Pakistan calls US sanctions on firms allegedly aiding missile program ‘politically motivated’

Pakistan calls US sanctions on firms allegedly aiding missile program ‘politically motivated’
Pakistani police officers stand guard outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad on January 18, 2024. (AFP/File)
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Updated 14 September 2024
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Pakistan calls US sanctions on firms allegedly aiding missile program ‘politically motivated’

Pakistan calls US sanctions on firms allegedly aiding missile program ‘politically motivated’
  • US sanctioned a Chinese institute, other companies this week after accusing them of helping Pakistan
  • China says it opposes such unilateral sanctions, vows to protect interests of its citizens and companies

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Saturday criticized the recent decision by the United States to impose sanctions on commercial entities accused of aiding Pakistan’s ballistic missile program, calling it “biased and politically motivated.”
The US imposed the sanctions on a Chinese research institute and several companies on Thursday, alleging they had supplied missile-applicable items to Pakistan.
State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement the Beijing Research Institute of Automation for Machine Building Industry had collaborated with Pakistan to procure equipment for testing rocket motors for the Shaheen-3 and Ababeel systems, and potentially for larger systems.
He maintained that the US decision reflected its commitment to “act against proliferation and associated procurement activities of concern, wherever they occur.”
“Pakistan considers this action as biased and politically-motivated,” Foreign Office Spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said in response to media queries related to the development. “Similar listings of commercial entities in the past were based on mere suspicion [and] involved items not listed under any export control regime and yet were considered sensitive under broad, catch-all provisions.”
The administration in Washington had also targeted three China-based companies with sanctions last year in October on similar grounds.
“It is widely known that some countries, while claiming strict adherence to nonproliferation norms, have conveniently waived licensing requirements for advanced military technologies to their favored states,” Baloch continued.
“Such double standards and discriminatory practices undermine the credibility of global nonproliferation regimes, increase military asymmetries, and endanger international peace and security,” she added.
China has already said it will “firmly protect” the rights and interests of Chinese companies and individuals.
One of its diplomats in Washington said this week his country “opposes unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction that have no basis in international law or authorization of the UN Security Council.”
With input from Reuters


Riyadh says will give share of $200 billion annual construction contracts to Pakistan

Riyadh says will give share of $200 billion annual construction contracts to Pakistan
Updated 15 sec ago
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Riyadh says will give share of $200 billion annual construction contracts to Pakistan

Riyadh says will give share of $200 billion annual construction contracts to Pakistan
  • Investment minister Al-Falih expected finalize $2 billion business proposals while in Pakistan
  • Saudi crown prince this year pledged to expedite $5 billion investment package for Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Saudi Arabia’s Investment Minister Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al-Falih said on Thursday the Kingdom wanted to give a large share of $200 billion in annual construction and material procurement contracts to Pakistan. 
Al-Falih was addressing a joint business forum in Islamabad, which is hoping to finalize at least $2 billion in investment proposals during the Saudi dignitary’s three-day visit. 
Saudi Arabia is set to become the world’s largest construction market as the Kingdom pours vast amounts of money into projects aimed at overhauling and diversifying the economy. The country’s total construction output value is forecast to reach $181.5 billion by the end of 2028, up almost 30 percent from 2023 levels, according to a 2024 report by global property consultancy Knight Frank.
“Saudi Arabia is the largest construction site in the world and we will in the next few years be awarding construction and material procurement contracts reaching about $1.8 trillion,” Al Falih said as he addressed the Pak-Saudi Business Forum 2024. 
“Last year, the value of construction and EPC [engineering, procurement, and construction] procurement, including materials, was $150 billion, this year that’s $180 billion and it will be about $200 billion annually of contract and material procurement awards year after year.
“Fortunately for our partners here in Pakistan, a lot of the input into those contracts is going to be imported and we want it to be imported from Pakistan. All things being equal, in fact, we will compromise a little bit to make it come from Pakistan.”
Al-Falih’s visit to Islamabad comes as Pakistan seeks closer cooperation in trade, infrastructure, energy and other sectors with friendly countries and regional allies, with the aim to attract foreign investment and shore up its $350 billion economy, beset by a prolonged economic crisis that has drained foreign exchange reserves and weakened the national currency.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in particular have been working closely in recent months to increase bilateral trade and investment, with Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman reaffirming the Kingdom’s commitment this year to expedite a $5 billion investment package for the South Asian country.
Earlier on Thursday, the Pakistani president’s office said 25 agreements would be signed during Al-Falih’s visit. 
“These agreements will usher in a new era of bilateral economic cooperation,” a statement from President Asif Ali Zardari’s office said, adding that Saudi Arabia was planning to invest in Pakistan’s construction, infrastructure, mining, agriculture and information technology sectors. 
“The Saudi minister will have a busy schedule in Pakistan of meetings with representatives of private companies and top government officials of KSA while bilateral trade and investment between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, mutual agreements and important Memorandums of Understanding will also be signed,” the Pakistani Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement after the Saudi delegation’s arrival on Wednesday night.
“Private companies of Pakistan are fully ready for investment and bilateral business from Saudi Arabia,” the PMO said, quoting Pakistani Privatization and Investment Minister Abdul Aleem Khan. 
During his visit, Al-Falih will meet top Pakistani leaders and also interact with the country’s business community. He comes with a delegation of over 130 members. 
“The delegation comprises representatives from various sectors, including energy, mining, minerals, agriculture, business, tourism, industry, and manpower,” Radio Pakistan reported. 
Last month, the International Monetary Fund’s board approved a long-awaited $7 billion bailout deal for Pakistan’s struggling economy. The IMF said the new program will require “sound policies and reforms” to strengthen macroeconomic stability and address structural challenges alongside “continued strong financial support from Pakistan’s development and bilateral partners.”


World Bank raises South Asia growth forecast to 6.4% on India demand, quicker recoveries in Pakistan

World Bank raises South Asia growth forecast to 6.4% on India demand, quicker recoveries in Pakistan
Updated 13 min 49 sec ago
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World Bank raises South Asia growth forecast to 6.4% on India demand, quicker recoveries in Pakistan

World Bank raises South Asia growth forecast to 6.4% on India demand, quicker recoveries in Pakistan
  • The upward revision confirms South Asia as the fastest growing emerging economy region monitored by the World Bank
  • Bank projected Pakistan’s economy would grow by 2.8% in current fiscal year on recovery in manufacturing, easing monetary policy

NEW DELHI/LONDON: The World Bank raised its growth forecast for South Asia to 6.4 percent in 2024 from an earlier estimate of 6.0 percent, citing the strength of domestic demand in India and quicker recoveries in crisis-hit countries such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
India’s economic growth forecast for the current fiscal year, ending in March 2025, was revised to 7 percent year-on-year, up from April’s estimate of 6.6 percent, helped by a rebound in agricultural output and increased private consumption.
“You have an emerging class of consumers in India that’s driving the economy forward, you have recoveries from crises in Sri Lanka and in Pakistan, you also have a tourism-led recovery in Nepal and Bhutan,” Martin Raiser, World Bank Vice President for South Asia, told Reuters.
The upward revision confirms South Asia as the fastest growing emerging economy region monitored by the World Bank. The Washington-based lender projects South Asia will see robust 6.2 percent growth annually for the following two years.
Raiser said there was “significant upside potential” to growth with greater integration of South Asian countries into the global economy, but countries needed to stick with economic reform programs to sustain momentum.
On Wednesday, India’s central bank maintained its GDP growth forecast at 7.2 percent for the current fiscal year and shifted its policy stance to neutral.
The World Bank projected Pakistan’s economy would grow by 2.8 percent in the current fiscal year, which started in July, an increase from the previous estimate of 2.3 percent, aided by a recovery in manufacturing and easing monetary policy.
Sri Lanka, which is clawing its way out of a sovereign debt default and its worst economic crisis in decades, saw the biggest upward revision, with growth expected to come in at 4.4 percent this year and 3.5 percent in 2025.
Nepal’s growth forecast was raised to 5.1 percent from 4.6 percent for the 2024/25 fiscal year beginning mid-July, and Bhutan’s to 7.2 percent from 5.7 percent.
But Bangladesh’s growth forecast was downgraded to 4.0 percent from 5.7 percent for the fiscal year 2024/25, spanning from July to June, reflecting a slowdown in garment exports amid recent social unrest.
The World Bank recommended the region should boost women’s labor force participation — currently the lowest globally at 32 percent. Raising employment among women to levels comparable to those among men could raise output by as much as one-half in the long term, the report said.
“Bringing more women into the labor force could add significantly to the production potential,” said Raiser.


Suspected militants shoot police in vehicle in northwest Pakistan, killing 2 officers

Suspected militants shoot police in vehicle in northwest Pakistan, killing 2 officers
Updated 25 min 20 sec ago
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Suspected militants shoot police in vehicle in northwest Pakistan, killing 2 officers

Suspected militants shoot police in vehicle in northwest Pakistan, killing 2 officers
  • Attack happened in Tank, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan
  • No group has claimed responsibility, but suspicion is likely to fall on Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan

PESHAWAR: Suspected militants riding on a motorcycle opened fire on a vehicle carrying police officers Thursday in a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban, killing two of them and wounding two others, police said.
The attack happened in Tank, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, local police official Sher Afzal said.
No group has claimed responsibility, but suspicion is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, who often target security forces.
The TTP are outlawed in Pakistan. They are separate from but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban who control neighboring Afghanistan.
The latest violence came a day after at least three people were killed in clashes in the northwestern town of Jamrud between police and supporters of a banned right group Pashtun Protection Movement or PTM, which authorities say supports TTP.
The government has also barred PTM from holding rallies in the northwest, allegedly because the demonstrations are against the interests of Pakistan. PTM denies backing the Pakistani Taliban, and tension was growing Thursday after the group vowed to resist the ban on their rallies.


Pakistani deputy prime minister orders continued humanitarian assistance for Gaza

Pakistani deputy prime minister orders continued humanitarian assistance for Gaza
Updated 10 October 2024
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Pakistani deputy prime minister orders continued humanitarian assistance for Gaza

Pakistani deputy prime minister orders continued humanitarian assistance for Gaza
  • Pakistan does not recognize nor have diplomatic relations with the state of Israel
  • Islamabad has dispatched several aid consignments for Gaza since last year

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani deputy prime minister Ishaq Dar has ordered continued humanitarian assistance for the people of Gaza as Israeli forces pressed on with a raid in the enclave’s north on Thursday where UN aid officials said hunger is spreading again.
Pakistan does not recognize nor have diplomatic relations with Israel and calls for an independent Palestinian state based on “internationally agreed parameters” and the pre-1967 borders with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital.
Since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza, Pakistan has repeatedly raised the issue at the United Nations, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and other multilateral platforms and demanded international powers and bodies stop Israeli military actions in Gaza. The South Asian country has also dispatched several aid consignments for the Palestinians.
“Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar chaired a meeting to discuss humanitarian assistance for people of Gaza,” his office said on X. “He appreciated the efforts of NDMA [National Disaster Management Authority] and directed to continue humanitarian assistance in pursuance of the Declaration adopted by All Parties Conference on 07 October 2024.”


An All Parties Conference (APC) held in Islamabad on Monday called on the OIC to convene an emergency summit to address the situation in Palestine, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announcing the formation of a special working group to engage other Islamic countries in raising a collective voice against Israel’s ongoing military campaign.
Israel began its offensive against Hamas in Gaza after fighters from the Palestinian group attacked southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
Nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive, the Gaza health ministry says. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced and much of the enclave has been laid to waste.


Lahore Biennale aims to reclaim historical city’s place on international arts calendar

Lahore Biennale aims to reclaim historical city’s place on international arts calendar
Updated 10 October 2024
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Lahore Biennale aims to reclaim historical city’s place on international arts calendar

Lahore Biennale aims to reclaim historical city’s place on international arts calendar
  • Biennale features over 60 artists representing 30 countries and presenting site-specific exhibits as well as immersive installations
  • Artworks are featured at a dozen venues including Mughal-era Lahore Fort and Masjid Wazir Khan in Walled City, iconic Shalimar Gardens

LAHORE/ISLAMABAD: The Lahore Biennale, a large-scale international contemporary exhibition ongoing in the Pakistani city of Lahore, is aiming to reclaim the historical city’s place on the international arts calendar, its curator and featured artists have said, and be a “collective and participatory” event that involved the whole city and its citizenry. 
Of Mountains and Seas, the third edition of the Biennale, is curated by John Tain, the head of research at Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong, and considers the themes of ecology and sustainable futures, with special reference to recent floods and agricultural disasters in Pakistan as well as the country’s urban pollution and social, economic, political and sexual inequalities. 
This will be the first edition since 2020, which had Emirate curator Hoor Al Qasimi at the helm and was displayed before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Biennale features over 60 artists representing 30 countries, presenting site-specific exhibits as well as immersive installations that draw attention to issues caused by environmental degradation, along with illuminating the city’s vernacular and indigenous heritage as transformative resources for future sustainability. 
Exhibitions are being featured across a dozen venues across the city, including the UNESCO World Heritage site the Lahore Fort in the ancient Walled City and the famed Mughal-era Shalimar Gardens, a true treasure of Islamic garden design and hydrology that will be showcased for the first time in the Biennale. 
“We wanted to showcase our art in a bustling public space, not art as gate-kept by colonial legacies or their bureaucracies,” Abdullah Qureshi, a Pakistani Artist who curated a show titled: ‘Decolonial Feminist Ecologies: On Body and Land’ put together by the Pakistan Art Forum (PAF) in collaboration with the Lahore Biennale Foundation, told Arab News. 
“We tend to think of art as this controlled, quiet space where people are observers from a distance. [The artists in this show] think about these ideas outside the Western canon.”
A press release by the biennale management said the idea of placing historic sites in dialogue with more contemporary works was aimed at bringing to light the ways Lahore’s celebrated culture, architecture, and gardens, “generally understood to symbolize its palimpsest of connections to Asia and Europe through trade routes and the migration of people and knowledge, also connects with more recent conversations about the significance of historical and indigenous forms of knowledge and practices as necessary alternatives to the extractivism that plague modern societies.”
“Evidence of these local and vernacular forms can be abundantly found everywhere in the architecture, art, cosmology, cuisine, and literature across the city, as well as in the diversity of its inhabitants— people whose relation to local and regional ecosystems have been fine-tuned over millennia of cohabitation and adaptation,” the statement added. 
Tain, who has previously served as curator of modern and contemporary collections at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, sees the Lahore Biennale as being “collective and participatory in nature.”
“One way to think about a biennale is that it’s something which is a space in time that allows for activities and programs to take place and that necessarily involves other people outside the artist,” Tain said at an event before the launch of the exhibitions last week. 
“So I think what is being planned is not artists just making work and putting it on wall or putting it on a floor, but thinking about the work as something that involves other people.”
Qudsia Rahim, a graduate of Lahore’s esteemed National College of Arts and the executive director of the Lahore Biennale Foundation, said the purpose of the biennale was for the “whole city” to take part. 
“To be a part of this biennial, you don’t necessarily have to be an artist,” she said. “The good thing about art is that you don’t need the wall of a drawing room or gallery but what’s important is an idea and for that an audience is important … So, the point of the biennale’s purpose is how can we connect with each other, because we are social animals and in a way we want the whole city to be a part of this biennale.” 
“ART IN A BUSTLING PUBLIC SPACE”
Free and open to the public, the biennale commenced on Saturday, Oct. 5, and will run through Friday, Nov. 8, complemented by a number of collateral exhibitions and programs scattered all over the city. 
One such show that took place during the opening weekend (October 5–7) was the ‘Decolonial Feminist Ecologies: On Body and Land,’ curated by Abdullah Qureshi and featuring Iranian-born artist Sepideh Rahaa and Kenyan-German collaborative artist Syowia Kyambi.
“This is a collateral event for the Lahore Biennale 03, which is taking place in the Brown House inside the Masjid Wazir Khan courthouse,” PAF founder Imtisal Zafar told Arab News, referring to a 17th-century Mughal mosque located in the Walled City.
The mosque was commissioned during the reign of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a part of an ensemble of buildings that also included the nearby Shahi Hammam baths. Considered to be the most ornately decorated Mughal-era mosque, Masjid Wazir Khan is on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List.
“[Art] can’t be constricted to a neat and tidy studio or a clean canvas,” Nairobi-based Kyambi told Arab News. “Art is forever moving, changing and clamoring.”
Her work showed two distinct worlds, the high-rises and apartment complexes and rural countryside and at Thursday’s event, the artist handed out maps and pictures to her audience, shared stories and painted bright colors on a mud wall. She also encouraged her audience to speak out during her performance and voice their opinions on whether they liked it and what they understood of her art. 
“We want to imagine futures of solidarity, community and resistance,” she said. “Not just stay quiet at everything unfolding in front of them.”
Speaking about the experience of working in a place as richly-textured and cosmopolitan as Lahore, with its many iconic and historical buildings, Kyambi said: 
“When I entered for the first time to check the space [at Masjid Wazir Khan], it had a really light energy, and the rooftop is just perfect for my practice in this particular work, because it holds the scale but it’s also outdoors so the work can also keep on changing with the environment ... It’s wonderful to be near the mosque as well and I think it’s a really special part of town.”
PAF founder Zafar said the purpose of the biennale, like the ‘Decolonial Feminist Ecologies’ show arranged by the Pakistan Art Forum, was to promote local and lesser-known artists and bring them in conversation with international, globally acclaimed ones “to show the world how much talent we have here in Pakistan.”
Stephan Chow, a Singaporean artist whose work is featured at the Lahore Biennale, said the people of Lahore and Pakistan were very open to new ideas and art. 
“This is my second trip to Pakistan,” he said, “and I find the people of Pakistan to be very rich in culture, knowledge, and they embrace ideas very well.”