British Prime Minister David Cameron was mired in a diplomatic row with Islamabad yesterday over comments made on a trade-driven trip to India about the “export of terror” from Pakistan.
Pakistan’s ambassador to Britain accused Cameron of “damaging the prospects of regional peace” with his remarks on Wednesday in the southern Indian information technology hub of Bangalore.
The foreign ministry in Islamabad reminded the British prime minister of Pakistan’s sacrifices in the fight against terror, adding that militant networks, “as the UK knows full well,” know no borders.
Cameron’s trip to India was meant to showcase his new foreign policy based on Britain’s commercial interests, but the minefield of India-Pakistan relations and regional security risked overshadowing his pitch for investment and open trade.
Asked about unrest in South Asia on Wednesday, Cameron responded with a warning to Pakistan against becoming a haven for militant groups or giving them support to strike targets in India or Afghanistan.
“We cannot tolerate in any sense the idea that this country [Pakistan] is allowed to look both ways and is able, in any way, to promote the export of terror, whether to India or whether to Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world,” he said.
His remarks came days after the leak of secret US military documents that detailed alleged links between Pakistan’s intelligence services and Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.
They were splashed on the front page of every major newspaper in India, which has long accused Pakistan of harboring and abetting extremist groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba — blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
“We should be very, very clear with Pakistan that we want to see a strong, stable and democratic Pakistan,” Cameron said. “It should be a relationship based on a very clear message — that it is not right to have any relationship with groups that are promoting terror.”
In London, Pakistani High Commissioner Wajid Shamsul Hasan voiced his government’s deep disappointment, saying Cameron had chosen to ignore Pakistan’s “enormous role” in the war on terror.
“He seems to be more reliant on information based on intelligence leaks, despite it lacking credibility or corroborating proof,” said Hasan, writing to the Guardian newspaper. “A bilateral visit aimed at attracting business could have been conducted without damaging the prospects of regional peace.”
In Islamabad, foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said: “Terrorists have no religion, no humanity, no specific ethnicity or geography.”
“Terrorists’ networks, as the UK knows full well, mutate and operate in different regions and cities,” Basit said.
The issue of South Asian regional security, including Pakistan and Afghanistan, is sure to be raised again when Cameron was scheduled to hold talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna yesterday, but Cameron will be keen to keep his two-day visit focused on its main purpose — Britain’s drive to take bilateral trade and economic ties with the former jewel in its colonial crown to a new level.
As well as his meetings with leaders in New Delhi, he will also attend a summit on expanding economic relations between Britain and India, one of the world’s fastest growing economies.
Cameron is heading the largest British delegation to travel to India in recent memory, including a host of senior Cabinet ministers and corporate bigwigs.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS