Pakistan News Thread

[Tiger]

Pakistan presidential hopeful and PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari was suffering from severe mental illness till last year, as he underwent severe torture during his 11 years of imprisonment in the past two decades in different prisons.

He was diagnosed with a range of psychiatric illnesses, including dementia, major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

In March 2007, New York psychiatrist Philip Saltiel found that Zardaris time in detention left him with severe emotional instability, memory loss and concentration problems. I do not see any improvement in these issues for at least a year, he wrote in a medical report.

This has been disclosed in court documents related to Zardaris corruption cases. Zardari used the medical reports to successfully fight a now defunct English High Court case in which the Pakistan government sought to sue him over alleged corruption. The case was dropped in March.

Stephen Reich, a psychiatrist from New York State , said Zardari was unable to recall the birthdays of his wife and children and had thought about suicide, reported the Telegraph.

Zardari was not available to comment on the documents, but Wajid Shamsul Hasan, the Pakistan high commissioner to London said he was now fit and well.

Zardari is his party’’s candidate to succeed Pervez Musharraf as president of the nuclear-armed country. However, his coalition government with former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, fell apart yesterday after Sharif withdrew his party, the The Pakistan Muslim League-N.

 

[IReporter]

Back to military rule in Pakistan?

Reports suggest Pakistan's Army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani is setting the agenda for upcoming talks with the US later this week, perhaps signalling a shift in the power equation in Pakistan.

Pakistan's media have claimed that Kayani is to be dominant Pakistani participant in meetings in Washington this week, in what could be a sign of the mounting power of the army over the civilian government in Pakistan.

Pakistani media claim that the meetings have been billed as cabinet-level meetings, with the foreign minister as the nominal head of the Pakistani delegation. But it has been the General who has been calling the civilian heads of major government departments, including finance and foreign affairs, to his army headquarters to discuss final details, an unusual move in a democratic system.

Foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has been taking a public role in trying to set the tone, insisting that the US needs to do more for Pakistan.

The talks are expected to help define the relationship between the US and Pakistan as the war against the Taliban reaches its endgame in Afghanistan.

The leading financial newspaper, The Business Recorder, suggested in an editorial that the civilian government of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani should act more forcefully and shun creating an environment conducive to military intervention.

The editorial added, "The government needs to consolidate civilian rule instead of handing over its responsibilities, like coordination between different departments, to the military."

"Gen Kayani is in the driver's seat", said Rifaat Hussain, a professor of international relations at Islamabad University. "It is unprecedented that an army chief of staff preside over a meeting of federal secretaries."

Kayani visited the headquarters of the US Central Command in Tampa, Florida, over the weekend, and will attend meetings at the Pentagon with the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Adm Mike Mullen, and defence secretary Robert Gates on Monday (March 22).

He is also to attend the opening ceremony of the talks between Clinton and Qureshi at the state department on Wednesday.

Meanwhile sources say that Pakistan in Washington will demand a civilian nuclear deal with the US similar to the one inked with India, and wants to show the US government it is more than willing to make up for the loss of credibility after its proliferation debacle with nuclear mastermind AQ Khan.

With this end in view, Islamabad has declared its intention to re-open investigations into Khan's activities. Just 48 hours before the US-Pakistan strategic dialogue is set to begin, the Pakistani government has filed a petition in the high court seeking to investigate Khan over recent reports about his ties to Iran's nuclear programme.

An unnamed Pakistani foreign ministry official reportedly told a US network, "What happened under AQ Khan was a mistake. We are very keen to seek civil nuclear reactors from the US and we want to demonstrate to them that proliferation will neither ever be allowed or tolerated again in Pakistan."

source : Times Now

 

[Leader]

Senior United States Senator John Kerry is visiting pakistan next week. he said that he would visit to pakistan prior next week to assist get bilateral ties with the country again on the correct track among angry tensions on the US raid which killed Osama bin Laden.