Trains, flights suspended owing to diesel shortage

Trains and flights within the country have been suspended owing to diesel shortage.

PIA’s 60 percent inland flights have been suspended while all the trains in the country have stopped.

All the trains have been stopped owing to no diesel stock in Lahore. The trains coming from Karachi Peshawar and Quetta to Lahore have also been stopped.

The administration has said that 40, 000 litres of diesel is being shifted to Lahore from Multan which will be supplied till evening.

Moreover, trains coming to and leaving from Multan are also delayed for hours.

On the other hand, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) is also in crisis as 6 out of 10 domestic and international flights have been cancelled.

According to the sources, this situation developed after 18 out of 49 planes were grounded over technical issues.

Memo scandal: Mansoor Ijaz submits reply to SC

Reply of Mansoor Ijaz regarding memo scandal has been submitted to the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

The reply of one of the main characters in Memo scandal, Mansoor Ijaz has been submitted to the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
Mansoor submitted his 81-page reply via e-mail in which he disclosed all the details regarding memo gate scandal including his meeting with ISI chief Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha.

Earlier, Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha have submitted their replies in Memo scandal case to the Attorney General office.

According to sources the replies were sent through Defence Ministry. The source informed that some papers are missing in the replies which will be submitted today.

The sources further said that President Asif Ali Zardari’s reply will not be submitted today. The sources said that the President will be consulted before submission of reply.

The Attorney General office will inform the court in writing about the illness of President. The Supreme Court has accepted the plea of Husain Haqqani against its verdict of December 1 in Memo scandal.

US House freezes $700m aid to Pakistan

The US House passed legislation Wednesday to freeze roughly $700 million in aid to Pakistan.

The Republican-led House of Representatives voted 283-136 to approve the bill. The Democratic-held Senate was to quickly follow suit.

The measure freezed roughly $700 million in aid to Pakistan pending assurances that Islamabad has taken steps to thwart militants who use improvised explosive devices (IEDs) against US-led forces in Afghanistan.

Pak-US relationship difficult but essential: Clinton

The US Secretary of State has said that relationship with Pakistan is difficult but important.

In an interview with a US radio, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that relationship with Pakistan is important with respect to our work in Afghanistan.

Hillary said it’s a difficult relationship. It has been for many, many years. You can go back and trace the difficulties that our country has encountered. We’ve gone through periods of closeness and periods of distance.

“And part of the reason we keep going back and working at it is because it’s a very important relationship, and it’s especially important with respect to our work in Afghanistan”.

She further said Pakistan is so poor and needs so much reform in their government and in the delivery of fundamental services that it is a – it’s a constant, vicious cycle of – if you can’t have a decent tax base so that you can actually have schools for universal education, then you’re going to have families desperate to get their sons educated, turning them over to madrassas that are going to inculcate them in extremism, and on and on and on.

“And so part of what we’ve tried to do with Pakistan, in the last three years, is provide support for them to make the tough decisions. They have to reform their agricultural sector, their energy sector. They’ve got to begin to wean their citizenry off of subsidies in order to generate some kind of competitive economic environment”

The US Secretary of State further said that the fact is that so few people pay taxes in Pakistan, and hardly anybody among the feudal landed elite and the rich pay taxes, so there’s no base on which to build the kind of system of services that people would at least feel like, well, maybe it hasn’t gotten to me yet, but my children’s life will be better.

She said Pakistan is facing turmoil, extremism all kinds of internal difficulties and it’s not only the political choices that are made, it’s the weak economic leadership that has gripped the country and, frankly, one of the problems throughout the world.

“An elite that is not willing to invest in the future prosperity and success of their country; in part, because they’re doing pretty well, they have for generations; in part, because they don’t see a connection between, if you grow the pie, you actually have a chance to do even better than if you shrink the pie and your piece is comparatively not growing. So it’s a troubling set of economic conditions, as well as political ones, that we’re trying to work with them on”, Clinton concluded.

Pak-India monkey diplomacy

Paramilitary troops manning a border post spotted the animal and sent him to Bahawalpur. 

India and Pakistan could be in for monkey diplomacy after an unsuspecting primate strayed across the border into Pakistan to be snapped up by soldiers and packed off to a British-era zoo.

The monkey, who has not been given a name by his Pakistani handlers, was apparently found ambling around the desert region of Rahim Yar Khan on November 19.

Paramilitary troops manning a border post spotted the animal and sent him to Bahawalpur zoo in Pakistan s Punjab province. The case may be open and shut for the zoo, but his status is attracting a flurry of media attention.

"We were given him by the Rangers. They found him strolling near their post," the zoo s curator Irfan Farooqi told AFP by telephone.

He added: "We don t suspect the monkey has been deliberately sent to Pakistan. I don t think it is a trained spy. It is a common monkey."

The monkey is now locked up, joining half a dozen others, including another monkey that apparently strayed across the border from India a few months ago. "India has a huge population of monkeys and often when they are hungry they head towards Pakistan," Farooqi said.

The zoo was established in 1942 during British colonial rule before the sub-continent was divided between India and Pakistan upon independence in 1947.

An animal rights group in India has reportedly written to Pakistan s ambassador to New Delhi asking that the monkey be released back into the wild. But Farooqi said the zoo had received no request.

The zoo official said there was no question of just releasing him because "monkeys are usually naughty and they can harm the civilian population".

"We got (another) one (from India) a few months ago and no one asked for its repatriation. We can release them only if we get orders from our bosses."

India and Pakistan resumed a tentative peace process this year, following a three-year hiatus over the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, blamed on Pakistanis.

The two countries have fought three wars since independence and relations remain mired in distrust.

Asghar Gilani, a Pakistani wildlife department official, said the monkey s fate was "just a media attraction".

"Such incidents have happened in the past also but no demand for their return had been made."

Flood-hit areas to be affected by closure of USAID projects in Punjab

US Agency for International Development (USAID) has formally closed 4 major programmes in Punjab. 

Following the refusal of Punjab Chief Minister, Mian Shahbaz Sharif to forego international assistance, the USAID held consultations with both the federal as well as the Punjab government and then decided to end four programmes with immediate effect.

These programmes supported Punjab government institutions with a total worth of 117 million dollars. The chief minister s decision is likely to affect the flood-affected areas the most, because the bulk of these programmes were being run there.

These include "Southern Punjab Basic Education" programme for reconstruction of up to 1,500 schools that were destroyed during the catastrophic 2011 floods, in five districts of southern Punjab. As much as $100 million had been allocated for this purpose, which have now been withdrawn.

Lady Willingdon Hospital in Lahore is Pakistan s largest maternity hospital, which is in extremely dilapidated condition. The USAID had endeavoured to renovate it with a cost of $16 million, including the provision of urgently-needed incubators, but it has also been stopped now.

Punjab Municipal Services Delivery programme for improvements in infrastructure and delivery of municipal public services, including safe water, solid waste collection and disposal, markets, sewerage services, streets and street lighting in urban and flood-affected areas with a cost of $10 million has also been discontinued.

The programme for providing "Technical Assistance to the Government of Punjab Department of Health" with one million dollars has been stopped too. Approximately $117 million in funds reserved for these programmes are now being redirected by the USAID to other projects around Pakistan.

However, the programmes in Punjab that do not provide assistance directly to the Government of Punjab have not been affected. The U.S. will continue such programmes that benefit the people of Punjab through partnerships with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the federal government.

Ongoing U.S. civilian assistance programs in Punjab include small grants to female entrepreneurs in flood-affected areas; rehabilitation of power plants; and distribution of treatments for tuberculosis, hepatitis, HIV/AIDS, and other diseases.

A USAID official, talking to Dunya News, about the Punjab government s decision said that "US government s civilian assistance supports the people of Pakistan and will continue to do so in close consultation with the government".

There are approximately 63 different projects underway across Pakistan in the five major sectors of energy, economic growth, stabilization, education, and health, under the auspices of USAID at the moment. Since October 2009, the US government has spent over $2 billion in civilian assistance to Pakistan, out of which over $1.8 billion have been disbursed through USAID.

- Contributed by Awais Saleem, Dunya News correspondent in Washington, DC