ISLAMABAD, 8 May 2007 — Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said yesterday that the issue of President Pervez Musharraf holding the post of army chief was the country’s internal matter.
She was responding to Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon’s statement in which he had said that Musharraf had pledged to quit the army post by the end of this year.
McKinnon said recently the group was watching reforms in Pakistan and had earmarked an end-of-year deadline for Musharraf to stop holding dual posts as president and army chief.
Referring to the two-day visit of NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer to Pakistan, Tasnim told the weekly news briefing that war on terrorism and security issues would figure in talks between Pakistani leaders and the NATO chief.
Scheffer will discuss cooperation in the war on terror and issues of mutual concern with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Defense Minister Rao Sikandar Iqbal and other senior military officials.
Pakistan is considered a non-NATO ally of the US in the war against terrorism. NATO secretary-general will visit Afghanistan after his Pakistan visit.
Touching on Indo-Pak relations, Tasnim said Pakistan wanted resolution of the Siachen row. “The current situation cannot last for a long time. We want Siachen to be turned into a peace zone,” she added.
A commentator on South Asian politics said the US-Pakistan alliance, formed after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 as part of the global war against terrorism is an example of a ‘bad marriage’, and Washington should take steps to end it.
Zalmay Gulzad, a professor of political science and economics at Harold Washington College, Chicago, said the US has not made any tangible gains from its collaboration with Pakistan.
Following the Democratic Party takeover of the US Congress last November, there has been increasing pressure on the Bush administration to re-evaluate its relationship with Pakistan.
The most prominent move in this regard is the bill approved by the House of Representatives in January which stipulates that continued financial assistance to Pakistan be contingent upon a certification from the president of the United States that Islamabad is doing its utmost to contain the Taleban and Al-Qaeda.
22 Killed in Accident
Twenty-two people were killed in a bus accident in the northwestern town of Nathiagali late Sunday night. Seven others were seriously injured.
The passenger bus veered off a mountain road and fell about 600 feet into a ravine, police said yesterday.
Twenty-one people died at the scene after the bus crashed at a sharp bend in the road near Nathiagali, a hill resort town about 50 kilometers northeast of Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, said Arshad Masud, a police official. One injured in the crash later died in hospital. Other injured are in serious condition, Masud said.
Police and people from villages near the crash site helped pull the dead and injured out of the wreckage of the bus, Masud said.
“God helped us. It was like pulling the bodies along a wall,” Masud said, referring to the steep ravine where the bus had tumbled. According to another report, the accident happened because of speeding.
