Saturday, October 12, 2013
Indian FM doesn’t see Pak-India dialogue resuming anytime soon
6 bn Gadani project begins by violating PPRA Rules, SC rulings
ISLAMABAD: In violation of the PPRA Rules and ignoring the principles of transparency and merit, the government of Nawaz Sharif has decided to appoint Nespak as consultant in the $6 billion Gadani Power Project, which may ultimately produce 6,000MW electricity from imported coal.
To give it a legal cover, six federal secretaries in their role as PPRA Board members recently met to get this project exempted from the PPRA Rules and allowed the Ministry of Water and Power to engage Nespak without getting into an open tendering process.
The MD PPRA had opposed this move but the board still decided to go for this exemption. This has been done despite the Supreme Court’s past decision of nullifying such contracts, which too were awarded through similar exemptions and in violation of the PPRA Rules.
It is interesting to note that the PPRA Board comprises six federal secretaries and three independent members but to get this controversial exemption through in spite of the legal requirements, the three independent private members have not been appointed.
According to the minutes of the last PPRA Board meeting held on September 16: “The board resolved to recommend to the federal government to grant exemption under Section 21 of the PPRA Ordinance, 2002 for hiring services of M/s Nespak by PPPMLC, the subsidiary of the Ministry of Water and Power.”
This exemption has been approved by federal secretaries-dominated PPRA Board despite the opposition of the PPRA chief.The PPRA MD, in the agenda of the meeting, had made it clear that if the matter was urgent, then rule 42(d)(iii) of Public Procurement Rules, 2004 may be invoked which reads as under: “For reasons of extreme urgency brought about by events unforeseeable by the procuring agency, the time limits laid down for open and limited bidding methods cannot be met. The circumstances invoked to justify extreme urgency must not be attributable to the procuring agency: Provided that any procuring agency desirous of using negotiated tendering as a method of procurement shall record its reasons and justifications in writing for resorting to negotiated tendering and shall place the same on record.”
The MD had contended that if Nespak was ideally suited for the subject consultancy and it had the requisite expertise and resources, then Rule 42(c)(ii) may be invoked which reads as: “Only one manufacturer or supplier exists for the required procurement: Provided that the procuring agencies shall specify the appropriate fora, which may authorise procurement of proprietary object after due diligence.”
The MD PPRA also wrote: “With reference to grant of exemption under Section 21 of the PPRA Ordinance, it is submitted that Rule 4 of the Public Procurement Rules, 2004 has still to be complied by the procuring agency if exemption to it is granted.”
In the absence of competitive bidding, it will be extremely difficult for the procuring agency to establish compliance with the above rules. The MD had advised the board to consider advising the procuring agency to follow the PPRA Rules in this matter.
However, despite warnings and recommendations of the MD PPRA, the secretaries decided in favour of the exemption from the open bidding process.Apparently, to pre-empt the possible intervention of the Supreme Court in this matter, the board discussed the aspect of court cases.
The minutes of the board meeting say, “A view was expressed that some court decisions have not approved of the single procurement instances. The members were of the view that in none of those cases, the court had adversely adjudged a case that was processed under the provision of Section 21 of the ordinance.”
Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) adviser Adil Gilani, when contacted, said the Supreme Court in 2012 had cancelled the $126 million Safe City Project despite the approval of exemption by the then cabinet and the prime minister. The SC had declared the exemption as illegal in constitutional petition No.91 of 2011, Gilani recalled.
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Miss Universe apologises to India over Taj Mahal photo shoot
NEW DELHI: Organisers of Miss Universe extended their “deepest apologies” to India over a photo shoot at the Taj Mahal that triggered a police case and accusations that she disrespected the famed monument to love.
Reigning Miss Universe Olivia Culpo, a 21-year-old American from Rhode Island, visited the Islamic mausoleum on Sunday during a 10-day tour of India. During her time at the World Heritage site, she posed for cameras with branded shoes and sat on the Diana Seat, a marble ledge named after the late British princess who visited in 1992.
Acting on a complaint from the site’s caretaker, police filed a case because any advertising or promotional work is banned at the site. “The Miss Universe Organization would like to extend its deepest apologies to the people of India for the incident involving the reigning Miss Universe,” said a statement sent to AFP late Thursday.
It said Culpo was making a video diary for fans. “As part of these videos, we sometimes incorporate sponsors into these shoots,” it said, adding the footage was not meant for commercial purposes. “We sincerely apologise for any unintentional harm our indiscretion and insensitivity may have caused,” it added.
Indian-born fashion designer Sanjana Jon, who accompanied Miss Universe to the site, has also been booked for an alleged breach of the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act. They are likely to face a fine if found guilty, officials say.
The Taj, visited by millions of tourists each year, was built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a tomb for his beloved empress, Mumtaz Mahal, who died during childbirth in 1631.
Visitors are asked to remove shoes while climbing the plinth and entering the Taj, but footwear is allowed in the surrounding garden area where Culpo posed, wearing a long peach-coloured off-the-shoulder dress.
The Mumbai-based Mid-Day tabloid quoted Taj caretaker Munazzar Ali earlier this week as saying Culpo’s behaviour amounted to “disrespect and insult”. “The sandals from a bag she carried were taken and placed on the Diana Seat for shooting pictures, which is not permitted by the ASI (Archaeological Survey of India). It also amounts to disrespect and insult,” he told the paper.
Israeli settler bludgeoned to death in West Bank
BROSH, Palestinian Territories: Suspected Palestinian militants bludgeoned to death a settler on Friday in the third killing of Israelis in the West Bank in as many weeks, police said, prompting calls to suspend peace talks.
The wife of the murdered man, a retired army colonel, was also injured in the night-time attack on their home at the settlement of Brosh in the northern Jordan Valley.
The attack was followed by calls from rightwing Israeli MPs for the suspension of low profile peace talks between the two sides and of the expected release of more Palestinian prisoners.
Army radio named the dead man as Sarya Ofer, a former commander of Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip and of various special forces units.
Mosque, school spark new feud between Turkey and Greece
ATHENS: Greece and Turkey, which share a history marred by bitter territorial disputes and Christian-Muslim feuds, are at loggerheads once again over religion.
The latest row erupted after Greece flatly rejected the idea of reviving two Muslim mosques in Athens in return for the reopening of an Orthodox clergy school in Turkey. Mosques have been a thorny issue for a long time in Greece, where the population is predominantly Greek Orthodox. Athens is one of the few European capitals without an official mosque.
The Halki seminary has also been a subject of controversy. The Orthodox clergy used to train in the school located on an island off Istanbul but it was closed in 1971, after Turkey fell out with Greece over Cyprus.
Turkey, a country where Muslims make up 99 per cent of the population, recently decided to give back to the seminary lands that had been seized in 1943, but there was no talk of reopening. “While we return something, we have the right to expect the return of other things,” said Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who said he wanted two mosques revived in exchange for the seminary. “Greece’s position on the subject (the re-opening of the seminary) is clear, (it is) in accordance with international law and has been expressed on numerous occasions,” Greek Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos said earlier this week.
Any further public discussion on the matter would be “counter productive,” Venizelos said when asked to comment on Erdogan’s suggestion. Erdogan also wants Greece’s Muslims to be able to elect their own Mufti (religious leader), something that the Greek government is currently in charge of. Greece is home to around 500,000 Muslims — many of them undocumented migrants — including a community of over 100,000 Greek citizens of Turkish origin in the country’s northeast.
A staunchly Orthodox state with bitter memories of nearly four centuries of Ottoman Turkish rule, Greece currently offers sanctioned Muslim religious sites only near its northeastern border with Turkey. The issue of mosques in Greece started popping up shortly after 2000, as the 2004 Athens Olympics were looming up.
With an increasing number of migrants from Pakistan and other Muslim countries having recently found their way to the Greek capital, the matter has become more pressing and in 2011 the government approved the construction of a mosque in Athens.
But there were no immediate signs of interest in the project, in view of the Greek Church’s reluctance, objections by local residents and protests by far-right activists including neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn.
In September, the ministry of infrastructure launched a fourth call for offers for this project which will cost some one million euros ($1.4 million).
Syrian Jihadists accused of ‘execution’ war crimes
DAMASCUS: Jihadist fighters were accused on Friday of war crimes over the killing of 190 civilians from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority, in the largest atrocity attributed to rebels.
A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on the killings of Alawite villagers said another 200 people — the vast majority women and children — were taken hostage in the rebel operations in August.
The report, which urged an arms embargo on groups suspected of war crimes or crimes against humanity, said at least 67 people were “executed or unlawfully killed”.
It comes as Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he sees no military solution to the 31-month conflict which has killed more than 115,000 people. HRW said the killings began on August 4, the first day of the Eid-ul-Fitr holiday ending the Muslim fasting month of Ramazan, in villages in Latakia province.
“These abuses were not the actions of rogue fighters,” said HRW’s Joe Stork. “This operation was a coordinated, planned attack on the civilian population.” The 105-page report, based on interviews with 35 survivors, emergency personnel and fighters on both sides, said at least 20 groups were involved, but that five “are responsible for specific incidents that amount to war crimes”.
It named them as Ahrar al-Sham, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Al-Nusra Front, Jaish al-Muhajireen Wal-Ansar and Suqur al-Ezz. HRW said that, in some cases, opposition fighters who are mostly Sunni Muslims executed or gunned down entire families, or killed the elderly or infirm who had been left behind by those who fled.
It also said “some of the opposition atrocities... had clear sectarian motivation”. In one village, it said fighters intentionally damaged an Alawite maqam, a site where a religious figure is buried, and “appear to have intentionally damaged and dug up the grave”.
It said they had also abducted and executed the area’s Alawite religious leader, quoting Al-Nusra as saying he had been executed because he supported the regime.
HRW quoted opposition forces, including an officer involved in negotiations, as saying ISIL and Jaish al-Muhajireen Wal-Ansar were still holding 200 hostages, mostly women and children. It called for them to be treated humanely and released immediately.
“We have documented abuses by opposition forces before, but never on this scale,” HRW researcher Lama Fakih told AFP. “Violators on all sides should be sent a message by the UN Security Council” which should refer the situation to the International Criminal Court.
The opposition National Coalition expressed “deep concern” about the reported atrocity and distanced itself from those responsible.
“The incident reported by HRW in today’s report does not represent an effort by the true Syrian opposition, but rather a shameful one-time attack by outlier extremist groups that thrive under the hand of the Assad regime,” a statement said.
In Athens, Nato’s Rasmussen “there is no military solution to the conflict in Syria”, emphasising a political solution was required.
Libyan PM accuses ‘political party’ of kidnapping him
TRIPOLI: Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan has accused a “political party” of organising his brief abduction by armed gunmen on Thursday, the latest example of the lawlessness prevailing since Moamer Qadhafi’s overthrow.
The premier appeared in good health when he arrived at government headquarters after his ordeal, waving to waiting well-wishers as he climbed out of an armoured car.
“I hope this problem will be resolved with reason and wisdom” and without any “escalation,” Zeidan later said in comments broadcast by state television as he left a cabinet meeting.
The pre-dawn seizure of Zeidan came five days after US commandos embarrassed and angered the government by capturing senior al-Qaeda suspect Abu Anas al-Libi on the streets of Tripoli, whisking him away to a warship in the Mediterranean.
Witnesses said Zeidan was held at a police station south of the capital, and that his captors released him after armed residents surrounded the building and demanded he be let go.
An employee at the hotel — where Zeidan had taken up residence for security reasons — told AFP a “large number of armed men” had entered the building but that the staff did not know what was happening.
A Libyan government statement said Zeidan had been taken “to an unknown destination for unknown reasons by a group” of men believed to be former rebels.
In comments made later to France24 television, Zeidan accused a “political party” of organising the kidnapping him, without naming the group. “It’s a political party which wants to overthrow the government by any means,” he said.
“In the coming days I will give more information on who this political party is that organised my kidnapping,” Zeidan added.
Truck, train collide in US; 1 dead, 60 injured
CHARLESTON: An emergency official says one person was killed and more than 60 others were injured in a collision between a logging truck and a train taking passengers on a scenic tour of fall foliage in West Virginia.
Emergency services director Jim Wise says at least three people were critically hurt. Wise says 21 were taken to a hospital by ambulance and 45 others were taken there by bus with lesser injuries.
Pocahontas County emergency services director Shawn Dunbrack said two passenger cars on the Durbin & Greenbrier Railroad train overturned in the accident. Authorities say the collision occurred Friday afternoon in the eastern part of West Virginia. (AP)
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The blueprint of a package deal with Taliban Is this an offer TTP cannot refuse? Shaheen Sehbai Saturday, October 12, 2013
WASHINGTON: What are the terms of engagement for talks that chief spokesman and information minister Pervez Rashid says have already begun between the Taliban and the Nawaz Sharif government. Apparently the TTP is jacking up its negotiating position and military muscle is being demonstrated to get a better start. Bombs all over the country are exploding while any contact with the official middlemen is being denied. Demands have been raised to a total denial of existence of the Pakistani State and its constitution and geographic boundaries. Allegience to Mulla Omar has been reaffirmed and the larger alliance with Al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban has been underlined.
Yet Hakimullah Mehsud still says he will talk to the Government. Why because he knows his overall strength and position. His loose alliance of overall strength and position. His loose alliance of dozens of warlords is shaking and already infighting has begun with a lot of heads rolled and reshuffled. His No 2 has been arrested in Afghanistan by the US troops, Afghan Taliban have attacked TTP leaders and hideouts inside Afghanistan and reports of Maulvi Fazlullah’s death are circulating all around. His control extends only in North Waziristan and some areas beyond where his allies run the affairs. He is surrounded in a larger strategic and tactical sense by the Pakistani forces.
Mehsud has felt the need to appear on TV, allow journalists to question him and is negotiating through the media by raising his demands, while stating loudly that he will not negotiate with the government through the media.
On the government side, there is a calm and poised position of confidence. The army chief and prime minister have stated loudly, but once or twice only, that neither the Constitution of Pakistan is negotiable nor any blackmail will be accepted.
Having made these statements, officials are quietly working through intermediaries to lay the ground rules for talks. Maulana Fazlur Rehman is reported to be in Kabul for talks with Hamid Karzai and Mulla Baradar is in Peshawar waiting for Afghan Taliban to show up, who are reluctant to meet him inside Pakistan. Likewise, the TTP is suspicious of what Maulana Fazlur Rehman is trying to do.
The real go-betweens, Maulana Samiul Haq and other Ulema, are quiet and working behind the scenes. The army and security establishment have given a free hand to the political government to try a negotiated settlement but failing that a full-scale operation is also not being ruled out.
Imran Khan hopes the TTP will come around after some give and take.In such a scenario what can the Pakistan establishment and government offer to the Taliban to accept living within the constitutional boundaries of Pakistan but having enough autonomy in their areas to run their lives according to the Shariah and Islamic rules they want.
At a recent private meeting between some Pakistanis and some US think tank guys well-connected with the US security establishment in New York, the whole scenario was discussed, imagining the future scenario of a situation in which the nitty gritty is discussed between the TTP and government.
Moving at least two stages forward to discuss what tangible but practical things could be offered to the TTP to satisfy them in terms of holding some sense of political power, a lot of control over their economics and some substantial benefits, a very liberal package to the TTP and all other Fata militants was considered as a starter.
I attended the meeting and noted some of the points of the package that can be offered, a very lucrative and hard to reject deal that could change the face of the tribal areas, bring immense power and riches to the tribal leaders, most of whom would be the present militant leaders.
Without disclosing the names and contents, I can write the points of the package which looks like a huge big cake with cream all over it, which may cost Islamabad some billions for a few years but in return the peace that may come will bring back many more billions elsewhere in the economy, investment, industry, trade and other areas which have fallen on the sidelines because of the law and order situation.
These tangible offers include;
- A completely cost free supply of electricity and gas in all Fata areas.
- Supply of petrol and food items at highly subsidised and reduced prices.
- A total tax free and duty free status to all Fata areas for setting up any industry for at least 10 years. This should include an incentive package for Pakistani entrepreneurs to build suitable industries in Fata.
- Like many Arab countries, a local partner must be given free 15 to 20 percent shares in these industries and in return he should ensure a secure and workable environment for the industry to run.
- Mandatory employment of locals with a minimum wage of Rs20,000 on at least 50 percent jobs thus created. If locals are not available, outsiders may be given these jobs.
- Free education for Fata children within Fata and in universities inside Pakistan, to be paid by the Government of Pakistan.
- Free setting up of quality hospitals in these areas where local doctors should run the affairs.
- All youth, over the age of 18, boys and girls, should be given an unemployment allowance of at least Rs15,000 a month until they find a job, within Fata or in Pakistan or abroad.
- Generous no-interest loans be provided to locals for business, transport and economic activities in their areas including duty free import of buses and vans registered in Fata.
- All Fata residents, with valid ID cards, must get 30 to 50 percent discount in airlines, railways and other government transport systems. These subsidies should be picked up by the government.
- At least 2,000 Fata residents should be sent on free Haj and Umra visits every year at no cost.
- All Fata agencies should be re-structured into smaller units where local leaders should be declared as Nazims, mayors, ameers or whatever name they like, and local affairs should be allowed to be handled by them under Shariah or local tribal laws, customs and traditions through Jirgas and Ulema councils.
- The militants in these areas, with their arms should be regularised as law enforcement forces of their respective areas. They should be given proper training and assistance by Pakistan, where and when needed.
There are some other concessions and points in the package as well but all this package comes to several billion rupees every year but it is a long term investment in the future of Fata and Pakistan.
What the Taliban should give in return is an assurance that violence and fighting will stop everywhere, an environment of peace will be created for all this to be achieved, Pakistan’s territorial sovereignty will be accepted and Fata people will continue to use the Pakistani passport as their travel document.
If these points are acceptable, Pakistan can think of releasing TTP militants under arrest, form Ulema committees and Jirgas to work out the details of these plans and then ultimately when peace starts emerging, slowly withdraw its troops to places where FC and army used to be for decades.
It may all sound too simple and overly optimistic but the people who discussed it clearly said this was based on some wishful thinking for the moment.
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21 killed, dozens injured in Syria militant attacks
At least 21 civilians have been killed and dozens injured in mortar attacks and bombings in four different cities across Syria as deadly violence rages on in the Arab country.
Four mortar shells fired by foreign-backed militants on Thursday hit Jaramana near the Syrian capital, Damascus, killing at least 11 people and injuring 23 others.
The first three shells struck the entrance of Jaraman and the fourth hit an area near a hospital and caused material damages.
Some six people were killed and 16 others injured after a number of mortars slammed into a residential area in Azamiyah in the northern city of Aleppo.
Elsewhere in Homs, mortar attacks killed at least two people and wounded five others in al-Enshaat neighborhood.
In another incident, a roadside bomb went off near a school in the central city of Hama, killing two students and injuring two others.
The attacks came as the Syrian government forces continue their battle against foreign-backed militants across the country.
Over the past few months, Damascus has come under several mortar attacks from anti-government militant groups holed up on the outskirts of the city.
Syria has been gripped by deadly turmoil since 2011. Reports indicate that Western powers and their regional allies -- especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey -- are supporting the militants operating inside the country.
According to the United Nations, more than 100,000 people have been killed and millions of others displaced in the violence.
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