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Pakistan trusts Judges are not above India more than the law, believes legal ever, says Hina Khar wizard Aitzaz Ahsan PAGE | 22
Rs 15.00 Vol ii no 290 22 pages
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Lahore edition
tuesday, 17 april, 2012 Jamadi-ul-awal 24, 1433
US, Kabul point fingers at Haqqanis for deadly attack g
Clinton, Munter urge Pakistan to act against dreaded militant outfit ISLAMABAD
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ShAiq hUSSAiN
He brazen attack by the Taliban in the Afghan capital on Sunday has once again brought the Haqqani network into sharp focus, with the United States asking for a fresh stern action by Pakistan against this most influential militant group allegedly based in North Waziristan, as it is being suspected by Washington and Kabul of staging the assault on important government installations and the US embassy. It has been only hours since the Taliban’s nearly 18-hour-long attack in Kabul, but authorities in Washington and Kabul have already started pointing fingers at the Haqqani network and Pakistan is once again being asked to take steps to weaken the powerful Taliban-linked insurgent group, which is blamed for some of the deadliest attacks in the past. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Washington’s envoy to Pakistan Cameron Munter separately urged upon Pakistan to take robust action to stop terror attacks. The US, Pakistan and Afghanistan must work together to take “robust action” to stop terror attacks, Clinton told her Pakistani counterpart in a telephonic conversation on Monday. Clinton discussed the coordinated attacks in Kabul with Khar and “underscored our shared responsibility for robust action — by the US and ISAF, by Afghanistan, and by Pakistan — to confront and defeat terrorists and
violent extremists,” a US official said. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Clinton had called Khar to talk about the next steps after Pakistan’s parliament approved new guidelines on its thorny relations with the United States. The two diplomats also “discussed the cowardly insurgent attacks in Afghanistan” on Sunday in which militants carried out a series of coordinated attacks in Kabul in an unprecedented 18-hour assault. “Initial indications are that the Haqqani network was involved in this set of attacks that occurred yesterday in Kabul,” Pentagon press secretary George Little said of Sunday’s assault. The 18-hour attack was “well-coordinated,” but Afghan security forces “did a very effective job” in quelling the onslaught, Little told reporters. It was not surprising that insurgents had launched an attack with the advent of spring, when fighting usually escalates in Afghanistan, he said. “We thought something like this may very well happen and it did,” he said. Meanwhile in Islamabad, Ambassador Munter called on Foreign Minister Khar on Monday and asked for action against the Haqqanis, according to diplomatic sources. Khar also spoke to her Afghan counterpart Dr Zalmai Rassoul on telephone to express solidarity with the Afghan government and the people for the Sunday’s attack in Kabul in which precious lives were lost. Continued on page 04
BANNU: A prisoner from Kohat, Zahir Shah returns to the Bannu Central Jail on Monday after he and several other inmates were taken by Taliban militants in an epic jailbreak in the history of the country on Saturday night. online | related stories on pages 03 & 04
PM’s fate hangs in the balance Bench says pM was aware of adnan Khawaja’s conviction before appointing him ogdCl Md
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rejects application by pM seeking no verdict on nro non-implementation case until decision on president’s immunity g
ISLAMABAD MASood RehMAN
Hearing a case pertaining to the nonimplementation on the Supreme Court’s National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) verdict, a sevenmember special bench of the apex court neither announced its scheduled ruling on Monday over the defiance of orders by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani by not writing a letter to Swiss authorities, nor did it hint at a date for announcing such a ruling. While hearing the non- implementation on the NRO verdict case on March 29, the special bench had decided Continued on page 04