Suicide blast kills six at Pakistan navy college

LAHORE -- A suicide bomber killed at least six people and wounded 19 in an attack on Tuesday on a Pakistan naval college in the eastern city of Lahore, officials said.
Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema told a news conference that a mini-bus entered the college when a suicide bomber following closely behind blew up his vehicle.
The bomber killed himself and four others in the initial attack, navy officials said, but two more people died in secondary explosions that followed.
"I saw a fully charred body," a Reuters photographer at the scene said. "A black cloud of smoke was rising from the scene as I reached there."
It was the fourth suicide attack in Pakistan in five days, further unsettling a country already reeling from a bomb campaign waged by Islamist militants linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Over 500 people have been killed in related violence since the start of the year, stoking fears over the deteriorating security situation in the nuclear-armed state.
Tackling the violence will provide a tough test for the incoming government following elections two weeks ago which saw no clear winner emerge, leading to coalition talks between various parties mostly hostile to President Pervez Musharraf.
Television pictures showed damaged vehicles near the bent and buckled gates of the college. Emergency vehicles were seen rushing in and out of the premises.
Lahore, the capital of Punjab province and about 290 kilometres southeast of the capital, has rarely been targeted before, although a suicide bomber killed 19 people, mostly police, in an attack near the High Court in January.
Last week, a suicide bomber in Rawalpindi killed the military's top medical officer, Lieutenant-General Mushtaq Ahmed Baig, making him the most senior military officer to die in the violence to date.
Tuesday's blast in the country's cultural capital and political nerve centre coincided with a visit by U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen for talks with Pakistan's military leadership and President Pervez Musharraf.
Mullen's visit aimed at reinforcing the military relationship with Pakistan, according to embassy spokeswoman Elizabeth Colton.
The West shudders at the thought of Pakistan sliding into chaos. Sections of the Western media have depicted Pakistan as the most dangerous country in the world.
Many Pakistanis believe there is some grand conspiracy to take away Pakistan's nuclear weapons, but realization of the scale of the internal threat is dawning.
The deteriorating law and order situation put pressure on a stock market that remains the best performer in Asia this year, although it is considered difficult and illiquid by many investors.
The index shed 0.5% on Tuesday, though it is up over 3% since the Feb. 18 parliamentary elections and over 5.25% this year.
Elsewhere in Pakistan on Tuesday, five people including four militants were killed in a gunbattle with police near the town of Lakki Marwat in the northwest, police said. The dead included two Uzbek and two local militants.
The shootout, near the town where three police were killed by a roadside bomb on Friday, broke out after militants kidnapped a local councillor and two colleagues.

Suicide bomber kills 39 in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD - At least 39 people were killed and scores more injured when a suicide bomber attacked a traditional tribal meeting in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday, officials said.
Pakistan is in the middle of a wave of violence blamed on al Qaeda-linked militants based in tribal lands on the Afghan border and there have been three suicide attacks in as many days.
Over 500 people have been killed in militant related violence this year alone.
A top government official in Darra Adam Kheil tribal region told Reuters the bomber detonated a device while tribal elders were holding an outdoor "jirga", or traditional meeting.
"They were finalising the formation of a committee of locals to take steps against miscreants and help the government," said Kamran Zaib, a government official.
A security official who asked not to be identified put the number of dead at 39.
Local television showed pictures of residents and authorities cleaning up the blast site, a shady clearing surrounded by tall trees with a backdrop of rugged mountains.
Piles of torn clothing and bloody Muslim prayer caps were mixed up with the shattered remains of "charpoys", wood and rope daybeds.
"I saw three persons...all of them were not locals. The youngest one walked straight toward elders and blew himself up in the middle of them," said Naimat Khan, a witness.
Zaib said a head and identity card found at the scene were believed to belong to the bomber. He said the attacker was aged around 18-20.
A suicide attack on a police funeral in northwest Pakistan killed at least 38 people on Friday, while on Monday the army's top medical officer was killed in a bomb attack in Rawalpindi.
The escalating violence has raised concern about the stability of the nuclear armed state as it passes through a period of political transition, with doubts over how long President Pervez Musharraf can hold onto power after his allies lost a parliamentary election on February 18.
Militants intensified their suicide bomb campaign after the army stormed Islamabad's Red Mosque last July to crush a militant student movement.

Musharraf to free Indian "spy" condemned to death

ISLAMABAD - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has accepted a mercy plea from an Indian national who spent 35 years on death row on spying charges, and ordered his release, a minister said on Friday.
Kashmir Singh, was arrested in the city of Rawalpindi with another Indian in 1973 while trying to smuggle goods from Pakistan to India.
The other man was sentenced to 10 years in jail and has been sent back to India, but a military court sentenced Singh to death.
"Kashmir Singh has gone through hell during the last 35 years. He has suffered more than enough for his alleged crime," Minister for Human Rights, Ansar Burney, told Reuters.
"I personally requested the president to accept his mercy petition in the greater interest of human rights and allow him to return home and spend the rest of his life with his family."
Burney said Singh would be released on Monday and handed over to Indian authorities.
The father of two sons and a daughter, Singh was from Indian Punjab and contact has been made with his family through Indian politicians, he said.
According to a report from the private Human Rights Commission of Pakistan last year, more than 7,300 men and 44 women are languishing in death cells across Pakistan.
In most cases, death sentences are not carried out because of lengthy appeals.
In 2006, Musharraf commuted the death sentence of a Briton who spent 18 years in jail for murder.
Nuclear armed Pakistan and India have fought three wars since winning independence from Britain in 1947 and the nearly went to war again in 2002.
Their relations have improved considerably since they launched a peace process in 2004 but they routinely arrest each others' nationals who have strayed across land or sea borders.

Sharif wants probe on Musharraf's role in Kargil war

The new government in Pakistan should review the causes for the Kargil war, including President Pervez Musharraf's role, and fix responsibility for the conflict with India, former premier Nawaz Sharif has said.The Charter of Democracy signed by the Pakistan People's Party and the PML-N nearly two years ago committed both parties to setting up a commission to review the Kargil conflict, Sharif, whose party has decided top support a PPP-led coalition government, said.The document also committed the parties to abolishing the National Security Council, making the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency accountable to the civilian government and getting all army officers to declare their assets annually, the PML (N) chief said.''We stand by the Charter. We think it's an excellent document (and) it must be implemented in letter and spirit. And I have all the intentions to do that,'' Sharif told interviewer Karan Thapar on the Devil's Advocate programme.''The PPP is committed to that because it bears the signature of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto.''Asked if he was still committed to the setting up of a commission to look into the causes of Kargil and to fix responsibility, Sharif replied, ''Yes.''Sharif, whose PML(N) emerged as the second largest party after PPP in the February 18 polls, also said the charter continued to be binding despite slain former premier Bhutto's talks on a possible power-sharing arrangement with Musharraf. Sharif has for long contested Musharraf's contention that he was aware about and had backed the plan to take over strategic heights in the Kargil sector of the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir in 1999, while he was the prime minister.The conflict stalled a peace initiative that had been launched by Sharif and his then Indian counterpart, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, barely months before Pakistani troops took over the heights in Kargil.The Pakistani troops and mujahideen were evicted after a three-month long campaign.Asked if a possible probe into the Kargil affair was another way to target Musharraf, Sharif said: ''It's not targeting. It is straightening out things. We have to put our house in order and we want to put our house in order.''Sharif also did not rule out the possibility of taking legal action against Musharraf for deposing him in a military coup in 1999, barely three months after the end of the Kargil conflict, and for abrogating the constitution.''Somebody will have to be taken to task. After all, abrogating the constitution is not a small crime. Does it happen in India?'' he said.''What is the harm if any such action is initiated?''Asked if he would actually initiate legal action against Musharraf, Sharif said, ''Who knows? Well, time will tell. I think the country has suffered enough at the hands of these dictators.''Sharif repeated his call for Musharraf to quit in the wake of the defeat of his supporters in the February 18 general election. ''That is why we are saying repeatedly, 'Mr Musharraf step down.' There may be a safe exit now available to you.''

Suicide bomber attack kills at least 40 in Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — A suicide bomber blew himself up at a peacemaking meeting of tribal elders in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday, killing at least 40 people and injuring more than 100, witnesses and officials said.
It was the third suicide bombing in as many days in the northwest, where security forces were battling pro-Taliban Islamic militants.
It took place at the public meeting in the tribal-majority town of Darra Adam Khel in North West Frontier Province about 25 miles south of the provincial capital, Peshawar. Tribal leaders had gathered to discuss peace in the volatile region.
"It was a huge explosion and left body parts and blood scattered on the ground," said Ramin Khan, whose left leg and face were wounded.
Dr. Hamid Afridy, the area's chief medical officer, said he counted 40 bodies, some with severed limbs and mutilated faces, at the site.

New Day for Pakistan

By Tom PlateLOS ANGELES ― The central nervous system of the Bush administration's ``war on terror" may now be frayed beyond recognition or repair.Tired American soldiers are bogged down in Iraq, whose indigenous politicians cannot get their act together, and where the real al-Qaida terrorists are fewest in number. In Afghanistan, where are there more of the bad guys, the NATO alliance is undermanned and demoralized; European governments are shakier than ever in their resolve to do what it takes. And in Pakistan, where there may be the greatest number of al-Qaida anywhere, the Bush administration's chief ally has just been embarrassingly told to take a hike by his people.The recent Pakistan election must be the most astounding low-turnout landslide in recent memory. Many people were too frightened to vote, fearing retaliation from the government of Pervez Musharraf, the military careerist who tried to repackage himself as the savior of rectitude and integrity.But those who did courageously overcome their fears voted overwhelmingly for almost anyone but the dictator.There are two immediate implications.One is that the general-dictator must stand down immediately ― or allow his position to be watered down dramatically to lame-duck status. As we wrote last September, ``Musharraf must leave not because he is an authoritarian, but because he has lost the confidence of the Pakistanis.'' Now, with the Feb. 18 election, that loss-of-confidence becomes totally official.The second implication is that the Bush administration must do nothing in Pakistan of any consequence. It also needs to do something that it is generally not good at: Be quiet, because everything it has done or said has generally been misconceived and miserable. It put all its eggs in the bountiful basket of the handsome general, and now the eggs have gone rotten.Pakistan has all but blown up in everyone's face ― and it may still even do that. A lot of terrible things could happen, in addition to the unmentionable: terrorist groups getting their paws on the country's nuclear weapons stash. But by this time next year, a new American administration will be in power. Good riddance to the current one. It is hard to imagine that the next one could prove ― whether Democratic or Republican ― as incompetent in Pakistan as the current leadership. It seems as if every step the Bush administration took was off-balance, off-key ― just plain off. But the whole mess is to be inherited (presumably ― seven months is a long time in American politics ― who knows what might happen?) by President John McCain or President Hillary Clinton or President Barack Obama. One of them will need to start thinking about Asian and terror-war options as soon as early November. American foreign policy is in crisis there.In Pakistan, the two main opposition groups say they are prepared to lay down their hatchets and work together in harmony to hammer out a broad coalition government in Parliament. If this can be pulled off, they are to be congratulated. Their country needs national-interest unity above all right now.They, for the moment, are not the enemy, Musharraf is. They must become the solution to Pakistan's problem, not remain party to the customary petty squabbling and the not-so-petty corruption of the past.The late Benazir Bhutto may not have been the second coming of Mother Teresa in the sainthood department. But when an assassin finished her off in December, that vile act blew a symbolic hole in the center of a unified Pakistan. Were she alive today, she would in a Karachi minute become the new government of Pakistan in the post-Musharraf era, and bring to the task an unparalleled sense of history about her own destiny and her country's.But she is dead ― yet suddenly a new kind of Pakistani democracy may have come alive. Let us all hope it will prove real enough for this country to escape the darkness and start developing ― politically as well as economically like a normal nation.UCLA Prof. Tom Plate is a veteran author and journalist.