Gilgit-Baltistan gets internal, political autonomy

ISLAMABAD: The federal cabinet on Saturday unanimously approved the new Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self-Governance Ordinance 2009 to give more internal and political autonomy to the Northern Areas.




“All the stakeholders were taken on board prior to getting the approval from the cabinet to give internal and political autonomy to the Northern Areas, which shall be now be called Gilgit-Baltistan,” said Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani while addressing a press conference here on Saturday at the PM Secretariat after chairing a special cabinet meeting.



Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira, who is also holding the charge of Minister for Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas, and Minister of State for Information Syed Samsam Ali Bukhari were also present during the press conference.



When asked whether the political measures could affect Pakistan’s position on Kashmir at the United Nations, the prime minister said the Foreign Office was consulted on it and they have cleared it. “Every aspect was taken care of,” he added.



He said the political leadership was also taken into confidence before announcing the measures that would empower the people of the Northern Areas. Presenting the salient features of the newly-approved Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self-Governance Ordinance 2009, the prime minister said the new name of the Northern Areas of Pakistan shall be Gilgit-Baltistan as proposed under Article-2 (f).



The cabinet decision will empower the Gilgit-Baltistan council and assembly to make laws. “The subjects about which the assembly shall now have power to make law have been increased from 49 to 61 while the council shall have 55 subjects,” he added.



The prime minister said there will be a governor for Gilgit-Baltistan, who will be appointed by the president of Pakistan. He said till the election of the legislative assembly, the minister for Kashmir and Northern Areas will be acting as governor. “There will be a chief minister, who shall be elected by the Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly and will be assisted by six ministers with the provision of two advisers,” he added



The prime minister said the legislative assembly will have 24 members, who will be elected directly and in addition, there will be six women and three technocrat seats. He said in order to empower the council and the assembly on financial matters there would be a consolidated fund.



He said the budget of the area would be presented and approved by the Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly. The prime minister said the chief judge of the Appellate Court will be appointed by the chairman of the council on the advice of the governor, and other judges will be appointed by the chairman on the advice of the governor after seeking views of the chief judge.



He said the number of judges will be increased from three to five. The prime minister said Gilgit-Baltistan Public Service Commission is also being established to further empower the people of the area.



He said separate auditor general and election commissioner will be appointed. The prime minister recalled that late Prime Minister Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto took measures in 1975, bringing in the first noticeable administrative improvement in the Northern Areas through the Northern Areas Legal Framework Order, 1975 and later Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto introduced major administrative, judicial and political reforms abolishing Jagirdari and the FCR in 1994.



Answering a question, the prime minister said under the Constitution, the Northern Areas could be given the status of a province. “But we have given them internal autonomy as per the Constitution,” he added.



Answering another question, he said Gilgit-Baltistan could not be given representation in parliament. Responding to a query, Minister for Information, Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas Qamar Zaman Kaira said the measures will now go to the president and enforced through a presidential order replacing the Legal Framework Order of l994. “Some of the decisions would be implemented immediately while the remaining would be implemented after the promulgation of presidential ordinance,” he added.

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इंडिया Squad
MS Dhoni
Yuvraj Singh (vc)
Rahul Dravid
Gautam Gambhir
Harbhajan Singh
Dinesh Karthik
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Amit Mishra
Abhishek Nayar
Ashish Nehra
Yusuf Pathan
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RP Singh
Sachin Tendulkar

Pakistan Squad
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Fawad Alam
Iftikhar Anjum
Imran Nazir
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Misbah-ul-Haq
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Shoaib Malik
Umar Akmal
Umar Gul

क्रिकेट पिक्टुरेस

Complete strike in held Kashmir against Indian premier statement

SRINAGAR: The complete strike is being observed today in held Kashmir to protest against Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh’s recent statement on Kashmir and to convey him the message that Kashmiri people are determined to liberate their homeland from India’s illegal occupation.

Indian Prime Minister in his remarks had said that the elections in Kashmir had rendered freedom element irrelevant.

According to Kashmir media service, call for the strike has been given by the forum patronised by senior Kashmiri Hurriyet leader, Syed Ali Gilani and supported by the High Court Bar Association of occupied Kashmir and other pro-liberation organisations. All business establishments and offices are closed while traffic is off the road.

Hakeemullah new TTP chief

Hakeemullah Mehsud has been Saturday declared to be the successor of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Baitullah Mehsud.

Talking to a British news agency by phone, TTP Acting Amir Maulvi Faqir denied the reports of Baitullah’s killing, saying Baitullah Mehsud is alive and wanted to appoint an amir in his lifespan.

The TTP acting Amir said 42-strong council of Taliban appointed Hakeemullah their chief in lieu of Baitullah and Azam Tariq as the new central spokesman of the militant outfit.

He told that TTP Council had a meeting in Orakzai Agency, attended by Taliban and militants from Bandu Basti areas.

Faqir said Haji Muslim Khan was designated as Acting spokesman after the Maulvi Omar was detained; however, as there was no phone in the area, Azam Tariq will function as the new central spokesman of Taliban.

New Poll Shows Support for President Obama Slipping

A new poll shows that public confidence in U.S. President Barack Obama has declined amid concerns about health care reform and growing government spending.
The Washington Post - ABC News poll released Friday shows the president's overall approval rating is at 57 percent, 12 points lower than its peak in April.

The poll shows President Obama's disapproval rating is at an all-time high of 40 percent.

It says nearly half of Americans express confidence that the president will make the right decisions for the country, down from 60 percent in April, at the 100-day mark of his presidency.

The survey shows an increase in Americans who believe the nation is on the wrong track - 55 percent now, compared to 48 percent in April.

At the same time, half of Americans think the current economic recession will end in the next year, while just 28 percent believed that in February.

The poll of 1,001 adults was taken between August 13 and 17. The survey's margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points.

Mr. Obama was meeting at the White House Friday with former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat who was the president's first choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services. Presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs says the two were to discuss health care.

Daschle dropped his bid for the Cabinet post after it was revealed he had failed to pay $120,000 in back taxes.

Aghanistan candidates warned against early claims of election victory

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan - Election officials and Western diplomats Friday warned candidates against making premature claims of victory after aides to President Hamid Karzai said it appeared he had won Thursday's vote.

Karzai's chief rival, Abdullah Abdullah, meanwhile, declared that if the president had gotten more than 50% of the vote -- as required to avoid a runoff -- it would signal that Karzai's supporters had committed massive fraud.

Many Western observers are concerned that the competing claims could set the stage for clashes between the candidates' partisans and usher in a prolonged period of tension and instability while an official count is compiled.

A final tally is not scheduled to be disclosed until early September. A partial preliminary count was initially due today, but now is not expected until Tuesday.

Afghans defied Taliban threats and a rash of preelection violence, coming out by the millions to vote. But election officials acknowledged that turnout was lower than hoped, perhaps less than 50%.

When Karzai was voted into office in 2004, in Afghanistan's first direct presidential election, the turnout was 70%.

The U.S. and its NATO allies are heavily invested in a credible outcome to this week's vote. The election is a centerpiece of the Obama administration's war strategy, based on the notion that the Afghan government must be viewed by its people as legitimate in order to make headway against a burgeoning insurgency.

The process is a slow one. Ballots have begun arriving in Kabul, the capital, from about 6,500 polling stations, reversing a sometimes-arduous journey before the election, when helicopters and donkeys had to be used to deliver election materials to some remote areas.

A spokesman for Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission, Noor Mohammed Noor, said that candidates had no basis for declaring victory pending the official results. "Nobody should make such a claim," he said.

A clouded aftermath to the vote raises the specter of ethnic strife, long a feature of the Afghan political landscape.

Karzai's Pashtun ethnic group is the country's largest, and his main base of support. But the Pashtun belt lies largely in the south and east, where violence and threats depressed the voter turnout.

Abdullah is politically identified with the Tajiks, who are the dominant group in the north. Conditions in that part of the country are more peaceful, and turnout voter there was higher as a result.

The Obama administration did not lend its support to any candidate, and special regional envoy Richard C. Holbrooke, who visited polling places on election day, said the U.S. would take "an agnostic position" on any claims of victory until the final results are in.

"We always knew it would be a disputed election," said Holbrooke, who was briefed Friday by election observers. "I would not be surprised if you see candidates claiming victory and fraud in the next few days. For the United States, and the international community, we're going to respect the process."

Two other Western diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said their governments had made their concerns known after Karzai's campaign spokesman, Seddiq Seddiqi, was quoted as saying it appeared that the Afghan leader had garnered enough of the vote to obviate the need for a runoff.

A similar admonition against declaring victory was delivered to the Abdullah campaign, the diplomats said.

Foreign observer groups have lauded Afghans for braving danger in order to vote, and have expressed relief that the election passed without any large-scale insurgent attacks. But they have also described the balloting as flawed by the low turnout, especially among women, and by irregularities such as the sale of false registration cards.

The campaign season and the election coincided with some of the most intense fighting of the 8-year-old conflict between Western troops and the Taliban. Military officials Friday disclosed the deaths of three more Western troops: two British soldiers killed in the south and an American who died of wounds suffered a day earlier in eastern Afghanistan.

Afghans go to polls under threat of Taliban violence

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Under the menacing threat of violence from the Taliban, Afghans headed to the polls on Thursday in the war-ravaged nation's second-ever national election.

Burqa-clad women display ID cards as they queue to vote in Kandahar on Thursday.





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In parts of the capital Kabul, where recent calm was shattered by a series of bloody attacks leading up to election day, the streets were eerily empty early in the day, save extra security checkpoints. At midday, NATO's International Security Assistance Force reported "Kabul is calm."
The Taliban has vowed to disrupt the voting, and the risk may have been too high for some Afghans to venture out to vote.
The government ordered a ban on media coverage of incidents of violence in an effort to "ensure the wide participation of the Afghan people."
Thousands of NATO and Afghan soldiers provided security at the polls and more than 30 observer groups -- domestic and international -- were on hand to monitor the voting. Watch an election monitor in Kabul discuss what's being examined »
But in other parts of Afghanistan that have been largely spared the daily drumbeat of car bombs, assassinations and whizzing rockets, voters lined up to cast their ballots.
Pajhwok, an independent Afghan news agency, reported brisk turnout in western Herat province, which borders Iran.
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In central Bamiyan province, where predominantly ethnic Hazaras suffered under Taliban rule, thousands of voters cast their ballots behind cardboard screens inside dust-caked tents. Police struggled to hold back and search the crowd and at one point, people pushed through, breaking off one of the gates to the polling center. Watch what ranks high among Afghan concerns »
Organizers from Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission said all 412 polling stations across Bamiyan will be open, whereas in neighboring Daikundi province to the south, 11 polling centers were closed because of security concerns. The southern provinces form the heartland of Taliban territory.
A few other polling stations in eastern Kunar and Nuristan provinces that did not open and others, including 100 in Ghor that opened without a security presence, Pajhwok reported.
The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until the 2001 U.S.-led invasion and in recent months has staged an increasingly bloody insurgency. Afghanistan observers and experts said a high turnout would help marginalize the radical Islamist group.
"We're at a moment of truth," said Mark Schneider, senior vice president of the International Crisis Group, an independent advisory and analysis organization.
Incumbent President Hamid Karzai, dressed in his traditional purple and green striped robe, cast his vote shortly after the polls opened Thursday and had his finger stamped with indelible ink, a measure to thwart fraud.
"It's the second presidential and parliamentary elections in Afghanistan and I'm sure this will be for peace, for progress and for the well-being of the Afghan people," he said afterward. "And I request the Afghan people to come out and vote so that through their vote, Afghanistan can be a more secure, more peaceful and a better country."
Karzai's name appears on the ballot with 40 other candidates for president. His top rival is his former finance minister Abdullah Abdullah, who once served as a confidante of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the charismatic leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance killed by al Qaeda. The other candidate who gathered steam in the campaign is former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani, a Western-educated man who served as a World Bank analyst. Who are the candidates? How does the voting work? Read here »
Karzai was named interim leader after the fall of the Taliban regime and won the 2004 election by a significant margin. His popularity, however, has waned in recent months as Afghanistan has been crippled by corruption and increasing bloodshed.
Both Abdullah and Ghani hailed anti-corruption measures and government transparency as centerpieces of their campaign platforms.
More than 3,000 candidates also are on the ballot vying for 420 provincial seats.
Women's votes were seen as crucial. Under Taliban rule, women were denied equal rights and hurtled backward in time. In some areas, however, women voters were greatly outnumbered by men.
Habiba Surobi, the female governor of Bamiyan, said one problem is that women who live in remote areas are still not aware of their rights.
"This is something to be concerned about," she said, adding that it was the responsibility of Afghanistan's women leaders to ensure better awareness and education.
International donors are helping pay for Afghanistan's $223 million electoral undertaking. Richard Holbrooke, the top U.S. envoy in the region, acknowledged earlier this week that staging an election in the midst of war was tough, but expressed optimism that Thursday's vote would showcase Afghanistan's fledgling democracy. Watch preparations on election eve »
About 15 million Afghans are registered to vote. Earlier, officials had estimated that number as 17 million.