Friday, June 12, 2009

BEIJING: Pakistan has given a firm assurance to the Chinese leadership that it was committed to eliminating extremism, terrorism and separatism, and would not allow any terrorist outfit to operate from its soil, Interior Minister Rahman Malik said.Giving impressions on completion of the first phase of his June 9-12 official visit to China, he said there were some “traces” of the terrorist outfit of East Turkmenistan Independence Movement (ETIM) found in the Fata area and Pakistan had taken firm action against it. He said it was the modus operandi of the terrorist outfits that they worked in syndicates but Pakistan would not allow these outlaws to inflict any harm to our most trusted friend.“We have signed agreements worth $300 million to acquire state-of-the-art equipment to combat terrorism,” he said adding that the first consignment of the most-needed equipment would be reaching Pakistan within three weeks.The equipment Pakistan needs includes most modern mobile scanners that can detect hidden explosives and drugs. “Initially, we would start employing this equipment in the metropolitan cities like Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi and then gradually we plan to cover the entire country,” he said.

RANCHI: Maoist rebels killed 11 policemen in separate attacks Friday in apparent retaliation for the slaying of a rebel leader in eastern India, officials said. Armed gunmen raided a bank in Jharkhand state's Bokaro city and shot dead two policemen, senior police officer Prashant Kumar said in state capital Ranchi. In a separate attack, nine other policemen died in a landmine blast in a Bokaro suburb, Kumar added. Thirteen others were injured in the two attacks, which came two days after another 11 police were killed in Jharkhand. Kumar said the wave of attacks was in retaliation for the recent killing of a senior guerrilla leader in nearby Andhra Pradesh state.

News Desk

NEW DELHI: A joint operation has been launched by the CISF and the local police to trace a scientist of the Kaiga Nuclear Power Plant, who went missing four days back, a top Indian police official said. “Intensive search is being carried out round-the-clock by a 40-member team, comprising the CISF and local police personnel, to trace N Mahalingam, missing since June 8 from the Kaiga township,” Superintendent of Police Uttara Kannada Raman Gupta said.It is being investigated whether it is a case of kidnapping or the 47-year-old scientist, who worked in the simulator training division of the power plant, went somewhere himself. The scientist, who went for a morning walk on June 8, did not return, he said.A complaint was lodged by his wife on June 8 in the Mallapur police station in Karwar. A joint search team was set up immediately and it combed the entire Kaiga residential campus, spread over 100 acres and searched a pond as part of the operation, Gupta said. “Till now, no clue has been found,” he said.

LAHORE: The death of Jamia Naeemia administrator Dr Sarfaraz Naeemi has deprived the Brelvi school of thought of a sincere leader who always worked for uniting Sunni parties and groups on a single platform.

The son of Mufti Muhammad Husain Naeemi, the founder of Jamia Naeemia, Dr Naeemi never showed any ambitions to secure benefits for himself and was often seen riding his old motorbike.
A humble, moderate and widely respected scholar, Dr Naeemi never cared about protocol or security. He got his early education from Jamia Naeemi and then did PhD from the Punjab University besides a short course from Al-Azhar, Egypt.
A former khateeb of Chowk Dalgaran mosque, he was now running Jamia Naeemia besides an organisation looking after the affairs of Sunni sect seminaries.
Dr Naeemi never directly joined politics. However, like his father he had strong leanings towards Pakistan Muslim League-N chief Nawaz Sharif and for this reason he had been opposed to former army chief Pervez Musharraf.
Since his return from exile in November 2007, Nawaz had twice visited Jamia Naeemia, the first seminary to introduce information technology for religious students.
PML-N officials say Dr Naeemi along with MNA Haji Fazl Karim and Ittefaq Mosque khateeb Syed Riaz Shah was working to build an alliance of religious scholars against the Taliban to cut their support from amongst the masses. He left behind a son and five daughters.