Pakistan will investigate claims that its intelligence service was involved in the bombing of the Indian embassy in Afghanistan last month that killed 41 people.
The promise was made by Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani in Colombo, where he is attending a South Asian leaders’ summit, India’s Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon told reporters.
Gilani also agreed to discuss the issue yesterday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on the sidelines of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation summit, which is discussing cooperation in fighting terrorism among several issues, Menon said on Saturday.
PHOTO: AFP
Gilani and India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met in the Sri Lankan capital on Saturday to check the slide in their relations amid tensions over the attack on the Indian embassy on July 7 and clashes between their armies across the border dividing disputed Kashmir.
Accusations that Pakistan helped a militant group bomb India’s embassy in Afghanistan cast a cloud over the summit gathering.
Afghanistan has long accused Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency of backing the Taliban-led insurgency wracking the country.
On Saturday, Gilani told reporters that if Karzai provided any evidence of Pakistan’s involvement in the attack on the Indian embassy, he would order an independent inquiry.
He also asked the Indian side to share any information it had to substantiate its charge that elements in Pakistan were behind the blast at the Indian embassy, the Indian foreign secretary said.
The New York Times, citing unnamed US government officials, reported on Friday that US intelligence agencies have concluded that members of the powerful ISI were involved in the embassy attack. Pakistan dismissed the report as “rubbish.”
Gilani also said any misunderstanding that impeded good relations with India should be removed.
Relations between the longtime rivals have been on the mend since 2004 when they began talks on their competing claims to the Himalayan region of Kashmir.
But India has also accused Pakistan of violating a ceasefire accord along the boundary that divides Kashmir between them. Indian and Pakistani forces traded gunfire in recent days along the heavily fortified frontier in the worst violation of a 2003 ceasefire agreement between the neighbors.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola
RSS