Monday International News

Multiple crises send Pakistan
to the brink
Agence France-Presse . Islamabad

Pakistan faces a ‘perfect storm’ of crises, with its US-backed fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban faltering and the country lurching towards bankruptcy, analysts and opposition figures say.
Dramatic developments over the past week on both the security and economic fronts underscored more clearly than ever the massive challenges facing the fragile government of the world’s only nuclear-armed Islamic nation.
First the International Monetary Fund announced on Wednesday that Islamabad had sought a politically unpopular rescue package to give the country the four billion dollars it needs to avoid defaulting on its foreign debts.
Parliament meanwhile ended a historic two-week session by passing a unanimous resolution that called for an ‘urgent review’ of Pakistan’s role in the ‘war on terror’ and for fresh talks with militant leaders.
‘Pakistan is truly at a crossroads,’ Talat Masood, a leading security analyst and retired Pakistan army general, said.
‘If the economic situation continues to decline it will reinforce militancy and make it more difficult for the government to tackle. They need to do better than the past six or seven months,’ Masood said.
If local media dubbed the slaying of Benazir Bhutto as Pakistan’s 9/11 and JFK rolled into one, the crisis now faced by the president, Asif Ali Zardari, her widower, is arguably even greater.
His government faces US pressure to crush militant safe havens in its tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda and Taliban rebels have formed new alliances seven years after fleeing the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.
The army said Saturday it had turned a corner with the capture of a strategic town in the tribal zone of Bajaur after a two-month offensive. It has also hailed the formation of tribal militias opposed to the Taliban.
But in an apparent sign of US frustration, suspected US missile strikes on insurgent targets in Pakistan have soared in recent weeks. Eleven people were killed in an attack on a centre run by a leading Taliban commander on Thursday.
The prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, admitted the problems the government faces in a statement earlier this week, saying that the ‘very stability and survival of Pakistan is at stake.’
‘Our resources are over-stretched and our economy is severely impacted by each bomb blast and each suicide attack,’ he said.
But Zardari’s efforts to win public support for an end to the violence ran into trouble when parliament dealt an apparent snub of Islamabad’s alliance with Washington.
Its resolution on Wednesday night hit out at the US missile strikes and recommended increased talks with militants. Previous talks have been criticised by Islamabad’s western allies for allowing the insurgents to regroup.
There was no mention meanwhile of Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agencies — accused by Washington and Kabul of sponsoring the very militants they were meant to be fighting.
Yet the government is being distracted by Pakistan’s economic woes, a toxic brew of debt, inflation and a sinking currency redolent of the dark days of the 1990s before the coup that brought former president Pervez Musharraf to power.
Needing at least four billion dollars to avoid defaulting on its foreign debts, key allies including the United States, China and Saudi Arabia have all rebuffed Zardari’s appeals for extra cash.
News that Islamabad had sought talks with the IMF over aid was met with mounting resentment at home.
Sri Lanka reassures India
over Tamils
Agence France-Presse . New Delhi

A senior Sri Lankan minister held talks on Sunday with the Indian foreign minister over the safety of the island nation’s minority Tamils as its conflict with Tamil Tiger rebels escalates.
Sri Lanka’s Tamils share close cultural and religious links with the 55 million Tamils in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
New Delhi has expressed concern over the conflict and legislators from Tamil Nadu threatened to resign unless the Indian government took action.
Basil Rajapakse, a top aide of the Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapakse, said he had held ‘very positive’ talks with the Indian foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee.
Rajapakse told reporters after the meeting he had given India ‘every assurance’ that Tamils’ needs would be met.
India had used the talks to convey ‘its concern at the humanitarian situation’ in northern Sri Lanka and had ‘emphasised the need for unhindered essential relief supplies,’ the Indian foreign ministry said in a statement.
It added that India would send 800 tons of relief material to affected civilians in the north.
The Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, is under pressure from the Tamil regional DMK party to halt arms supplies to Colombo and mediate in the conflict.
Singh has asked president Rajapakse to start a peacefully negotiated settlement and told him there could be no military solution.
The ethnic Sinhalese-dominated Colombo government is engaged in one of its biggest offensives against the Tamil Tigers, who control part of the north of the island and want to carve out a separate state.
UN world heritage temple damaged
in Thai clashes: Cambodia
Agence France-Presse . Phnom Penh

Cambodia has lodged a complaint with the United Nations accusing Thai troops of damaging the ancient Preah Vihear temple during a border shoot-out earlier this month, an official said Sunday.
Phay Siphan, spokesman for Cambodia’s Council of Ministers, said that a staircase and a sculpture of the mythical Naga creature were damaged by rocket fire at the 11th-century Khmer ruins.
A complaint was filed with the UN cultural body UNESCO a few days after the firefight erupted on October 15 near Preah Vihear, a World Heritage Site at the centre of a long-running territorial dispute between the neighbours.
‘Preah Vihear temple was intentionally damaged by Thai troops, because we found the remnants of grenades... near the temple and there were no Cambodian soldiers stationed nearby,’ Phay Siphan said.
‘The Preah Vihear authority has sent reports and pictures of the damage to UNESCO.’
Three Cambodian soldiers and one Thai troop were killed in the clashes this month, which came as a months-long military standoff between the neighbours erupted into a shoot-out on disputed land.
Tensions between Cambodia and Thailand flared in July when Preah Vihear was awarded UN World Heritage status, rekindling long-simmering tensions over ownership of land surrounding the temple.
Preah Vihear, with its elegant carvings and crumbling stone staircases, is the most important example of ancient Khmer architecture outside Cambodia’s famed Angkor Wat temple complex.