Month: February 2023

Firing fresh broadside at the former military commander, ex-prime minister and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Monday claimed that General (retd) Qamar Javed Bajwa asked him to decry the Russian invasion of Ukraine soon after his return from Moscow.

Giving details about his talks with the ex-army chief, the ousted premier said: “I talked to Russian President Vladimir Putin about procurement of oil at cheaper rates but when I returned to Pakistan, then chief of army staff asked me to condemn Russia’s attack on Ukraine.”

In an address to intellectuals through a video link, Khan — who was removed from power via no-confidence in April last year — said when he advised Bajwa to stay “neutral” like India in the matter, the ex-army chief himself started condemning Russia.

 

 

“A grade-22 officer made a foreign policy statement during a seminar to please the US,” the deposed prime minister said. He went on to say that the country would have to face the consequences when decisions were made to please Washington.

In a bid to plea the United States, 80,000 people got killed in the war on terror, he added.

Turning his guns towards the coalition government and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), the PTI leader said that as per the Constitution, the polls must be held within 90 days after the dissolution of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assemblies but “these people are making new excuses”.

It is pertinent to mention here that Khan, earlier today, decided to launch a save the Constitution drive [Aain Bachao Tehreek] if elections are not held within 90 days.

On February 10, the former premier said that the ex-army chief had accepted that he was behind the “regime change” move that led to his government’s removal.

Though Khan had earlier blamed the United States for overthrowing his PTI administration, later he turned the guns towards the ex-army chief, and then he also claimed that Punjab caretaker Chief Minister Mohsin Naqvi was also involved in the “regime change” operation.

In an interview with Voice of America (Urdu), the ex-premier said: “General Bajwa told the journalist with much pride how he had our government ousted due to economic policies and other matters.”

The country is looking to sign defence deals worth 750 billion rupees ($9bn) at the biennial five-day Aero India event, its biggest ever, as its airlines try to complete jetliner purchases to meet civilian demand and press global aircraft manufacturers to produce more locally, mainly through partnerships.

India has been one of the world’s biggest importers of defence equipment for decades, but it has punched below its weight in the global arms export market.

 

New Delhi’s export ambitions are a sign of its growing clout as it uses the leverage of huge imports to attract investment in its domestic industry.

“Today, India is not just a market for defence companies, it is also a potential defence partner,” Modi said in a speech at the show. “I call on India’s private sector to invest more and more in the country’s defence sector.”

The air show aims to promote exports of indigenous air platforms such as Tejas, Dhruv, HTT-40 training aircraft, Dornier light utility helicopter and the light combat helicopter.

India also wants smaller domestic companies and start-ups to make parts for large defence products globally as well as to attract foreign investment for joint product development and production.

Defence experts were circumspect about India’s ambition.

“From just a 0.2 per cent share in global arms exports, becoming a major exporter is a long haul,” said Amit Cowshish, a former financial adviser in the defence ministry and a former distinguished fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi.

“Some of the biggest importing countries, even if they are willing, will find it difficult to withstand pressures from Europe and the US to consider buying whatever little we have to offer by way of major equipment and platforms,” Cowshish said.

Pressure to diversify

At the Aero India event, held at the Air Force Station of Yelahanka near Bengaluru, officials cheered aerobatic displays by aircraft, including Tejas and Russian-made Sukhoi 30 fighter jets.

Sharing borders with nuclear-armed rivals China and Pakistan, India’s largely Soviet-era air force fleet is in desperate need of modernising.

Russia supplied India with around $13bn of arms in the past five years, Russian state news agencies reported late on Sunday, and suppliers in the European Union and the United States have been lobbying for a bigger share of the market.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made it imperative for India to further diversify its supply base, amid fears of possible Russian supply disruption and Western pressure on New Delhi to limit ties with Moscow.

Exhibitors at the show include Airbus, Boeing, Dassault Aviation, Lockheed Martin, Israel Aerospace Industry, BrahMos, SAAB, Rolls Royce, Larsen & Toubro, HAL and Bharat Electronics Ltd.

India’s airlines are also expanding, with Tata Group’s Air India expected to announce a potentially record deal to buy nearly 500 jets from Airbus and Boeing, worth more than $100bn at list prices.

Although unlikely to be announced at the air show itself, the deal coincides with India’s largest industry gathering where suppliers hope to win spin-off contracts from the country’s defence and civil aviation expansion.

The measures, which were inching towards approval through a series of preliminary votes inside the chamber, have provoked widespread criticism and charges that they would give the legislative branch nearly unchecked authority.

Outside Israel’s Knesset in Jerusalem, protesters filled the grounds with a sea of blue and white Israeli flags and waved placards that read “Save Israel democracy” and “The whole world is watching”.

Multiple media outlets estimating the crowd at between 80,000 and 90,000, and the national rail service said it had expanded its Tel Aviv to Jerusalem service to accommodate the masses of people seeking to reach parliament.

President Isaac Herzog, in a rare national address late on Sunday focused on the reform plan, warned that Israel was “on the verge of legal and social collapse”.

Herzog, who holds a largely ceremonial role, urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline right-wing government to pause the legislative process and hold talks with the opposition in hopes of reaching a compromise.

“I am appealing to you with a request not to introduce the bill for its first reading,” Herzog said. But the committee tasked with reviewing a plan in line with Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s proposal was approving sections of the legislation on Monday.

It was not immediately clear when the government would set a first vote in parliament, but Israeli reports said it could be held on Monday. Three plenum votes are required before a bill becomes law.

There were minor disturbances in the hearing room when opposition lawmakers left their chairs to verbally confront committee chairman Simcha Rotman. Security personnel restrained at least two opposition members. Netanyahu accused opposition lawmakers of going “on a rampage inside the Knesset”.

“I call on the leaders of the opposition to stop it,” the premier said in a statement. “Stop deliberately leading the country into anarchy… Show some responsibility and leadership.” Lapid had earlier told journalists that the bill’s passage would mark “the end of the democratic era of this country”, calling the Netanyahu government “extremist and corrupt”.

Netanyahu and his allies say the reforms are necessary to correct a power imbalance between elected representatives and the nation’s top court.

His government wants to give the government de facto control over supreme court nominees, a role currently held by a mixed panel of politicians, judges and bar association members. Levin’s plan would also give parliament the power to override supreme court decisions through a simple majority vote.

Critics, including supreme court president Esther Hayut, have condemned the bill as an assault on the independence of Israel’s judiciary.

Some of Netanyahu’s critics have also tied the reform plan to his ongoing corruption trial, arguing he is seeking to undermine a judicial system he has accused of targeting him unfairly for political reasons. Netanyahu has denied the corruption charges.

The veteran leader, who reclaimed power late last year after spending 14 months in opposition, has also firmly rejected any link between the justice minister’s proposal and his own trial.

Levin, reacting to Herzog’s proposal, told Israeli media that he was prepared for and “wishes to engage in genuine dialogue with the members of the opposition” on ways to improve the judiciary. But he rejected any “linkage… between dialogue and moving forward with the legislative process”.

He warned that agreeing to work with the opposition should not “become a means for foot-dragging in order to delay and to prevent a substantive and meaningful reform to the justice system”.

Herzog in his national address conceded that changes were needed to improve the judiciary and make it more responsive to the “range of opinions” in Israel, but warned against giving another branch of government a “structural majority” over the court.

Rayyana Barnawi will join fellow Saudi male astronaut Ali Al-Qarni on a mission to the International Space Station “during the second quarter of 2023”, the official Saudi Press Agency said.

It added that the astronauts “will join the crew of the AX-2 space mission” and the space flight will “launch from the US”.

Gulf monarchies have been seeking to diversify their energy-reliant economies through a plethora of projects.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has also been trying to shake off the kingdom’s austere image through a push for reforms.

Saudi Arabia’s foray into space is not the first, however.

In 1985, Saudi royal Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, an air force pilot, took part in a US-organised space mission, becoming the first Arab Muslim to travel into space.

In 2018, Saudi Arabia set up a space programme and last year launched another to send astronauts into space.

ANTAKYA: Rescuers pulled more survivors from the rubble on Sunday six days after one of the worst earthquakes hit Turkey and Syria, as Turkish authorities sought to maintain order across the disaster zone and began legal action over some building collapses.

With chances of finding more survivors growing more remote, the toll in both countries from Monday’s earthquake and major aftershocks rose above 33,000 and looked set to keep growing. It was the deadliest quake in Turkey since 1939.

Displaced residents in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, near the epicentre, said they had set up tents as close as they could to their damaged or destroyed homes in an effort to prevent them from being looted.

Facing questions over his response to the earthquake as he prepares for a national election that is expected to be the toughest of his two decades in power, President Tayyip Erdogan promised to start rebuilding within weeks.

In Syria, the disaster hit hardest in the rebel-held northwest, leaving homeless yet again many people who had already been displaced several times by a decade-old civil war. The region has received little aid compared to government-held areas.

“We have so far failed the people in north-west Syria,” United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths tweeted from the Turkey-Syria border, where only a single border crossing is open for UN aid supplies.

“They rightly feel abandoned,” Griffiths said, adding that he was focused on addressing that swiftly.

More than six days after the first quake struck, emergency workers still found a handful of people clinging to life in the wreckage of homes which had become tombs for many thousands.

In the city of Antakya in southern Turkey, a team of Chinese rescuers and Turkish firefighters saved 54-year-old Syrian Malik Milandi after he survived 156 hours in the rubble.

Such scenes have become rare as the number of dead climbs relentlessly.

At a funeral near Reyhanli, veiled women wailed and beat their chests as bodies were unloaded from lorries – some in closed wood coffins, others in uncovered coffins, and still others just wrapped in blankets.

One resident of Kahramanmaras said he had not yet buried his relatives because there were not enough funeral shrouds left to wrap them in. On a road into the town, a big truck was stacked to the brim with wooden coffins.

Security fears and detention orders

Along the main road into Antakya, where the few buildings left standing had large cracks or caved-in facades, traffic occasionally halted as rescue teams called for silence to detect signs of remaining life under the ruins.

Building quality in a country which lies on several seismic fault lines has come into sharp focus in the aftermath of the quake.

Vice President Fuat Oktay said 131 suspects had so far been identified as responsible for the collapse of some of the thousands of buildings flattened in the 10 affected provinces.

“We will follow this up meticulously until the necessary judicial process is concluded, especially for buildings that suffered heavy damage and buildings that caused deaths and injuries,” he said.

The earthquake hit as Erdogan faces presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for June. Even before the disaster, his popularity had been falling due to soaring inflation and a slumping Turkish currency.

Some affected by the quake and opposition politicians have accused the government of slow and inadequate relief efforts early on, and critics have questioned why the army, which played a key role after a 1999 earthquake, was not brought in sooner.

Erdogan has acknowledged problems, such as the challenge of delivering aid despite damaged transport links, but said the situation had been brought under control. He has called for solidarity and condemned “negative” politicking.

He has also warned that looters will be severely punished. Among the aid vans heading towards Kahramanmaras, police led a convoy of eight army vehicles.

Gizem, a rescue worker from the southeastern province of Sanliurfa, said she had seen looters in the city of Antakya. “We cannot intervene much, as most of the looters carry knives.”

One elderly resident of Kahramanmaras said that gold jewellery in his home had been stolen, while in the port city of Iskenderun police were deployed at junctions of commercial streets with many phone and jewellery shops.

Two German rescue organisations suspended work in Turkey on Saturday, citing reports of clashes between groups of people and highlighting concerns for security in the quake-hit areas.

Syria aid ‘held up’

In Syria, the hostilities that have fractured the country during 12 years of civil war are now hindering relief work.

Earthquake aid from government-held regions into territory controlled by hardline opposition groups has been held up by approval issues with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) which controls much of the region, a UN spokesperson said.

An HTS source in Idlib told Reuters the group would not allow any shipments from government-held areas and that aid would be coming in from Turkey to the north.

“Turkey has opened all the roads and we won’t allow the regime to take advantage of the situation to show they are helping,” the source said.

The UN is hoping to ramp up cross-border operations by opening an additional two border points between Turkey and opposition-held Syria for aid deliveries, spokesperson Jens Laerke said.

The foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday in the first high-level visit by an Arab official since the quake.

Several Arab countries have provided support to Assad in the quake’s aftermath. Western countries, which sought to isolate Assad after his crackdown on protests in 2011 and the outbreak of civil war, are major contributors to UN relief efforts across Syria but have provided little direct aid to Damascus.

The first shipment of European earthquake aid to government-held parts of Syria also arrived in Damascus on Sunday.

UN relief chief Griffiths will travel to the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Monday to survey the damage and launch a United Nations appeal for Syria, which he hopes will cover both government and non-government zones of control.

The quake ranks as the world’s sixth deadliest natural disaster this century, its death toll exceeding the 31,000 from a quake in neighbouring Iran in 2003.

It has killed 29,605 people in Turkey and more than 3,500 in Syria, where tolls have not been updated for two days.

Turkey said about 80,000 people were in hospital, and more than 1 million in temporary shelters.