Earlier, the judges said in their remarks that it is up to the Parliament to amend the Constitution and set any amendment right.

Today, Rashid A Rizvi, counsel of Sindh High Court (SHC) continued with his arguments before a 17-member SC bench headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Iftikhar Muhammed Chaudhry.

Rizvi said the judiciary in Britain had no power regarding judicial review prior to 1998; accordingly, the Parliament of the country was said to be supreme.

He further said Attorney General and the Law Minister have been expelled from committee and commission meant for appointments of the judges.

Reacting to this, Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday said this is the procedure not to save the amendment but to butcher it.

Justice Jawwad S Khawja stressed the court cannot say who to be expelled and who else to be included, as this is the job of the Parliament to ‘re-engineer’ the issue.

He further remarked the court could not barge into the limits of the Parliament, as the parliament is there to set right the Constitutional amendment.

Justice Saqib Nisar observed it is the national Constitution that empowers the Parliament to effect Constitutional amendment.

Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday said the commission for the appointment of judges was made in Britain in isolation from the Executive; but, in Pakistan, the same commission is being instituted at the heart of Executive.

Rashid Rizvi completed his arguments before the interval and Abdul Hafeez Pirzada began with arguments later on after the interval.

Lastly, after conclusion of arguments from counsels and prosecutors, the court has reserved verdict, saying that a detailed judgment will be pronounced instead of short one.

Source The News

“All three sets of parties, i.e. Muslims, Hindus and (Hindu religious organisation) Nirmhoi Akhara are declared joint holders of the property in dispute,” Justice S.U. Khan said in a ruling on the website of the Allahabad High Court.

Several of the litigants in the case said they would appeal the judgement to the Supreme Court, meaning the already 60-year dispute will continue in India’s notoriously slow justice system.

Some 200,000 police and paramilitary forces had been deployed ahead of the court verdict to pre-empt any violent reaction.

In 1992 the demolition of a 16th-century mosque on the Ayodhya site by Hindu activists sparked riots that killed more than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, in some of the worst sectarian violence since partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947.

The process to divide the site would begin in three months, the court said.

A third will go to Muslims, a second part will become a temple for Hindus who claim the spot as the birthplace of their god Lord Ram, while another third will go to the Ayodhya-based Nirmhoi Akhara.

Hindu lawyers said the court’s verdict backed Hindu beliefs that the site was the birthplace of the deity Lord Ram.

“I am very happy the court has accepted the historic fact and this is a matter of great happiness for Hindus,” Nritya Gopaldas Maharaj, president of Ram Janam Bhoomi trust, told reporters in Ayodhya.

But Maharaj said his group would appeal in the Supreme Court against the court’s decision to give a proportion of the site to Muslims.

“The court has respected the Hindu belief but we will take the matter to the Supreme Court as the fight still remains,” he said.

Ever since the destruction of the mosque 18 years ago the site has been cordoned off with barbed wire and steel fencing and guarded by troops.

The main Muslim group contesting the case said it was “partly disappointed”
by the verdict, which dismissed its claim to ownership of the entire site.

“The suit of Muslims were liable to be dismissed. But they are still entitled to one third of the site,” the lawyer for the Babri Masjid Action Committee, Zafaryab Jilani, told reporters.

The government had issued public appeals for calm ahead of the verdict, as well as placing advertisements in newspapers urging respect for the rule of law and mobilising tens of thousands of security forces.

The country has avoided any major outbreak of Hindu-Muslim violence since riots in the western state of Gujarat in 2002 and Home Minister P. Chidambaram expressed his belief Wednesday that the country had changed.

“India has moved on. Young people have moved on,” he told a press conference, issuing another appeal for calm.

The High Court ruling turned on three key questions: whether the disputed spot was Ram’s birthplace, whether the mosque was built after the demolition of a Ram temple and if the mosque had been built in accordance with the tenets of Islam.

Noted constitutional lawyer Rajeev Dhawan said he was disappointed with the ruling and felt the court had shirked its primary responsibility of discerning ownership of the site.

“If you seek to divide property, you should at least first find out who owns it,” Dhawan said.

“This judgement seems to be a judgement where the court has done what it was not supposed to do and said ‘We cant answer this question. So we must split it three ways’.”

Source The News

Bob Woodward also rote in his book that President Asif Ali Zardari, after his election, held meeting with the then CIA Director General Michel Hayden on November 12, 2008 in New York.

During the reported meeting, Michel Hayden apprised president Zardari of killings of some US citizens among other tribal people in a US drone attack in Pakistan.

According to book, president Zardari replied that deaths inflicted by drone attacks may bother you Americans but not me.

Senior Taliban commanders should also be targeted; the book also quoted Zardari as wishing.

Source Geo News

The provocative comments prompted the US delegation to walk out of Ahmadinejad’s UN speech, where he also blamed the US as the power behind UN Security Council sanctions against Iran for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a technology that can be used as fuel for electricity generation or to build nuclear weapons.

Delegations from all 27 European Union nations followed the Americans out along with representatives from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Costa Rica, an EU diplomat said.

Ahmadinejad said the US has allocated $80 billion to upgrade its nuclear arsenal and is not a fair judge to sit as a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council to punish Iran for its nuclear activities. Iran denies it is seeking a nuclear weapon.

The Iranian leader _ who has in the past cast doubt over the US version of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks _ also called for setting up an independent fact-finding UN team to probe the attacks. That, he said, would keep the terror assault from turning into what he has called a sacred issue like the Holocaust where ”expressing opinion about it won’t be banned”.

Ahmadinejad did not explain the logic behind blaming the US for the terror attacks but said there were three theories:

_That a ”powerful and complex terrorist group” penetrated US intelligence and defenses, which is advocated ”by American statesmen.”

_”That some segments within the US government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime. The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view.”

After Ahmadinejad uttered those words, two American diplomats stood and walked out without listening to the third theory: That the attack was the work of ”a terrorist group but the American government supported and took advantage of the situation.”

Mark Kornblau, spokesman of the US Mission to the world body, issued a statement within moments of the walkout.

”Rather than representing the aspirations and goodwill of the Iranian people,” he said, ”Mr. Ahmadinejad has yet again chosen to spout vile conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic slurs that are as abhorrent and delusional as they are predictable.”

Ahmadinejad said the US used the Sept. 11 attacks as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of people. He argued that the US, instead, should have ”designed a logical plan” to punish the perpetrators and not occupy two independent states and shed so much blood.

He boasted of the capture in February of Abdulmalik Rigi, the leader of an armed Sunni group whose insurgency in the southeast of Iran has destabilized the border region with Pakistan. He praised Iranian security forces for capturing him in an overseas operation without resorting to violence. Rigi was later hanged.

Ahmadinejad’s attacks on the United States and the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program dominated the opening of the General Assembly’s annual ministerial meeting.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned kings, prime ministers and presidents in his keynote address of the growing political polarization and social inequalities in the world and implored UN members to show greater tolerance and mutual respect to bring nations and peoples together.

”We hear the language of hate, false divisions between ‘them’ and ‘us,’ those who insist on ‘their way’ or ‘no way,”’ he said.

In times of such polarization and uncertainty, Ban said, ”let us remember, the world still looks to the United Nations for moral and political leadership.”

President Barack Obama, speaking soon after, echoed the secretary-general, warning that underneath challenges to security and prosperity ”lie deeper fears: that ancient hatreds and religious divides are once again ascendant; that a world which has grown more interconnected has somehow slipped beyond our control.”

The US president’s 32-minute speech _ more than twice the allotted 15 minutes _ covered global hotspots from Iran and Afghanistan to the Mideast and North Korea.

Obama said Iran is the only party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty ”that cannot demonstrate the peaceful intentions of its nuclear program” and as a result the UN Security Council has imposed four rounds of increasingly tough sanctions.

”The United States and the international community seek a resolution to our differences with Iran, and the door remains open to diplomacy should Iran choose to walk through it,” he said. ”But the Iranian government must demonstrate a clear and credible commitment, and confirm to the world the peaceful intent of its nuclear program.” – AP

Source Daily Dawn

ARACHI: One-day captain Shahid Afridi Friday called Pakistan’s scandal-marred tour of England the “most difficult” of his career as the team staged a low-key return home after four gruelling months away.

Coach Waqar Younis also conceded that it had been a punishing tour “on and off the field” after corruption investigations engulfed the side, triggering a barrage of condemnation from the press and public.

An exhausted-looking Afridi flew in to Karachi with three team-mates while the rest of the squad arrived in Lahore in the early hours, with a phalanx of gun-toting policemen escorting the players out of both airports.

“It was tough because of the controversies and became very difficult to cope with, because every time we went out of the hotel people passed remarks against us,” Afridi told a scrum of reporters in Karachi.

“Because of the controversies on the tour, it was the most difficult tour of my 14-year career,” the explosive all-rounder added.

The tour ended on Wednesday with Pakistan losing the one-day series 3-2.

England also took the Test and Twenty20 series.

The tour will be remembered less for the on-field play and more for the off-field revelations by British tabloids that sparked investigations by Scotland Yard and the International Cricket Council (ICC).

Allegations of spot-fixing in the Lord’s Test against England engulfed Test captain Salman Butt along with bowlers Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif. All three were questioned by British police and returned home early to Pakistan.

The ICC launched another probe into a suspicious scoring pattern by Pakistan in the third one-day match at The Oval on September 17, prompting Pakistan’s cricket chief to hurl corruption allegations in turn against England.

The Pakistan Cricket Board on Thursday hired lawyers to reply to a legal notice filed by English officials demanding an “unreserved apology” over the allegations by PCB chairman Ijaz Butt.

Butt had accused England players of deliberately losing The Oval match in return for “enormous amounts of money”, prompting passionate denials by England. There was also an off-field altercation between rival players.

Afridi said team unity had remained intact despite the storm of controversy.

“The best part of the whole tour was that the players showed unity even in difficult times and gave a good fight in the one-day series against England,”he said, while also hinting at a return to Test cricket.

“I will think about it and if the team needs it, I may consider playing the Test series against South Africa,” he said, ahead of the Proteas encounters starting late next month on neutral turf in the United Arab Emirates.

Foreign teams have shunned tours of Pakistan since Sri Lanka were attacked by gunmen near Lahore’s Gaddafi stadium in March 2009. Seven Sri Lankan players and a coach were wounded in the attack, which killed eight Pakistanis.

Pakistan began their troubled summer tour with matches against Australia in England, winning both Twenty20 matches and squaring the two-Test series 1-1.

Waqar, one of Pakistan’s greatest bowlers, said the tour’s length had taken its toll.
“If you take into account the tour to Sri Lanka before we went to England, it was four months on the trot and the tour of England was difficult both on and off the field,” the coach said on his arrival in Lahore.

“We had successes against Australia which were pleasing,” Waqar added.

“But because of the controversies it was tough against England, because you need to go to extra effort to gee up the players when you see a report in the newspaper every other day.” – AFP

Source Daily Dawn

Aisam said his pair with Aqeel Khan would be unseeded at the event.

He added that they were to face top players from Australia and New Zealand, who play on the international circuit throughout the year.

Aqeel will join the camp from Thursday, as Aisam practised with non-playing captain Mohammad Khalid.

Aisam said he had played with Aqeel a good number of doubles’ matches in the Davis Cup and they both had good understanding. “We have played around 18 Davis Cup doubles together,” Aisam said, who recently earned the biggest achievement of his 15-year-long career by playing the finals of the US Open’s men’s and mixed doubles.

Aisam said he had a hectic programme in the coming days as he would be playing at Shanghai Open, Paris Open, Master Open and Australian Open.

He said his recent achievement had improved his doubles’ ranking to six that helped him to play the Master Open in London for the first time, where only top-eight players participate.

“I will try my best to maintain my doubles’ ranking or improve it,” he said.

He said many international players were ready to play charity matches in Pakistan to generate funds for the flood-affected people and now it was up to the government and the PTF to raise sponsorship. Pakistan contingent is scheduled to leave for New Delhi on Sept 29. —Sports Reporter.

Source Daily Dawn

Source The News

Source: Daily News

However, expression of sympathy and solidarity with the flood-affected masses was accompanied by serious concerns about the inability of the international community, especially its South Asian component, to extend adequate succour to Pakistanis faced with an unprecedented disaster. A particularly sore point was the failure of Saarc to operationalise, or even to recall, the protocol on regional disaster management. It was not possible to understand why no member state could invoke the regional accord.

Allegations were made, with considerable vigour, that Pakistan had not devised a clear policy for accepting aid in kind from civil society organisations and elements (such as doctors, pharmaceutical dealers and farmers) in the neighbouring countries. This is something the Pakistan establishment must immediately address and remove any obstacles, real or imagined, to the flow of people-to-people aid supplies from across South Asia, including India. For one does not wish to believe any state authority will be guided by confrontationists to the extent of spurning aid offers from neighbours. Cross-border cooperation in humanitarian endeavours will surely strengthen the concept of South Asian identity and a shared destiny, a fact that was amply confirmed when Edhi and some other Pakistanis went to the Indian state of Gujarat a few years ago to provide relief to earthquake victims.

It was impossible for even the most cautious human rights activists from the region to ignore the wave of killings in the Kashmir Valley and Sri Lanka’s march towards authoritarianism, the large number of extra-legal killings there and the unbearable strain on the media. But the conference was perhaps held back by the danger of its intervention causing more harm than good, particularly in view of the highly charged climate in which these issues were being approached by the parties concerned. They therefore contented themselves with regretting the loss of life in Kashmir and extra-democratic trends in Sri Lanka and called for sincere efforts to avoid derogation of human rights in any form and in any situation.

On Afghanistan, however, the discussion was considerably frank and candid. There was a fair measure of accord on the urgency of allowing the Afghan people much greater say in shaping their destiny than they have apparently been granted so far. It was strongly argued that some of the external actors strutting across the ravaged Afghan landscape were part of the problem and not its solution. The common view was that instead of competing for an exclusive right to courting Afghanistan, India and Pakistan should respect each other’s interests in the area and jointly lead a South Asian initiative to secure peace, justice and democracy in the war-torn land.

The release and repatriation of about 450 Indian fishermen that had been held in Pakistan was the only matter that brought some comfort to the delegates. The initiative taken by civil society organisations was lauded and the prompt and sympathetic intervention by the apex courts of both Pakistan and India was considered a good augury for the resolution of matters related to the imprisonment of a Saarc country’s nationals in another country in the region. Essentially the issue concerned Pakistani and Indian prisoners in each other’s jails, a stigma the two governments have been extraordinarily tardy in erasing.

The conference therefore made an emphatic demand for a South Asian convention/protocol to address the issue of prisoners, including such matters as their trial in an alien land, consular access, relief for those who suffer heavily for unintended violation of cross-border traffic rules, and repatriation of prisoners to their home countries immediately after the completion of their sentences and even before that.

The central issue the conference tried to tackle was terrorism. There was complete unanimity among the participants that terrorism presented the gravest threat to the stability, integrity and representative rule of all South Asian countries, including any faction or group that expected to benefit from any brand of terrorism. The participants agreed that instead of allowing themselves to be divided by terrorism, the South Asian states should forge a united front against the menace.

At the same time the conference strongly criticised the abuse of due process and basic rights through counter-terrorism measures. The specific matters that came under attack were extra-legal killings, unlawful detention, interference with judicial processes, an increasing premium on impunity and involuntary disappearances. The conference called upon all South Asian states to ratify and implement the UN Convention on Involuntary Disappearances and work out a strategy to jointly deal with both terrorism and counter-terrorism activities in a rational manner and with due respect for all citizens’ basic entitlements.

The strains on democratic norms in the various parts of South Asia generated a lively debate. In the end an agreement was reached on the need to regenerate healthy and transparent politics across South Asia. It was necessary for the people, especially the youth, to end their indifference or apathy to politics and free their political parties and state institutions from the stranglehold of inefficient, corrupt and self-serving cliques.

The human rights activists who tried to examine the afflictions causing distress and worse to their societies had no illusions about their importance or strength. They were, however, fortified by the belief that the voice of those who shared the hard-pressed communities’ aspirations and anxieties had a better claim to public space in the media and elsewhere than the antics and harangues of spurious politicos that no person sound of head and heart could own.

Source Daily Dawn

Delhi sealed the right to host the Games when their delegates emerged at the final presentation in Jamaica and offered all 72 nations $US100,000 (then about $140,000) each for athlete training schemes if they were the successful bidders.

The money, subsequently paid to all nations, was not significant to Australia because it had already decided to vote for India and the payment was not an exceptionally large one.

But for small nations who have minimal interest in the Games, it clinched their vote and India went on to beat Canadian city Hamilton 46-22 in the final poll. Hamilton had offered the nations about $70,000 each.

Hamilton’s bid organisers, and many of the nations who voted for them, fired off angry protests about India buying votes and the bad blood generated between several feuding nations still exists.

The Commonwealth Games Association has decided to ban 11th-hour inducements as a consequence of the outrage over India’s tactics.

The revelation comes as photos and video footage taken secretly inside the Games compound show just how squalid the athletes’ village is.

Undercover reporters from The Australian and The Daily Telegraph reported seeing filthy toilets, widespread flooding and children defecating in the street.

The images raise more questions about India’s ability to bring the Games facilities up to scratch before the opening ceremony on October 3.

The India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called an emergency meeting of his ministers last night to deal with the crisis and Commonwealth Games chief Mike Fennell was flying into Delhi early today to meet Singh and Games officials.

Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit met national team leaders from 25 countries to discuss their concerns about the athletes’ village

Australian team general manager Perry Crosswhite said the workforce of cleaners and maintenance staff had increased “ten-fold” in the village yesterday.

“They have elevated their response and brought in people who have the power to make it happen,” Crosswhite said.

As well as an army of cleaners, bomb squad officers and dogs have been deployed outside the village as security forces took control, weeks after the original scheduled lockdown deadline.

Source: The News