Steps to implement DCC decision taken

Trucks are parked at a road as authorities closed the Torkham border for Nato supply trucks at Pakistani border town of Torkham on Saturday, Nov 26, 2011.

ISLAMABAD: Sunday saw a flurry of activities in the capital as the government went into overdrive to express its anger over the Nato air strike that took place in the early hours of Saturday.

While the American administration was informed of the decisions taken by the Defence Committee of the Cabinet, including the blocking of the Nato supply routes as well as the deadline to vacate Shamsi airbase, the opposition raised questions about the preparedness of the military personnel who had been killed in the attack.

In accordance with the DCC decision, Pakistan suspended Nato supplies to Afghanistan and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was informed about it.

Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar spoke to Ms Clinton by telephone in the early hours of Sunday, conveying the decisions taken by the DCC.

Talking to reporters, Interior Minister Rehman Malik claimed that the supply of Nato had not been suspended, but “stopped permanently” in line with DCC’s decisions.

He said all other decisions of the DCC would be implemented in letter and spirit. “The decisions of the DCC are final and would be implemented.”

The minister said Nato containers, which had been stopped, would not be allowed to cross the border into Afghanistan.

According to a statement issued by the Foreign Office, the foreign minister conveyed “deep sense of rage felt across Pakistan” over loss of 28 soldiers and told Ms Clinton that “such attacks are totally unacceptable”.

She said that such strikes demonstrated complete disregard for international law and human life and were in stark violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty.

The foreign minister was quoted as saying: “This negates the progress made by the two countries on improving relations and forces Pakistan to revisit the terms of engagement.”

She also informed Ms Clinton about the DCC decision that the US should vacate the Shamsi airbase within 15 days. The US secretary of state offered condolences over the loss of life, the statement said.

Ms Clinton said she was deeply saddened by the event and conveyed the US government’s desire to work with Pakistan to resolve the issue.

Meanwhile, the military authorities negated the US claim that Nato had carried out strikes after its helicopters had come under fire from the ground.

“These were lame excuses that the attack was made after Pakistani soldiers opened fire on Nato forces or that Nato forces were chasing the Taliban in the area,” said Inter-Services Public Relations Director General Maj-Gen Athar Abbas.

Nato has already been communicated about two Pakistani posts in Mohmand Agency called ‘Golden’ and ‘Volcano’ on the top of the height in the area with national flag hoisted over them. “Even then they were attacked,” he said.

He said Mohmand Agency had been cleared of militants during the four-month operation and there was no militants’ hideout in the area. Therefore, he said, the US claim that Nato forces were chasing the Taliban was ‘ill-logical’.

Gen Abbas said the Nato attacks continued for a long time during which the military’s General Headquarters contacted the Nato authorities and apprised them of the aerial attacks. However, Nato officials did not take any action to stop such provocative strikes.

Asked if Pakistan will be involved in investigation announced by the Nato chief to probe into the incident, he said the modus operandi of the investigation was yet to be decided.

PRESIDENT-PM MEETING: President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani met at the presidency and discussed the Nato attacks for the second consecutive day.

Sources in the presidency told Dawn that the president and the prime minister were worried that the Nato strikes had taken place soon after the ‘memogate’ that had soured relations between the civilian set-up and the military establishment.

OPPOSITION: Calling for a joint session of parliament to debate the Nato air strike, Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan questioned at a news conference why army officers and soldiers had been caught unawares and unprepared.

The PML-N leader said that although he considered the present rulers mainly responsible for the killings of soldiers, the military leadership could not be absolved completely of its responsibility.

Not only the rulers, but even Army Chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani had in the past threatened to retaliate if the US carried out drone attacks, he said, adding that the drone attacks were continuing and there had been no response from the military.

He said the May 2 Abbottabad incident and recent Nato air strikes on security posts had raised many questions about the defence preparedness of the armed forces. Was there any arrangement to provide the soldiers a cover at the posts against any aggression? he asked. He said if anti-aircraft guns are installed at these posts. “If the guns are there then why these were not used?”

He said: “Previously former army chief Gen Pervez Musharraf sent the troops to the top of a hill at Kargil and later left them to be killed.”

Chaudhry Nisar said soldiers in such a large number could not be killed simply by strafing if they had been in bunkers.

When asked if his party wanted a commission to investigate the incident, he said first the replies to these questions should be presented in parliament.

The PML-N leader said his party wanted a joint session of parliament within a few days much before Ashura. He demanded that it should be an open session because the time had come for the nation to be informed about facts.

He welcomed the decisions taken by the DCC, but raised serious doubts about their implementation. He regretted that the government did not take any step to implement the resolutions adopted by parliament and the all-party conference.

Chaudhry Nisar claimed that it was the PML-N which had raised the issue of Shamsi airbase in a joint session of parliament and demanded that its foreign control must be ended.

Despite an announcement by the government that the US had been asked to vacate the airbase in Balochistan, it is not clear who controls the base.

When asked what would be the line of action if the US did not vacate the base in 15 days as recommended by the DCC, ISPR director general Maj-Gen Athar Abbas said “Speculative. Speculative means we will cross the bridge when it comes.”

During a briefing to parliament in June in the aftermath of the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, top military officials had disclosed that the airfield, long suspected of housing US drones, was actually not a Pakistan Air Force facility and its control had been handed over to the United Arab Emirates in 1990s.

Later, in an interview with AP a UAE official denied that his country had any operational role in the base, although he said that wealthy Arabs occasionally used it to fly to Pakistan on hunting expeditions.

The US reportedly used the airbase as a forward staging point in the initial period after it invaded Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks. Reports surfaced in the media in 2008 that the drones used in attacks on tribal areas were taking off from the Shamsi airfield.

Two weeks after the parliamentary briefing, Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar said that Pakistan had asked the US to withdraw its forces from the airbase and that it would be vacated soon.

The minister had even claimed that the Americans had started moving equipment and materials from the airbase. A defence ministry official had stated that the government had decided to get the base vacated because of a significant reduction in the flow of US funds and growing trust deficit between the two countries.

A US Embassy spokesperson at that time stated that there were no US military personnel at the base.

Attempts were made to contact officials of the US Embassy in Islamabad to get its version over the government decision to get the airbase vacated, but there was no response.

Pakistan retaliation leaves Nato drivers in limbo

PESHAWAR: Pakistani truck drivers carrying supplies to Nato troops in Afghanistan say they are worried about militant attacks after their country closed its border crossings in retaliation for coalition airstrikes that allegedly killed 24 Pakistani troops.

Nearly 300 trucks were stranded at Pakistan’s two Afghan border crossings Sunday, a day after the alleged Nato attack and Islamabad’s quick decision to block the coalition’s supplies.

“We are worried,” said driver Saeed Khan. He spoke by telephone from the border terminal in Torkham. “This area is always vulnerable to attacks. Sometimes rockets are lobbed at us. Sometimes we are targeted by bombs.”

Khan and hundreds of other drivers and their assistants barely slept Saturday night because they were worried about potential attacks, he said.

Some drivers said Pakistan had sent paramilitary troops to protect their convoys since the closures, but others were left without any additional protection.
Even those who did receive troops did not feel safe.

“If there is an attack, what can five or six troops do? Nothing,” said Niamatullah Khan, a fuel truck driver who was parked with 35 other vehicles at a restaurant about 125 miles from Chaman. “It is just a matter of some bullets or a bomb, and that’s it.”

Nato ships nearly 50 per cent of its non-lethal supplies to its troops in Afghanistan through Pakistan. The trucks are periodically targeted by suspected militants as they travel through the country, and their occupants are sometimes killed.

Nato has said these attacks do not significantly impact its ability to keep its troops supplied.

A prolonged closure of the border would, however. Nato has reduced the amount of supplies it ships through Pakistan from a high of around 80 per cent of its total non-lethal supplies by using routes through Central Asia, but they are costly and less efficient. It would likely be difficult to increase significantly the amount of supplies shipped on these alternative routes in a short timeframe if Pakistan’s borders remain closed.

Some critical supplies, including ammunition, are airlifted directly to Afghan air bases.

Turkish FM expresses solidarity with Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu early Sunday morning telephoned Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar to express solidarity with the people and government of Pakistan on the Nato attack in Mohmand Agency that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

Khar thanked Davutoglu for Turkey’s expression of solidarity and condemned the attack by terming it “unprovoked and totally unacceptable”. She also said that Nato’s action shows a complete disregard for international law and human life.

Davutoglu assured the Pakistani foreign minister that as a member of Nato, Turkey would ask for an impartial inquiry into the attacks. He added that loss of Pakistani soldiers was “as painful as losing Turkish soldiers”.

Troops buried amid fury over Nato strike

PESHAWAR: Pakistan on Sunday buried 24 troops killed in a Nato cross-border air raid that has pushed a crisis in relations with the United States towards rupture.

The attack was the latest perceived provocation by the United States, starting with the secret raid which killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May, and the question is whether ties will break or whether the two sides will remain stuck in a bad marriage of convenience.

Nato helicopters and fighter jets attacked two Pakistan military outposts on Saturday, killing the soldiers in what Pakistan said was an unprovoked assault.

Nato and US officials expressed regret about the deaths of the Pakistani soldiers, but the exact circumstances of the attack were unclear.

Television stations showed the coffins of the soldiers draped in green and white Pakistani flags in a prayer ceremony at the headquarters of the regional command in Peshawar.

About 500 members of Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan’s most influential religious party, staged a protest in Mohmand tribal area, where the Nato attack took place.

“Down with America” and “Jihad is The Only Answer to America”, they yelled.

Around 40 troops were stationed at the outposts at the time of the attack, military sources said. Two officers were reported among the dead.

“They without any reasons attacked on our post and killed soldiers asleep,” said a senior Pakistani officer, requesting anonymity.

Two scouts gunned down, violence erupts in Karachi

KARACHI: Two young scouts were gunned down and three others injured in an attack by unidentified armed men on a Muharam-ul-Haram procession at Numaish Chowrangi on Sunday evening, police said.

The incident took place when the procession was passing by a mosque in the limits of Soldier Bazaar Police Station.

An official Shoaib at the police station said the deceased were identified as Zain and Ali, volunteers of Abu Turab Scouts. However, identity of the other three severely injured are yet to be ascertained.

The bodies and injured were shifted to Civil Hospital Karachi.

The armed culprits opened the fire on the volunteers and mourners, when they were going to join the central congregation (majlis) of Imam Hussain (as) at Nishtar Park.

The participants of the procession staged demonstration at Numaish Chowrangi against the attack by terrorists and blocked central M.A.Jinnah Road in protest against the incident. Police and Rangers cordoned the area after the incident.

Shah Mehmood Qureshi joins Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s ex-foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi joined forces with cricketer-politician Imran Khan Sunday, becoming the most high-profile defector to his growing campaign to win the next general election.

Qureshi made the announcement at a rally led by Khan in the southern town of Ghotki, part of the broad hinterland in the southern province of Sindh and central province of Punjab where the former minister is considered powerful.

“I announce I am joining a movement, which is struggling to win justice for people,” Qureshi said of Khan’s Tehrik-e-Insaaf (Movement for Justice) which is fast emerging as a powerful player in the run-up to elections due early 2013.

Qureshi lost his position as cabinet minister in a February reshuffle. He was offered another portfolio, which he refused, and this month resigned as lawmaker representing the main ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

“Winds of change have now begun,” Qureshi told the rally attended by several thousand supporters 420 kilometres (260 miles) north of Karachi, Pakistan’s port city used by the US to ship supplies to landlocked Afghanistan.

“I am embarking on a new journey and from today onwards, Shah Mehmood is part of your team,” he told Khan to thunderous applause.

Qureshi fell out with President Asif Ali Zardari around the time of the reshuffle and says he withstood pressure to approve diplomatic immunity for a CIA contractor who killed two Pakistanis in Lahore in January.

He used the rally to criticise Zardari, whose five-year mandate expires in 2013, a day after Pakistan was plunged into fresh crisis with the US over accusations that Nato air strikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on the Afghan border.

“They have indulged in loot and plunder,” he said. “The time has come to seek a fresh mandate from the people,” Qureshi added.

Khan, a staunch critic of the US alliance, condemned the Nato strike and demanded that Pakistan order all CIA agents to leave in protest.

“We should raise the issue at the UN Security Council because it was an attack on our country and soldiers,” he said.

“We need not bow before any one. The time has come to build a new Pakistan by introducing a new system reflecting will of the people.”

Pakistan protests attack ‘in strongest terms’ with Nato, US

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan said it was reviewing its alliance with the United States and Nato after up to 26 soldiers were killed in cross-border Nato air strikes, plunging frosty US ties into deeper crisis.

Pakistan sealed its Afghan border to Nato, shutting down a supplies lifeline for some 130,000 US-led foreign troops fighting the Taliban, and called on the United States to leave a secretive air base reportedly used by CIA drones.

Islamabad protested to Nato and the United States in the strongest terms — summoning US ambassador Cameron Munter, branding the strike a violation of international law and warning there could be serious repercussions.

The US-led Nato force in Afghanistan admitted it was “highly likely” that the force’s aircraft caused the deaths before dawn on Saturday, inflaming US-Pakistani relations still reeling from the May killing of Osama bin Laden.

The US commander in Afghanistan promised a full investigation and sent his condolences over any troops “who may have been killed” on the Afghan border with Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt, branded an al-Qaeda hub by Washington.

The military said funerals will be held at 9:30 am Sunday in the northwestern city of Peshawar for those soldiers killed.

Nato troops frequently carry out operations against Taliban insurgents close to the border with Pakistan, which in many places is unmarked, although the extent to which those operations are coordinated with Pakistan is unclear.

Afghan and US officials accuse Pakistani troops at worst of colluding with the Taliban or at best of standing by while insurgents fire across the border from Pakistani soil, often in clear sight of Pakistani border posts.

At the same time Pakistan, battling its own Taliban insurgency in the northwest and dependent on billions of dollars in US aid, gives the US-led war effort in Afghanistan vital logistics support.

Key questions remain unanswered about what exactly happened in Mohmand district, just hours after General John Allen, the US commander in Afghanistan, discussed coordination with Pakistan’s army chief General Ashfaq Kayani.

Pakistan said Nato helicopters and fighter aircraft fired “unprovoked” overnight Friday-Saturday on two army border posts, killing 24 to 26 troops and wounding 13, adding that Pakistani troops had returned fire.

The government said the attacks were “a grave infringement” of sovereignty, a “serious transgression of the oft-conveyed red lines”.

A spokesman for Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, confirmed that foreign soldiers, working with Afghan troops, called in air support for an operation near the border.

“It’s highly likely that this close air support, called by the ground forces, caused the casualties,” Jacobson told AFP.

Pakistan swiftly sealed its border with Afghanistan to Nato supplies — holding up convoys at the Torkham and Chaman crossings on the main overland US supply line into landlocked Afghanistan from the Arabian Sea port of Karachi.

An extraordinary meeting of cabinet ministers and military chiefs ordered the United States to leave the Shamsi air base within 15 days, despite reports that American personnel had already left.

It also said the government would “undertake a complete review of all programmes, activities and cooperative arrangements with US/Nato/ISAF, including diplomatic, political, military and intelligence”.

In Afghanistan, Allen promised a thorough investigation “to determine the facts” and extended his condolences to the loved ones of anyone who died.

Munter expressed “regret” over any loss of life and pledged the United States would work “closely” with Pakistan to investigate.

Relations between Pakistan and the United States have been in crisis since American troops killed bin Laden near the capital without prior warning and after a CIA contractor killed two Pakistanis in Lahore in January.

Pakistani, US and Afghan officials have traded complaints about responsibility for cross-border attacks, with each side accusing the other of not doing enough to prevent insurgent assaults on military positions.

In September 2010, Pakistan shut the main land route for Nato supplies at Torkham for 11 days after accusing NATO of killing three Pakistani troops.

The border was reopened after the United States formally apologised.

Americans have long accused Pakistan of playing a double game with the Taliban, and the issue came to a head in September when the then top US military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, accused Pakistan of colluding in a US embassy siege in Kabul.

US drones carry out routine missile attacks on Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan’s tribal belt, where American officials say neutralising militants is vital to winning the war in Afghanistan.

Pakistan last week forced its envoy to the United States, Husain Haqqani, to step down over accusations that he sought American help in limiting Pakistan’s powerful military after the bin Laden raid.

His successor, Sherry Rehman, has yet to arrive in Washington.