– Security will be provided to Mansoor Ijaz: Army
ISLAMABAD: The meeting of corps commanders headed by the Army Chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani on Thursday decided to provide Mansoor Ijaz with security upon his arrival in the country for the hearing of memogate case, DawnNews reported. ….
Read more » DAWN.COM
http://www.dawn.com/2012/01/12/security-will-be-provided-to-mansoor-ijaz-army.html
via » Twitter » TF’s tweet
I will be in Pakistan before the 26th: Mansoor Ijaz
As the Memogate scandal continues to create ripples in the Pakistani establishment, all eyes now are centred on US-based Pakistani businessman Mansoor Ijaz – better known as the ‘Memogate man’. He has finally secured a Pakistan visa to travel to the country to depose before a judicial commission that is probing the political scandal. NDTV’s Barkha Dutt speaks to Ijaz amidst questions by the global media of why the latter missed his date with the court on the 16th of this month and what he would eventually say in his deposition.
To watch Mansoor Ijaz’s interview with Barkha Dutt » CLICK HERE : http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/i-will-be-in-pakistan-before-the-26th-mansoor-ijaz/221650&cp
via – Twitter
Pakistan’s political soap opera
By Owen Bennett Jones, BBC News
Islamabad – Earlier this week, Pakistan’s prime minister appeared before the country’s Supreme Court to defend himself against allegations of contempt – it is symbolic of a dispute that is on-going at the centre of the country’s powerful elite.
When great institutions of state clash, history is made. It is the stuff of school history lessons – the Magna Carta, the Star Chamber, the Great Reform Act – that kind of thing.
But while in the UK such milestones have generally been once-a-century type events, in Pakistan they have become a way of life. Constitutional crises have become business as usual.
This week Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was forced to appear before the Supreme Court. He was there to face contempt proceedings related to the president’s immunity from prosecution.
I will spare you the details. But as I sat in the court’s press gallery, I felt pretty sure that in 100 years, Pakistani school children would not be learning about the January 2012 contempt case.
Perhaps they will be studying something the Western journalists did not even know was happening: a debate between some clerics on what role Islam should have in the state.
But the court was colourful. There was the prime minister, alongside him his brilliant lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan and a throng of ministers showing solidarity.
And buzzing about all of them, the journalists – representatives of Pakistan’s new, irrepressible 24-hour news television culture.
For millions of Pakistanis, the constant wrangling of the elite has the quality of a TV soap opera.
I do not want to belittle the importance of politics. The failure of successive elected and military governments has left millions of Pakistanis highly frustrated. But still the TV news shows attract massive audiences – people both despair of their leaders and want to know all about them.
Because many of the political parties are little more than family businesses, the same names have been around for decades – with power passed from father to daughter, brother to brother, and so on.
All this is against a backdrop of corruption cases, the frequent imprisonment of politicians, the “war on terror”, suicide attacks, assassinations, US military incursions – there is so much going on.
Pakistani news anchors can pirouette from the big news such as “The Prime Minister’s Day in Court”, to the tittle-tattle – the affairs, the hair transplants, the family rows.
“Will the generals and judges force the president from power?” …
Read more » BBC
Farahnaz Isphani discusses the status of memogate hearing and threats being made while making an emotional appeal for justice in the case.
Courtesy: CNN » Wolf Blitzer
By Tom Hussain
The war of words between the Pakistani prime minister and army chief follows claims by an American businessman, Mansoor Ijaz, that Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington, Hussain Haqqani, had in May asked him to seek White House support against a planned military coup.
Continue reading Pakistan’s military rejects Pentagon findings, denies coup plot
By Josh Rogin
Former National Security Advisor Jim Jones has submitted a confidential affidavit, obtained by The Cable, in which he swears that he has no reason to believe that former Pakistani Ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani had any role in the scandal known as “memogate.”
Jones was the go-between in the transmission of a secret memo from Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz to then Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen in the days following the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad. The memo, purportedly from the Pakistani civilian leadership, asked for U.S. government help to avoid a pending military coup in Pakistan and pledged, in return, to reorient Pakistan’s foreign and national security policy to be more in line with U.S. interests. ….
Read more » Foreign Policy (FP)
– ‘US Aid is being used to Kill Secular Balochs and Sindhis in Pakistan’. Protesters Gathered in Front of Pakistan Consulate in Houston
Report by: Sikander Baloch
HOUSTON, MAY 27, 2011: Several dozens of Americans of Sindhi and Baloch origin gathered on Friday to protest in front of the Pakistan consul-general in Houston condemning …., Islamabad’s support to terrorist outfits and state terrorism against people of Balochistan and Sindh. The peaceful but vocal protest was held on Jones Road in front of the Pakistan Consulate in Houston.
Continue reading US Aid is being used to Kill Secular Balochs and Sindhis in Pakistan
A controversial US pastor has been jailed after a court said his planned protest outside a mosque was likely to provoke violence …
Read more : Yahoo News
By Paul J. Richards, AFP News
A controversial US evangelical preacher oversaw the burning of a copy of the Koran in a small Florida church …
Read more : YahooNews
It’s a discouraging sign of the times that a notoriety-craving Christian preacher with a pistol on his hip and intolerance in his heart can spark an international uproar by dissing another religion’s holy book. …
Read more >> Toronto Star
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Actress Angelina Jolie on Wednesday joined a growing chorus of opposition to plans by a U.S. pastor to burn copies of the Quran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, amid fears it would fan religious hatred.
The Quran-torching event on Saturday planned by Pastor Terry Jones, who heads a tiny, little-known church in Florida, is fueling growing fears about heightened Christian-Muslim tensions in the United States as well as elsewhere in the world.
Oscar-winning Jolie, who is visiting Pakistan to highlight the plight of millions of people devastated by the country’s worst-ever floods, said she would never support any such plans.
“Of course not. Of course not,” she told a news conference when asked if she supported Jones’ plans.
She said she had “hardly the words” to express her opposition to burning someone’s religious text. …
Read more >> The Gazette
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