Pakistan out to fill void
Pakistan's next likely leader claimed mental illness
Pakistan's next likely leader claimed mental illness
Minneapolis Star Tribune, MN - 22 hours ago
By JANE PERLEZ, New York Times ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - Asif Ali Zardari, who is favored to win the Pakistani presidency in elections next week, filed medical ...
Switzerland Frees $60 Million in Zardari’s Assets New York Times
Bhutto's widower has mental-illness history, records say Seattle Times
Pakistan presidential candidate Asif Ali Zardari 'suffering from ... Telegraph.co.uk
Gulf Daily News - Khabrein.info
Switzerland Frees $60 Million in Zardari’s Assets New York Times
Bhutto's widower has mental-illness history, records say Seattle Times
Pakistan presidential candidate Asif Ali Zardari 'suffering from ...
Pakistan lawyers call for stronger moves on judge reinstatement
Pakistan Reinstates 8 Deposed Judges Voice of America
Pakistan judges break ranks to make return The Australian
Pakistan govt reappoints eight sacked judges: official
BBC News - Xinhua
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Eight deposed SHC judges stage return
KARACHI - Eight deposed judges of Sindh High Court (SHC), including new Chief Justice Anwer Zaheer Jamali, took fresh oath while the number of judges of the said court has also been increased and the notification issued in this regard, The Nation has learnt here on Wednesday.
The law ministry has issued notification for the appointment of the new Chief Justice and reappointment of eight deposed judges, who took oath during a ceremony held at the Governor’s House.
Governor Sindh Dr. Ishartul Ibad administered the oath to the new SHC Chief Justice, who administered the oath to the rest of deposed judges.
The judges, who were reappointed, included Justice Khilji Arif Hussain, Justice Ameer Hani Muslim, Justice Zafar Ahmad Khan Sherwani, Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, Justice Salman Ansari, Justice Faisal Arab and Justice Abdul Rashid Kolhoro.
Meanwhile, the law ministry also issued the notification to raise the number of judges from 28 to 40, appointment of the new Chief Justice of SHC and restoration of eight deposed judges.
On the other side, President Sindh High Court Bar Association (SHCBA), Rasheed A Rizvi, has said that despite the latest development, the legal fraternity would continue its movement for the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and other deposed judges.
He termed the fresh oath of SHC judges as a gloomy breakthrough but emphasised that the lawyers’ movement would not stop until the reinstatement of all the deposed judges.
Agencies add: After the issuance of the notification regarding reinstatement of eight deposed judges of the Sindh High Court (SHC), these judges took oath at Governor’s House. Former President Pervez Musharraf had signed the summary for their appointment.
Acting Chief Justice Azizullah Memon took oath from Justice Anwar Zahir Jamali as Judge of the Sindh High Court.
On the occasion Chief Secretary Fazlur Rehman read out an order of the President regarding the appointment of the judges.
Sharif's party pulls out of PPP-led coalition
Pakistan's fragile coalition split on Monday with Nawaz Sharif-led Pakistan Muslim League(N) withdrawing support to the PPP-led government accusing it of reneging on the promise to reinstate sacked judges.
"The promises made to us were not honoured by the PPP," Sharif, a former Pakistan Prime Minister, told a packed press conference in Islamabad.
The six-month-old coalition has been tethering on the brink of collapse following sharp differences between Sharif and PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari on the issue of reinstatement of judges sacked by the then President Pervez Musharraf in March last year.
"The PPP has forced us to withdraw support and sit in the opposition," the 59-year-old leader said.
However, he said, PML(N) will act as a "constructive opposition" and will continue efforts to bring genuine democracy in Pakistan.
Siddiqui as PML(N) presidential candidate
Nawaz Sharif has also named former Chief Justice Saeed us Zaman Siddiqui as his party's candidate for presidential polls scheduled for September 6.
Addressing newspersons after a meeting of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), Sharif said that the party has requested the former judge to contest the presidential elections.
The former Prime Minister said that Saeed us Zaman Siddiqui is a "non-partisan person".
Siddiqui was the Chief Justice when Sharif was deposed as Prime Minister in a military coup in 1999. He was forced to step down from his post after he refused to endorse Musharraf's actions.
Pakistan's Feuding Leaders Lobby Party Defectors (Update1)
Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan's feuding political leaders reached out to party defectors to support their candidates to replace former President Pervez Musharraf, two days after disbanding the coalition that forced his resignation.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, campaigning for Pakistan Peoples Party Co-Head Asif Ali Zardari, met with Aftab Sherpao, a former PPP leader, who left the party after Musharraf took power in a 1999 coup. Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League, which quit the government after Zardari announced his candidacy, said it will try to woo ex-colleagues who broke away in 2000 to set up a pro-Musharraf faction of the party.
Independent lawmakers and party defectors hold the key to Sharif's attempt to dislodge presidential frontrunner Zardari, the widower of slain leader Benazir Bhutto, after the PPP won the most seats in Feb. 18 parliamentary elections. Sharif, a two-time prime minister, has nominated former chief justice Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui for the Sept. 6 vote.
``We are hoping to win as many votes as possible,'' Gilani told reporters in Islamabad today. Sherpao, whose party has one seat in the lower house and six members in the North West Frontier Province assembly, said he hasn't decided whether to vote for Zardari.
The two main parties are focusing on smaller groups because their largest rival, the pro-Musharraf faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, headed by Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, is backing its own candidate, Mushahid Hussain. The winner requires 51 percent of electoral college votes, which include tallies from both chambers of parliament and the four provincial assemblies.
`Zardari Will Win'
``In today's situation, Zardari will win the election without any major challenge,'' said Zafar Nawaz Jaspal, assistant professor of International Relations at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad. ``Still, there are a few days to go and if back-channel diplomacy between the two factions of the Muslim League succeed, the smaller groups and independent lawmakers may rethink supporting the PPP.''
Siddiqui, 71, ``is the best candidate because he is honorable and honest and supports democracy,'' said Siddiq-ul- Farooq, a spokesman for Sharif's party. The party will try to convince the pro-Musharraf faction to withdraw its candidate and support Siddiqui, he said.
Smaller groups including the Karachi-based Mutahidda Qaumi Movement and the Awami National Party, based in the North West Frontier Province, have already said they will back Zardari.
Muster Votes
Zardari, 52, may muster 400 votes in the electoral college of 702, the Nation newspaper reported on Aug. 25. Sharif's party might win 126 votes and the pro-Musharraf candidate 129 votes, it said. Even if they combine, the two Muslim Leagues don't have enough support to upset Zardari, it said.
Lawmakers from smaller groups and independents, who do not belong to any party, typically side with the ruling party, Quaid-e-Azam University's Jaspal said.
Musharraf quit last week to avoid facing impeachment charges that he illegally ousted Sharif in a 1999 coup. While the four-party alliance headed by the PPP worked together to remove the president, the coalition splintered Aug. 25 after Zardari reneged on pledges to reinstate 60 judges fired by Musharraf and to select a presidential candidate.
The PPP-led government today reinstated eight High Court judges in Sindh province, GEO television channel reported. The judges took fresh oaths, or were reappointed, before returning to office, it said.
Replacing Judges
Sharif, 58, united with Zardari over the need to remove Musharraf, then bickered over replacing judges with the ones the former president fired.
Zardari wants to keep the Musharraf judges, who backed legislation withdrawing corruption charges against him and his wife, while also reinstating the fired ones. Zardari denies the corruption accusations.
Restoring former chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was been the biggest obstacle to an agreement because he questioned the legality of a 2007 decree that protected Zardari.
Squabbling between Sharif's party and the PPP since they formed the alliance in March has hampered the efforts by the government of the nuclear-armed nation to tackle extremism in its tribal region bordering Afghanistan. Terrorist attacks last year killed 2,000 people in the country of 168 million.
The benchmark Karachi Stock Exchange 100 index today completed a six-day, 16 percent decline, closing at 9,144.93, a 26-month low.
Pakistan's economy expanded 5.8 percent in the fiscal year ended June 30, the slowest pace since 2003, and the trade deficit widened to a record $20.7 billion. Inflation accelerated to 24.3 percent in July and foreign-exchange reserves have declined by more than half. Moody's Investors Service last week said reserve depletion was the ``most imminent risk.''
No favorites in Pakistan
PAKISTAN'S troubles did not end with the resignation last week of former President Pervez Musharraf. On the contrary, the rupture this week of the coalition between the parties of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari, widower of the assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, suggests that Pakistan's several overlapping crises are becoming more acute than ever.
Pakistan is both a nuclear power and an ambivalent host to local and Afghan Taliban militants as well as foreign Al Qaeda terrorists. So its problems inevitably become Washington's problems. The passage from an increasingly autocratic Musharraf to the shady pair of Zardari and Sharif has left the Bush administration facing the fallout from yet one more policy failure.
Bush gambled on Musharraf and lost when the former army chief fired Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, touching off a political crisis that undermined his own government. The administration then put its chips on a forced partnership between Bhutto and Musharraf and lost that wager as well. Recently, Washington's unacknowledged favor seems to have landed on Zardari, on the theory that his liberal, secular party may be more inclined to wage a serious struggle against Islamist extremists.
But the danger of choosing sides in Pakistan's power struggle was evident this week, after the disclosure that State Department officials chastised the US ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, for his private contacts with Zardari. In a note leaked to The New York Times, the assistant secretary for South Asia, Richard Boucher, complained that Khalilzad had veered from "a public line that we are not involved in the politics" of Pakistan "or the details."
In other words, Khalilzad made it hard to maintain the cover story that Washington is impartial in the struggle between Sharif, who has a history of support for Islamist forces, and Zardari, who spent eight years in jail on corruption charges.
Zardari broke a pledge to reinstall Chaudhry out of a fear that the jurist would overturn an amnesty from corruption charges that Musharraf gave Zardari. Zardari also recalls that Sharif had him imprisoned twice in the '90s.
The Bush cover story about impartiality ought to be the real policy. It is not possible to foresee who will come out on top in the Pakistani power struggle, and American intervention is likely to produce only one more losing bet.
Fierce Combat Continues in Tribal Pakistan
Pakistani frontier corpsmen, backed by helicopter gunships, killed at least 35 militants in the last 24 hours as some of the year's fiercest combat in the Northwest Frontier continued into its fourth week.
Among the 25 killed in the Bajour agency, where the local Taliban have strong links with al Qaeda, were "top level" Taliban commanders and foreign fighters from Uzbekistan and Chechnya, according to military sources.
Frontier corpsmen engaged a militant "hideout" using helicopters and artillery on Wednesday morning, said Maj. Murad, a spokesman for Pakistan's army.
The fighting in Bajour came just hours after militants tried to storm the Tiarza checkpoint in South Waziristan, where the Taliban also has a close relationship with al Qaeda. Security forces repelled the attack and killed 11 militants, Murad said.
Combat flares in 3rd area of Pakistan border belt
Pakistani troops drove off a Taliban attack on a fort and pounded another band of militants holed up in a health center, officials said Wednesday as fighting spread to a third area of the tribal belt along the Afghan border.
As many as 49 insurgents were reported killed.
The violence came a week after the threat of impeachment forced longtime U.S. ally Pervez Musharraf to resign as president, triggering a scramble for power that resulted in the collapse of Pakistan's governing coalition.
The party led by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto until her assassination last December is now in a position to dominate the government and it is toughening its stance against Islamic extremists at a time when they are becoming increasingly bold.
The Taliban have claimed responsibility for a wave of suicide bombings, including one outside the country's biggest weapons complex last week that killed at least 67 people, almost all of them civilians.
Security forces have been waging offensives against militants for several weeks in the northern Swat valley and in the Bajur tribal area, considered a launch pad for Taliban operations into Afghanistan and a possible hideaway for Osama bin Laden.
On Wednesday, fighting spread to South Waziristan, a tribal region that has seen a stream of suspected U.S. missile attacks on al-Qaida hideouts in recent months.
The military said 75 to 100 militants assaulted the Tiarza Fort around midnight Tuesday, but troops guarding the post and a checkpoint on a nearby bridge "responded effectively and repulsed the attack."
Its statement said 11 militants were killed and up to 20 wounded, but made no mention of any casualties among the troops. Spokesmen for insurgent groups could not be contacted to discuss the government's claim.
Aminullah Wazir, a shopkeeper in Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, said authorities imposed a curfew in the area Wednesday. He said shops were shuttered and the streets deserted.
"We heard shelling and gunfire almost all night," Wazir told The Associated Press by telephone.
The fiercest battles in Pakistan's restive northwest have been in Swat and Bajur, where officials say hundreds of militants have been killed by military operations and some 200,000 residents have fled their homes to escape the violence.
In the deadliest incident Wednesday, troops rained gunfire and artillery shells on militants sheltering in a health center in Bajur, killing as many as 30 and wounding many more, said a military spokesman, Maj. Murad Khan.
Security forces estimated the toll with the help of intercepted radio traffic among the insurgents, he said.
Police said an additional eight militants were killed and 10 wounded when troops fired on suspect vehicles in two areas of Bajur early Wednesday.
Later in the day, militants ambushed a government convoy near Wana. Khan said there were several casualties, without giving details. But an intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists, said two paramilitary troopers were killed and several others were missing.
Pakistan's 5-month-old government initially sought to calm militant violence by holding peace talks. But the initiatives have borne little fruit, and U.S. officials have been pressing for tougher action against insurgent groups they blame for rising violence across the border in Afghanistan.
In addition to a string of suicide bombings in the last week, gunmen fired at the car of a senior U.S. diplomat in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Tuesday and a bomb killed seven people at a roadside restaurant near Islamabad, the capital.
Pakistanis and the country's Western backers worry the political turmoil since Musharraf's ouster after nine years in power is distracting the government from dealing with militants as well as taking steps to shore up the flagging economy.
On Wednesday, the Karachi stock exchange's benchmark 100-share index fell 3 percent. The index has slid more than 40 percent since April and stands at its lowest level in more than two years.
Lawmakers are to elect a new president Sept. 6. Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto's widower and the current leader of her party, which has the biggest block of seats in parliament, is widely expected to win.
Critics have questioned Zardari's suitability in light of a Financial Times report that his lawyers told a London court that he suffered from serious mental problems.
Zardari's party said he had suffered great stress during his confinement in Pakistani jails on corruption charges, but is now fully fit to lead the country.
Pakistan's second biggest party, headed by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, which bolted the governing coalition Monday, said Wednesday that a "patient" shouldn't be allowed to run for president.
"Similarly, if a sitting president suffers from such mental and psychological problems, constitutionally he cannot retain his office," said the spokesman for Sharif's party, Sadiqul Farooq.
Bhutto widower poised for Pakistan's presidency
Asif Zardari, the controversial widower of the slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, will this week file his nomination papers to become Pakistan's next president, pushing the fragile coalition government further towards collapse.
He is almost certain to be the next incumbent of the presidential palace in Islamabad, as his Pakistan People's party (PPP) has the required votes in parliament to get him elected, replacing Pervez Musharraf, who was ousted last week and who had kept Zardari in prison for years.
Nawaz Sharif, leader of the other major party in the coalition, is furious that he was not consulted over Zardari's bid for the presidency. Sharif has also given the PPP until today to reinstate the judges sacked by Musharraf last November, the fourth such deadline set. He has warned that he is ready to walk out of the coalition.
As president, Zardari, who became known as Mr Ten Percent for his alleged corruption when his wife was twice prime minister, would enjoy a strong measure of protection from prosecution on any of the dozens of criminal charges made against him over the years. He is alleged to have bought a £4.4m country estate in Surrey with ill-gotten gains, and of having siphoned off $1.5bn (£750m) from Pakistan while Bhutto was in office. He was also accused in two murder cases, including the killing of Bhutto's brother Murtaza in 1996.
Zardari has never been convicted on any of these charges and maintains that all the allegations were politically motivated.
"Zardari is a controversial leader," said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a political analyst in Lahore. "A president in a parliamentary system should be someone above day-to-day politics. With him, controversies will continue around the presidency."
Under Pakistan's constitution, the president is supposed to be a figurehead, with the prime minister - Yousaf Raza Gilani - in charge of running the government. However, as party boss and president, Zardari will be all-powerful. "He will overshadow the prime minister," said Rizvi.
Zardari spent 11 years in jail in Pakistan, in two stints, then went into exile in New York in 2004. Before his wife's assassination in December last year he held no party position and was deeply unpopular within the PPP and the country. He flew back to bury her and immediately established an iron grip on the party, winning plaudits for keeping it united. Since elections in February, he has manoeuvred the party into all the important positions of power, despite it not having a majority in parliament.
While political in-fighting rages in Islamabad, extremists continue to carry out suicide bomb attacks and occupy the tribal border area with Afghanistan. An editorial yesterday in The News, a Pakistan daily, pleaded: "Politicians need to realise that with each day that passes people who face bomb blasts, crippling inflation and a general sense of despair, grow more distant from their government."
Violence hits as Pakistani politicians jockey
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Government forces killed at least 44 militants in clashes in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday, and the stock exchange took drastic action to stop steady losses stemming from increased violence and political uncertainty.
Hopes for political stability in nuclear-armed Pakistan after Pervez Musharraf resigned as president last week were dashed when the ruling coalition, led by the party of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, fell apart over a judicial dispute and replacing Musharraf.
The departure on Monday of the second biggest party, that of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, ended what analysts said was an unnatural alliance between the two old rival parties and set the scene for a battle over the presidency.
The wrangling has distracted the government's attention from mounting militant violence, critics say, though the government says it is committed to the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism.
Military officials said on Wednesday that 44 militants were killed in two clashes near the Afghan border.
"We'll strike their hideouts. We won't show any kind of relaxation," the government's top Interior Ministry official, Rehman Malik, told reporters in Islamabad.
The United States, an ally and important source of aid for Pakistan, says al Qaeda and Taliban militants based in sanctuaries in the northwest plot violence in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the West.
Drawn out political uncertainty and militant violence have undermined confidence of investors who hoped Musharraf's departure would let the government focus on economic and security problems.
Pakistani stocks fell more than 4 percent to their lowest level in more than two years in intra-day trade on Wednesday. The benchmark Karachi Stock Exchange index has fallen for six consecutive sessions, spurring exchange action to halt the trend.
After a series of meetings that began at midday Wednesday and only ended after midnight, stock exchange authorities set a floor of 9,144 points for the Karachi Stock Exchange index.
DRUMMING UP SUPPORT
As investors sold their stocks, politicians drummed up support for the September 6 presidential election in which members of the country's four provincial assemblies and two-chamber national parliament will vote.
Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party has nominated her widower and political successor, Asif Ali Zardari. Sharif's party has put forth a former Supreme Court judge, Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui.
The main pro-Musharraf party nominated a former government minister and top party official, Mushahid Hussain Sayed.
No party has a simple majority of votes though analysts expect Zardari to be able to gather enough support to win.
Bhutto's party dismissed a news report this week suggesting Zardari, who spent 11 years in prison on various charges but was never convicted, suffered from severe mental problems.
Party spokeswoman Farzana Raja said Zardari had been tortured while in prison and as a result had been under mental stress and had a heart problem but had never been mentally ill.
Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan High Commissioner to London, said in a statement to Reuters: "All these years since his marriage with Ms Bhutto in 1987 I have known Zardari. On no occasion did I find him absent minded or forgetful as reported."
"But that does not mean he had not been stressed or suffered from it. For that he did seek some medical help."
A spokesman for Sharif's party said if the report of Zardari's mental illness were true, he would be ineligible to run for president.
The main issue that led to the departure of Sharif's party from the coalition was his demand scores of judges Musharraf purged last year be reinstated.
The PPP is reluctant to restore the judges partly because of concern the deposed chief justice might take up challenges to an amnesty granted to Zardari and other party leaders from graft charges last year, analysts say.
But eight of the judges, all from the southern province of Sindh, were re-appointed on Wednesday, the eve of a nationwide protest by lawyers aiming to get their colleagues restored.
Al-Qaida Commander in Afghanistan Reported Killed
A statement posted on an Islamist Web site says an al-Qaida field commander in Afghanistan has been killed by a U.S. airstrike.
The message, dated July 14 and signed by an al-Qaida leader, says Abu Abdullah al-Shami was killed, but it does not specify when or where.
Shami was one of four al-Qaida inmates to escape from the U.S. military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan in 2005.
In another development, a NATO official says ground troops backed by air power killed more than 20 suspected Taliban in Ghazni province on Wednesday after a roadside bomb wounded NATO soldiers.
Scene outside Pakistan consulate in Herat, Afghanistan
In other violence, a bomb blast wounded at least two people outside the Pakistani consulate in the western Afghan city of Herat Thursday.
Authorities say the bomb, attached to a bicycle, wounded a police guard and at least one civilian.
Pakistan's foreign ministry says it holds the Afghan government responsible for the safety and security of its personnel in its embassy in Kabul and consulates in Herat, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Mazar-i-Sharif.
Relations have been strained between Pakistan and Afghanistan, with the Afghan government accusing Pakistan of not doing enough to crack down on militants in its tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
Afghan officials also have accused Pakistan's intelligence agency of being involved in a suicide attack outside the Indian embassy in Kabul this month.
Pakistan has denied those claims.
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