23-10-2025

Month: April 2023

As SC deadline nears, PM chairs allies’ meeting on talks with PTI

LAHORE/ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is chairing a meeting of the ruling alliance today (Wednesday) before negotiations with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on the Supreme Court’s directions.

Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) chief Maulana Fazlur, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari and Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui and other leaders are attending the meeting.

Attorney general for Pakistan and federal ministers are also attending the meeting.

As per sources, the meeting is being briefed by the legal team on the election fund case and the negotiations with PTI.

Earlier today, The News had reported that there are chances of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supermo Nawaz Sharif — who is currently in Saudi Arabia — attending the meeting virtually.

During the last meeting of the coalition partners, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari suggested dialogue with the PTI but the PDM chief Fazl outright rejected the proposal.

PMLN sources claim that the party leadership has asked Ayaz Sadiq to contact PTI’s Asad Qaiser and both have agreed to meet today. However, PTI chief Imran Khan has clearly stated that the mandate for negotiations rests with Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

On April 20, the top court adjourned the hearing of the petition till April 27 after the key ruling parties —PPP and PML-N — had assured the Supreme Court they would sit with the PTI on April 26 and try to find a solution on the election date.

A three-member bench of the top court — headed by Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial and comprising Justice Ijazul Ahsan and Justice Munib Akhtar — has sought a progress report on the talks by April 27.

‘Disagreement’ among ruling allies

A dispute emerged among the ruling parties over holding talks with the PTI on April 18, sources told Geo News, after Jamaat-e-Islami’s (JI) bid to bring both sides to the negotiation table.

The PDM coalition partners met in Islamabad after PM Shehbaz convened a meeting on the country’s political situation and the JI’s negotiation efforts.

During the meeting, a disagreement took place among the parties in the coalition government over holding talks with the opposition party as some believed that PTI Chairman Imran Khan could not be trusted, while others insisted that political forces should not shut channels for negotiations.

PPP Chairman Bilawal had stressed holding dialogue with the opposition, with Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), Balochistan National Party, Balochistan Awami Party, Chaudhry Salik, and Mohsin Dawar backing him, sources said.

Bilawal said closing the door for talks is against his party’s principles and “undemocratic”.

But representatives of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) and the Jamhoori Wattan Party (JWP) rejected Bilawal’s opinion and said that it isn’t in the coalition’s interests to hold talks with the deposed prime minister — who was ousted from the office via a no-confidence vote in the National Assembly in April last year.

Later, the PPP supremo also held a separate meeting with the JUI-F chief to convince him.

Following the SC directives, both Bilawal and Fazl rejected the order, terming the dialogue between political parties as directed by the court “talks at gunpoint”.

COAS, Chinese commander reiterate need for maintaining peace, stability in region

RAWALPINDI: Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Asim Munir and the commander of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) have reiterated the need for maintaining peace and stability in the region, said the Pakistan military’s media wing in a statement.

As per the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), COAS Asim Munir on the first day of his visit to China visited the PLA Army Headquarters. The army chief is currently in China on a four-day visit.

On his arrival, the COAS was presented with the guard of honour and later he reviewed the smartly turned-out contingent.

General Asim Munir discussed the “regional security situation” in his detailed meeting with the PLA commander. Both officials also reiterated enhancing military-to-military cooperation, the ISPR said.

Later, the army chief also witnessed a demonstration of the operational capabilities of the PLA troops.

Gen Munir praised the high standards of training and the professionalism displayed by the soldiers.

The ISPR said that the army chief will hold further meetings with military leaders in China to enhance the long-standing relations between the two militaries.

Erdogan’s abrupt departure from live interview shocks audience

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan abruptly interrupted a live television interview on Tuesday before returning and apologising, citing a stomach bug as the reason for his sudden departure.

The 69-year-old leader had given three campaign speeches earlier in the day, leading up to a closely contested parliamentary and presidential election scheduled for May 14th.

Erdogan was scheduled to end the day with a joint interview on Ulke TV and Kanal 7, which began more than 90 minutes behind schedule. However, ten minutes into the interview, the broadcast abruptly cut off mid-question, causing the camera to shake and the reporter to stand up from his chair. An off-camera voice could be heard saying, “Oh wow.”

About 15 minutes later, Erdogan returned to the interview to apologise for his sudden departure, saying, “Yesterday and today were hard work. That’s why I got a stomach flu.”

The president appeared tired and his eyes seemed to water as he spoke. After answering a few more questions, he ended the broadcast.

Erdogan and his Islamic-rooted party have held a dominant position in Turkish politics for the past two decades, but the upcoming election poses a significant challenge to his rule. Polls indicate that he is running neck-and-neck with opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu or could potentially lose the election.

Kilicdaroglu expressed his well wishes towards Erdogan, tweeting shortly after the incident aired, “I convey my best wishes to Mr. Erdogan.”

British American Tobacco is to pay $635m (£512m) plus interest to US authorities after a subsidiary admitted selling cigarettes to North Korea in violation of sanctions.

The US authorities said the settlement related to BAT activity in North Korea between 2007 and 2017.

BAT’s head Jack Bowles said “we deeply regret the misconduct”.

The US has imposed severe sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile activities.

Tuesday’s settlement was between BAT and America’s Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

BAT is one of the world’s largest tobacco multinationals and one of the UK’s 10 biggest companies. It owns major cigarette brands including Lucky Strike, Dunhill and Pall Mall.

In a statement, BAT said it had entered into a “deferred prosecution agreement with DOJ and a civil settlement agreement with OFAC, and an indirect BAT subsidiary in Singapore has entered into a plea agreement with DOJ”.

The DOJ said BAT had also conspired to defraud financial institutions in order to get them to process transactions on behalf of North Korean entities.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is known to be a heavy smoker. Last year the US attempted to get the UN Security Council to ban tobacco exports to North Korea, but this was vetoed by Russia and China.

At a briefing on Tuesday, the DOJ’s assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said the settlement was the “culmination of a long-running investigation”, describing it as “the single largest North Korean sanctions penalty in the history of the Department of Justice”.

He said that BAT was engaged in an “elaborate scheme to circumvent US sanctions and sell tobacco products to North Korea” via subsidiaries.

“Between 2007 and 2017 these third-party companies sold tobacco products to North Korea and received approximately $428m.”

Criminal charges were also revealed against North Korean banker Sim Hyon-Sop, 39, and Chinese facilitators Qin Guoming, 60, and Han Linlin, 41, for facilitating sales of tobacco to North Korea.

A $5m (£4.4m) bounty was put for any information leading to the arrest or conviction of Mr Sim, and $500,000 (£402,905) rewards for each of the other two suspects.

They were accused of buying leaf tobacco for North Korean state-owned cigarette makers and falsifying documents to trick US banks into processing transactions worth $74m. North Korean manufacturers including one owned by the military made about $700m thanks to these deals.

Pyongyang has for years faced multiple rounds of tough sanctions in response to its ballistic missile launches and nuclear tests.

However that has not deterred Mr Kim from continuing to develop the country’s weapons programme.

Many Indians, including a minister, have been criticising a cartoon in German magazine Der Spiegel that they say was racist and in bad taste.

The cartoon shows a dilapidated Indian train – overflowing with passengers both inside and atop coaches – overtaking a swanky Chinese train on a parallel track.

It is being seen as mocking India as the country overtakes China to become the world’s most populous nation.

Der Spiegel is a weekly news magazine.

Many Indians have tweeted, saying that that the magazine was stuck with an outdated idea of India and hadn’t recognised the progress made by the country in recent decades.

Federal minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar tweeted: “Notwithstanding your attempt at mocking India, it’s not smart to bet against India under PM @narendramodi ji. In a few years, India’s economy will be bigger than Germany’s.”

Kanchan Gupta, senior adviser in the ministry of information and broadcasting, tweeted that the cartoon was “outrageously racist”. Another Twitter user said the cartoon showed the magazine’s “elite mindset”.

The magazine has not reacted to the criticism.

While overcrowded trains can still be seen in many parts of India, significant investments have been made to improve the country’s railway network and its trains.

Cartoons published by Western media have caused outrage in the country earlier as well. The New York Times newspaper had apologised in 2014 for a cartoon on India’s Mars Mission following readers’ complaints that it mocked India.

The cartoon showed a farmer with a cow knocking at the door of a room marked Elite Space Club where two men sit reading a newspaper. It was published after India successfully put the Mangalyaan robotic probe into orbit around Mars.

SNP supporters who donated money to the party for independence campaigning will not be reimbursed, the first minister has said.

Humza Yousaf was asked whether the cash would be returned if a referendum did not take place within the next year.

Complaints about donations sparked the police probe into SNP finances.

Mr Yousaf also told broadcaster LBC he had not spoken to Nicola Sturgeon since her husband Peter Murrell was arrested and released without charge.

The party’s treasurer, Colin Beattie, was arrested almost two weeks later before also being released while further investigations are carried out. He has since resigned as treasurer.

 

Speaking on the Tonight with Andrew Marr programme, Mr Yousaf said it would be “very dangerous” for him to comment while the police investigation was taking place.

But he said: “Money that is raised from the membership by the party, we’re going to spend that in advancing the cause of independence referendum.

“We’re not reimbursing people for the donations that they have made.

“People make donations to the party because they want to advance the cause of independence. Every pound and penny that we spend as a party will be on advancing the cause of independence.”

Sturgeon ‘welfare’

Mr Yousaf appeared on the programme during a visit to London, which included his first in-person meeting with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak since becoming first minister.

Although he said he had not contacted his predecessor Ms Sturgeon since ex-SNP chief executive Mr Murrell’s arrest, he said he wanted to check in with her during what will have been a “difficult period”.

The former first minister told journalists on Tuesday afternoon that the crisis which had engulfed the party in recent weeks had been

Nicola Sturgeon says she could not have anticipated what was going to happen with the SNP

Ms Sturgeon said the police investigation into the party’s finances did not influence her decision to stand down from the role she had held for eight years.

He said: “Nicola and I will speak though. And we’ll do that once she hopefully returns back to Holyrood. And I think that would be the right place to do that. Of course, I want to check in with her and her welfare.”

Police Scotland launched its Operation Branchform investigation in July 2021 after receiving complaints about how more than £600,000 of donations raised by activists for a future independence referendum campaign were spent.

Questions were raised after accounts showed the SNP had just under £97,000 in the bank at the end of 2019, and total net assets of about £272,000.

Last year it emerged that Mr Murrell gave a loan of more than £100,000 to the SNP to help it out with a “cash flow” issue after the last election.

The party had repaid about half of the loan by November of that year, but Mr Yousaf admitted last week that it still owed money to Mr Murrell.

The party’s auditors quit last September, with the party facing a race against time to file its accounts with the Electoral Commission by 7 July. It has still not found a new auditor.

The SNP’s Westminster group, which was also left without an auditor and has not yet found a replacement, faces losing £1.2m in public funding if fails to file its accounts by 31 May.

China, Singapore to hold joint naval drills

China and Singapore will hold joint naval drills this week, Beijing’s defence ministry said on Monday.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy will dispatch its frigate Yulin as well as the Chibi minesweeper for the drills, which will take place around Singapore from “end-April to early May”, the ministry said in a statement.

The two countries agreed last year to hold the drills at a meeting of defence ministers, though details were not announced at the time.

Singapore regularly conducts drills with countries from the region and around the world, with personnel from the city-state taking part in the massive Cobra Gold exercises with US soldiers in Thailand in March.

The announcement comes days after the US Commander of the Pacific Air Forces met with Singapore’s defence minister Ng Eng Hen to discuss enhanced cooperation in military training.

Chinese Navy representatives will also participate in the IMDEX Asia naval and maritime defence expo in Singapore next month, the ministry said.

The Southeast Asian country has for decades juggled ties with rival powers in the region, engaging in an increasingly delicate balancing act as China asserts its might across the Asia-Pacific.

Foreign ministers from Group of 7 industrialised nations warned this month against “China’s expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea”, while tensions have soared in the Taiwan Strait with Beijing brandishing its firepower in recent drills aimed at intimidating Taipei.

China and Singapore have previously held naval exercises in the South China Sea, including multiple joint exercises in 2021.

China says respects ‘sovereign’ status of all ex-Soviet states

China said on Monday it respected the “sovereign state status” of all ex-Soviet countries, after Beijing’s ambassador to France sparked outrage in Europe by questioning the sovereignty of those nations.

“China respects the sovereign state status of the participating republics after the dissolution of the Soviet Union,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters.

Beijing’s ambassador to France Lu Shaye triggered a furore after suggesting that countries that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union “don’t have effective status under international law because there is not an international agreement confirming their status as sovereign nations”.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell branded the remarks “unacceptable”, adding in a tweet the EU “can only suppose these declarations do not represent China’s official policy”.

Mao told journalists: “China respects the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries and upholds the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.

“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, China was one of the first countries to establish diplomatic relations with relevant countries.

“Since the establishment of diplomatic ties, China has always adhered to the principle of mutual respect and equality to develop bilateral friendly and cooperative relations.”

France refuses to halt Indian Ocean migrant expulsions

France on Monday refused to halt a controversial planned operation to expel migrants from its Indian Ocean island territory of Mayotte, despite opposition from the neighbouring Comoros and clashes between locals and security forces sent by Paris.

The operation, called Operation Wuambushu (“Take Back” in the local language), aims to expel migrants from urban slums on Mayotte to improve living conditions for local residents in France’s poorest department.

Some 1,800 members of the French security forces have been deployed for the operation on Mayotte, including hundreds sent from Paris, with young locals and police clashing in the district of Tsoundzou outside the main town of Mamoudzou since Sunday.

An official said the number of migrants trying to reach the French territory from Comoros by sea had also reduced since the beginning of the operation to flood the area with security forces.

“Since we have increased reinforcements, there are no more kwassas (small boats) that have been spotted,” Camille Chaize, spokeswoman for the interior ministry, told France Inter radio.

Comoros, whose three islands lie to the northwest of Mayotte, said Monday it had refused to allow a boat carrying migrants from the island. Most of the illegal migrants being deported are Comoran.

It also said it had suspended passenger traffic at a port where deported migrants usually land.

“As long as the French side decides to do things unilaterally, we will take our decisions,” Comoran Interior Minister Fakridine Mahamoud told AFP, adding that none of the deported migrants “will enter a Comoran port”.

The country’s maritime services company also said that the Mutsamudu port was suspending passenger traffic from Monday until Wednesday.

The plan is for those without papers to be sent back to the Comoran island of Anjouan, 70 kilometres (45 miles) away from Mayotte.

“We will not stop the operations… to fight against delinquency and unsanitary housing, with their consequences on illegal immigration,” the most senior Paris-appointed official on Mayotte, prefect Thierry Suquet, told reporters.

He said he hoped to “quickly resume” boat deportations to Anjouan and hoped the standoff would be resumed through “dialogue”.

“We have common interests with the Comoros, in particular the safeguarding of human life at sea and the control of illegal immigration,” he said.

But he added: “The aim is for there to no longer be any slums on Mayotte… (these) are dangerous for the health of those who live there”.

– Diplomatic tensions –

The first expulsions from the slums are expected to start on Tuesday morning, beginning with a settlement near Koungou.

But Comoros already last week warned that it would not accept migrants expelled under the plan.

Intense negotiations between Moroni and Paris in recent weeks had raised the possibility of a last-minute deal.

But Comoros’ leader Azali Assoumani, who holds the rotating presidency of the African Union since February, said he hoped the operation would be abandoned, admitting Moroni didn’t have “the means to stop the operation through force.”

In 2019, France pledged 150 million euros ($161 million) in development aid as part of a deal to tackle human trafficking and ease the repatriation of Comorans from Mayotte.

Around half of Mayotte’s roughly 350,000 population is estimated to be foreign, most of them Comoran.

Many African migrants, especially Comorans, try to reach Mayotte illegally every year. These crossings risk ending in tragedy when the “kwassa kwassa” — the small motorised fishing boats used by people smugglers — are shipwrecked.

Mayotte is the fourth island of the Comoros archipelago that France held on to after an initial 1974 referendum, but it is still claimed by Moroni.

In March 2011, Mayotte became the 101st French department, or administrative area, in accordance with another referendum two years earlier.

On Friday, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin confirmed the operation would take place but declined to give a date for its start.

He added on Monday that France was taking “resolute action” against crime and gangs on Mayotte “with exceptional resources” and 26 people had been arrested this weekend alone.

Information minister denies reports of PM Shehbaz taking vote of confidence

Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb denied reports on Monday that Prime Minster Shehbaz Sharif would take a vote of confidence in the National Assembly.

The Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM)-led government has been on its toes since coming into power in April last year, with repeated protests from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), a distressed economy, and its recent standoff with the judiciary.

“The prime minister did not decide to take a vote of confidence. There were no such consultations and there is no need for the [vote of confidence],” Aurangzeb said in a tweet.

The minister termed Shehbaz — who was sworn in as the premier on April 11, 2022 — as the “unanimous” candidate of the people, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), and the coalition parties.

The information minister claimed that “rumours” are not facts and asked media outlets not to run news stories pertaining to the prime minister “without verification”.

The minister’s tweet came after sources told Geo News that the premier had decided to take a vote of confidence this week, while consultations with PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif had been completed.

The prime minister, the sources said, had directed parliamentarians of all ruling parties to be present in Islamabad for the vote.

Army chief General Asim Munir in China to strengthen military ties

RAWALPINDI: Chief of Army Staff General Syed Asim Munir is currently in China on a four-day official visit, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said in a brief statement.

“The COAS is on a four-day official visit to China for enhancing bilateral military relations,“ said the military’s media wing without providing any further details.

This is Gen Munir‘s fourth overseas visit ever since he took command of Pakistan Army. In January, Gen Munir paid an official visit to Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE), in his maiden overseas visit as the army chief.

During his time in Saudi Arabia, the COAS had met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and “reviewed bilateral relations and the ways of enhancing them.”

Later, Gen Munir visited UAE and met President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and discussed defence and military ties.

The two also discussed ways to strengthen military affairs to serve the common interests of the friendly countries during the meeting, as per the state news agency.

A month later, Gen Munir visited the United Kingdom on a highly important visit on Britain’s Ministry of Defence invitation to discuss security-related strategic issues.

After the visit to Britain, Gen Munir again visited UAE and met the president.

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