Pak police arrest nephew of former Nawaz Sharif

LAHORE, Feb 3: A nephew of Pakistan’s exiled former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was arrested here today following his return home from Saudi Arabia, police said.

Yusuf Abbas, 18, was taken into custody from his residence, a senior police official told AFP.

The official, who did not want to be named, refused to give any reasons for the arrest of Abbas, who had arrived here from Saudi Arabia last week.

Sharif was exiled to the Kingdom in December by military ruler General Pervez Musharraf, along with a score of close relatives, under an arrangement brokered by the Saudi Royal family.

Sharif, ousted in a military coup in October 1999, cannot return to Pakistan for 10 years.

Acting President of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League party, Makhdoom Javed Hashmi, expressed his "shock" at the arrest.

"Yousaf returned home only to pursue his studies and was about to take his exams. He has nothing to do with politics," Hashmi said.

"His arrest clearly indicates a personal vendetta against the Nawaz Sharif family. Such steps are always expected from the military rulers because they can’t tolerate any criticism or dissent. We condemn this act of harassment." (AFP)

Rumsfeld defends US missile plan

MUNICH, Feb 3: New U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld today sharply defended the Bush Administration’s National Missile Defence Plan and dismissed support for the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty as "cold war thinking".

Rumsfeld, in Germany for an annual meeting of European and international defence leaders, said President George W. Bush’s controversial proposal to protect the United States and its allies from missiles "just doesn’t threaten anyone".

"That is really cold war thinking in my view," he told reporters travelling with him to Munich when asked about the importance and future of the 1972 ABM Treaty, which would forbid a U.S. National Missile Defence (NMD).

"The Soviet Union is gone. Russia is a different country. That period is over in our life, why don’t we get over it?" Rumsfeld said.

Many European leaders say the ABM Treaty, which Rumsfeld in December called "ancient history", is a bedrock of nuclear arms control and worry that Washington will abandon it.

Rumsfeld said that Moscow, which bitterly opposes NMD and has refused to permit changes in the ABM Treaty, was lobbying western Europe and nations around the world to kill NMD.

"They know, and we know, and you know that the (U.S.) systems that are being discussed are not in any way relevant to the Russians with their hundreds and thousands" of nuclear missiles, he said.

"We are talking about systems that are able to deal with handfuls of things," Rumsfeld added, stressing that the limited defence would be designed to shoot down only a few missiles launched by potential enemies such as north Korea, Iran or Iraq.

Rumsfeld made the whirlwind one-day trip to the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy to hold get-acquainted talks with allied defence ministers, address NMD concerns and discuss cross-atlantic security.

He suggested that the ABM Treaty’s time was past.

"I mean that is really cold war thinking in my view - to elevate that treaty as something that is central to a (U.S.-Russian) relationship today," he told reporters.

Rumsfeld declined to say whether he felt the treaty should be modified, which Russia has rejected, or scrapped. He said the Bush Administration had no intention of "moving precipitously" on NMD without close allied consultation and talks with Moscow.

"There’s little doubt in my mind but that if you were seeking a system that was the earliest to deploy, the most cost-effective, technically the best, you would very likely come up with something other than if you sat down and tried to design a system that would fit within a treaty that was written 25 years ago," he said.

Rumsfeld, also Defence Secretary from 1975 to 1977, said the ABM was agreed "when technology was notably different, when we were in a cold war, when the nature of the threats in the world were vastly different".

He is the first senior Bush Administration official to carry the argument on NMD to Europe. The meeting could set an early tone for cross-atlantic security ties for Bush.

Rumsfeld said that he was open-minded about the European Union forming its own rapid-reaction force to deal with conflicts or peacekeeping in which NATO was not involved, but warned the force must not threaten NATO’s power or status.

"I begin at the beginning - and that is that NATO is the most successful military alliance in history probably, that it is enormously important to the United States and western Europe and, I would add, to the world," he said.

"If I saw more dollars coming in (European) budgets that would net increase the strength of NATO nations, that would be encouraging. I haven’t seen that, and I guess I’m more interested in addition than subtraction."(REUTERS)

CAIRO, Feb 3: External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh today said India cannot unilaterally commit itself to total elimination of weapons of mass destruction and warned that the world was becoming a stage for the destructive doctrine of "Jihad" as foreign policy.

Outlining the country’s security concerns in a presentation on ‘India’s Perspective on International and Regional Security Issues’ at the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs here, Singh, however, agreed that total elimination was the only solution for the danger posed by weapons of mass destruction.

He said national security must consider the continued relevance of weapons of mass destruction as a currency of power. They serve ironically not as fighting instruments but the purpose of deterrence, he said.

However, only the rational and responsible can be deterred. "We have yet to find an answer for the factor of irrational response," he said, adding "that is why for weapons of mass destruction, there is only one solution: universal, non-discriminatory and total elimination of all weapons of mass destruction from the face of the earth."

"India remains committed to this goal and we will continue to pursue it untiringly. Like others, India too cannot do so unilaterally in a world of differentiated norms, of uneven and selective criteria of assessment of national security," he said.

Referring to the various factors of consequence to India’s security, Singh identified terrorism emanating from Pakistan and Afghanistan as one and said "the great vortex of medieval malevolism and terrorism that has come into existence in Pakistan and Afghanistan identifies yet another aspect of the security of our region."

He said what is happening in Pakistan and Afghanistan is an outstanding example of how availability of arms has given a new impetus to the new ideology — the ideology of terrorism.

"The contest on the soil of Afghanistan between the then USSR and by proxy, the USA, resulted in the birth of taliban and in consequence a great deal else that has followed: arms, narcotics, terrorist training camps and the creation of a new and additional destabilising agency.

"This has resulted in a kind of validation of the employment of terrorism and terrorists as extensions of state policy. Thus, encouragement, abetment, financing, arming, training of terrorists by agencies of state has got conferred a kind of legitimacy," he said.

Singh said from this emerged the advocacy of ‘jihad’ as an instrument of foreign policy. "The entire world is now therefore an arena for the application of this destructive doctrine," he said.

He told the Council, an influential think tank which provides inputs on Egypt’s foreign policy, that economic security was central to national security. Foreign policy is now not only political but foreign economic policy has also acquired a cutting edge, he said.

Environment, water, energy and militarisation of outer space are the other factors that will gain importance in security globally in the years ahead, he said.(PTI)

Vajpayee-Musharraf contact "positive" development: Pak

KARACHI, Feb 3: The first direct contact between Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani military ruler General Pervez Musharraf is a "positive" development for peace, a senior military official said today.

"It is certainly a positive sign and development," the head of the Pakistani military’s Inter-Service Public Relations (ISPR) department, Major-General Rashid Qureshi said.

"It’s a good omen for peace and if someone is genuinely interested in peace and resolution of the main problem he must build on this opportunity," Qureshi, who is also Musharraf’s press secretary, said.

Vajpayee and Musharraf talked by telephone yesterday about India’s quake disaster, marking the first contact between them since well before Musharraf seized power in a coup in October 1999.

The Foreign Ministry here said Musharraf offered to send more relief from Pakistan, which has already delivered three planeloads of blankets and tents.

Qureshi said the two leaders spoke for seven or eight minutes and agreed to remain in touch with each other in future. (AFP)

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