeople are on the roads againstload shedding.

In some cases, the specialcommittees of parliament didnot even meet for months, letalone discuss the issues and re-solve them.

National Assembly SpeakerFehmida Mirza on August 28,2011 formed a Special Commit-tee on Law and Order situationin Karachi (Sindh) and Quetta(Balochistan).

The speaker had formedthe special committee in pur-suance of the motion moved inthe National Assembly andunanimously adopted by theHouse on August 12, 2011. Thespecial committee was man-dated to look into the law andorder in Karachi and Quettaand report to the House withrecommendations within twomonths. However, except forsome initial meetings, the com-mittee never met and the issuegot worst.

The speaker formed a Spe-cial Committee to Review thePresent Prices of PetroleumProducts on February 15 to re-view the then prices of petro-leum products.

The committee was man-dated to review the prices ofpetroleum products withinone week. It was after the op-

position raised hue and cryover the increase in petroleumprices that the governmentannounced to form the com-mittee but no recommenda-tions came after the passageof more than one month. Therecent increase in the petro-leum prices have put theprices to a record high leavingthe general public and trans-porters to protests.

A special 17-member NApanel was formed in Octoberlast year to suggest steps toovercome power crisis after theopposition parties went onweeklong protest in the Na-tional Assembly on prolongedpower outages and called forsetting up of a special commit-tee of the National Assembly tolook into the causes of energycrisis and suggest measures toovercome it.

The government acceptedthe proposal and the Houseadopted a motion to form aspecial committee for the pur-pose. The committee was sup-posed to submit its reportbefore the next session of theNational Assembly startingfrom November 14 but noprogress in this regard hasbeen witnessed so far.

The NA speaker has so farformed around 11 special com-mittees of the House on differ-ent subjects, these includeSpecial Committee on Delay inAll Flights including HajFlights and Grounding of theAircrafts of Pakistan Interna-tional Airlines, Special Com-mittee on Law and Order inKarachi (Sindh) and Quetta(Balochistan), Special Commit-tee on Millennium Develop-ment Goals, Special Committee

on Petroleum Prices, SpecialCommittee to Investigate theIssue of Threatening MessagesBeing Received by the Journal-ists and Media Personnel, Spe-cial Committee to Look into theMatter of Delay in ConstructionWork on Gandhi Dera IsmailKhan Road, Special Committeeto Look into the Reasons Lead-ing to the Current Power Crisisin the Country and ProposeSteps to Alleviate the PowerShortage and Special Commit-tee To Oversee the Implemen-tation of Resolutions of AllParties Conference.

Out of these committeeshardly a few completed the taskassigned to them and the re-maining did not met sincemonths leaving the questionmark on the credibility of theparliament and the govern-ment itself.

Parliamentary special committeesfail to resolve public issues

Qazi says Afghan Talibangovt was not Islamic

likeminded jump

bandwagon of parties

opposing NAto

reopening allianceISLAMABAD

STAFF REPORT

The Steering Committee of the PakistanMuslim League likeminded on Mondaydecided, in principle, not to endorse anymove to reopen NATO supply routes andrather urged the political leadership ofthe country to respect the public aspira-tions over the issue.PML Steering Committee, the highest de-cision-making body of the likemindedgroup, was chaired by former ministerSalim Saifullah Khan and was attended byHamid Nasir Chattha, Humayon AkhtarKhan, Humayon Saifullah Khan, Kash-mala Tariq, Arbab Zakaullah, KishanChand Parwani, Ghulam Haider Samejo,Maj (r) Ghulam Abbas and other seniorleaders of the party.PML President Arbab Ghulam Rahim alsoattended the meeting through video linkfrom Dubai where he is living in self-exile. Current political situation, eco-nomic, election alliance with PML-N andother issues came under discussion.It was decided that the PML likemindedwould strongly oppose the move in parlia-ment regarding reopening of supplyroutes to NATO force stationed inAfghanistan. Salim Saifullah briefed themembers that there was no impasse in theparty’s dialogue for a seat-adjustmentwith the major opposition party – thePML-N - and said that since the generalelections were far away, it would be pre-mature to finalise any such deal withPML-N.He said the PML likeminded and thePML-N election alliance matters weremoving in positive direction. He said analliance with any other political partycould not be ruled out either.Calling for an alliance of all PML factionsprior to the general elections, Saifullahsaid the alliance of PML different sectionswas the need of the hour to pull out Pak-istan from existing crisis.

Boy sets himself

alight over school

uniformPESHAWAR

AFP

A 13-year-old Pakistani scholarship boyhas died after setting fire to himself be-cause his mother was too poor to buyhim a new school uniform, his familysaid Monday.Kamran Khan, who was top of his classfour years running in the northwest-ern town of Shabqadar, doused him-self in kerosene on March 24 after anargument with his mother over a newuniform.He suffered more than 50 percent burnsand died five days later, having beenmoved to a military hospital for specialisttreatment. His family had begged vil-lagers for the money needed to pay thehospital, his brother told AFP.The case highlights the desperate povertysuffered by millions of people in Pakistan,where record price hikes are squeezing allbut the very wealthiest minority.Khan was desperate to get a new shalwarkhamis and do away with his tatty oldwhite tunic and trousers, his brother said.“My brother became the victim ofpoverty. He asked our mother to get him a newuniform but she told him to wait, he gotemotional and set fire to himself,” the 16-year-old brother Saleem told AFP.Their father went to Saudi Arabia threemonths ago looking for a job but had sofar been unable to find work and hasnot sent any money home.Zakir Hussein, head teacher at the pri-vate English-language Mohmand Edu-cational Academy, 140 kilometres (90miles) from the capital Islamabad, de-scribed Khan as a “brilliant” all-roundscholarship student.“We thought he will earn a major distinc-tion for the school one day. That is whyhe was being given free classes andbooks,” said Hussein.

iSLAMABAD: A Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) worker holds a placard outside islamabad Press club and warns of self-immolation if not provided ‘roti, kapra, makaan’ (bread, clothing

and shelter). inP

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06tuesday, 3 April, 2012

News

LAHORESTAFF REPORT

PML-Q President SenatorChaudhry Shujaat Hussainon Monday presented a sim-ple formula to end loadshedding in the country.

unfolding the formula while talking tojournalists at his Gulberg residence,Shujaat said that the installed powergeneration capacity in the country was23,000MWs against which15,000MWs were being produceddaily, adding that the remainingpower plants were either closed orproducing less electricity against theirinstalled capacity for want to re-sources to meet oil and other require-ments for power plants.

The PML-Q president said thatunder the NFC Award, provinces wereto get another total amount of Rs 50

billion during the remaining threemonths of the present financial year.He said if the federation deducts thisamount for the remaining threemonths and allocate the same amountto power plants then there was no rea-son why load shedding was not fullyeliminated in cities and its durationalso reduced in rural areas consider-ably. Shujaat said if provincial govern-ments cooperate with the federationthen this problem can easily be solvedin this manner.

The senator said that success ofthis simple formula depends on thelarge heartedness and positive think-ing of all chief ministers.

He said as a result of this, millswould start working again, unemploy-ment would be reduced to a great ex-tent, protesting workers would restartworking on their machines and na-tional economy would start getting

better and growing. The PML-Q presi-dent said that a full-fledged campaignshould be launched against incidentsof power thefts and it should be en-forced forcefully so that honest elec-tricity consumers were notunnecessarily over-burdened and theirbills reduced, adding that this wouldbe a step in the right direction and goa long way in improving the nationaleconomy.

He said that the PML-N’s protestwas wrong and unjustified, addingthat the PML-Q was the well-wisher ofthe people and ally of the governmentdue to which it was giving a formula toend outages.

Earlier, MNA Omar SibghatuillahRashdi, son of Pir Pagara SibghatullahRashdi along with Makhdoom AliAkbar called on Shujaat and SeniorFederal Minister Chaudhry PervaizElahi at their residence.

Ending load shedding,the ‘mitti pao’ way!

RAWALPinDi: The first batch of the newly introduced Special Response Force (SRF) presents its passing out parade at the Strategic Plans Division (SPD) Training

Academy on Monday. inP

NEW DELHIinP

India will soon send toPakistan all documentsrelated to 26/11 terror at-tacks case that were au-thenticated by four keywitnesses during the visitof a Pakistani JudicialCommission last month.

The nearly 700-pagebulky file contain docu-ments like the confes-sional statement of thelone surviving perpetra-tor Ajmal Kasab, postmortem reports of slainterrorists and 26/11 vic-tims prepared by twodoctors and the casediary of Mumbai attackcase. The documentswere authenticated byMagistrate RV SawantWaghule, who had takendown the confession ofKasab, Senior Inspector

Ramesh Mahale, who hadinvestigated the terror at-tacks case and by the twodoctors, official sourcessaid.

The documents, sentto the Home Ministry byMumbai Chief Metropoli-tan Magistrate SS Shinde,who executed the com-mission’s visit to the me-tropolis, will be sent toPakistan through diplo-matic channel in the nextfew days, they said. Thedocuments are expectedto help the Rawalpindicourt which is hearing the26/11 case in Pakistan.

During the five-dayvisit of the 8-member Ju-dicial Commission fromPakistan beginningMarch 15, Waghule toldthe panel that Kasab hadgiven the confession vol-untarily and told her thathe and nine others had

been sent by Lashkar-e-Taiba to unleash terror inMumbai. Police InspectorMahale, who had investi-gated the terror attackscase, told the commissionthat the role of Pakistanhad surfaced during theinvestigations.

He also contendedthat oral, technical andmaterial evidence linkedthe case to Pakistan, ac-cording to sources closeto the proceedings. Thecommission visited Indiato record the statementson behalf of a Pakistanianti-terror court which iscurrently hearing the26/11 attack case againstLeT commander ZakiurRehman Lakhvi and sixothers. The statements ofthe Indian witnesseswould be used as evi-dence during the trial inPakistan.

LARKANASTAFF REPORT

The Sindh government on Mondaydeclared a public holiday in theprovince on April 4 in connectionwith the 33rd death anniversary offormer PM and PPP founder ZulfikarAli Bhutto.

Around 6,000 policemen and1,000 rangers, women police, trafficpolice along with bomb disposalsquad and commandos reachedLarkana, Naudero and Garhi KhudaBux Bhutto. Hundreds of thousandsof followers of Bhutto, including PPPworkers and leaders, were alsoreaching Larkana, Naudero andGarhi Khuda Bux Bhutto to attendthe anniversary ceremonies to paytribute to Bhutto. President Asif AliZardari accompanied by PPP Chair-man Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and thePM were expected to reach the venuetoday (Tuesday) and will attend apublic gathering at President CampHouse Naudero, where the PPP’sCEC meeting will be held.

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim

Ali Shah reached Garhi Khuda BuxBhutto visited the mausoleum, of-fered fateha and oversaw arrange-ments of the anniversary. Amushaira will also be held at themausoleum and a documentary, de-picting the life and achievements ofBhutto will also be shown. Severalreception camps have also been es-tablished at Larkana and differentroots, corners towards Garhi KhudaBux Bhutto and Naudero to accom-modate leaders and workers from allprovinces.

woman arrested for

throwing acid on

daughter-in-lawSWAT

STAFF REPORT

Police on Monday arrested a woman ac-cused of throwing acid on her daughter-in-law in the Mangar Kot area of MalamJabba. The police also took her daughterunder custody for being an accomplice inthe heinous act. According to details, apolice team led by Station House Officer(SHO) Iqbal Khan arrested Taj Bibi w/oTaza Khan and her daughter, Robina,after the victim Tahira w/o Saba Khanregistered a case against her mother-in-law and sister-in-law. Police said a do-mestic dispute triggered the incident. Police said they had registered a first in-formation report and was investigatingthe matter.

53 people fall

unconscious after

eating poisonous foodSIALKOT

inP

Around 53 people, including twoteachers, fell unconscious after eatingpoisonous food in a seminary on Mon-day.According to reports, the incident tookplace at Shahabpura Road when stu-dents and two teachers of the seminaryate food, which was left spared in a wed-ding. All the people who fell sick hailedfrom Multan. After eating the food, allstudents of the seminary and two teach-ers fell unconscious. All the affectedchildren and two teachers were admittedto hospitals.According to hospital sources, blood sam-ples of the affected people were for-warded to Chief Chemical Examination.Police started an inquiry into the case.

india to send 26/11 file authenticated by 4 witnesses

APotoA threatens

to block oil suppliesPESHAWAR

STAFF REPORT

All Pakistan Oil Tankers Owners Associa-tion (APOTOA) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa onMonday threatened to block oil supply toprovince and Bacha Khan Airport if theirdemand of increase in oil tankers fareswas not met within 48 hours.Holding a press conference at the Pe-shawar Press Club, APOTOA PresidentNasir Ali Khan said that wheel-jam strikewould be held for a indefinite period, asrepeated fuel price hikes had compelledtankers’ owners to demand an increase infares. Nasir said that drivers were also de-manding an increase in their stipends butowners could not fulfil this demand untiltanker fares were raised. He said thatthey were demanding the increase sincelast month.

Public holiday in Sindh on ZAB’s33rd death anniversary

CNG outlets in Swat

charge revised rates

ahead of effective date

SWATSTAFF REPORT

CNG pumps in Swat began looting thepeople before the notification of the re-vised gas prices was officially announced.They had started charging the consumersthe revised yet un-notified prices. Thegovernment announced RS 11.58 increasein per kilo CNG.Many angry consumers were reported tohave exchanged heated words with thestaff at various CNG pumps. “The govern-ment should formulate a monitoring lawwhich should be strictly implemented inorder to prevent such illegal price hikes,”said an upset motorist.Considering the increase in CNG price asa financial death, the general public re-jected the revised gas prices. They ap-pealed to the government to revoke theincrease.

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tuesday, 3 April, 2012

iSLAMABAD: PTi activists demonstrate against increase in the prices of petrol, gas and electricity in Sector F-6. online

US, KP celebrate successes inMalakand division

ISLAMABADSTAFF REPORT

The uS and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa govern-ment on Monday celebrated their successes inreviving the conflict and flood-affectedMalakand division of the province. Over thepast few years, the uS government has pro-vided more than $450 million for humanitar-ian assistance to those affected by conflict andnatural disaster through a variety of projectsproviding food, water, shelter and other basicnecessities, said a press release issued here bythe uS embassy. The uS government also provided cash pay-ments to needy families, created tentschools for the children of internally dis-placed families and funded one-year univer-sity education for more than 7,000students. More than 14,000 affected fami-lies received funds to reconstruct theirhomes. The uS government also providedextensive support to help revive theMalakand division’s economy, including re-construction of 261 hotels and fisheries,schools, health clinics, water supply sys-tems, and government buildings. The united States also provided support forreviving the region’s tourism industry, oneof its key industries. Additionally, morethan 100,000 farmers and micro-entrepre-neurs received seeds, livestock, tools, train-ing and other assistance. “The uS government is committed to work-ing with the government and the people ofKhyber Pakhtunkhwa to help the region re-cover,” said Andrew Sisson, director, uSAgency for International Development(uSAID) Mission to Pakistan. Representa-tives from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa gov-ernment, community representatives,media, and beneficiaries of the uS-sup-ported activities also joined the celebrationin Islamabad. The celebration, which tookplace at the Serena Hotel, included stallswhere partners and beneficiaries displayedthe positive impact of various projects.

ISLAMABADSALMAn ABBAS

THE Transparency Inter-national Pakistan (TIP)has raised concernsabout the No ObjectionCertificate issued by the

National Accountability Bureau(NAB) to the Capital DevelopmentAuthority (CDA) for initiating a Rs6.5 billion project.

The TIP says that for the contro-versial Light Emitting Diode (LED)project, Rs 5 billion of the project’stotal cost will be paid by publicmoney.

Referring to the media reportsabout the NOC granted to the CDA,the TIP has written a letter to thecivic body in which it said that theproject should cost only Rs 1.35 bil-lion. The extra Rs 5 billion needs tobe saved, by implementing the PPRAOrdinance 2002, and Public Pro-curement Rules 2004, that stateother than the Public ProcurementRegulatory Authority; no organisa-tion has the mandate to give the CDAan NOC or regulate the applicationof law relating to the public procure-ment of goods and services. Accord-ing to the letter, copy of which isavailable with Pakistan Today, theproject award process has faced

many allegations.The irregularities reported by

the media need to be addressed bythe CDA, Planning Commission,Asian Development Bank, ECNECand ECC.

The letter pointed out that theCDA had stated in its 9 Januaryletter to the TIP, the NAB chair-man, PAC chairman, PPRA MD,AGP and the Supreme Court ofPakistan, that the project is fundedprincipally by the Asian Develop-ment Bank which includes softterms for repayment.

This includes a carefully restruc-tured repayment plan allowing theCDA to repay the loan from the sav-ings resulting from the lower energyconsumption.

However, the Asian Develop-ment Bank officially informed theCDA and the Ministry of Water andPower on January 4, 2012, that thebank would not fund the project.

The letter added that the AsianDevelopment Bank had refused to fi-nance the project as the CDA had notcompleted the bidding in line withthe standard bidding process de-fined by the ADB.

It also stated that the PlanningCommission has not approved thePC-I, without which the CDA cannotinvite tenders.

“Planning Commission DeputyChairman Dr Nadeem-ul-Haq con-firmed to the TIP that the project’sPCI-I was not approved, as the costestimated by the CDA was muchhigher than the market prices,” theletter added.

The letter stated that the marketprices for LED lights are Rs 20,000to 22,000 if procured in bulk whichshould project the total cost of pur-chasing 65, 000 at Rs1.36 billion,which is stated to be cost of energyborne by the CDA.

The CDA can replace the lightsitself as it has a large maintenancestaff and either auction the 65,000lights, or gift them to other cities.

The letter said the CDA is re-quired to have at least 25 percent ofthe total project cost as a require-ment for initiating the project. How-ever, the CDA does not have the Rs1.6 billion required.

The Planning Commission hassuggested to that a Cash Develop-ment Loan be taken from the federalgovernment.

However, that is a post tendercondition and is not allowed underthe PPRA Ordinance.

The letter added that if the pro-curement is declared as mis-pro-curement, the parties involved maybe heavily fined.

g tIP says actual cost is rs 1.35 billion

CDA to spend Rs 5b of taxpayers’ money on controversial LED project

CdA plans to

upgrade recreational

facilities for youthISLAMABAD: The Capital DevelopmentAuthority (CDA) is taking steps to upgraderecreational facilities in the federal capitalto provide the opportunities for healthy ac-tivities to the people. An official of CDA told APP that the au-thority is considering different options torevamp the sport facilities and upgrade thesports grounds with the assistance of theprivate and corporate sector, equippingthese with latest facilities.The authority is preparing a comprehen-sive plan for up-gradation of the sportscentre in line with international standard.“Islamabad is one of the beautiful cities inthe world and all out efforts would be madefor providing international standard sportsfacilities. Youth is the real asset of a societyand sports activities would keep them awayfrom all kinds of negative activities andwould lead to a healthy society,” the officialsaid. The sports facilities consisting footballground, basket ball court, badminton courtwith a walking track in various sectorswould be developed shortly. The officialsaid that the ongoing development work ofthe Lake View Park phase-II would be com-pleted on priority and work on water sportfacility and allied entertainment or recre-ational facilities are underway. Parks addvalue and pride to a city and play a majorrole in improving the quality of life of resi-dents and the Authority would ensuretimely completion of development work asper international standards with assuranceof all precautionary safety and environ-ment-friendly measures.

fde announces admission schedule

ISLAMABADAPP

Federal Directorate of Education (FDE)has announced the admission schedule ofclass-prep and I for session 2012-13 at allthe Islamabad Model Colleges and Schools.The directorate will issue the registrationforms for Class Prep from April 11-20 andreceive from April 12-23 while the writtentests will be conducted on April 26. Themerit lists will be placed on May 2 and theclasses would start from May 7.About the eligibility, the directorate saidthe parents of children must be the resi-dents of Islamabad while those living inRawalpindi but serving in govt/semi gov-ernment organizations in Islamabad arealso eligible to apply the admission. Ac-cording to FDE, the age limit must be atleast four years but not more than five years(4 to 5 years) as on 31.03.2012 according to`B’ form issued by NADRA and the admis-sion forms must have attested copies of rel-evant certificates or documents.The admission forms can be obtained fromIslamabad Model Colleges for Boys (IMCB)in the sectors G-6/3, F-8/4, G-10/4, F-10/3,F-11/3, G-11/1 and Islamabad Model Col-leges for Girls in the sectors including F-6/2,F-7/2, F-10/2, F-8/1, G-10/2, I-8/4 and alsofrom Islamabad College for Girls (ICG) F-6/2. Evening shift is not available in all themodel colleges except ICB G-6/3 and IMCBF-8/4. The registration forms for class-1were available at the selected colleges tilltoday and can be submitted till April 4.The tests would be conducted on April 10and merit list will be placed on April 18while the classes would start from April 23.The admission forms can be obtained fromIslamabad Model Colleges for Boys in thesectors including F-8/4, F-7/3, G-10/4, F-10/3, I-10/1, I-8/3, F-11/3, F-11/1, G-11/1and Islamabad College for Boys in G-6/3and Islamabad Model Colleges for Girls inthe sectors including F-6/2, G-7/4, F-10/2,F-8/1, G-10/2, I-8/4, I-10/4, Korang Townand Islamabad College for Girls (ICG) F-6/2. Evening shift is available in all modelcolleges except IMCB, F-11/3 and IMCB,G-11/1. Principal Islamabad College forBoys G-6/3, Professor Anwar Ali Khan isthe convener of admissions.

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HIlAl-e-AHMer 9250488

edHI foUNdAtIoN 2827844

BoMB dISPoSAl 9270698

fIre BrIGAde CeNtre 16

CIVIl defeNCe 9262830

eMerGeNCy HelP

HoSPItAlS

Blood BANK

PIMS Blood BANK 9261272

Poly ClINIC Blood BANK 9209123

CoMPlAINt

wAPdA 111-000-118

SUI GAS 1199

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reSerVAtIoN 9273614

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PIA reSerVAtIoN 111-786-786

ColleGeS / UNIVerSItIeS

INterNAtIoNAl ISlAMIC UNIVerSIty 9260765

BAHrIA UNIVerSIty 9260002

NUMl 9257677

qUAId-e-AZAM UNIVerSIty 90642098

ArId AGrICUltUre UNIVerSIty 9290151

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rIPHA INterNAtIoNAl UNIVerSIty 111510510

NCA rAwAlPINdI 5770423

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mOnster truck In IslmabaD

Monster truck in Islamabad.

DrummIng cIrcle

dAte ANd tIMe: 05:00 PM, weeKly eVeNtVeNUe: tHe CeNtre for ArtS & CUltUre

our drumming circle is a (free!) ongoing eventand is held every friday from 5 to 6 p.m.we are having a great time, and want to sharethe good time with you! our drumming circle haschildren ...

CloUdy

weAtHer UPdAteS

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dAte: MAr 20 - APr 21, 2012 VeNUe: f-9 PArK, ISlAMABAd

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Instrumental ecstasy cOncert V

featuring instrument: Shehnai and Naqqāra. In the Indiansubcontinent one of the most famous instruments whosepresence is particularly essential on any auspiciousoccasion is the Shehnai. the sound of the Shehnai isthought to create and maintain a sense of auspiciousnessand sanctity and, as a result, it is widely used duringtraditional marriages, processions, and religious ceremonies.

dAte ANd tIMe: APr 06, 2012, 6:30 PMVeNUe: KUCH KHAAS (ISlAMABAd)

iSLAMABAD: Air University Vice chancellor Air cdre (r) ijaz Ahmed Malik, (Sitara-e-imtiaz Military), addresses the inaugural ceremony of students’ week. online

Children Book day observed

ISLAMABADAPP

The International Children Book Day(ICBD) is being observed today in the com-memoration of birthday of famous childrenwriter Hans Christian Andersen and thischain was started in 1925.Hans Christian Andersen was born in Den-mark in 1805 and died in 1875. He was anauthor and poet who was best known forhis fairy tales, loved by children all aroundthe world.Among his best-known stories are TheSnow Queen, The Little Mermaid, Thum-belina, and The ugly Duckling. His fairytales have been translated into over 150languages, whose millions of copies arestill sold every year, which has become apart of the reading culture of most of thecountries.Gul Afshan, Manager for Rawalpindi Sec-tion, Ferozsons, while talking to the APPsaid that organisation had been publishingbooks for children for several years.It is pertinent to add that the sale of suchbooks is increasing day by day. She furthertold that supplementary reading books forchildren were mostly published in urdu asit is still the language of majority of thepopulation, however the books in Englishalso have major contribution in developingreading habits in children.It is bit disappointing that parents are notheeding on this issue much, and their focusis only on childrens homework, adding thatthe West has much better ratio of publish-ing of storybooks for children, he added.On the contrary note, the marketing man-ager of Liberty Books Imran told the pub-lishing ratio of story books for children wasmuch higher in English than urdu, as weare not receiving healthy response for urdustory books.He further elaborated that Liberty Bookswas publishing such books for 15 years andmost of their authors are from the West.

ISLAMABADAPP

THE advancement in science and tech-nology has provided such facilitiesand comfort which the people hadnever experienced earlier, as peoplecan now talk with their relatives and

friends without paying much. One can witnessmushroom growth of the social activities like facebook, twitter, flicker and many others but an in-novative service which has gripped the populationespecially the youth, is the mobile phone ShortMessage Service (SMS) obsession.

The use of this innovative service is increasingday by day and goes unchecked as our young gen-eration is being destroyed from within and theirmoral, social, educational, financial and the mostimportant the worthiness of time is also wastedin remaining idle while only chatting with othersvia free SMS package.

Muhammad Rahim Khan, a father of fourchildren told APP here on Monday that our youthhas provided with the thousands of SMS to besent daily on cheap rates so they are seen busy allthe time while talking with friends unnecessarily.

“No one is bothered to keep a check on them.Parents are worried about its growing trendwhich engulfing more youth towards it,” he said.As per estimates, billions of SMS are being sharedbetween users of all mobile phone companies inthe country every year. Cell phone companies arefacilitating the users as they have provided themwith the cheap SMS service and every one canbenefit from the opportunity.

“Now there are more than 10 million users ofmobile phone in Pakistan and it has now also be-come a vast and better mass media outlet becauseTelevision users are 8 billion, lesser than the for-mer,” said a mobile phone user, Ahmad Kamal.

Sharing the worries and grievances of this so-cial problem, another parent, Nazeer Ahmad said

propaganda has now taken grip as well. Every dayfunny and strange message are mushroomingfrom one cell phone to millions of others.

He said residents in developed people havegot even better services of cell phone, messagingand communication system and they have longbeen using it relevantly and for their needs and asfacility. They utilize for special purpose like busi-ness and many other important works. But if weobserve the same situation in Pakistan, peoplehave taken it as a big blessing for fun, uselessthings and spend host of their precious time whileusing it. They do not care for time which is of ut-most importance in this modern age.

In some countries a ban has been placed onsending more than 100 SMS per day which is avery good move for their youth because they sayin this way their youth will be a bit save from themiseries of wasting time. But here in our country youngster are having themania of SMS and they get daily as much messagepackage as they can from mobile phone compa-nies but no such type of thing can be seen. Youthare our asset and need here is that the policy mak-ers should pay immediate attention to this grow-ing bad habit. There must be a mechanism ofusing SMS and its usage without any purposeshould be controlled.RAWAL ToWN ACTS AGAINST ENCRoACHMENTS: The Rawal Town Munic-ipal Administration Rawalpindi on Monday con-ducted operation against encroachments indifferent parts of city and confiscated goods withload of two trucks.

During raids, 15 shopkeepers were also finedRs 1500 each on the spot. According to RawalTMA, mobile squad raided different areas includ-ing Liaqat Road, Iqbal Road, College Road,BaraBazaar, Commercial Market, Sadiqabad and Mus-lim Town. It stated that duties of inspectors werebeing rotated on daily basis to make the drivesuccessful.

Text messaging corrupting youth

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Islamabad

RAWALPinDi: Students pose for a group photo during the annual ceremony of government Degree girls college, Zafarul Haq Road. online

ISLAMABADAPP

Residents of twin cities of Islamabad andRawalpindi have to face troubling situa-tion when they find beggars chasing themin the markets, hospitals and where notas the professional begging has increasedto the alarming proportion.

The residents expressed fear that, ifaction to tackle the menace is not takenseriously, it will attain alarming propor-tions over a period of time. The beggarsbecome a common sight on the mainroads, parking lots and shopping centresthey said. People urging the civic admin-istration, demanded that the concernedauthorities should take strict actionagainst the responsible persons.

While on the one hand the number ofchild beggars pestering the people espe-cially the shoppers in different marketsincluding Melody market, Karachi Com-pany, Aabpara market, Commercial mar-ket, Saddar and Raja Bazaar.

Atif Aslam a resident of G-7/1 pointedout that beggars remain present at all thetraffic signals of all main roads includingMurree Road, IJ Principal Road, 9th Av-enue etc from morning to late night.

He said men and women as well asboys and girls whose ages are ranging be-tween eight to 60 years are involved inthis practice.

A shopper Hussain Ali claimed thatMelody market is occupied by these beg-gars and they ask for money from shop-pers and shop-keepers.

There is no doubt that a number ofdrives by the district government havebeen underway but begging still remainsunabated in commercial, residentialareas, hospitals, bus stands and at differ-ent traffic signals of the city. An official ofpolice said that beggars especially thechildren have been persuaded not to beg.

He said that stern action will also betaken against those professional whoare involved in sending these beggarsinto the cities.

Begging activities rise to alarming proportion

ISLAMABADSTAFF REPORT

WHERE billions of ru-pees are being spenton post-distressmanagement, ifsome portion is

spent on psychological counseling, theresults will be different.

Pakistan Psychology Association(PPA) President and Standing Com-mittee of National Assembly onHuman Rights Chairman Riaz Fatyanastated this at the concluding ceremonyof the two days international confer-ence on mental health at the Qaid-e-Azam Auditorium of InternationalIslamic university, says a press releaseissued here on Monday by IIuI.

Fatyana was the chief guest at theconcluding ceremony whereas facultymembers and large number of studentswere present during the conference.He said that frustration is quite high inour society which de-motivates peopletowards our national interests. On theprevailing terrorism in the country,

Fatyana considered it as causes of thepsychological trauma and violence inthe society and lauded that effectivemeasurement be made to restrict it.

He urged the need of psychologyand addiction trauma centre at the In-ternational Islamic university Islam-abad. Fatyana invited the students tobecome member of PPPA and conductresearch on psychological issues of thepeople.

Dr Nabi Bux Jumani, Dean Fac-ulty of Social Sciences, IIu, proposedthat the government should appoint atleast one psychiatric at each district ofthe country to help the psyche pa-tients. He said psychosocial issuesbadly affect mental health, daily life,relationships and even physical healthwhich disturbs the whole environ-ment. Dr Jumani pointed out the mostcommon forms of mental illnesseswhich are panic disorder, post-trau-matic stress disorder, and mood dis-orders.

Principal organiser of the confer-ence Dr Tahir Khalily said such confer-ences will provide opportunities for

academician, researchers and clini-cians in the promotion of scientific andresearch activities to meet the 21stcen-tury challenges. He said that earth-quake and flood had affected thegeneral health of people particularlymental health and it was increasingrapidly.

He further said that mental healthissues in adults might be as common asin children and adolescent population.On violence and aggression in society,Dr Khalily said it was a complex phe-nomenon in Pakistani society, espe-cially in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

Department of Psychology Chair-person Dr Seema Gul said the interna-tional moot on mental health will helpthe students in creating awarenessabout the psychological and mentalhealth issues of others and self as well.She said that total 111 scholars pre-sented research papers during the con-ference and shared research findingswith the students.

At the end, Raiz Fatyana distrib-uted shields and certificates among or-ganisers of the conference.

Pollen allergy reliefcamp set upISLAMABAD: The Islamabad CapitalTerritory (ICT) administration has set up apollen allergy camp at Aabpara Commu-nity Centre, Islamabad. The camp willstart working from Tuesday (today). TheICT administration has been organisingthis free camp for last 9 years with the co-ordination of chemists, philanthropistsand pharmaceutical companies who do-nate medicines for patients at the camp.So far, thousands of allergy patients hadbeen treated at the camp which is held inthe allergy season. Three types of treat-ment facilities are provided to the patients,which include allopathic, homepathic andTibb-e-unani and all medicines are pro-vided free of cost to them. Known allergyexperts, including Dr Osman Yousaf, DrAthar Rana, Dr Zaman, Hakeem RizwanHafeez and Dr Nasir also provide theircounseling services to the patients. Thedistrict health department, on the ordersof Chief Commissioner Tariq MahmoodPirzada and Deputy Commissioner AmerAli Ahmed, has made special arrange-ments for providing maximum treatmentfacilities to the patients at the camp. Tim-ings of the camp would be from 9am to4pm and it would remain open on Sunday.Drug Inspector Sardar Shabbir Ahmed isthe coordinator of the camp and specialduties have been assigned to medical offi-cers and paramedics of the district healthdepartment at the camp. STAFF REPORT

Passing-out paradeof SPd’s responseforce held

RAWALPINDISTAFF REPORT

Strategic Plans Division (DG Lt-Gen (retd)Khalid Ahmed Kidwai, Director GeneralSPD), has said that all available resourceshad been put in place to safeguard the na-tional strategic assets of the country com-prehensively. While reviewing an impressive passing-outparade of the first ever, newly raised, Spe-cial Response Force (SRF), at the SPDTraining Academy near Rawalpindi, hesaid the addition of SRF to SPD’s securityforce marked the achievement of a qualita-tive milestone in its rapid response capa-bility, said a press release issued here byISPR.Addressing the newly passing-out SRFtroops, Lt-Gen (retd) Kidwai expresseddeep satisfaction over the high standardachieved in unequivocal terms. “You werechosen, well trained and have been taskedto perform a very important task, and I amsure if ever challenged, your response willserve to make an example of any potentialaggressor.” He urged the men to dischargetheir duties with utmost commitment, sin-cerity and with national pride.It is note worthy that this is the first everspecialised force that has passed out fromthe SPD Academy. The training was wellchalked out and delineated in which highlyqualified instructors from Pakistan’s elitespecial services group and a number ofother experts in security and crisis man-agement trained the new force.The chief guest congratulated the success-ful personnel and conveyed his specialthanks to all the faculty members and in-structors for their good work. Earlier, onarrival at the academy, he was received bySPD Director General (Security) MajorGeneral Muhammad Tahir.

road discipline toppriority: SSP trafficISLAMABAD: The Islamabad Traffic Po-lice (ITP) arranged a road safety awarenessworkshop on Monday at the Reham Gram-mar Model School, Rawal Town, to educatestudents about traffic laws.The ITP has been arranging lectures at var-ious educational and government institu-tions, aiming to inculcate better trafficsense among the people. The workshop, organised at the RehamGrammar Model School, was conducted bythe ITP Education Team, headed by In-spector Mehfooz Kayni. According to apress release, ASI Sajjad Sheikh delivered alecture on road safety tips. SSP (Traffic) DrMoeen Masood, in his special message tothe students of the school delivered by theITP Education Team, said the aim of hold-ing such programmes was to acquaint thepeople with traffic laws. Masood said the ITP was doing its best tomaintain traffic discipline in the city whileconducting inspections through radars, todetect over-speeding vehicles. STAFF REPORT

Int’l conference on mental health concludes

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ISLAMABADMAHTAB BASHiR

WITH an aim to projectand promote southernPunjab’s indigenouscultural crafts acrossthe country, united

Nations Educational, Scientific and Cul-tural Organisation (uNESCO), in collab-oration with THAAP, organised anexhibition of the cultural products here atLok Virsa.

The exhibition displayed the culturalproducts prepared under the joint initia-tive of One uN (ARP-JPC-2) project,‘Promotion of Cultural Industries forPoverty Alleviation in Bahawalpur’ which

was spearheaded by uNESCO in partner-ship with THAAP in 2011.

The project was carried out in five vil-lages, Abbas Nagar, Dera Bukka, BC 33,DNB 112 and Bheli of district Bahawalpurwhile over 600 women and artisans par-ticipated in it.

Speaking on the occasion, uNESCOCountry Director Dr Kozue Kay Nagata,who is very proactive in promotion andpreservation of cultural heritage of Pak-istan, said, “Capacity building, with arti-sans and designers’ collaboration,transferred and honed the skill level of acraftsperson in woven fabric, chunrimaking skills, embroidery and ralli mak-ing and developed designs to attract thecontemporary market demands.

She added that new skills were alsotaught to the village weavers to increasetheir repertoire and equip them to ex-plore different avenues and markets.Chunri and embroidered fabric of highquality was developed and the skills ofcontinual design development weretransferred to the marginalised artisancommunities of district Bahawalpur tobenefit from long-term projects.

Equipped with management andmarketing skills, the participants of theproject are poised for receiving ordersfrom the Islamabad buyers.

The uNESCO endeavours to safe-guard the intangible cultural assets ofcommunities and create a nexus betweencultural heritage and economic develop-

ment. This project thus aimed at promot-ing livelihood opportunities for the ruralcommunities, while safeguarding theircultural assets, and linking them to mar-kets, particularly the discerning buyers.

Carried out within the joint pro-gramme initiative which has four compo-nents i.e. pro-poor sustainableagriculture, Decent Employment, Em-powerment of Vulnerable Groups andMDG-Driven Policy Framework, the proj-ect has improved incomes of over 600families and impacted five villages of dis-trict Bahawalpur.

Dr Kozue Kay Nagata appreciated thework of skilled female artisans present atthe exhibition.

THAAP Executive Director Professor

Sajida Vandal briefed the audience onoutcomes and achievements of the proj-ect and appreciated the uNESCO for itsfinancial and technical support. Sheadded the exhibited products were givena very encouraging response and the salesfigure touched to a handsome amount ofRs 200,000 in one day.

Dr Ali Abbas Qazilbash inauguratedthe exhibition and offered technical ex-pertise of uNIDO to strengthen marketlinkages of the handicraft enterprises es-tablished under the project.

uNDP Country Director Toshi HiroTanaka also attended the event and ap-preciated the initiative of the uNESCOand THAAP for economic empowermentof women from South Punjab.

32,957 emergencyvictims rescued inMarch: 1122 dG

RAWALPINDIAPP

The Director General, Punjab Emer-gency Service 1122 Dr. Rizwan Naseersaid on Monday that the emergencyservice has rescued around 32957 vic-tims in the 36 cities of Punjab in themonth of March .The emergency calls to which Rescue1122 responded includes 13040 roadtraffic accidents, 17934 medical emer-gencies, 908 fire incidents, 46 buildingcollapse incidents, 1588 crime, 59drowning Incidents, 104 special rescueoperations mostly animal rescue and 18explosions.These 33697 rescue operations in themonth of March, 2012 includes 6741rescue operations in Lahore, 3182 inFaisalabad, 2654 in Multan, 2068 inGujranwala, 1344 in Bahawalpur, 1080in Rawalpindi, 1220 in Dera GhaziKhan, 1136 in Sargodha, 780 in RahimYar Khan, 1079 in Sahiwal, 960 inSialkot, 290 in Murree, 1105 in Jhang,405 in Toba Tek Singh, 627 in Muzafar-garh, 410 in Rajanpur, 384 in Mianwali,555 in Pakpattan, 634 in Kasur, 379 inGujrat, 515 in Bahawalnagar, 282 inJehlum, 555 in Attock, 546 in Khanewal,396 in Vehari, 276 in Chakwal, 633 inOkara, 327 in Hafizabad, 616 inSheikhupura, 576 in Lodhran, 313 inNankana Sahib, 281 in Khushab, 285 inMandibaha-ud-din, 338 in Narowal, 305in Layyah and 420 in Bhakkar.The Director General, Dr. RizwanNaseer urged District Emergency Offi-cers to evolve a strategy to effectivelyhandle increasing number of emergen-cies cases.He requested people to call in case ofmajor accident and critical emergencyonly. He also requested citizens to avoidcalling 1122 in minor incidents as it willhelp to provide services to genuineemergency victims in a effective way.

weekly bazaarsawash with filth,unhygienic eateriesISLAMABAD: Buzzing flies over foodstalls at weekly bazaars and the utensilsused to serve customers being cleanedwith dirty water speak volumes of theperformance of the authorities con-cerned. Doctors say most of the people,who eat or drink from these unhygienicstalls, later complain of sore throat andgastroenteritis. They say people withweak immune system easily fall prey toadulterated food. They advised the peo-ple to refrain from eating food beingsold by such vendors, particularly thesedays. It has been witnessed that the ma-jority of the food stalls in bazaars are setup along sewage drains or near heaps offilth. Despite filthy dirty condition ofthe food, the stalls are always throngedby the customers. But, the authoritiesconcerned seem least bothered to re-move these vendors. APP

iSLAMABAD: A female artisan from Malakand at a stall during a ceremony to celebrate the successes of USAiD in Malakand division. online

ISLAMABADAPP

The united Nations Entity for GenderEquality and the Empowerment ofWomen in collaboration with theunited Nations Development Pro-gramme (uNDP) and Free and FairElections Network (FAFEN), organ-ised a national forum on Monday on`Collective Action for EnsuringWomen’s Participation in ElectoralProcesses in Pakistan.

The forum aimed at building polit-ical commitment and momentum onwomen participation in elections, andto formulate recommendations to en-sure the inclusion of women in theelectoral process.

The forum presented a draft reso-lution recommending specific steps tobe taken by policy makers in order toincrease women’s participation andrepresentation in the electoral processat all levels.

The forum was attended by partic-ipants from National Database Regis-tration Authority (NADRA), ElectionCommission of Pakistan (ECP), na-

tional and international developmentand human rights organisations,members of the parliament andprovincial assemblies, academia, andmedia.

The recommendations includeearmarking at least 10 percent ofparty tickets

to women; 33 percent representa-tion of women in parliamentaryboards; expedite the process of regis-tering all women, issuing them CNICsand making them part of the electoralroles; improved facilities for womenvoters at the polling station; wherethere is evidence of women not beingallowed to vote, the polls in that con-stituency should be declared null andvoid; and implementation of reformsat ECP according to their 5-year plan.

The speakers at the event high-lighted the need for women’s partici-pation in electoral processes as animportant channel for ensuring thatthey have both voice and visibility,and are part of decision makingprocesses essential for a strongdemocracy.

The critical role of the Election

Commission of Pakistan was alsorecognised. In its five year plan, theECP focuses, among other reforms, onthe need to formulate laws that ensurethat marginalised groups includingwomen, minorities and persons withdisabilities are able to participate inthe political and electoral processes.Civil society organizations, interna-tional and national organizations wereencouraged to support the govern-ment’s efforts for this noble cause.

The speakers included TariqMalik, NADRA Deputy Chairman;Saeed Ahmad Alvi, Secretary, Min-istry of Human Rights; Syed SherAfghan Khan, Director General, Elec-tion Commission of Pakistan; Ms.Mussarat Qadeem, Chairperson,FAFEN; Ms. Nilofar Bakhtiar, Ex-Sen-ator and Chairperson Bardasht; Ms.Bushra Gohar, MNA and member ofWomen Parliamentary Caucus; TimoPakkala, united Nations Resident Co-ordinator; Alice H. Shackelford,Country Director, uN Women; andToshihiro Tanaka, Country Director,united Nations Development Pro-gramme.

Kite sellers held, 370kites confiscatedRAWALPINDI: On the special direc-tives of City Police Officer (CPO) AzharHammed Khokar, Sadiqabad Police heldfive kite sellers and confiscated 370 kitesfrom their possession here on Monday.According to Police Spokesman, PoliceStation Sadiqabad, during the operationagainst the kite seller held Ramzan, Ar-shad, Owais, Ashfaq, and Shahid on thecharges of selling kites and recoveredhundreds of kites, string and materialfrom them. People of the areas de-manded police to take action against thekite seller as many serious accidentswere occurred in the past. APP

Murree road to be closed tomorrowRAWALPINDI : On the instructions ofPunjab Government, the city govern-ment will close Murree road on Wednes-day for all type of traffic from 2 pm to 6pm. The decision has been taken by thegovernment keeping in view the an-nouncement made by the various politi-cal parties and groups to take out ralliesagainst loadshedding on Wednesday.Chief Traffic Officer Ghulam AbbasTarar asked people coming from Islam-abad to use Airport, Mall and Peshawarroads . He requested the people to coop-erate with traffic police. APP

g exhibition held at lok Virsa to promote cultural products of South Punjab

Forum seeks women’srole in electoral process

UNESCO working for women empowerment

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Editor’s mail 11tuesday, 03 April, 2012

Send your letters to: Letters to Editor, Pakistan Today, 4-Shaarey Fatima Jinnah, Lahore, Pakistan. Fax: +92-42-36298302. E-mail: letters@pakistantoday.com.pk. Letters should be addressed to Pakistan Today exclusively.

Advice for Aitzaz AhsanI have been watching the contempt

proceedings against the Prime Ministerand your able conduct of the case.

I have some points, which may be ofsome assistance to you.

1. The judges in the bench, who werere-appointed through an executive order,their appointment can be challengedbeing against the Constitution ofPakistan. When this objection is raisedthose judges should immediately leavethe bench as they cannot decide thisissue because they cannot be the judge oftheir own cause.

2. The decision on NRO is per-incurrium and therefore is not binding.The decision is per-incurrium because itwas given in ignorance of Article (8) ofthe Constitution and Section (6)A of theGeneral Clauses Act. It also failed to takenotice of the fact that NRO was not anoriginal law but an amended law.Different consequences flow if thisdistinction is kept in view in regard to aparticular ordinance.

3. There is no contempt law in thefield. The Contempt of Court Act of 1976was repealed by the Contempt of CourtOrdinance, 1998. It was again repealedby the Contempt of Court Ordinance,2003. This later Ordinance standsrepealed because it was never placedbefore the Parliament. Then anotherordinance called Contempt of CourtOrdinance, 2004 was promulgated,under which, for the third time TheContempt of Court Act, 1976 wasrepealed. This later Ordinance alsoexpired as it was not placed before theParliament.

The 18th Amendment under whichcertain laws were validated has noapplication on Contempt of CourtOrdinance, 2003 and 2004.

I can also draft a Letter for the SwissBank in compliance with the SupremeCourt Order, but without causing anyharm to anybody.

SYED ABRAR HUSSAIN NAQVILahore

Another solutionMany suggestions are being floated

by the government and the public tocurtail the use of electricity to meet theenergy shortfall.

The installed capacity of powergeneration in the country, if made tooperate to its full capacity, will not onlymeet all our power requirements butmay also produce somewhat surplus toour needs. Surprisingly, no one has comeup with yet another suggestion that couldhelp tremendously in this matter.

According to the Pakistan PressReference data, there are more than 3.5million television sets in the country,each of them consuming about 200 wattsper hour.

The total power consumed by them isapproximately 700 MW. I think that ifcable transmissions are restricted from6:00 pm to 9.30 pm, like in the good old1960s, 700 MW of power would beavailable for industry and agriculture formost of the day and night. But who willdo this? The mighty media mafia,minting millions by the second, will buryany such voice raised in this context.

HAMZA KHANKarachi

Poverty and child labourPakistan is facing a lot of problems

one of them is child labour. Instead ofsending their children to schools, peopleforce their children to work. Educatingchildren in place of forcing them to workcan yield enormous economic benefitsfor a developing nation

High cost of living has affectedeveryone and because of this people areforced to have their children work.Though benefits of education are farmore in number, they seem to be notenough to convince poverty struckfamilies to stop sending children to work.

Even if people want to educate theirchildren, they face the problem of highfees of schools. People with low incomecannot afford to send their children toschools for studies because privateschools are expensive and everyonecannot afford them and the governmentschools are terrible.

According to survey findings, themajor factors responsible for childlabour are large population with highpopulation growth rate, almost three-fourths of the total population living inrural areas, with subsistence agriculturalactivities, low productivity andprevalence of poverty, unpaid familyhelpers, especially in agriculturalactivities, discriminating social attitudetowards girls and women and inadequateeducational facilities.

It is very important to think aboutthis problem and take some proper stepsto solve it.

TAZEEN FATIMAKarachi

Student politics at KUI’m a student at Karachi university.

Of the six working days we have, fourwere declared to be holidays, this weekalone. Speaking for myself, three of myfive exams had to be rescheduled, myclasses cancelled. My education is suffer-ing at the hands of violent protesters,and brainless party workers.

Primarily, do the ministers, thepoliticians, the government see the issuehere, and understand the severity of thesituation? If so, are they going to dosomething about it, before we, much likea lot of them, turn into under-qualifiedindividuals handling posts beyond ourscope?

If not, it’s a pity they don’t realise theimportance of educating us; this coun-try’s youth, it’s next generation. What isgoing to happen of us, if three-quarter ofeach academic year is spent having tochoose between sitting home, being safeand missing out on our education, orrisking being scorched to death by insen-sitive fellow citizens, and still attendingclass? Do they even qualify to beingcalled citizens, when they’re just destroy-ing public property, dirtying the wallswith their low-calibre graffiti, and ruin-ing the future of their youth? Will thegovernment take action before all rays ofhope have diminished?

TOOBA AKHTARKarachi

Seeds of hopeSeeds are being deposited in Artie

Doomsday vault to protect food cropsfrom being damaged by war and naturaldisaster. The seed is designed to with-stand global warming, earthquake andnuclear strikes.

It is all but over: under the circum-stances, the world has to decide whatpossibly can be done now. For one, ‘Stopthe war’ may end up like a slogan – butnot collective attempts for removing thecause of wars. This may require strength-ening the uN, enabling it to draft a fool-proof mechanism, in consultation withthe Security Council, so as it become likesaying ‘we will keep the world peacefuland won’t allow wars in the world.’

This may look impossible, but then,how to describe the modern world welive in which is the outcome of hundredsof impossibles made possible in the pastand world continue to flow in time tocome.

Eleanor Roosevelt, a Western geniusonce said, ‘It is not enough to talk aboutpeace. One must believe it. And it is notenough to believe in it. One must work atit.’

‘Be the change you want’: Socrates.Z A KAZMI

Karachi

Coal energy: the cheapest solution to energy crisisElectricity has become an essential

part of our lives and its outage adverselyaffects the country’s economic growthand daily lives of common people. Sincethe past few decades, there has been anenormous increase in the demand ofelectricity and no appreciative steps havebeen taken to cope up this issue. Now thedemand has exceeded supply and‘loadshedding’ has become a commonissue. Every day an outage of 3-4 hourshas to be faced by the people and insummer season the outage lengthincreases to an unbearable level which ismaking the lives miserable for everyone.

What is the government doing toensure a sustainable supply of energyresources for economic growth? Whatstrategic steps are being taken to acquireenergy resources in future? Is privatesector willing to invest in Pakistan’s oilindustry? What are the incentives beingoffered to the foreign players to continueworking in the exploration sector? Whathurdles are stopping other big players

around the world to enter Pakistan?What is the role of gas distributioncompanies so far? Are the citizens ofPakistan being robbed by energy giantswith ever rising utility bills? What shouldbe the real price of petroleum, keroseneand other oil products in Pakistan? Whenwill the nation have “loadshedding free”electric supply? Have we been able tomake long term contracts with thecountries to provide uninterruptedsupply of energy resources? Will thegovernment be able to provide enoughsources to the citizens for a sustainableeconomic growth? Have we lost the racefor acquiring maximum energy resourcesfor future survival?

Pakistan has rich reserves of coal.Most of the power generation in manyparts of the world is being done by usingcoal as an energy resource. Thar, Lakhra,Badin etc are some of the mammoth coalreserves in Pakistan. If we talk aboutThar reserves only we get astonishingfacts. Thar coal reserves of Sindh are

about 850 trillion cubic feet, which ismore than oil reserves of Saudi Arabiaand Iran put together. These reserves areestimated at 850 trillion cubic feet (TCF)of gas, about 300 times higher thanPakistan’s proven gas reserves of 28 TCF.

Dr Murtaza Mughal, President ofPakistan Economy Watch, in a statementsaid that these reserves of coal worthuSD 25 trillion could not only cater tothe electricity requirements of thecountry for the next 100 years but alsosave almost billions of dollars instaggering oil import bill.

Just two percent usage of Thar coalcan produce 20,000 MW of electricity fornext 40 years, without any single secondof loadshedding and if the whole reservesare utilised, then it can easily beimagined how much energy could begenerated. The coal power generationwould cost Pakistan PKR 5.67 per unitwhile power generated by IndependentPower Projects cost PKR 9.27 It requiresjust 420 billion rupees initial investment

whereas Pakistan receives annually 1220billion from tax only.

Chinese and other countries’companies have not only carried outsurveys and feasibility of this project butalso offered 100 percent investment inthe last seven to eight years but the“petroleum gang” always discouragedthem in a very systematic way.

Petroleum lobby is very strong inPakistan and they are against any othermeans of power generation except for theimported oil. This lobby is the majorbeneficiary of the increasing oil bill thatis estimated to be above 15 billion dollarthis year.

Beyond the shadow of any doubt coalenergy is the most viable solution to theenergy crisis situation in Pakistan. Thegovernment should seriously think aboutit and put untiring efforts to cater to theenergy crisis situation in Pakistan byutilising coal reserves.

BUSHRA ASIMKarachi

President’s prayer

Judges’ tenureThe latest judgement of the

Supreme Court of Pakistan regardingrental power units is a landmark deci-sion unmasking the shady dealings ofour high and mighty rulers.

The judgements of our superiorcourts are the shining beacon of lightin the darkness of corruption allaround us. This leads to the questionof age of retirement of judges of HighCourts and Supreme Court that standsat 62 and 65 years respectively atpresent. It would be in the fitness ofthings to raise the age of judges of Su-perior Courts to 65 in the case of HighCourts and 70 years in the case ofSupreme Court judges.

The politicians must consider toextend the tenures of judges of Supe-rior Courts by a constitutionalamendment even if it is not to theirliking. This is because we would neverget a chance of ushering in a fully in-dependent judiciary like the existingone.

The Chief Justice of Supreme

Court is a living example of defying anarmy general who held absolutepower. The majesty of law can only beensured if we extend the tenures ofour superior court judges to makethem fully independent of the va-garies of despotic rule.

DR MUHAMMAD YAQOOB BHATTILahore

Ban one wheelingThe other day, I was going at

Canal road to drop a friend at Fer-ozepur Road, Lahore who was goingback to Multan. On the way, we saw ayoung boy indulge in one wheelingwhile his friend was sitting on theback seat of the motorbike. All of asudden their motorbike slipped andboth of them fell on the road. I ap-plied the brakes and stopped the carwhile a car coming just behind us hitour car fiercely who was hit by an-other vehicle.

We were just evaluating the dam-age done to our vehicles when thosetwo boys slipped from the scene who

caused this havoc to us. The car com-ing behind us was badly damaged be-cause their both front and hind windscreens were broken into pieces.

There are frequent accidents hap-pening on the Canal Road of Lahorebecause people drive rash and over-speed and do not maintain a properdistance between two vehicles.

This is unfortunate that we as anation have little traffic sense andpeople feel pride in violating trafficrules. Just look at any traffic jam;everyone is in a hurry but wasteshours in these jams instead of drivingaccording to traffic rules. Such a traf-fic mess is a common place thing onany rainy day.

My suggestions is that there mustbe complete ban on one wheeling as itrisks the lives of people and such mis-creants be booked and fined heavilyfor public safety. Moreover, thereshould be speed cameras at CanalRoad to maintain distance betweenvehicles.

FAROOQ BASHIR BUTTLahore

President Asif Ali Zardari is scheduled to visit Indiacoming weekend. It’s a private visit wherein he will betravelling to Ajmer to pay homage at the 13th century Sufisaint, Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti’ shrine. As per theexpected official announcement, president will pray forstability and progress in his home country – Pakistan.

Let’s disregard the official announcement for amoment and ponder what else he could be praying for? Tocomplete the 5th year in government while expecting noadverse decisions from the Supreme Court on the ongoingcases – NRO, memo scandal, OBL probe etc or bysomehow if the government is dismissed that shallincrease the rating (sympathy votes) in the next elections,uS may find another route for the NATO supplies or theyagree on a better compensation for supply routes andthose killed in drone attacks, more rains to fill the damsbasins to increase the hydro power generation or may beless rains to avoid floods in South Punjab and Sindh.

Or Karachi’s law and order situation moves towardsbetterment or at least the extortion tactics used by

Taliban shall set a bench mark for other groups inKarachi, a way to control ever increasing prices of oil, gasand water with eve r declining availability of the same ormake the general public content to be ready to live in 19thcentury, how to avoid daily noise and chattering aboutnewly discovered corruption cases either by shuttingdown the newspapers and private TV channels or justdenial at government TV channel may be sufficient, howto keep the friends from the jail time, be happy andcontent with whatever they are making with the taxpayers’money, how to keep State Bank to keep its mouth shut onever increasing local and foreign debt/loans, how to keepopposition in their holes on the fear of khakis taking overif ever this government is dismissed, the list goes on.

I don’t know why the president needs to travel toIndia; all these issues can be solved within the country;the thing we lack in Pakistan is a sincere, credible,respectable and honest leadership.

MASOOD KHANJubail, Saudi Arabia

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Comment12tuesday, 03 April, 2012

Arif NizamiEditor

Lahore – Ph: 042-36298305-10 Fax: 042-36298302Karachi – Ph: 021-34330811-3 Fax: 021-34330900Islamabad – Ph: 051-2287414-6 Fax: 051-2287417

Web: www.pakistantoday.com.pk Email: editorial@pakistantoday.com.pk

Dedicated to the legacy of the late Hameed Nizami

Hard times

the dismal science

If the economy, global as well as international,wasn’t being relentless, the government also has atough crowd on its hands. First, in the form of anangry public, then in the form of angry opposition

and wily coalition partners. And last, in the form ofinternational allies that won’t let their interests beovershadowed by our own economic ones.

The uS, for instance, is adamant we do not enterinto a gas pipeline agreement with Iran. To makematters worse, key diplomats have even been suggestingfor Pakistan to develop alternative energy sources.Chutzpah, if there ever was one. The uS is a notoriouslyenergy squandering country, which can wage wars for itsaddiction to oil and a refusal to conserve it. Barring thefew upper-middle-class consumers in a state or two whodrive hybrid vehicles, its electric power profile isoverwhelmingly thermal. Yet it has issues with Pakistaneking out a deal with a friendly neighbouring country.

Back at home, the PML(N) and MQM are up in armsagainst the petrol price hikes. The MQM’s attempts topresent a better case need to be scrutinised with greatcare. The party’s seemingly reasonable line is that theprogression in prices is not sustainable and thegovernment should cut off tariffs on petroleumproducts. Where would the revenue lost thus comefrom? Correct ratio of direct taxes to indirect taxes, theparty says. Easier said than done. For instance, when thegovernment wanted to reform the GST, the MQM andthe Muslim Leagues opposed it tooth-and-nail. Thenewer model would not have increased the revenuequantum of the GST but, because of the way it wasdesigned, created a better database for the collection ofdirect taxes.

To make things worse, the mass media is makinghaving one’s cake and eating it too seem like the rationalargument. Let us not pay taxes, have more government-funded programmes, have cheap oil regardless of whatthe stuff costs in the international markets, have cheapnatural gas, have CNG stations operating throughout theweek, have gas available to industrial units regardless ofhow little there is to ration out in the first place.

that city of lights, Karachi

Handed over to terrorists

It will go to the eternal discredit of the PPP, MQMand ANP, the three parties the people of Karachihad elected to rule, that they threw the city to thegangs of terrorists. While in the past Karachi faced

numerous problems like any other mega city in theworld, the incidence of target killings was never as highnor its eruptions so frequent. During the last eight daysover 30 people have died, scores of others wounded andmore than 50 vehicles set ablaze. There still seems to beno respite to violence.

The current wave of violence started when the MQMissued a call for business centres’ shutdown after thekilling of a party activist and his brother. The next day alocal ANP leader was gunned down leading to anothercall for shutdown. As if vying with its coalition partner,the MQM issued a second call for strike. Both the partiesknow that protest calls of the sort are invariablypreceded and followed by killings and acts of arson inKarachi. The closure of the markets and the wheel jamstrikes disturb the common man’s life. What is more, itharms the national economy by bringing to halt theindustrial and commercial activity in the country’scommercial and industrial heartland. The suspension ofbus service stops students from pursuing their studieswhile hundreds of litigants desperately in need of justiceand often coming from far off districts fail to reach thecourts.

The killers belong to well-known gangs patronisedby political parties. Their identity is no secret. The SCwas given a detailed briefing by the top security agencieson who’s who in the business of killing. The enquiry intothe Nishtar Park killings was discontinued to avoidruffling the alliance’s feathers. Those behind the goryincidents of May 12, April 9 and October 18 were notunmasked for a similar reason. The coalitiongovernment that rules the centre and Sindh has failed toprovide security of life, the least expected from anadministration. What stands in the way of stopping thekillers are political exigencies wrapped up in the sloganof ‘political reconciliation’. unless the governmentabandons the policy of appeasement for short termgains, peace will continue to elude Karachi.

On the one hand we are promis-ing that we will get every childin Pakistan, between the agesof five and sixteen years, inschool (Article 25A) and pro-

vide free and compulsory education tothem. On the other, we have 15 millionplus children of school-going age out ofschools and a government education sys-tem that is in tatters: it offers poor qualityand limited access, a lot of schools do nothave basic facilities, many do not haveteachers, in some places teachers do notshow up, do not teach or do not teach howthey should be teaching, in other places westill do not have primary schools, and mid-dle and high schools number a lot less, andteaching pedagogy leaves a lot to be de-sired, as do our examination systems. Mostchildren drop out of public schools insteadof finishing matriculation. And, althoughit has been two years since the passing ofthe 18th Amendment to the Constitutionand the inclusion of 25A in the Constitu-tion, there has been little effort to addressthe above issues too.

What should be clear from the above isthat educating our children is not going tobe simply a matter of more capital andhuman resources. Yes, they are needed andare important. But though they might be anecessary condition, they will not be suffi-cient. The real problem is the culture wehave allowed our education system to settleinto. Public schools are seen as providingservices to only those who cannot affordprivate schools, teachers are seen as stateemployees who have permanent jobs andcannot be fired, but are ‘agents’ of the statewho are to be used for other functions ofthe state: immunisation drives, conductingcensus, election duty, and so on.

MPAs/MNAs see government teacherjobs as a way of obliging constituents andas giving favours to be returned at electiontime (patron-client networks). This ex-plains why there is so much interest, onthe part of MPAs/MNAs, on hiring ofteachers and posting/transfer and neveron issues of educational quality and/or ac-cess. Teacher unions are also entrenchedbureaucracies that have set roles in termsof protecting teacher interests alone, interms of benefits, salaries, and job tenure.Provincial bureaucracies, usually managedby civil servants coming from district man-agement cadres, have little or no under-standing of education issues. They areusually just there to manage the labourforce.

There are more than fifty thousand pri-vate schools in the country. Those who canafford to, and many who cannot really af-ford to but have no option, have shifted

their children to private schools. The exitof the richer, usually more connected andmore politically active citizens, has furtherweakened the pressure for provision ofbetter educational services through thepublic system. So, how is the promise of25A going to come about?

What is needed is a complete change ofculture in the public education system ofthe country: a complete re-doing of the en-tire setup. But the problem is it is a hugesystem and changing basic culture, givensuch entrenched interests and positions oflarge lobbies and interest groups, is noteasy. How is this to be accomplished?

Many colleagues think that it cannot bedone and we should be looking to privatiseeverything and the state should just moveto funding education and not providing it.But this is not really an option. The educa-tional network we need is so large and inso many places where markets are not de-veloped that it is just not practical to leavethings to the private sector alone. And,empirically too, there is no example of anycountry which has done that for primaryand high school education.

But if the state has to do it, we have toshake things up. And really shake themup. We have seen some examples of set-ting up of institutions that have defied theaverage low quality expectations that wehave internalised about institutions in thecountry, private or public. From privatesector we have examples like ShaukatKhanum Cancer Hospital and Aga KhanHospital, Aga Khan university, and La-hore university of Management Sciences.And we have some examples from thepublic sector too. Motorway Police has awell-deserved reputation for efficiency,fairness, and efficacy.

Some of our well-established medicaland engineering schools used to draw stu-dents from a number of countries till acouple of decades ago. Quaid-i-Azam uni-versity started out very well too. But theseare all examples of institutions that devel-oped their reputations when they were es-tablished. For these we can see a pattern tohow a good institutional culture can becreated: a clear mission and an initial

group of mission-driven and dedicatedpeople who are motivated with the missioncan create the cultural ethos of a new in-stitution that settles it into a certain pat-tern. It is not easy to continue with thispattern and many of our institutions haveindeed lost their initial lustre, but still theway they are set up is clearer.

But we do not have many examples ofturnarounds of poorly performing institu-tions and sectors. State Bank of Pakistanmight have been an example but I do notthink it is been sustained after the initialchanges. Still it does point out some im-portant factors. If the entrenched cultureis to be challenged: a) incentives have tobe changed, b) dominant interests have tobe challenged, c) entrenched power has tobe uprooted, d) new methods have to beintroduced and installed, and e) new in-terests have to be entrenched so that newways can become standard operating pro-cedures. In other words, old powers haveto be challenged and uprooted if they donot change and new ones have to be put inplace that can support the new culture andexpectations. This, when we are talking ofbureaucracies of hundreds of thousands,is not easy. Maybe the way forward wouldbe to devolve education management todistrict level and try to deal with the issueat that smaller unit rather than at provin-cial level.

Cultural change is the challenge in ed-ucation. If that does not happen, thingsare not going to change and we will con-tinue to limp forward. But culturalchange, when institutions, organisations,and interest groups are entrenched, is noteasy or costless. It can only happen bychallenging the entrenched power struc-tures. It will definitely not happen in anelection year. But even post election, willany government have the incentive to doit? We will come back to the how of it inthe next few weeks.

The writer is an Associate Professor ofEconomics at LUMS (currently on leave)and a Senior Advisor at Open SocietyFoundation (OSF). He can be reached atfbari@sorosny.org

By Dr Faisal Bari

Foundational cultural changeDeep rooted problems of our education sector

It does not matter what steps the provincial government istaking to rein in the growing traffic mess in the capital cityPeshawar, they are not going to yield any success until an

all encompassing approach is resorted to by coming up withsystematic steps to address the impending issue on all routessimultaneously.

With saddling into the post of SSP Traffic, Peshawar, thenewly appointed officer started asserting tall claims to dosomething different from his predecessors in addressing thetraffic issue, but he too proved to be a common lot in this re-gard. The issue lingers on just the same with troubled travel-ling for masses in any part of the capital city.

According to reports there are about 45,000 rickshawsplying in Peshawar on different routes with merely 10,000

having any legal authority to ply; the rest are without permitsbut still roam about openly, probably with the support of per-sonnel having big say in traffic affairs, including traffic offi-cials.

Both light and heavy vehicles are another composition ofthe traffic plying in Peshawar having their own ‘role’ in addingto the suffering of the masses. People believe that the trafficmess will go on deteriorating day by day provided the govern-ment fails to come up with overhauling of the system in thebest interests of the common people.

It is government’s responsibility that cannot be shoul-dered by any other sector to tighten up the officers concernedin addressing the traffic issue which more than often causesmasses delays of hours on daily basis.

– Translated from the original Pashto by AbdurRauf Khattak.

Unbridled Peshawar trafficDaily Khabroona

Regional Press

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Why don’t women ride bikes in Pakistan?

The lone cyclist

She sailed past my car as the lightturned amber, a woman on a bi-cycle, and no, she was not a pas-

senger, she was at the wheel. We wereall, she, I, and the men staring bugeyed at her (I have to admit I was bugeyed myself) in DHA, just oppositeMasjid Chowk in Lahore that bastionof Punjabi ghairat.

Wonder, worry, excitement, allrattled around in my head like a boxof liquorice allsorts. Who was she, andwhy was she doing this? Was sheaware of the looks, laughter and lewdcomments that rained about her? Howwonderful that someone had thecourage to do this! I prayed she was aharbinger of some huge change.

She was clearly not a bike rallycontestant in training. Wearing a pinkshalwar kameez, yellow dupatta andbeat-up chappals, she rode an inex-pensive bicycle, what used to be Rus-tum or Sohrab, black and scratchedwith a paranda hanging off the han-dlebars. I judged her to be a cleaninglady on her way to work.

I drove alongside her, trying tocatch her expression, and you know

what, she looked neitherworried nor scared. Whip-cord tough she was cy-cling quite effortlessly. Tosomeone who has cycled,albeit not in the land ofthe censorious, and wasaware that even a flatstretch of road developsHimalayan slopes andgrand canyons for cyclists,this indicated one thingand one thing alone: shewas used to this particularexercise.

I had a wild urge tofollow her, to shield herwith my car from the jeersand more that wouldsurely come her way, tocongratulate her when weboth stopped, to cautionher, offer her a job on thespot, anything, but thenshe turned away from myroute and I was left writ-ing this.

You’d think that in acountry like Pakistanwhere women work inspite of purda and otherconstraints they’d be rid-ing bicycles and motorcy-cles not because theywanted to but becausethey must, but they don’t.And when they do use ei-

ther of these modes of transport, aspassengers, they sit side saddle.

Have you ever tried sitting sidesaddle on a bike of any sort? I have,behind my husband when he offeredto show me around his farm and sur-rounding land on a motorbike. In thefive short minutes while I was seatedbehind him and before I fell off, myrespect for Pakistani women went upa hundred fold, mingled with anger. Ithought of all those women dressed intrailing fussy clothes and gold sandalsseated side saddle behind their lordand master, children in front, behindand in between, infants on laps, thewhole family going to visit the jummabazaar or some other dazzling place ofentertainment…and don’t shoot me, Iknow there’s little choice.

Can the Pakistani male not evenhandle the sight of a woman seatedastride a cycle? And this, the home ofFatima Jinnah, Nigar Ahmed, BilquisEdhi, Mukhtaran Mai and Asma Ja-hangir!

Indian men are clearly stronger. Iasked an Indian friend if women cy-cled in India, and she said she used tocycle herself some years ago ‘when Iwent to school, college etc, in a smalltown and got heckled, followed andonce, even fondled. Thankfully thesame is no longer true. Women in thecities use scooters. They ride pillion,side saddle as well as astride. School-girls and boys use cycles to go to andfrom school and they are mostly un-challenged and unbothered. Of courseI'm talking about Maharashtra, Mad-hya Pradesh and cities where I'velived/visited. In Punjab it’s a bit moreconservative.’

In which case (as in many otherinstances), Pakistan has gone back-wards. I know that my aunts bikedmany miles to university and medicalschool about fifty years ago in Lahore,as did other cousins for a decademore. And then what happened?

The Pakistani male needs to un-derstand that expressing his manhoodis not about being able to spit longand accurately right in someone’spath just before they pass, and it isdefinitely not about keeping hiswoman in a cage, especially not thosein the Punjab, who could do with theexercise.

My friend also wrote, ‘Our auntiestold us to stop riding bicycles becausewe would get muscular legs, and thenwho would marry a girl with fatthighs?’

And that does not apply to thePunjab either.

By Rabia Ahmed

The line between ‘outspoken’and ‘insensitive’ is quitefine. I should know, because

I tread it every other week. Beingan armchair analyst is hard workand I’m sure most newspapercolumnists will agree that the keyto a good piece is knowing youraudience. Which is probably whymost respectable journalists andcolumnists – who write for boththe English and the urdu press –engineer their columns in such asway that they do not antagonisetheir respective audiences. There-fore, a Talat Hussain column inthe urdu press will not be as Left-leaning as his English pieces maybe. Mind you, the man is an estab-lished journalist who is, at thistime, working for a channel noone watches. Therefore, he maybe said to be flying ‘under theradar’.

The esteemed JavedChaudhry, on the other hand, isnot under the radar. His prime-time show on the second-highestrated news channel in the countryis widely watched and peoplefrom all socio-economic back-grounds await his columns with asense of longing. And why should-n’t they? Mr Chaudhry provideshis readers with something thatothers do not: he tells them astory. His monologues at the be-ginning of each show are leg-endary for their wit and theinvaluable history lesson con-tained within. As far as the rest ofhis show is concerned, I cannotvouch for the veracity of contentthat flies out at random from themouth of a political mouthpiece.What I do know is that MrChaudhry is somewhat respectedfigure in the world of TV news andhas some credibility when itcomes to mainstream journalism.

So imagine my surprise when,one fine day, I wake up to findthat said journalist has written an‘outrageous’ article in the vernac-ular press; one that tries to sym-pathise with acid-attackers as wellas their victims. Now, while onemay find the very thought ofdoing so vile and disgusting, thinkabout it from Javed Chaudhry’sperspective. In his mind, he haswritten something that hithertono one, not even the most testicu-larly fortified of columnists haswritten. He has, in fact, tried toempathise with the attacker to tryto get into the mind of a sick,twisted and deranged individual.Only, he did so from the comfortof his highly syndicated newspa-per column, which is a far cryfrom the mental institutionswhere such empathy is usuallyemployed. But the dilemma thisincident poses is quite a mael-strom: on one hand, you have themoral imperative of siding withthe victim; while on the otherhand you have the journalisticduty to report both sides of thestory, no matter how gruesome.There is difference between tryingto tell a story and trying to be-come the story. In this case, nomatter how noble his intentions,Mr Chaudhry seems to have falleninto the latter trap. And this iswhere it all went wrong.

For those of you who are oldenough to remember, even themost vicious and vile of individu-als have had their day in court.The Nuremberg Nazis, Milosevic,Karadic, Saddam, TimothyMcVeigh and even our very ownJaved Iqbal, were all accorded tri-als (whether fair or not is a ques-tion that I do not wish to answer).What matters here is that the dueprocess of the law was carried outand justice took its course. Thatthere was insufficient evidence totry these individuals was never astumbling block: each trial had aforegone conclusion. While thereis something to be said about theswift and summary style of justicepracticed in certain countries andcertain parts of the world, the factof the matter is that what makesus ‘civilised’ is the presence of aprocess for redressal of griev-ances, be they civil or criminal.

In the pursuit of ‘justice’, the

state is compelled to hear outeven the most despicable of crim-inals. Saddam got his spiel, as didall the others. Similarly, as jour-nalists, we are required to presentat least two sides of each story toavoid the impression of prejudice.However, when you apply thesame principle to a case which hassparked widespread moral out-rage and an outpouring of griefpreviously unheard of, somethingstrange happens. Rather thanbeing acknowledged as a thor-ough reporter, one is sticked andstoned into submission by thevery people who would otherwisechampion the cause of a freepress. This applies across theboard to all persons: be they ac-tivists, political workers or youraverage Jamil the Plumber.

I cannot offer a defence forJaved Chaudhry, because I tooquestion deeply his approach tothe balanced reporting that I talkabout above. What I do wish tocommunicate, in black and white,is that our society has a very badhabit of sweeping things underthe rug. We always aim for ret-ributive justice rather than reha-bilitative systems. It is thispreoccupation with ‘revenge’ thathas brought our society to thispoint where vigilante justice is thenorm and moral outrage equals amedia trial which then leads tosummary executions and that thepeople will not accept anythingless.

I say we must hear out eventhe most psychotic ones. We mustdo this because we need to under-stand what goes on in the mind ofthe man (or woman) who aban-dons all notions of civilised be-haviour and pursues a homicidalagenda. Our society obviously of-fers a fertile breeding ground forall types of deviant behaviour.Rather than simply relying ondeath and defamation as a deter-rent, it’s time we learn to face ourdemons. Cliched as it is, I do sin-cerely believe that it is better toknow the demon that haunts youthan to continue to live in the fearof the unknown. I just hope youcan understand that too.

Follow @mightyobvious onTwitter for more incoherence in160 characters or less

Mighty ObviousBy Syed Hassan Belal Zaidi

in the pursuit of ‘justice’ one is compelled to hear out even themost despicable ones

Bold and balanced?

ISB 03-04-2012_Layout 1 4/3/2012 2:51 AM Page 13

MUMBAi: the alleged affair between Shahrukh Khan and Priyanka Chopra is an issuethat just doesn’t seem to rest. for every otherday, there is some newcolour being splashedon it. the latestin thiscriterion isthat actorArjun

rampal, who was once seen beside Shahrukh through thick and thin, has laid theirfriendship off over the scandal that rocked theentire industry a while back. Shah rukh’simpeccable image has perhaps been

tarnished beyond repair, and owing to thefiasco involving Priyanka Chopra, looks

like the actor has a lot to do inorder to redeem his image in theeyes of his once-close friends.the actor’s friendship with a lotof people is currently facing acrisis, rampal being the latestin the lot. when the initialspeculations of the Shah rukh-Priyanka affair were beingreported by the media, Arjunwas among the few peoplewho tried to offer some well-

wishers’ advice to the actor. Andgiven the resentment shown by

SrK over people talking about hispersonal matters, Shah rukh’s

relationship with Arjun has receivedthe last nail in the coffin, apparently.Shah rukh and family even went

ahead and skipped rampal’sanniversary celebrations. AgEnciES

1 BERLin: liam Neeson promotes his movie'Battleship' and 'the Grey'. ReuTeRs

2 LAS VEgAS: Blake Shelton and lionel richie(r) perform ‘you Are’ at the Academy ofCountry Music Awards. ReuTeRs

3 SAnTiAgO: foo figthers performs in thelollapalooza festival. ReuTeRs

4 TOKYO: rihanna arrives for a news conferenceto promote the film ‘Battleship’. ReuTeRs

5 MUMBAi: Shah rukh Khan attends theunveiling of the brand campaign 'NokiaChannel Me' for the Nokia Kolkata Knightriders (KKr), IPl Season 5. AFP

6 MUMBAi: Amol Palekar (r) and Shabana Azmi,cast members of film 'Khamosh', attendproducer-director Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 'A filmfestival'. AFP

7 MUMBAi: Salman Khan poses at a pressconference announcing him as the brandambassador for the online travel portalyatra.com. AFP

14 tuesday, 3 April, 2012

LOS ANGELESREUTERS

I T'S an awards showsweep for Adam San-dler and friends atthe Razzies as his film‘Jack and Jill’ won a

record-breaking 10 awardsfor the worst film and per-formances of 2011. TheGolden Raspberry Founda-tion said the cross-dressingcomedy, in which Sandlerplayed both the male andfemale lead parts, was thefirst film in the 32-year his-

tory of the Razzies to sweepall 10 dishonourable cate-gories. Sandler, 45, wasvoted worst actor and worstactress, and shared theaward for worst screen en-semble. ‘Jack and Jill’,which he also helped towrite, was voted worst pic-ture, worst re-make, worstdirector and worst screen-play. "He didn't playtriplets, but he couldn'thave won more awards if hehad," said Razzies founderJohn Wilson. But the Razz-ies did not overlook San-dler's other starring rolefrom last year. Sandler'sworst-actor prize came forboth ‘Jack and Jill’ and hisearlier comedy ‘Just GoWith It’. Dennis Dugan, thefilmmaker behind bothcomedies, was named worstdirector for both flicks. Thisyear, the awards werehanded out on April Fool'sDay in a change of traditionthat for years saw the Razz-ies announced on the eve ofthe Oscars. Al Pacino, whoplayed himself in a cameoappearance in ‘Jack and

Jill’, was named worst sup-porting actor, and he alsoreceived a mention in theworst screen couple cate-gory along with co-starKatie Holmes. The winnerswere determined by some650 members of the GoldenRaspberry Foundation, andmore than 35,000 ballotson movie review websiteRotten Tomatoes. Organis-ers said the cast of ‘Jack andJill’ was only just ahead ofbox-office hit ‘The TwilightSaga: Breaking Dawn - Part1’ in the voting.

Priyanka responsible for Shah Rukh-Arjun rift?

Imran, Deepika win worst actors awards

1 2

3 4

65

IN LIMELIGHTSandler's ‘Jack and Jill’ goes downhill at Razzies

WASHINGTONAgEnciES

Kristen Stewart is set to take onthe literary world with new re-ports emerging that she is aboutto finish her first novel. The 21-year-old actress has apparentlytaken up writing and has beenbusy working on her debut bookwhile on the set of her latestmovie ‘Snow White And TheHuntsman’. The ‘Twilight’ starhas enlisted the help of herscreenwriter mother JulesStewart to help her find a pub-lisher. “Kristen began by writ-ing short stories. She has beenworking on her novel whilefilming and has almost finishedit. She’s desperate to be a pub-lished writer in her own right,”a website has quoted a source astelling a leading daily.

Kristen Stewart ‘almost finished’ working on debut novel

MUMBAi: AbhishekBachchan has injuredhimself yet again. the actorhas now suffered a backmuscle tear, but says thiswon’t affect the shootingschedule of ‘Bol Bachchan’."thank you all for the getwell soon wishes. yes, havea muscle tear in my lowerback. Got injured training inthe gym," Abhishektweeted. "will be back onmy feet soon. And No, theschedule of BolBACHCHAN has Not beenaffected at all as wronglyreported. we shoot nextend April," he clarified.Abhishek had earlierreceived six stitches abovehis right eye after anaccident on the sets ofdirector rohit Shetty’s‘Bol Bachchan’.following that,he injured hisfinger whilereturning tohis hotelroom aftershooting forthe comedy.AgEnciES

MUMBAi: Imran Khan was named the worst actor anddeepika Padukone the worst actress at the fourth annualGolden Kela Awards, a spin-off of Hollywood's razziesawards, which recognises the worst in cinema. while Imranwon the award for ‘Mere Brother Ki dulhan’, deepika wasgiven the award for her performance in Prakash Jha's‘Aarakshan’. Shah rukh Khan's sci-fi film ‘rA.one’ walkedaway with two trophies for worst film and worst directorfor Anubhav Sinha. the award for the most atrocious lyricswent to Amitabh Bhattacharyya for ‘Pyar do pyar lo’ (‘thankyou’), ‘Jigar ka tukda’ (‘ladies vs ricky Bahl’), and ‘Mutton’song (‘luv Ka the end’). ‘teri meri’ from ‘Bodyguard’ wasnamed most irritating song. Prateik was given the awardfor worst supporting actor award for ‘dum Maaro dum’ and‘Aarakshan’. Actor Pankaj Kapoor's maiden directorialventure ‘Mausam’ got the Bawra Ho Gaya Ke Award, whileesha deol won the award for the worst attempt at a

comeback for ‘tell Me oKkhuda’. the lajja awardfor worst treatment of aserious issue went to‘Aarakshan’ and Pritamwas awarded the BasKijiye Bohut Ho Gayaaward. However, therewas a special categoryof 'Anti-Kela' awards forthe films that were thesaving graces of 2011.the recipients were ‘yehSaali Zindagi’, ‘Saheb,Biwi Aur Gangster’,‘Shaitan’ and ‘Shor in theCity’. AgEnciES

ISB 03-04-2012_Layout 1 4/3/2012 2:53 AM Page 14

MUMBAi: the lanky young boy, who made abig splash in Bollywood with his daredevilstunt performance in his debut film ‘PhoolAur Kaante’ in 1991, has turned 43. ‘Son ofSardar’ aka Ajay devgn sought divineintervention ahead of his special day as hevisited the Kali temple at quila Mubarak inPunjab. A source said, “Ajay is usually nottoo excited about celebrating his birthday, butvisiting Patiala’s 250-year-old quila Mubarakhas really made it special for him this timearound.” Ajay is not known for socialisingand is hardly seen at Bollywood’shappening dos. His birthday plans arepretty simple as he intends to spendthe day with his family post shoot.“yes, we will be shooting early in theday, but I’m looking forward tospending the day with my family, assoon as we wrap up the day’sshoot,” said Ajay, who has beenshooting for ‘Son of Sardar’ forquite some time now. the actortook to twitter to thank hisfans who surprised him with abirthday cake on the sets ofSoS. Ajay wrote, “thank u forthe lovely Birthday wishes!:)

and thanks to the fans that surprised mewith a huge

cake on #SoSsets, thewhole unitenjoyedit!(sic).”AgEnciES

15

Action King Ajay Devgnturns a year older

Akshay and John’s

reunion: What an act!

Jennifer Lopez launches new single ‘Dance Again’

LOS ANGELES AgEnciES

International pop star Jennifer Lopezhas once again teamed up with rapperPitbull to launch her new single ‘DanceAgain’. The new track’s video will be re-leased on April 5 on ‘American Idol’,where Lopez is on the judges’ panel. JLofans helped unlock her new single art-work for ‘Dance Again’ via sharing andliking on Facebook. The 42-year-oldsinger-actress also revealed the artworkand released the following statement,"Always remember, you will live. Youwill love. You will dance again", a releasesaid. Last year, Lopez and Pitbull deliv-ered the smash hit ‘On The Floor’, whichwas the most watched video of 2011.

Watson 'disappointed' by failure of clothing range

LONDONAgEnciES

Emma Watson has put her dreams ofbuilding a career as a fashion designeron hold after her clothing line for theethical label People Tree failed to sell.The 21-year-old 'Harry Potter' star, whohas also collaborated with Italian de-signer Alberta Ferretti in the past, isnow concentrating on her studies at Ox-ford university instead. "Emma was sodisappointed," the Daily Mail quoted asource as saying. "But even at knock-down prices, the clothes were still sit-ting on the shelves. She's also stalled onplans to do more with Ferretti becauseshe doesn't have time," the source added.

7

Ashton Kutcher to portray Steve Jobs in movie

LOS ANGELES REUTERS

Ashton Kutcher will play Steve Jobs in amovie about the late Apple co-founderfrom his early days as a "wayward hip-pie" up through to his technology ven-tures, according to show businesspublication Variety. The independentfilm ‘Jobs’ is based on a script by MattWhiteley and will be directed by JoshuaMichael Stern (‘Swing Vote’). Kutcher,who replaced Charlie Sheen on the long-running television sitcom ‘Two and aHalf Men,’ is scheduled to shoot themovie during that TV series' productionhiatus. Kutcher's big-screen credits in-clude ‘Valentine's Day,’ ‘What Happensin Vegas’ and ‘The Butterfly Effect.’

LAS VEGAS: It was a night for married couples at the Academy ofCountry Music Awards as husband and wife Blake Shelton andMiranda Lambert won several honours. The show spanned theyears of country music with 22-year-old sensation Taylor Swiftwinning the top honour, entertainer of the year. "I am so

amazed that the fans keep doing such incredibly nice thingsfor me. I just want to hug them all the time and thank themfor everything - it really blows my mind," Swift told re-porters. But Shelton and Lambert, who married last year,were the big winners, taking home three trophies betweenthem including best male vocalist for him and two trophiesfor her, female vocalist and album of the year for ‘Four theRecord.’ Jason Aldean and Kelly Clarkson also walked offwith two awards, single record of the year and vocal event

of the year for their duet ‘Don't You Wanna Stay.’ Lady An-tebellum, fresh off their smash hit ‘Need You Now,’ wasnamed best vocal group - the fourth time it had won theaward in recent years. The Eli Young Band took song ofthe year honours with ‘Crazy Girl.’ Former ‘American

Idol’ contestant Scotty McCreery, 19, who recorded the hitsingle ‘Water Tower Town,’ was named best new artist.

Among honors announced backstage, video of the year wentto Toby Keith for his popular party song, ‘Red Solo Cup.’ The

show featured numerous performances. Carrie Underwoodstarted off the programme with her rocking song ‘Good Girl.’

Not to be outdone, Keith Urban put on an electric guitar showwith ‘For You,’ and in keeping with tradition, the Academy ofCountry Music invited stars from other musical genres to appear,including U2 singer Bono and the members of KISS. REUTERS

Taylor, Shelton big winners at country awards

Abhishek injured, says ‘Bol Bachchan’ not affected

MUMBAi: remember the story of actorsJohn Abraham and Akshay Kumar gettinginto a nasty fight yesterday? well, turns outthat was the actors’ idea to fool their fanson April fool’s day! And well, we have noqualms in accepting the fact that we fell fortheir prank – hook, line, and sinker. Kudos tothe two actors for staging such a fight. theyhave proved, yet again, that they are brilliantactors – both on screen, and off screen – asand when the situation demands. Akshayand John had reportedly got into a fightduring a special screening of their upcomingmovie, ‘Housefull 2’. Post the screening, thetwo performedtheir act – andwere successfulin creatingabsolute foolsof their fans.Here’s wishingJohn andAkshay all thebest for their‘Housefull 2’ –and hope you’relistening guys –both of youwere equallyresponsible forthe success of‘desi Boyz’, nodoubts there.AgEnciES

ISB 03-04-2012_Layout 1 4/3/2012 2:54 AM Page 15

tuesday, 3 April, 2012

16 Foreign News

MOSCOWAFP

THIRTY-ONE people died Mon-day when a Russian jet crashedand burst into flames momentsafter taking off from an oil-richSiberian region, where another

jumbo jet aborted its flight a few hours later.The emergencies ministry said the

French-Italian made ATR-72 was carrying39 passengers and four crew when it camedown 45 kilometres (28 miles) from thewestern Siberian city of Tyumen after tak-ing off for the oil town of Surgut.

“Twelve people are in critical condi-tion... Thirty-one have been killed,” theTyumen emergencies ministry said in anupdated statement after initially puttingthe death toll at 32. The twin-engine tur-boprop was operated by uTair — a privateRussian airline that conducts most of its

flights in the energy-rich regions of West-ern Siberia and the ural Mountains.

The airline said in a statement that theplane came down “while conducting aforced landing 1.5 kilometres (about onemile)” outside Roshchino airport. An air-port security officer told Interfax newsagency the plane had only managed toclimb to about 100 metres before it lost allcommunication with air traffic controllers.One person on the ground said he noticeda problem as soon as the plane left the run-way. “There was a small flash of light fol-lowed by smoke,” the witness identifiedonly as Alexei told RIA Novosti newsagency. “The plane started turning, thesmoke kept pouring out, and then theplane went into the field,” he said.

unnamed investigators at the sitetold Interfax that both of the plane’s en-gines were working until the final mo-ment it crashed into a snowy field. One

source also speculated that the plane maynot have been de-iced properly prior totakeoff. uTair itself gave no immediatereason for the crash.

But it reported that pilots of a muchlarger Boeing 747 jumbo had to put ontheir emergency breaks and abort an at-tempt to take-off from the same airportjust a few hours later after discovering a se-rious problem with the jet. “The Boeing747 commander had to slow on the runwayafter reporting that the plane was not setto its standard configuration,” Interfaxquoted the local Investigative Committeeas saying. Passengers on the Boeing werelater put on another uTair flight. Therewas no immediate explanation of whatkind of fault the plane had.

Emergency and rescue workers whorushed to the crash site found the ATR-72 ablaze and the jet itself broken up intomultiple charred pieces that bore few

signs of life. State television footageshowed the tail lying in a snow-coveredfield some distance from other debrisunder a clear blue sky. The city of Tyu-men lies 1,700 kilometres (1,000 miles)east of Moscow and is the capital of oneof Russia’s biggest oil producing regionsof the same name.

The plane was flying to Surgut — theheart of the Surgutneftegaz energy com-pany and one of Russia’s largest oil andnatural gas producers. Interfax said one ofthe company’s board members and severalof its employees were on board the flight.Investigators were still identifying the sur-vivors. Russia’s once-proud aviation indus-try remains blighted by repeated accidentsinvolving its ageing and poorly looked-after fleet.

President-elect Vladimir Putin has al-ready ordered Russia’s older planes to betaken out of service by the end of the year

and for pilots and smaller air carriers to besubject to strict tests and regulations.

The crash marks the first disasterPutin will have to deal with following hisMarch 4 re-election and underscores thedifficulties Russia has faced in updating itsSoviet-era infrastructure.

Officials have identified poor pilottraining and lax safety rules as one of themost immediate problems affecting Russ-ian aviation.

But plans to eliminate smaller carriersthat employ just a handful of planes as asafety precaution have run up against thereality that Russia lacks the fleet needed tospan the country’s vast distances.

Officials promised to recall the licencesof 30 smaller airlines in response to a Sep-tember 2011 plane crash that claimed thelives of 44 people — most of them mem-bers of the championship-winning icehockey team Lokomotiv Yaroslavl.

ISTANBULAFP

Sunday’s “Friends of Syria” confer-ence sidestepped solid measuresagainst the Damascus regime for fearof getting sucked into a conflict thatcould defy control, analysts and ex-perts said. Although most countriesare committed to a political transitionthat puts President Bashar al-Assadout of power, they are concerned withthe military venture they might haveto risk for that, observers suggested.

“Europeans do not have the meansand willingness to get involved in a newconflict after what happened in Libya,”said Agnes Levallois, a Middle East ex-pert based in Paris. “Everybody isafraid of getting stuck in the conflict.”Sunday’s conference boasted dramaticwords and open challenges from topworld officials against Damascus, butthe results were limited with “notmuch” coming out of the final state-ment, Levallois commented. Represen-tatives from around 83 countriesgathered in Istanbul Sunday to try to

thrash out a new way to make Damas-cus halt its repression of dissent thathas claimed close to 10,000 lives inSyria, according to estimates. But thestatement that emerged from the meet-ing did not go as far as supplying armsto rebels, or recognising the Syrian Na-tional Council — also represented at theconference — as the only voice of theSyrian opposition.

The text lent strong backing to in-ternational envoy Kofi Annan’s peaceplan for an immediate ceasefire andcalled for a timeline to be set for its im-plementation, but failed to suggest adeadline. The lack of enthusiasm forgiving arms to the opposition despiteits strong demand reflects the absenceof faith in the SNC’s capacity to repre-sent everybody, an analyst from theWashington Institute for Near EastPolicy told AFP. “There are still a lot ofdivisions within the SNC and every-body wants arms,” Andrew Tabler saidof the main opposition group, whichwon recognition as “a legitimate repre-sentative” from Sunday’s conference.“Countries are cautious as they realise

that giving arms (to rebels) could endup inflaming the situation,” he warned.

Syria has all the the sectarian andreligious variety of the volatile MiddleEast, and unity under one umbrellaproves elusive. Similarly, the countriesof the so-called Friends group havetheir own agendas to worry about, andrivalries in the same region to watchout for, another expert suggested.“Some want to help bring democracy toSyria, others who are part of the coldwar between Iran and the alliance ofSaudi Arabia and Qatar want to prevailin regional conflicts,” Oraib al-Rantawiof the Amman-based Al Quds Centerfor Political Studies noted. “What hap-pened yesterday was a compromise be-tween the two,” he said of theconference that gave leverage andfunds to the Syrian opposition, butstopped short of calling on Assad tostep down. Meanwhile in Damascus,the meeting was deemed a failure forthe “Enemies of Syria,” as Al-Baathnewspaper, considered Assad’s mouth-piece, said the group produced onlymeagre results.

nATo opposesarming syrian rebels

BRUSSELSAFP

NATO’s chief on Monday said the alliancewas opposed to providing arms to theSyrian opposition seeking to counter aregime crackdown, warning that it wouldfuel a proliferation of weapons in theregion. Anders Fogh Rasmussen called fora diplomatic solution and reiterated thatNATO, which led the Libya air war thatcontributed to Moamer Kadhafi’s downfalllast year, had “no intention whatsoever tointervene in Syria.” The Syrian oppositionhas appealed for weapons to fight the year-long bloody crackdown on dissent, butArab League members, the united States,France and Germany steered clear of thosecalls at the “Friends of Syria” meeting inTurkey on Sunday. “I don’t think the rightway forward would be to provide anygroup with weapons,” Rasmussen told anews conference, voicing support for thediplomatic efforts led by uN special envoyKofi Annan.

senegal’s Mackysall sworn in as president

DAKARAFP

Senegal’s new president Macky Sall, 50,was sworn in on Monday after a crushingpoll victory over outgoing leaderAbdoulaye Wade and a transfer of powerhailed as an example of democracy inAfrica. “I swear to faithfully fulfil theoffice of president ... to observe andenforce the constitution, to devote all myefforts to defending constitutionalinstitutions, territorial integrity andnational independence,” Sall said as hetook the oath, his right hand raised.Some 2,000 people attended theceremony in the gardens of a large hotelin the seaside capital, including 11African heads of state from countriessuch as Liberia, Ivory Coast, Gambia,Burkina Faso, Guinea and Sierra Leone.Sall takes over as the west Africannation’s fourth president sinceindependence from France in 1960 afterwinning 65.8 percent of the votes in arun-off presidential election againstWade on March 26. He was expected tomake his way to the presidential palacedowntown where hundreds of cheeringpeople lined the road awaiting the newleader. Sall’s victory was greeted witheuphoria in the country after hetriumphed over Wade, whose efforts tostay in office for a third term led todeadly riots and threatened to tarnishthe country’s democratic credentials.Wade surprised the world by concedingdefeat just hours after polls closed andcalling his former protege tocongratulate him, a move that won himplaudits from around the globe.

MUMBAi: Police try to control a gathering of jewellery industry workers during an anti-government protest on Monday. nearly 1,000 jewellery industry workers took part in a

protest to urge the government to roll back a spate of taxes introduced on jewellery products including higher excise duties. AFP

Siberian plane crash kills 31 in oil town

‘Friends of syria’ hit brakes toavoid conflict: analysts

Tibet’s exiled premiersays Myanmar icon offers hope

TOKYOAFP

Exiled Tibetan leader Lobsang Sangay onMonday said Aung San Suu Kyi’s by-election victory in weekend polls gave himhope that his troubled homeland would seean end to Chinese repression. Sangay, a 43-year-old Harvard scholar, was elected to thenew post of prime minister of Tibet’sgovernment-in-exile last August as exiledspiritual leader the Dalai Lama eases out ofthe political arena. “No one thought AungSan Suu Kyi will be released (from housearrest). Things happen. So we are absolutelycertain our day will come,” Sangay told theForeign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. “Itmight look, some say, impossible andunrealistic... The success of every struggle isbelieving in oneself and believing in yourmovement,” he added. Suu Kyi, a Nobellaureate released from years of house arrestin November 2010, was elected toMyanmar’s parliament in a historic victoryon Sunday, following a host of reforms bythe country’s nominally civilian governmentBut Sangay repeated warnings that a spateof Tibetan self-immolations would continueunless China backed off its hardline policiesin the vast region.

ISB 03-04-2012_Layout 1 4/3/2012 2:54 AM Page 16

Foreign News 17tuesday, 3 April, 2012

MOSCOWAFP

President-elect Vladimir Putinsuffered a tough political blowMonday after seeing his party’scandidate trounced in a mayoral racethat became the focus of Russia’snascent protest movement. Officialresults from the central city ofYaroslavl showed ruling unitedRussia party candidate YakovYakushev picking up just 27.8 percentof the vote in a runoff Sunday againstlocal independent rival Yevgenyurlashov. urlashov claimed 68.7percent of the vote after seeing boththe Communist Party and the liberalopposition rally around his candidacyin a sign of the frustration in poorerregions with Moscow-backedpoliticians. “I am glad that the votersshowed their courage and reason.They are tired and they want change,”the winner told Moscow Echo radio.

The defeat for the party thatconverged around Putin during hisfirst two terms as president in 2000-2008 was especially painful becauseYakushev had won the endorsementsof both the local governor and theoutgoing mayor. urlashov complainedof a dirty campaign being wagedagainst him by united Russia thatincluded a raid on his campaignheadquarters by the authorities only

two days ahead of the vote. Theprotest movement responded bysending more than 1,000 of itsmonitors to Yaroslavl after floodingMoscow polling stations withobservers at the March 4 presidentialelections. The anti-Putin movementclaimed Moscow as its biggest successwhen the capital became the onlyregion of Russia in which the ex-KGBspy failed to pick up 50 percent of thevote. Putin still secured a crushingwin with nearly 64 percent of thenational vote — a sign that voter angerat the corruption and politicalmismanagement of the ruling elite hasleft Putin himself largely untouched.

The scale of his victory also tookaway much of the momentum fromthe record protests that emerged inresponse to fraud-tainted Decemberparliamentary polls narrowly won byunited Russia. But the streetmovement’s leaders said Putin wouldhave fared much worse had hiselection been watched as closelyacross the nation as it had been inMoscow. They have since vowed tochanged their tactics and makeelection monitoring one of their focalpoints as they seek to reverse morethan a decade of the Kremlin’sstifling domination over politics.“urlashov’s victory is our victory,”the unregistered Solidaritymovement of former cabinet

minister Boris Nemtsov and retiredchess king Garry Kasparov wrote onTwitter.

The respected election monitorGolos — a private group that hasbeen forced out of its Moscow officessince reporting thousands ofviolations in December — said theYarovlavl vote “was conducted inaccordance with the law.” Theprotest movement still intends tostage one last grand event on the eveof Putin’s May 7 inauguration aspresident for a newly extended six-year term that will involve a switch— current President DmitryMedvedev will take up his post ofprime minster. This continuity hasparticularly enraged oppositionleaders who are pressing the Kremlinfor new political rules. Authoritieshave promised to make partyregistration easier for futureelections. Medvedev also intends tomeet some opposition leaders for asecond time on Tuesday to discussother reforms. But Putin himself hasrefused to meet protest leaders.Some analysts called the weekendvote an important boost to theopposition’s morale. “This is anespecially important resultconsidering the downbeat mood theopposition was in after theelections,” said Carnegie MoscowCentre analyst Nikolai Petrov.

PHnOM PEnH: ASEAn foreign ministers pose after signing documents during a ceremony on the sidelines of the 20th Association of Southeast Asian nations (ASEAn)

summit on Monday. Asian foreign ministers welcomed Myanmar’s “orderly” elections as they met ahead of a regional summit that will also be dominated by north Korea’s

planned rocket launch and maritime disputes. AFP

Pro-Putin party suffersnew setback in polls

Red cross sendsemergencydiesel to gaza

GAZA CITYAFP

The International Committee of the RedCross on Monday began transferringemergency fuel supplies to the Gaza Stripwhere an electricity crisis has hit medicalservices hard. “This morning we begandistributing 150,000 litres of diesel toGaza’s hospitals and we will havecompleted the distribution by the end ofthe day,” ICRC Gaza spokesman Ayman al-Shehabi told AFP. The Red Cross said lastweek it would distribute the emergencysupplies to help local hospitals deal with adire shortage of fuel as Gaza suffersthrough what residents say is its worstelectricity crisis ever. The 150,000 litres ofdiesel will “help 13 public hospitalsmaintain essential health services for thenext 10 days,” the ICRC said in announcingthe move last week. The head of Gaza’sHamas government, Ismail Haniya, onMonday attended the funerals for threechildren killed on Sunday night by a fireapparently started by a candle being usedfor light in their home. “These martyrs arethe martyrs of the Palestinian people, thesiege and the conspiracy against thePalestinian people,” Haniya told a crowd ofseveral thousand mourners. In a statementissued on Monday, Haniya said his foreignminister Mohammed Awad was in Cairofor “intensive consultations” withEgyptians and Palestinian Authorityofficials on the issue of the power crisis.Gaza has long suffered power outages, butthe current crisis has proved worse andlasted longer than any before it. Theterritory’s sole power plant has stoppedoperations multiple times in the past fourmonths, as supplies of fuel from Egypt —much of it smuggled through tunnels intoGaza — have dried up.

israel army orderssettlers out ofHebron house

JERUSALEMAFP

The Israeli military on Monday ordered agroup of settlers to evacuate a contestedhouse in the southern West Bank city ofHebron, less than a week after theymoved into the property. “After examin-ing all the evidence that was handed overand after considering all the circum-stances of the incident, it was decided toreturn to the situation which existed be-fore,” said the military order, which wassent to the lawyer representing the set-tlers. “In other words: the state that ex-isted before the settlers entered thehouse.” The order, which gives the set-tlers until 1200 GMT on Tuesday to evac-uate the building, said the decision wasbased on “considerations of publicorder.” Last week, dozens of Israeli set-tlers moved into the second floor of abuilding, which they dubbed Beit Mach-pelah in an overnight operation on March28. They said the property had beenlegally purchased, but relatives of thePalestinian owners, who live on the firstfloor, dispute the claim. Guy Inbar,spokesman for the Israeli Civil Adminis-tration which administers the West Bank,said all such purchases need official ap-proval — which they did not obtain. “Thepurchase of a building by an Israeli froma Palestinian needs to be approved by theCivil Administration,” he told AFP. “BeitMachpelah did not request such permits,which is illegal, and for this reason theywere asked to vacate the premises by to-morrow afternoon.” A closed militaryzone was put in place around the house,which is near the contested religious siteknown as the Cave of the Patriarchs toJews and the Ibrahimi Mosque to Mus-lims. David Wilder, spokesman for the Is-raeli settler community in Hebron,slammed the evacuation order as a “polit-ical decision. “The only reason written onthe order is ‘breach of public order’ al-though we have documents (proving) thatthe house is ours,” he told AFP. “Thereare people who do not want Jews in He-bron. We intend to do everything to bringabout the cancellation of the order.”

YANGONAFP

PRO-DEMOCRACY leaderAung San Suu Kyi on Mon-day hailed a “new era” forMyanmar and called for po-litical unity after her party

swept to victory in elections seen as a testof budding reforms.

The Nobel laureate won her first-everseat in parliament, state media con-firmed. It said her party had secured 40of the 44 seats it contested, according topartial official results. The dramatic po-litical changes were accompanied by thequasi-civilian government’s most radicaleconomic reform yet — an overhaul of thecountry’s complex currency regime. SuuKyi supporters celebrated into the nightafter her National League for Democracy

(NLD) party declared that she had se-cured a seat in parliament for the firsttime in Sunday’s by-elections.

The veteran activist’s election to po-litical office marks the latest sweepingchange in the country formerly known asBurma after decades of outright militaryrule ended last year. “This is not so muchour triumph as a triumph for people whohave decided that they must be involvedin the political process in this country,”Suu Kyi said in a victory speech at herparty headquarters in Yangon. “We hopethis will be the beginning of a new era,”said the 66-year-old known fondly as“The Lady”, who was locked up by the for-mer junta for most of the past 22 years.

Suu Kyi struck a conciliatory tone to-wards the other political parties as sheprepares to take her place in a parliamentthat will remain dominated by the mili-

tary and its political allies. “We hope thatall parties that took part in the electionswill be in a position to cooperate with usin order to create a genuinely democraticatmosphere in our nation,” she said.

The NLD said that its own tallyshowed it had taken at least 43 seats. Intotal, 45 seats were available. As a law-maker and opposition leader in parlia-ment, Suu Kyi will have anunprecedented voice in the legislativeprocess, and her party is also alreadylooking ahead to the next general elec-tion, in 2015. “Obviously they want towin the next election comprehensivelyand be able to set up a government intheir own right,” said Trevor Wilson, aMyanmar expert at the Australian Na-tional university. Observers say thegovernment that took power a year agoneeds Suu Kyi to take a place in parlia-

ment to bolster the legitimacy of its po-litical system and spur an easing ofWestern sanctions.

A European union spokeswoman inBrussels said the bloc was expected tosend a “positive signal” to Myanmarwhen it reviews sanctions this month. Aspart of moves to modernise an economyleft in disarray by decades of military ruleand encourage more foreign investment,Myanmar on Monday moved to revampits dysfunctional exchange-rate system.The central bank set a reference rate of818 kyat to the dollar under its new man-aged floating exchange rate system,bringing the official rate roughly in linewith its value on the black market, whereit is widely traded. Previously the officialgovernment rate — which was widely ig-nored — was pegged at around just sixkyat to the dollar.

Suu Kyi declares Myanmar on cusp of new era

Russia rejectsdeadline for Annan’ssyrian peace plan

YEREVANAFP

Russia on Monday rejected Arab andWestern calls for a deadline to be set forthe Syrian regime’s implementation of apeace plan put forward by internationalmediator Kofi Annan. “ultimatums andartificial deadlines rarely help matters,”Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said whileon a visit to the former Soviet nation ofArmenia. Lavrov added that only the uNSecurity Council on which Russia wieldsveto power could put any timerestrictions on Syrian President Basharal-Assad’s compliance with the six-pointinitiative. “Annan has a Security Councilmandate and it is up to the uN SecurityCouncil to decide who is complying withthis plan and how,” he said. The so-called“Friends of Syria” meeting of Arab andWestern nations in Istanbul agreed thisweekend to ask the united Nations to giveAssad a deadline to cooperate withAnnan’s solution to the year-long conflict.The plan itself demands that Assad pullout his forces from major flashpoint citiesand introduce a daily two-hour ceasefirethat could let aid workers deliver suppliesand treat the thousands of injuredcivilians. But it puts forward no timeframe in which Assad has to comply.Lavrov said the peace plan would notwork unless rebel forces also agreed tohalt fire. “The demands should be put toall sides of the barricades,” Lavrov said.“We intend to be friends with both sidesin Syria,” he added in reference toRussia’s past support for Assad.

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Tuesday, 3 April, 2012

Page 21

djokovic beats Murrayfor Miami Masters title

RAWALPINDIAFP

PAKISTAN is ready to host interna-tional cricket matches once againafter a three-year break, authori-ties said Monday after the success-

ful staging of a domestic Twenty20 event.International cricket has been suspended inPakistan since gunmen opened fire on the SriLanka team bus on its way to the Lahore Testin March 2009, leaving eight people dead andseveral players and officials injured.

Tens of thousands of cricket-starved fansthronged the Rawalpindi Stadium during theweek-long Super Eight Twenty20 tournament,which ended on Sunday and was marked bytight security. Former Pakistan captain ShoaibMalik said fans were desperate to see foreignteams come and play -- and the country wasready for it. "The discipline shown by the fansprove that we deserve international cricket andthe successful event with immaculate security

proves that we can host international cricket,"said Malik, whose Sialkot team won the finalon Sunday. The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB)has invited Bangladesh for a limited-overs se-ries later this month, but is still waiting for ananswer. Javed Miandad, Pakistan's all-timeleading Test run-scorer and a PCB board mem-ber, said the success of the Super Eight showedthe appetite for international cricket was enor-mous. "This event sends a big message to theworld," he said. "We don't have to say anything,22,000 people on Sunday night demanded thereturn of international cricket in Pakistan andwe can host that in near future."

Since the Lahore attack Pakistan havehad to play all their "home" matches on for-eign soil, mostly in the united Arab Emirates,and their share of 2011 World Cup games wasmoved out of the country for security reasons.

Pakistan also played "home" matches inNew Zealand and England in 2009 and 2010.The PCB and police put stringent securityarrangements in place for last week's

Twenty20 tournament, hoping they wouldserve as a model for matches against visitingforeign teams. "We deployed 1,300 policemenand each and every fan entering the stadiumwas thoroughly body-searched, and the suc-cessful event proves that we can also stage in-ternational cricket," senior police officerMalik Matloob said. Shoaib Malik said thatPakistan badly needed international cricket.

"We have been playing on foreign venues,which not only deprives the fans but alsoyoung players who want to improve theirskills in the game, they can't do that whenthey don't see their stars play before them," hesaid. The PCB said it was also looking at theoption of staging a Pakistan Premier League(PPL) along the lines of the lucrative IndianTwenty20 league, with foreign players in-volved. "We are doing our best to bring inter-national cricket back to Pakistan," said PCBchairman Zaka Ashraf. "We are quite positiveabout that and are also planning to host thePPL so that we can take the first step."

LAHOREASHER BUTT

A 14-member British university cricketteam has reached the city on a weaklong tour to play a couple of matchesagainst the Pakistan under-19 andsome local teams. The arrival of theBritish youngsters has also dispelledthe impression in the west that thePakistan is not a safe country to visitand that has also agreed by the captainof the British university team.

Intikhan Alam, director NCA, saidthanked the visiting team and under-lined the PCB keenness to host an inter-national team. “The PCB is doing greatefforts to bring cricket back to Pakistan.PCB chairman Zaka Ashraf is very keento see international teams playing inPakistan against and everyone is tryingits best in this regard,” said Pakistan’sformer captain. Kamal, one of the mem-bers of the team who assembled playersfrom different universities includingMCC and army, said: “When you thepicture from outside in the media it isdistorted in many ways until you cometo the country and see for yourself whatis going on and then realize there isnothing to worry about and its only thehype and propaganda.”

“Secondly we are here as a charity.We raise money for charity and also asa good will gesture between Britain andPakistan. We raise money for educationin countries like Afghanistan.

“The main reason is not just cricketbut an angle to show that Pakistan reallyneeds cricket which is the most impor-

tant thing in the country. (By deprivingPakistan of cricket) it is like taking oxy-gen out of the country. “The best thing Icould do to gather cricketers from dif-ferent organizations, the MCC, theArmy, the charity to come to Pakistanand see for themselves that things aregood here in Pakistan,” he added.

Rob Galamore, who is from theBritish Army, said that his perceptionabout Pakistan was clear and positive.“We have seen nothing since we arehere. I feel more safe here than in Lon-don. James, vice captain of the visitingteam, said that they are under no illu-sion that they are going to be facing avery tough opposition. “The Pakistanteam would be at the end of their seasonso their skills would be better hornedand we would have just half a day to ac-climatise so we are under no illusion.We have good talented players in ourteam and feel its going to be tough andwe would try to give our best.

The visiting team will be playingtwo matches against the PCB under-19on April 4 and 6 and on April 3 (today)they will open up their tour with a 25-overs match against Aitchison Collegecricket team. The British universitiesCricket Team arrived here on Mondayto play two one-day games againstPCB u-19 Team and both the matchesare day games and will be played atGaddafi Stadium. “We have alsoarranged several other tours for theteam so that they could interact withthe people and know for themselvesthat Pakistan is a save country to visitand play cricket,” said Intikhab.

T20 event showsPak ready for int’ls

British varsityteam positiveabout Pakistan

rAwAlPINdI: Sialkot Stallions celebrate after winning the faysal Bank Super 8 t20 title. sTAFF PHoTo

lAHore: director International Intikhab Alam and captain British Universities Kamal Alamteam talking to media before their training session at the Gaddafi Stadium. sTAFF PHoTo

LAHORESTAFF REPORT

Pakistan captain Misbah-ul-Haq has saidthat he intends to utilise the eight-weekbreak before the next international seriesto plug the weaknesses of the team. Pak-istan's next tour is of Sri Lanka from lateMay, and since no player from Pakistanis participating in the upcoming IndianPremier League (IPL), most of them willget a hard-earned break. "This period isvery valuable to us as we can utilise it towork on our weaknesses, physical fitnessand other issues," Misbah was quoted byPTI as saying.

"We have already identified the areaswhere we need to work on and improve.But due to our hectic schedule we never gota chance to work on them. Now this eight-week period is ideal for us to hold a campand get down to work," he said.

The Pakistan captain was unable tolead his hometown side, FaisalabadWolves, in the National Super EightsTwenty20 championship due to a viral in-fection. Misbah said he would soon betalking to the officials in the PakistanCricket Board (PCB) and new coach DaveWhatmore to plan out a training camp."The Super Eights event has also thrown

up some new talent and I think we canalso look at them in this free period,"Misbah said. He pointed out that Pak-istan needed to plan ahead because of thedemands of a hectic international calen-dar. Misbah declined to comment on theissue of Pakistan's players not being partof the IPL. "It is their [India's] domesticevent and we should just focus on im-proving our cricket or having our ownPremier League," he said.5TH IPL LooKS To PUT TRoUBLESBEHIND IT: The Indian PremierLeague faces a test of its popularity asthe fifth edition of the money-spin-ning Twenty20 event gets under waythis week amid concern aboutcricket fatigue amongviewers. The IPL, whichbegan in 2008 as ahigh-octane mix ofglamour, entertain-ment, rich purses forplayers and the ex-citement of slam-bang cricket, hashad a difficult rideover the past fouryears. It has beenhit by infighting,problems with

teams, criminal investigations and corrup-tion allegations. Fresh doubts have beenraised after a fall in viewership figures lastyear and a reported decline in sponsor in-terest, with the tournament coming soonafter the Asia Cup in Bangladesh andIndia's tour of Australia.

"By the time this one ends, all doubtswill be put to rest," IPL chief Rajiv Shuklatold AFP. "The excitement is building upnicely. We in the BCCI (Board of Control

for Cricket in India) are not worriedat all." The IPL, which featuresworld stars playing for rich fran-chise owners, is being investi-

gated by government agenciesfor alleged fraud and foreign

exchange violations. Its founderLalit Modi, who was suspended

from the league in 2010, isholed up in London as hefaces Indian governmentand BCCI charges of misap-

propriation of funds. Among the 10 IPLteams, Kochi have been thrown out fornon-payment of fees, while the RajasthanRoyals and Kings XI Punjab face arbitra-tion in cases filed by the BCCI.

The owners too are feeling the pinch.Pune, owned by the Sahara group, wanttheir franchise fees of a whopping $370million reduced. The Rajasthan Royals arein talks to sell a majority stake.

As viewership declined last year, whenthe event started just after India won theWorld Cup at home, some sponsors choseto turn their back on what was once consid-ered a safe bet for advertisers.

Business newspapers have reportedthat at least three regular advertisers --Parle, LG Electronics and Godrej -- havebacked out from the IPL this year. "Adver-tisers are starting to look at other options,"

said AlokBharadwaj of

Japanese elec-tronics group

Canon, whichhas decided to cut down

its advertising spend in the tourna-ment by 80 percent. "Each year the rateshave gone up by 15-20 percent and the re-turns are not directly proportionate,"Bharadwaj told the Times of India. The

Champions League Twenty20, an offshootof the IPL that involves leading domesticteams from around the world, lost its titlesponsors, AirTel, after just one year due tolack of interest among fans.

Former first-class cricketer ShishirHattangadi, who once worked on the teammanagement of Sachin Tendulkar-ledMumbai Indians, said the IPL was sufferingfrom a poor long-term development plan."It was inevitable," he said. "Team compo-sitions change every year which has con-fused the loyal fan. There is also the fatiguefactor of watching too much cricket."

The 76-match tournament from April4 to May 27 has the nine teams playingeach other on a home and away basis be-fore a four-game play-off. The Interna-tional Cricket Council has refused tocarve out a window for the IPL in its cal-endar, so bilateral tours will restrict thetop world stars from playing in the entiretournament.

England's Kevin Pietersen will not beavailable for more than a month, andleading Australians will be available onlyafter their tour of the West Indies ends onApril 27. Pakistani players, who are usu-ally a major draw in India, have been keptout of the tournament since the secondedition, reportedly due to security fears.

Misbah wants to iron out weak areas in break

ISB 03-04-2012_Layout 1 4/3/2012 2:54 AM Page 18

Sports 19tuesday, 3 April, 2012

COLOMBOAFP

SRI Lanka will settle for nothingless than a 2-0 series whitewashin the second and final Testagainst England in Colombo

from Tuesday, as the buoyant hosts cele-brate 30 years of Test cricket.

Sri Lanka won the first Test in Galleby 75 runs, meaning a draw would beenough at the P. Sara Oval in the SriLankan capital for a first series Test vic-tory since 2009, when they beat NewZealand 2-0 at home. "We will go for 2-0because we play our best cricket when we

are positive," skipper Mahela Jayawar-dene said on Monday.

Andrew Strauss's spin-wary Englandwill slip to number two in the world rank-ings behind South Africa if they lose ordraw the second Test, but Jayawardenesaid his team was not going to show thetourists any mercy. "When you play ateam like England, you have to be aggres-sive and look to get in front of them fromthe first ball. They are a strong side andwill come hard at us," he said.

"But we are prepared for that andready to play good cricket. We played wellin Galle and must now look to improve onthat." It was at the same venue that Sri

Lanka played their inaugural Test in Feb-ruary 1982 against an England side led byKeith Fletcher, which won by seven wick-ets inside four days.

"It is going to be somewhat emo-tional," Jayawardene said of the land-mark Test. "Everyone who plays thematch will become part of our rich his-tory. We are humble and proud to be partof such an important game."

The Galle win was only Sri Lanka'ssecond, and the first at home, in 18 Testssince world bowling record holder Mut-tiah Muralitharan retired in 2010 with arecord 800 Test and 534 one-day wickets.The other win came in December, whenthey thumped South Africa by 208 runsin Durban, but went on to lose the series2-1. Left-arm spinner Rangana Herath,who claimed nine wickets against SouthAfrica, destroyed England in Galle withsix wickets in each innings to earn theman of the match award.

Jayawardene said the P. Sara Ovalwicket will provide exciting cricket overthe next five days. "It is usually a very goodTest-match wicket," he said. "There will besomething in it for the quicks. The spin-ners will also come into play, batsmen willget value for their shots and the outfield isquick. "We like playing at venues like thiswhich favour us. That's what home advan-tage is." The success of sixth-ranked SriLanka over the world's number one teamin Galle did not surprise Jayawardene,who hit a match-winning 180 in the game."There are five to six teams in worldcricket who can beat each other, given theconditions," he said. "That is a good bal-ance to have." Sri Lanka make twochanges from the side that won in Galle,bringing in fit-again Angelo Mathews andseamer Dhammika Prasad for batsmanDinesh Chandimal and injured pacemanChanaka Welegedara.

EngLAnD-SRi LAnKA SqUADS FOR SEcOnD TESTEngLAnD (FROM): Andrew Strauss (capt), AlastairCook, Jonathan trott, Ian Bell, Kevin Pietersen, raviBopara, Samit Patel, Matt Prior, James Anderson, timBresnan, Steven finn, Monty Panesar, Graeme Swann.SRi LAnKA: Mahela Jayawardene (capt), tillakaratnedilshan, lahiru thirimanne, Kumar Sangakkara, thilanSamaraweera, Angelo Mathews, Prasanna Jayawar-dene, Suranga lakmal, Suraj randiv, rangana Herath,dhammika Prasad.Umpires: Asad rauf (PAK) and Bruce oxenford (AUS)tV umpire: rod tucker (AUS)Match referee: Javagal Srinath (INd)

Buoyant Sri Lanka eye 2-0 sweepunder-fire straussshrugs off captaincy talkCoLoMBo: England's Andrew Strauss insisted on Monday that he would fight on ascaptain and battle through his batting slump as the team look for a series-levelling winin the final Test against Sri Lanka. Strauss's world number one side face a must-win sit-uation at the P. Sara Oval in Colombo on Tuesday after losing the opening game of thetwo-match series in Galle by 75 runs. It was England's fourth consecutive defeat in Asiathis year following the 3-0 rout by Pakistan in the united Arab Emirates. They must winin Colombo to avoid falling to second spot in the world rankings behind South Africa."We desperately want to win this Test match and make amends for what happened inGalle," said Strauss, who is himself struggling to score runs at the top of a fragile battingorder. "I am very sure we have the ability to do it, and that is what we will challenge our-selves to do in the next five days. "We have not been as consistent as we would like tobe, and now we have this final chance and salvage something out of the winter and gointo the summer with some momentum. "I retain absolute faith in our players. You arenot going to win every game you play. But if you retain faith, you will turn it around,especially when you have players of quality in your side, which I know we have."Strauss has gone 23 innings without adding to his 19 Test centuries, and managed justone three-figure knock in his past 48 innings. But the left-handed opener, who has av-eraged a poor 28.52 since his last century, denied he was thinking of resigning as cap-tain to concentrate on his batting. "I have not considered quitting the captaincy, andgoing into this game, it is not something that is on my mind," Strauss said. "ObviouslyI want to score some runs, there is no doubt about that. But I am confident we havethe material to do well in this Test. Everyone is motivated to show that we can playbetter than what we have done so far. "I am not distracted at all about my form. Thechallenge of leadership is that it is easy when everything is going well. But when it getstough, it is important to show the right direction. I like that sort of challenge." AFP

ColoMBo: Sri lanka cricketer Kumar Sangakkara (l) chats with coach Graham ford duringa training session ahead of the second test match against england. AFP

ColoMBo: england cricketers warm up during a training session ahead of theirsecond test match against Sri lanka. AFP

LAHORESTAFF REPORT

KIPS Annual Sports was held at the WapdaSports Complex here the other day. SportsPromotion Society and KIPS DirectorPhysical Education, Prof. Faisal Fayyaz (In-ternational Gymnast and Project Managerof PuCIT) was chief organizer of the event.

Mian umer Misbah-ur-Rehman(MPA-PPP), was chief guest of the inaugurationceremony. Almost 800 students partici-pated in the event contested were 100m,200m, 400m, 800m, 1600m, 4000m,shot-put, discuss throw, javelin throw, longjump, high jump, triple jump andgymkhana events like sack race, chatti race,three leg race, wheel barrow, slow race, softball throw, musical chair while gymnasticsand karate display were also part of thesports day. Ms. Yasmin Rehman (MNA-

PPP) and Abdul Qadir (former Cricketer ofPakistan) later distributed the prizesamong the winners. Mohammad Ali Wynewas declared the best athlete of KIPS An-nual Sports 2012 and special souvenir wasgiven to Syed Taimoor-ur-Rahim, captainof KIPS Football Team who got 3rd posi-tion in Lahore Board Games.

The following were also among theguest who attended the closing ceremony:Dr. MA Pasha (Director, Imperial Collegeof Business Studies), Prof. Sadia Faisal, Dr.Mubashra , Dr. Shaheen Pasha, Dr. SadiaNiazi, Prof. Aasia Niazi, Prof. Painda A.Malik, Prof. Qamar Zaman, Arshia Faizan,Col Adeel(Principal DPS Kasoor), AyeshaAhsan, Ambreen Tariq, Iram Ramzan,Ayesha Mujahid, Prof. Khadim Ali Khan,Prof. Shafqat Rasool, Prof. Azmat Ali, Prof.Qamar Waheed, Prof. Mujahid Khetrani,Prof. Tariq Rustam, Ahsan Javed, Ali

Fayyaz, Ramzan Ikram, Javed Munir,Tariq Ikram, umer Javaid, Mujahid Pasha,Asifa Javaid, Faizan ul Haq, Ahsan Rabbi,M. Ali Mughal, Haroon Mughal, usmanRabi, Mubashar Abbas.

Best Athlete was Mohammad AliWyne and second best athletes wereTalha Zahid & Salman Shoiab.

RESULTS: 100 meter race: Hafiz talha Zahid, MujahidBhatti, Mubashir200 meter race: Noor ul Hassan, M. Ilyas , M. taimoor400 meter race: Behram Zulfiqar, Hamad, Zohair,800 meter race: M. Ahmad, Saad Siddique, Usama Ishfaq4 x 100 relay race: Ibrar, Salman, Umar, Mohyudin; Zee-shan, Shamsur rehman, Hubab Saif, Hamad Afzal;Salman, Hafiz talha, Jehangir, wajahat4 x 400 relay race: Suhair Khan, Syed Ghazaal, Hamzaqaiser, Hashir Ali Shamim; Hasnain Ilyas Muhgal, M. Umer,Syed taimoor ur rahim, talha Zahid; Umer Saeed, ShanAli Shafqat, Abdul rehman, Abdul Salam800 meter race: Zeeshan Akhter, Hamza Azmat, Zee-shan Alam Khan

Shotput: M. Ali wyne, Haider latif, Masood ul Hassan

Javelin: tayyab Asghar, M. Ali wyne, Umair Hashmt

discuss: wajahat Abbas Kazmi, M. Ali wyne, yahya

Haider

Hammer: M. Ali wyne, Shehzada Salman, Uzair Khan

long jump: M. Ali wyne, Naseeb Ali, Saad Khalid

High jump: Umer Mazher, danyal Mirza Baig, fahad Khan

triple jump: Abdul Moiz, yasir Minhas, Ahmed Junaid

wheel barrow: Atif Afridi & Ch. Umar Arshad; Zahid Ali

& Arham ranjha; Sarfraz Khan & Asad faisal

Needle race: Hassan Irshad & Inshal Khalid; Hassan

Saqib & Ibrahim Ijaz; Inam ul Haq & M. Salman Shoiab

three leged race: Irfan Ullah & Jahangir Khan; M. Ali

wyne & M. Nauman Nasir; Salman Shoiab & taimoor

ur rahim

one leg race: waseem Iqbal, Ali Asmer,M. faizan Khawer

Slow cycling: wajahat Abbas Kazmi, M. Ali wyne, yahya

Haider

Sack race: Hafiz talha Zahid, Mujahid Bhatti, Mubashir

Potato piling: Sajid Siraj , Abdul Moiz , Ahmed Junaid

fruit eating: M. Ali wyne, Shehzada Salman, Uzair Khan

Softball throw: Zeeshan Akhter, Hamza Azmat, Zee-

shan Alam Khan.

GCU NGSA forms

cricket team LAHORE

STAFF REPORT

The first cricket team of GovernmentCollege university Lahore Non-GazettedStaff Association (GCu NGSA) wasformed on Monday. THE TEAM: Mohsin Hayat is selected as the firstcaptain of the team, which includes vice captainMuhammad Javed, Hafiz Muhammad Bilal rasheed,Mirza faraz, Hassan Maqbool, Abid rasool, UsmanJaved, Kashif Masih, Muhammad Anwar, waseemShahzad, Sammar Abbas, Muhammad faisal, rajaAwais, Aurang Zaib, Mihammad Shahzad, yousafKhan and Saqib Hussain. GCU NGSA President KhailqHussain thanked Vice Chancellor Prof. dr. Muham-mad Khaleeq ur rehman for providing exemplaryworking conditions to the employees of GCU.

Marathon champ

Balciunaite loses

doping ban fightVILNIUS

AFP

Lithuania's disgraced European women'smarathon champion, Zivile Balciunaite, haslost a legal challenge to her two-year ban fordoping that has sidelined her for the LondonOlympics. The Lithuanian Athletics Federa-tion said on Monday that the Swiss-basedCourt of Arbitration for Sport had dismissedBalciunaite's appeal against its ban. "TheLithuanian Athletics Federation's decision ofApril 5, 2011 has been confirmed," it said ina statement. It said the ban would be inforce until September 6, less than a monthafter the Olympics are over. That expiry dateis linked to the federation's provisional sus-pension of Balciunaite, announced in Octo-ber 2010, which was later transformed intoa two-year, backdated ban, and confirmed inApril 2011. Balciunaite's defence team de-clined to comment on the Court of Arbi-tration for Sport's decision pending detailsof the ruling. "It is clear that the decisionis negative, but we still need to analyse thejustification before making a comment,"her lawyer, Aivaras Zilvinskas, told AFPon Monday. The federation imposed a banafter Balciunaite's urine sample -- takenafter her European title win in Barcelonain July 2010 -- revealed abnormal levels inthe ratio between the male sex hormonetestosterone and epitestosterone. Bothtestosterone and epitestosterone occurnaturally in women but an increased levelof testosterone can indicate it has been ad-ministered artificially. Balciunaite, whoturns 33 on Tuesday, denied the dopingallegations and claimed the results couldbe explained by her use of Duphaston, adrug prescribed by her gynaecologist.

LAHORESTAFF REPORT

The 34th National Boxing Championship will beheld here at the Punjab College of CommerceMuslim Town Hall from April 23 to 27.

Talking to this scribe, secretary PunjabBoxing Association Mohammad Yousaf Buttsaid that boxers from all the four provinces– Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and KyberPakhtunkhwa, Islamabad, Fata, Railways,Wapda, Army, Navy, Air Force, HEC, KESCand Police will compete in the champi-onship. Pakistan Boxing Federation presi-

dent Duda Khan Bhutto has allotted thechampionship to Punjab and he will also be

among the guests. He said that around 200boxers and technical officials will betaking part in the event and the compe-titions will be held in 10 body weightcategories.

Yousaf said that the championshipwill be inaugurated by PakistanOlympics Association President Lt GenArif Hasan and the chief guest of theclosing ceremony will be Sardar Mo-hammad Latif Khosa and will also dis-tribute the prizes.

Ali Wyne named best player of KIPS

34th national Boxingchampionship from 23rd

ISB 03-04-2012_Layout 1 4/3/2012 2:54 AM Page 19

Sports20tuesday, 3 April, 2012

KEY BISCAYNE: Maria

Kirilenko and Nadia

Petrova of Russia pose

for photographers after

defeating Sara Errani

Roberta Vinci of Italy

after the doubles final

of the Sony Ericsson

Open at the Crandon

Park Tennis. aFP

lAHore: owner Shaheen Butt holds Great Adla after the horse registeredan upset win during the lahore race Club's Sunday races. sTAFF PHoTo

SPM StagsVeterans inregional quarters

LAHORESTAFF REPORT

SPM Stags beat Vehari Veteran by 102runs and qualified for the regional quar-ter-final of the 14th National VeteranSenior Cricket Cup.SPM Stags made 278/4 after 30 overs.Test Cricketer Zahoor Ilahi batting well104 runs not out, Imtiaz Tarar 32, Sha-keel Malik 38, Kamran Khan 23, ShahidAnwar 15 & Fayyaz Haidar 57 runs notout. Zahid Alam 2/46, Zaheer Hussain1/44 & Zia-ul-Hassan 1/44 wickets. Inreply Vehari Veteran 176 all out after29.3 overs. Munawar Khan 28, NadeemSheikh 24, Zia-ul-Hassan 29 & QaisarKhan 20 runs. Aizad Hussain Syed 1/14,Iftkhar Ahmad 2/46, Shahid Anwar1/17, Sajjad Akbar 1/24 & Fayyaz Haidar1/22 wickets. Javeed Ashraf, Qaisar Wa-heed, Mian Pervez Akhter Match Ref-eree & Abdul Hameed was the scorer.End of the match Chief Guest Mian Per-vez Akhtar give away man of the matchaward to Zahoor Ilahi.

yoo wins KraftNabisco afterKim heartbreaker

RANCHO MIRAGEAFP

Sun Young Yoo birdied the first playoffhole to win the LPGA Kraft NabiscoChampionship on Sunday after I.K. Kimmissed a one-foot putt for the win on thefinal hole of regulation. Yoo was steadydown the stretch in the first women'smajor championship of 2012, but it wasonly Kim's heartbreaking miss that madeher playoff triumph possible. "She's agreat putter," Yoo said of Kim. "She usu-ally doesn't miss that kind of putt, but ... insports, you never know what's going tohappen." Both South Koreans cardedfinal-round 69s to finish 72 holes tied onnine-under 279. Kim could have sealed avictory at 10-under with her tap-in for parat the par-five 18th, but it circled the rimof the cup then popped out. It was her onlybogey in a round that included threebirdies and drew a gasp from the gallery.She put her hands to her face in dismay,then walked eyes down to the scorers' tent.

Murdoch’s Star winsIndia broadcast deal

NEW DELHIAFP

Star TV has won the right to broadcastcricket matches played in India for six yearsafter the Rupert Murdoch-owned group bidmore than $750 million, Indian cricketchiefs said Monday. Star TV will hold tele-cast rights for all Test and one-day cricketplayed in India until March 2018, the Boardof Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) an-nounced after its marketing committee metin the southern city of Chennai. "The BCCIis very happy with the deal," board presidentN. Srinivasan told reporters. The 38.51-bil-lion-rupee ($751-million) deal also includesInternet and mobile phone rights. The BCCIissued a tender for the lucrative deal after itterminated its contract with Nimbus in De-cember, claiming it had defaulted on itspayments. According to the deal, eachIndia match will be worth $7.8 million,which is $1.5 million more than Nimbuswas paying, Srinivasan said. The second-highest bidder was Multi Screen Media,owned by Sony Television, which offered$722 million for the rights, Srinivasan said.

AUGUSTAAFP

Tiger Woods arrived at the Masters con-fident and fit on Sunday, playing a prac-tice round over Augusta National's frontnine in advance of Thursday's start tothe first major of the year.

Woods, a four-time Masters cham-pion and 14-time major winner, snappeda uS PGA win drought of 2 1/2 years oneweek ago with a victory at Bay Hill. Nowhe hopes to end a major title drought dat-ing to the 2008 uS Open. "Physically I’mfine," Woods told the Masters website. "Ifeel great, no aches and pains."

Woods, who also played Augusta Na-tional's front nine the week before win-ning at Bay Hill, has won at least once ina season before each of his prior Masters'triumphs. But Woods has not won a Mas-ters title since 2005. "The whole idea is toget your game together and have it going

the way you want at the time you want,"Woods said. "There are four times a yearyou want to be playing your best and thisis one of them." Woods, chasing the all-time record 18 majors won by Jack Nick-laus, has shared fourth each of thepast two years at the Masters,coming back in 2010 after alayoff over his infamous sexscandal. Alongsidecaddie Joe LaCava,Woods played onSunday with palMark O'Mearaand Vern Coo-ley, a surgeonwho had operatedon Woods' leg, in a re-laxed morning roundunder sunny skies amidtowering pine trees. Woods,36, practiced putting at locationswhere he expects pins to be placed

during the tournament and worked onchipping from areas just off the green,seeing how he could make the ball spinand stop on the famed undulating greensat Augusta. Oddsmakers liked what theysaw from Woods at Bay Hill, edgingWoods into a favored role just ahead of

reigning uS Open champion RoryMcIlroy of Northern Ireland, the

prodigy who led after each of thefirst three rounds last year and with

nine holes to play before soar-ing to an 80. McIlroy, 22, setaside the Masters heart-break and won his firstmajor title in his next

chance two months later atCongressional. "It was justnice to see that not reallyever build into somethingbigger for him mentally,just to put it to bed," Eng-land's Justin Rose said.

HOUSTONAFP

Hunter Mahan fired a final-round71 on Sunday to win the uS PGATour's $6 million Houston Open byone stroke over Sweden's Carl Pet-tersson. Mahan, who won the eliteWorld Golf Championships MatchPlay Championship in February,became the first two-time winneron the uS tour this year.

The victory will boost the 29-year-old to fourth in the worldrankings, sending him into theMasters, the first major tourna-ment of the season that startsThursday at Augusta National, as

the highest-ranked American. "Itfeels great," Mahan said. "I'm play-ing good. I'm glad I'm going to Au-gusta, it's really a special place andI'm looking forward to going there."

Mahan's one-under 71 at Red-stone gave him a four-round total of16-under 272. Pettersson also posteda 71 for 273. South African LouisOosthuizen, who led by two strokesafter the third round, had two dou-ble-bogeys in a three-over 75 that lefthim in third place on 274. Petters-son, who closed his round with eightstraight pars, notched his secondrunner-up finish of the year, butcouldn't get the victory he needed tosecure a berth in the Masters. Three-

time major champion Ernie Els alsoneeded a victory to earn an auto-matic invitation to Augusta. Insteadhe was poised to miss the Mastersfor the first time since 1993 after fin-ishing on 10-under. "It's not going tochange my life, either way," Els said.

"I've played many out there.It's one of those things." While theMasters could still offer Els a spe-cial invitation, he said he wouldn'taccept a last-minute invitation. "Togo through all of this, and then getan invite, I wouldn't take it," hesaid. Mahan's two birdies on theday came back-to-back at nine and10. At the par-three ninth hedrained a five-foot birdie putt.

HUMBle: Hunter Mahan holds thewinners trophy of the Shell Houstonopen at redstone Golf Club. AFP

Mahan wins Houston Open by one stroke

Tiger confident uponarrival at Augusta

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Sports 21tuesday, 3 April, 2012

WAtcH It LIve

ESPNSports Center

07:30PM

MIAMI: Pakistan's ace tennis player Aisam-ul-Haq qureshi presents his book ‘lessons learntfrom the tennis tour’ to tennis legend roger federer last week at AtP Master Championship inMiami, USA, who highly appreciated this book.

PCB level-IICoaching Courseat Karachi

LAHORESTAFF REPORT

The PCB Level II Coaching Course will beheld in the last week of April 2012 at Na-tional Stadium, Karachi. In all 25 appli-cants from Karachi, Hyderabad, Quettaand Multan Regions based on their PCBLevel-I accreditation or candidates hav-ing equivalent qualification from abroadwill be selected to participate in thiscourse. The course will be of self-financedbasis and a fee amounting to Rs 20,000will be charged from each participant.The participants will be imparted ad-vanced skills of bowling, batting, fielding,wicketkeeping, athlete preparation, phys-ical fitness, video analysis, game sensetraining, sports nutrition, biomechanicsin cricket and sports psychology duringthis endeavor. Candidates wanted to takethe course can submit their applicationsalong with the course fee draft in favor ofPakistan Cricket Board to ZaighamAbbas, Assistant Manager Operations,National Cricket Academy, Lahore (0303-4441317) not later than April 9.

faisalabadVeteran beattextile tigers

LAHORESTAFF REPORT

Faisalabad Veteran beat Textile Tigers by34 runs in the 14th National Veteran Sen-ior Cricket Cup here at the at Ali GarhCricket Ground. Faisalabad made 329/4after 30 overs. Muhammad Shakeeb bat-ting well 163 runs not out, Ejaz AhmadJunior 75, Ejaz Mehmood 63 & Muham-mad Atif 22 runs not out. Maqsood Ali2/52, Hafiz Saeed 1/55 & Khalid Habib1/77 wickets. In reply Textile Tigers295/7 after 30 overs. Ali Amjad 48, Ro-mail Bashir 47, Khalid Habib 52, Maq-sood Ali 31, Qadeer Khan 19 MuhammadRiaz 16 & Test Cricketer Ashraf Ali 72runs not out. Ejaz Ahmad Junior 2/52,Maqbool Ahmad 3/60, Nadeem Afzal1/42 & Asif Islam 1/44 wickets. JaveedAshraf, Muhammad Kaleem umpire &Zahoor Alam was the scorer. MuhammadShakeeb Declared man of the match.

MIAMIAFP

WORLD number oneNovak Djokovic de-feated Andy Murray 6-1, 7-6 (7/4) on Sunday

to win his second straight ATP MiamiMasters title and third overall. Djokovic,who won here for the first time in 2007,became just the third man to win thetitle three or more times, along withAndre Agassi and Pete Sampras.

For his third straight match,Djokovic cruised through the first set be-fore finding himself in a tense tussle inthe second. However, even though thesecond set went with serve until the tie-breaker, it was Murray who was underpressure most, fighting off break pointsin three of his service games. "I thoughtI played a great match from start to end,"said Djokovic, who didn't drop a set inthe tournament. "There was a couple ofservice games I had a chance to breakhim in the second set. He's such a qualityplayer, you never know. "That's why he'sright at the top -- he always comes back,even if you feel you have control of thematch," Djokovic said. "I'm really happyto close it out in straight sets."

Djokovic, 24, captured his 30th ATPtitle, and his second this year after his tri-umph at the Australian Open. It markedhis 11th victory in the ATP's elite Masters1000 series. Murray had beaten Djokovicin the semi-finals at Dubai in February,and the Serb was then upset by AmericanJohn Isner in the semi-finals of the IndianWells Masters last week.

Djokovic said that made this win,which made him the first man sinceRoger Federer in 2006 to successfullydefend the Miami crown, all thesweeter. "I had a great tournament afterthat tough loss in the semi-finals at In-dian Wells," said Djokovic, adding herecalled his 2007 triumph in Miami asa springboard to his current success.Murray, who beat Djokovic in the 2009Miami final, was playing his first matchsince Wednesday, when he downedJanko Tipsarevic in the quarter-finals.He advanced to the title match on awalkover when world number twoRafael Nadal withdrew before theirsemi-final with a left knee injury.

Oddly, that was Murray's secondwalkover of the tournament, after Cana-dian Milos Raonic pulled out of theirscheduled third-round clash with anankle injury. Whether it was the layoff ornot, Murray wasn't at his sharpest, his39 unforced errors making things easierfor Djokovic. His only break chance inthe entire two hour, seven minute en-counter came in the fifth game of thefirst set, but he was unable to convert itand stem Djokovic's momentum.

Djokovic beats Murrayfor Miami Masters title

miami win buoys Djokovicfor claycourt campaignMIAMI: Novak Djokovic's third Miami Masters title on Sunday had the world num-ber one looking back fondly on his Florida triumphs, but more importantly lookingahead -- to the clay court season and beyond. "Any title is big, and it means a lot,"Djokovic said after beating Andy Murray 6-1, 7-6 (7/4) in the final at Key Biscayne."Such a big tournament that is considered one of the biggest in our sport. "I wonthree times here. I think that says enough about how I feel playing in Miami."Djokovic, who won his first Miami title in 2007 and beat Rafael Nadal in the final lastyear, said the successful title defence was a boost heading into the Monte Carlo Mas-ters. He didn't drop a set in Miami, closing out his quarter-final, semi-final and finalopponents with second-set tiebreakers to preserve that record. "This is going to bevery encouraging for me prior to the clay court season," said Djokovic. If he can claimclay's biggest prize, the French Open, he would hold all for major titles at once. First,however, he'll tackle the Monte Carlo Masters. "I didn't play it last year," saidDjokovic, who won Masters titles on clay at Madrid and Rome last year but fell in thesemi-finals at Roland Garros. "I look forward to it. I want to start well. I want tostart strong. "Clay demands the most physical effort out of all surfaces. You have tobe physically very fit. Your endurance has to be on a very high level, because all thelong rallies that you play on hard courts, it's double that on clay." While Djokovichasn't matched the astonishing 43-match winning run he put together in the firsthalf of 2011, he has earned one Grand Slam title this year at the Australian Open. AFP

Key BISCAyNe: Novak djokovic of Serbia holds the winner's trophy after beatingAndy Murray of Great Britain in the men's singles final. AFP

WARSAWAFP

Polish media piled on the praise on Mon-day for Agnieszka Radwanska's maidenMiami title, where she dismantled MariaSharapova and staked her claim on aGrand Slam this season. The Pole's 7-5,6-4 defeat of the world number two,which denied Sharapova her first victoryin four finals appearances, was a "tri-

umph of finesse in an era of force", wrotePrzeglad Sportowy. Radwanska had wonearlier this year in Dubai but Satur-day's victory over Sharapova marked anew high as she competed in the pres-tigious Miami tournament boasting apersonal record ranking of fourth inthe world. She became just the secondmultiple title winner on the WTA Tourthis season, behind world number oneVictoria Azarenka, as she clinched the

Miami crown without dropping a set insix matches. "Here in Poland we'veknown for ages that Agnieszka hasmassive talent," her trainer TomaszWiktorowski was quoted as saying bythe daily Metro. "What was missingwas this kind of win," he added. Metroheadlined simply "Agnieszka Radwan-ska Superstar", hailing Polish tennis'sgreatest success to date and tippingher to become world number one.

NBP open Nationalranking tennis beginsKARACHI: The qualifying rounds ofthe NBP Open National Ranking TennisChampionship started on Monday atthe Karachi Club Tennis Courts.Around 90 entries were recived for theweek long national event with Adil Ko-hari Nafil Kaleem (Islamabad) andTalha Zubair (Navy) Fahad Khan beingthe top junior to be taking part.

RESULT: Under 14 boys quallifing round 1: Saad M Ali beatM Amir 6-0,6-1; Ajay Kumar beat Amin Shafi 6-2, 6-3;Ahmed jaffer beat M. essa admani 6-4, 6-4; dawood Ad-mani beat Ibrahim khan 6-0,6-0; Under-12 Boys qualifyinground: Mustafa Admani beat Abde ali 8-0. STAFF REPORT

Poland in raptures over Radwanska's Miami title

radwanska withdrawsfrom charleston WtaMIAMI: Agnieszka Radwanska has withdrawn from the WTAclay court tournament in Charleston with a back injury, just aday after capturing the prestigious Miami title with a victoryover Maria Sharapova. "We're as disappointed as our fans tolose our top seed, and we wish Agnieszka a quick recovery," saidBob Moran, Family Circle Cup Tournament Director. A reviseddraw reflecting the change left fifth-ranked Samantha Stosur,the second seed, as the highest-ranked player in the field ofthe $740,000 event that starts on Monday in Charleston, SouthCarolina. According to WTA rules, third-seeded Marion Bartoliof France, who in Miami became the first woman this year tobeat world number one Victoria Azarenka, was inserted in thetop slot of the draw, with fifth-seeded American Serena Williamsbeing put into the slot originally occupied by Bartoli. AFP

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rPPs’ mega cOrruPtIOn case

tuesday, 3 April, 2012

22

Published by Arif Nizami for Nawa Media Corporation (Pvt) Ltd at Plot # 7, Al-Baber Centre, F/8 Markaz, Islamabad. Editor: Arif Nizami, Executive Editor: Sarmad Bashir, Resident Editor: Rana Qaisar

ISLAMABADSTAFF REPORT

ON the Supreme Court’s directiongiven in the rental power plants(RPPs) mega corruption case, the

National Accountability Bureau (NAB) onMonday put the names of 19 top men, in-cluding former federal ministers, federalsecretaries and other key officials, on theexit-control list (ECL).

NAB also cautioned 12 RPPs againsttransferring their properties and directedall district coordination officers (DCOs)and deputy commissioners (DCs) to takeappropriate action against transfer of suchproperties. Those whose names have beenput on the ECL are: former federal minis-ters Raja Pervez Ashraf (Water andPower), Liaquat Jatoi (Water and Power)and Shaukat Tareen (Finance), former fed-eral secretaries Shahid Rafi (Water andPower), Ismail Qureshi (Water and

Power), Ishfaq Mahmood (Water andPower) and Salman Siddique (Finance),former NEPRA chairmen Khalid Saeedand Saeed Zafar, GENCO CEO Yousaf Ali,PPIB MD Khalid Irfan Rehman, PEPCOCEOs Saleem Arif and Fazal Ahmad Khanbesides Chaudhry Muhammad Anwar andMunawar Baseer Ahmad.

The 12 RPPs, which face action are:Techno E-Power (Faisalabad and Sialkot),Young Generation, Pakistan Power Re-source, Kashmore, Piran Ghaib, ReshmaPower, Walter Power International, Naud-ero I and II, M/S Alstove, Bhiki and Gen-eral electric. Declaring all RPPs’ contractsillegal and non-transparent, the SupremeCourt had directed NAB on Friday to pro-ceed against all those involved in corrup-tion. The court had also directed NAB tosubmit fortnightly progress reports per-taining to actions against the persons in-volved in corruption in the case to theRegistrar Office for the judges’ perusal.

A two-member Supreme Court benchcomprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muham-mad Chaudhry and Justice Khilji Arif Hus-sain had announced the verdict holdingthat the RPPs mode of electricity genera-tion proved a total failure and was inca-pable of filling the electricity demand andsupply gap on a short-term basis.

The judgement said during the award ofRPPs’ contracts, PPRA Rules were violatedand principle of transparency and opencompetition was not followed. The court or-dered that the contracts of RPPs be re-scinded forthwith and all those responsiblefor it were liable to be dealt with for civil andcriminal action in accordance with the law.The court had reserved its judgement onDecember 14, 2011 on the petitions of fed-eral Minister for Housing Faisal SalehHayat and PML-N leader Khawaja Asif inthe RPP case. During adjudication of thecase, in pursuance of the court orders fromtime to time, a sum of Rs 8.689 billion was

paid back to the government by differentRPPs. This amount was paid to them as mo-bilisation advance, however, proceeding forrecovery of interest amounting to Rs445.496 million from two RPPs Young Genand Reshma were still pending.

While issuing directives to NAB, thechief justice had said all government func-tionaries, including the ministers for waterand power holding charge in 2006 and on-ward and from 2008 onward, duringwhose tenure the RPPs were approved andthe finance secretary holding the chargewhen mobilization advance rate was in-creased from 7 to 14 percent, were liable tobe dealt with under NAB Ordinance 1999.

It was categorically said in the judeg-ment that despite down payment of bil-lions of rupees to the RPPs, Karkey wasgenerating 48.33MW against a capacity of231MW and Naudero-I was generating9.16MW against a capacity of 51MW;whereas, Gulf was generating 50.08MW

against a capacity of 62 MW. It added thatPakistan Power Resources (Piranghaib,Multan) did not generate electricity at all,although down payment of $14.58 millionwas made to it, which had not been re-turned. The judgment said though RPPReshma has returned the down payment,it is still functioning and generating 15MWonly against capacity of 201.3 MW.

The verdict disclosed that per unit costof electricity produced by the RPPs was on avery high side, as Karkey was ranging fromRs 35 to Rs 50, Gulf Rs 18 to Rs 19, Naudero-I Rs 12 to Rs 19, adding that such rates werea blunt violation of ECC decision of Septem-ber 10, 2008 which emphasized on makingefforts for lower tariff through RPPs thanIPPs on the similar technology for the firstten years. All the RPPs are collectively gen-erating just 120MW of electricity. Prior to theintroduction of RPPs, the system of genera-tion of electricity under the control and man-agement of Ministry of Water & Power,WAPDA, PEPCO, GENCOs had sufficientpotential to produce more electricity, but in-stead of taking curative steps for its improve-ment, including clearance of circular debt ofthe IPPs or resorting to other means of gen-eration of electricity, billions of rupees werespent on Bhikki and Sharqpur RPPs, whichproved a complete failure because the objectcould not be achieved as the shortage of elec-tricity persistently continued, and yet moreRPPs were installed.

WASHINGTONinP

Pakistan considers India a“threat”, uS Defence SecretaryLeon Panetta has said, underlin-ing Washington’s differences withIslamabad on the common threatsfacing them.

“It is a complex relationship. Italways has been and I suspect it al-ways will be,” Panetta told CBC TVin an interview on Monday. “Insome ways we share a common con-cern and a common threat. Terror-ism is as much a threat to Pakistanand the people of Pakistan as it is tous and to the people of Afghanistan,”he said. At the same time, Panettanoted that the two countries differedon the threat perception. He saidwhile they “have common cause, theproblem is that Pakistan views itsposition “threatened by India”. “Asa result of that, sometimes we getvery mixed messages from Pakistanas to just exactly where they’re goingto be,” he said.

On the issue of keeping theraid on Osama bin Laden’s safehouse in Abbottabad a secret, thePentagon chief said he did not pro-vide information to Pakistan be-cause he feared this could be

leaked by them and would not beable to accomplish their mission.“The concern we had is that… wehad provided intelligence to themwith regards to other areas and un-fortunately, one way or another, itgot leaked to the individuals wewere trying to go after,” Panettasaid. “So as a result of that we wereconcerned that if we were going toperform a sensitive mission likethis, we had to do it on our own,”he underlined. Reiterating that hehad not come across anything sofar which reflected a direct link be-tween the top Pakistani leadershipand the safe hideout of bin Laden,Panetta expressed concern overhow a compound like this wouldnot be known to them (Pakistaniestablishment), adding howeverthat he had not found a direct linkor “evidence that involved a directconnection to the Pakistanis”.

“These situations sometimes,you know, the leadership withinPakistan (sic) is obviously notaware of certain things and yetpeople lower down in the mili-tary establishment find it verywell, they’ve been aware of it.But bottom line is that we havenot had evidence that providesthat direct link,” he noted.

Pakistan considersIndia a ‘threat’ butus differs: Panetta

ISLAMABADSTAFF REPORT

The Parliamentary Committee on National Se-curity (PCNS) on Monday could not make anyheadway on the proposal of conditional re-opening of NATO supply routes due to a boy-cott by PML-N members.

Both PML-N members Senator Ishaq Darand Mehtab Khan Abbasi did not attend thePCNS meeting on Monday in protest againstpetroleum price hike. On Saturday, the PCNSmembers had entered into a deadlock on aproposal for conditional reopening of NATOsupply routes with JuI-F chief Maulana FazlurRehman sticking to his demand that NATOsupplies should not be opened.

Though the PCNS remained in session forabout an hour on Monday, no headway couldbe made as the government coalition wantedto take along the members of the main oppo-sition party and thus no decision was madedespite some technical discussion made onthe proposals submitted by the PCNS mem-bers. A member of the PCNS told Pakistan

Today that technically, the PCNS did not de-liberate as it was decided by the ruling coali-tion that formal debate would be conductedonce the PML-N members returned to thecommittee, most likely on Tuesday morning.In the previous PCNS meeting, both factionsof the PML – Q and N – were supportive tothe proposal tabled by Senator MushahidHussain Sayed to linking reopening of NATOsupply routes with halting drone attacks in-side Pakistani territory, but the JuI-F vetoedthe proposal, compelling the committee toadjourn its proceedings until Monday. How-ever, PML-Q Secretary General MushahidHussain Sayed claimed that the committeehad evolved consensus on conditional re-opening of NATO supply routes.

The committee also agreed to delete itstwo clauses from the draft. The new clausesays that no foreign security contractor orintelligence official would be allowed toconduct covert operations on Pakistani soilwhile in future the government should alsonot give its airbases to any foreign country,the source added.

Pcns stalemate continues as PMl-nboycotts proceedings

NAB PuTS 19 ToP MeN oN eCLg Former ministers Raja Parvez Ashraf and liaquat Jatoi, former secretariesQureshi, Mahmood and siddique included in the list

us puts $10mbounty onHafiz saeed

NEWS DESK

The united States has placed a bounty of$10 million on Jamaat-ud-Dawa chiefHafiz Muhammed Saeed, and $3 million onhis brother-in-law Hafiz Abdul RehmanMakki, while placing them on the most-wanted terrorist list. According to anIndian newspaper, the reward on HafizSaeed is at par with Afghan Talibanfounder Mullah Omar. According to Timesof India, the move was disclosed to IndianForeign Secretary Ranjan Mathai byvisiting uS undersecretary of PoliticalAffairs Wendy Sherman on Monday. Saeedhas been on India’s most-wanted list since26/11 attacks that killed 173 people,including six Americans. Makki, alsoknown as “Professor”, is allegedly the fundcollector for Saeed’s organisation.

RAWALPinDi: Army chief general Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Lt general Jagath Jayasuriya, commander of the Sri Lankan

Army, present salute at the general Headquarters (gHq) after laying a floral wreath at Yadgar-e-Shuhada inP

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