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Thursday, December 25, 2008
Anti-Pakistan demo held in India
Pakistan warns India it will respond to any attack
MULTAN, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan warned India on Thursday not to launch a strike against it and vowed to respond to any attack — a sign that the relationship between the two nuclear powers remains strained in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.
Though the South Asian rivals have engaged in tit-for-tat accusations in recent weeks, both sides have repeatedly said they hope to avoid conflict. But India has not ruled out the use of force in response to the attacks, which it blames on a Pakistan-based militant group.
"We want peace, but should not be complacent about India," Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told reporters in his hometown of Multan in central Pakistan. "We should hope for the best but prepare for the worst."
Pakistan and India have fought three wars since they were created in the bloody partition of the Indian subcontinent at independence from Britain in 1947.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani echoed Qureshi's sentiments Thursday and urged the international community to pressure India to defuse the current tension.
He also repeated Pakistan's demand that India provide evidence to support its claim that the 10 gunmen who killed at least 164 people in Mumbai last month were Pakistani and had links to the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
"Whenever we receive evidence, we will examine it and investigate it, and we will share it with our people," Gilani told reporters at the tomb of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in southern Pakistan, ahead of the first anniversary of her assassination on Dec. 27.
India has given Pakistan a letter from the lone surviving gunman involved in the attacks, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, reportedly saying he and the nine others were Pakistani. He also asked to meet with Pakistani envoys, but newspapers in Pakistan reported Thursday that the government has rejected the request because it has no record of Kasab as a Pakistani citizen.
"How can we give him consular access without having knowledge about his nationality?" Dawn newspaper quoted the head of Pakistan's Interior Ministry, Rehman Malik, as saying.
India has said it has provided Pakistan with sufficient evidence and wants the government to crack down on Lashkar and other militants operating out of Pakistan.
Pakistan has arrested several senior members of the banned group and moved against a charity that India and others say is a front for Lashkar. But many in India are skeptical Pakistan will follow through on its crack down against Lashkar, which was created in the 1980s with the help of Pakistan's intelligence service.
Gilani said he understands Indian officials are under tremendous pressure to take action but sought to assure them that Pakistan was committed to cracking down on terrorists.
"We do not want our land to be used for terrorism," said Gilani.
At the same time, Qureshi said Pakistan's military is "alert and vigilant" in case it needs to respond to Indian action. Pakistani fighter aircraft have flown over several of the country's major cities in recent days, but Qureshi said the military has not mobilized its ground forces.
"India should refrain from any surgical strike," said Qureshi. "It should not commit this mistake, but if it does, Pakistan will be compelled to respond."
Also Thursday, police said they recovered 880 pounds (400 kilograms) of explosives and more than 500 detonators from a house in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.
Police arrested 10 people inside the house during Wednesday's raid but were still looking for the owner of the explosives, said Asghar Raza Gardaizi, Islamabad's police chief.
Pakistani officials have expressed concern about the spread of violence in the country outside the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, where al-Qaida and Taliban militants have sought sanctuary.
Militants attacked the Marriott hotel in Islamabad in September with a truck bomb, killing more than 50 people.
Pakistan says it wants friendly ties with India
| Gilani: won’t allow our soil to be used by terrorists or non state actors |
Yusuf Raza Gilani
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s civilian leadership on Sunday reiterated its desire for friendly relations with India and said it would not allow the country to be used for terrorist activities. It also kept up assertions that it was prepared to respond to any military strikes by India.
Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said Pakistan “wants good relations with all its neighbours, including India and Afghanistan, and will never allow its soil to be used against any country by terrorists or non-state actors.”
Mr. Gilani said Pakistan condemned the Mumbai terror attacks in the “strongest terms” and recalled that the government had offered to cooperate with New Delhi in the investigation.
He was speaking in Naudero, the hometown of the assassinated Pakistan People’s Party leader, Benazir Bhutto, in the Sindh province ahead of the first anniversary of her December 27 assassination.
Significantly, Mr. Gilani sought world help in defusing the current tension between the South Asian neighbours. “We urge the world to help defuse the situation,” he said.
But Mr. Gilani, who was speaking to journalists after visiting Benazir’s grave at Garhi Khuda Buksh, also said that if war was thrust upon Pakistan, “there should be no doubt that the whole nation, the political leadership and the armed forces will stand united to defend the country.”
Separately, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood, told journalists in his hometown Multan that “we are the torch-bearers of peace and remain committed to our desire for peace.”
Asked if war could be ruled out, the Foreign Minister said: ‘If you are asking me, I am not ruling out anything. But if war is imposed, we will respond to it like a brave, self-respected and self-esteemed nation.”
Meanwhile, the Indian High Commission here said it had received no word from the Pakistan government about the Indian national that intelligence agencies claimed to have arrested from Lahore in connection with a car bomb that killed a woman in the city on Wednesday.
Pakistani media said the arrested man, whose name was given out as Satish Anand Shukla, had identified himself as Munir. They reported that intelligence agencies claimed he was a resident of Kolkota and had earlier worked at the Indian High Commission in London.
Geo Television said he had been arrested with two others, but there is no official confirmation of any arrests. According to media reports, the man was said to be carrying three fake Pakistani identity cards and “explosives” on his person. He is said to have told Pakistani authorities that he had three accomplices in Pakistan and they had planned to carry out attacks against the country’s Christian community on Christmas-eve.
will the earth end till 2012
Scientific experts from around the world are genuinely predicting that five years from now, all life on Earth could well finish. Some are saying it'll be humans that set it off. Others believe that a natural phenomenon will be the cause. And the religious folks are saying it'll be God himself who presses the stop button...
1. Mayan Calendar
The first mob to predict 2012 as the end of the world were the Mayans, a bloodthirsty race that were good at two things:
Building highly accurate astrological equipment out of stone and
Sacrificing Virgins.
Thousands of years ago they managed to calculate the length of the lunar moon as 329.53020 days, only 34 seconds out. The Mayan calendar predicts that the Earth will end on December 21, 2012. Given that they were pretty close to the mark with the lunar cycle, it's likely they've got the end of the world right as well.
2. Sun Storms
Solar experts from around the world monitoring the sun have made a startling discovery: our sun is in a bit of strife. The energy output of the sun is, like most things in nature, cyclic, and it's supposed to be in the middle of a period of relative stability. However, recent solar storms have been bombarding the Earth with so much radiation energy, it's been knocking out power grids and destroying satellites. This activity is predicted to get worse, and calculations suggest it'll reach its deadly peak sometime in 2012
3. The Atom Smasher
Scientists in Europe have been building the world's largest particle accelerator. Basically its a 27km tunnel designed to smash atoms together to find out what makes the Universe tick. However, the mega-gadget has caused serious concern, with some scientists suggesting that it's properly even a bad idea to turn it on in the first place. They're predicting all manner of deadly results, including mini black holes. So when this machine is fired up for its first serious experiment in 2012, the world could be crushed into a super-dense blob the size of a basketball.
4. The Bible says...
If having scientists warning us about the end of the world isn't bad enough,religious folks are getting in on the act aswell. Interpretations of the Christian Bible reveal that the date for Armageddon, the final battle between Good an Evil, has been set down for 2012. The I Ching, also known as the Chinese book of Changes, says the same thing, as do various sections of the Hindu teachings.
5. Super Volcano
Yellowstone National Park in the United States is famous for its thermal springs and Old Faithful geyser. The reason for this is simple - it's sitting on top of the world's biggest volcano, and geological experts are beginning to get nervous sweats. The Yellowstone volcano has a pattern of erupting every 650,000 years or so, and we're many years overdue for an explosion that will fill the atmosphere with ash, blocking the sun and plunging the Earth into a frozen winter that could last up to 15,000 years. The pressure under the Yellowstone is building steadily, and geologists have set 2012 as a likely date for the big bang.
6. The Physicists
This one's case of bog-simple maths mathematics. Physicists at Berekely Uni have been crunching the numbers. and they've determined that the Earth is well overdue for a major catastrophic event. Even worse, they're claiming their calculations prove, that we're all going to die, very soon - while also saying their prediction comes with a certainty of 99 percent- and 2012 just happens to be the best guess as to when it occurs.
7. Slip-Slop-Slap-BANG!
We all know the Earth is surrounded by a magnetic field that sheilds us from most of the sun's radiation. What you might not know is that the magnetic poles we call north and south have a nasty habit of swapping places every 750,000 years or so - and right now we're about 30,000 years overdue. Scientists have noted that the poles are drifting apart roughly 20-30kms each year, much faster than ever before, which points to a pole-shift being right around the corner. While the pole shift is underway, the magnetic field is disrupted and will eventually disappear, sometimes for up to 100 years. The result is enough UV outdoors to crisp your skin in seconds, killing everything