Hotspot: Pakistan

It looks like the Army is getting ready to move on the Swat Valley.

Pakistan says offensive looming in militant valley

Pakistan will launch a major operation "any time from now" to clear militants loyal to a pro-Taliban cleric from a scenic northwestern valley, an army general said Saturday.

Major General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of military operations for the Pakistan army, said he hoped the mountainous Swat area would be reopened for tourism by the end of December.

He said five days of clashes in which the army reports around 100 militants have been killed are only a prelude to the impending large-scale offensive...

"The operation will start any time from now. The concept is to clear Swat of militants," he added. "For the moment we are just picking up anybody visible and pounding any known hideouts with helicopters."

Sectarian clashes between Sunni and Shia kill 30. That's in Pakistan - not Iraq, folks. Each accuses the other of initiating the violence. Religion. Of. Peace.
At least 30 people were killed and over 100 others injured in sectarian clashes between rival Sunni and Shiite Muslims in northwestern Pakistan, police said Saturday.

The clashes began Friday in Parachinar, a town near the Afghan border, when gunmen opened fire on a Sunni mosque, said Mohammed Nadeem, a local police official. Since then, armed men from the two groups have been attacking each other with assault rifles and other weapons.

He said gunbattles were still raging in the town, despite a curfew and appeals from authorities for religious leaders to help stop the fighting.

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Musharraf warns on nuclear weapons LONDON, Nov 17 (Reuters): President Pervez Musharraf, defending his decision to declare emergency rule, in a BBC interview Saturday said that if elections were held in a “disturbed environment”, it could bring in dangerous elements who might pose a risk to control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. “They cannot fall into the wrong hands, if we manage ourselves politically. The military is there - as long as the military is there, nothing happens to the strategic assets, we are in charge and nobody does anything with them,” he said.

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Foreign Office denies BBC report based on Musharraf interview (APP): Pakistan on Saturday denied a BBC report that claimed President Pervez Musharraf had told the network in an interview that the country's nuclear weapons could fall into wrong hands. In the interview the President had stated that these weapons could not fall into wrong hands, the Foreign Office spokesman said while commenting on the BBC report. “This report is a complete distortion of the President's interview,” the spokesman said. The spokesman said that contrary to the report, President Musharraf had reiterated that the nuclear weapons “cannot fall into wrong hands”. “He (President) had argued that because the military organization is responsible for their safety and security, our strategic assets are totally secure and in no danger of falling in wrong hands,” the spokesman said.

US warns Pakistan's Musharraf over military aid: diplomats but Pervez doesn't appear to budge.

A top US envoy warned Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf Saturday that Washington will its review military aid to the country unless he lifts a state of emergency, diplomats said. John Negroponte, number two in the US State Department, met Musharraf for two hours of talks Saturday which diplomats had said he would use to send "a very strong message" to end the two-week-old emergency rule. Western diplomats said Negroponte told Musharraf "military aid would be under review" if he did not quit the army, hold elections on time, lift curbs on the media and release political prisoners. "Both sides gave their views very clearly," one diplomat said. But the military ruler told Negroponte that he could only restore the constitution when the security situation improved, a senior presidential aide told AFP.

Militants blame John Negroponte for violence in Swat. Read their spin.
"A ceasefire is a possibility but it is up to the government to decide," he said. "However our government is under intense American pressure and therefore it is compelled to carry out the operation. But if you ask our opinion, a compromise is very easy. "Our people want the enforcement of Islamic laws. If the government would enforce those laws, a ceasefire will happen immediately," said Sirajuddin.

Three Supreme Court Judges want to quit bench in advance of next week's hearing on Musharraf's imposition of emergency law - I think.
Three judges on a 10-member Supreme Court bench hearing petitions against the imposition of emergency on Friday said they wanted to opt out of the bench.Justice Mohammad Nawaz Abbasi, Justice Faqir Mohammad Khokhar and Justice M. Javed Buttar said judicial propriety demanded that they detached themselves from the bench after President Gen Pervez Musharraf had cited their recent judgments to justify the imposition of emergency.

Widow of slain Pakistani reporter killed in blast: More handiwork from the Religion of Peace.
The widow of a Pakistani journalist, shot dead last year after reporting that an Al-Qaeda leader was killed by a U.S. missile, was killed in a bomb blast on Saturday. The bomb planted outside the family house in Mir Ali town, in North Waziristan near the Afghan border, went off early in the morning, killing Mehr-un-Nisa, on the spot. “All her five children who slept in the same room survived miraculously,” said her brother-in-law, Ihsanullah Khan. Mehr's husband, Hayatullah Khan, was found dead in June 2006 nearly seven months after he was abducted shortly after reporting on an explosion in a militant hideout near the Afghan border that killed Abu Hamza Rabia. Hayatullah who reported for various publications, was the first journalist to photograph fragments found at the scene that appeared to be from a U.S. missile.

Still with me? Read more from Benazir Bhutto's niece, Fatima, about Benazir and her return to Pakistan. She's not happy.
The clash between Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto during the country's current state of emergency is a "farce", according to Bhutto's niece, Fatima...

As for Benazir's house arrest, revoked on Thursday, the young Bhutto described it as a joke."Have you ever seen anyone placed under house arrest released continually for interviews and even receive an American consul?" she said.