No progress in Taliban hostage talks

Talks Thursday between Afghanistan's Taliban and a South Korean delegation trying to free 19 hostages ended with the militants reporting no progress.The two sides met for three hours in the small town of Ghanzi, south of Kabul, said a Taliban spokesman and a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross that has been facilitating the meetings.Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP that representatives of his militant movement had demanded the release of eight Taliban prisoners."But so far our demands have not been accepted and there has been no development in the negotiations," Ahmadi said.A Red Cross official said it was not immediately clear if there would be a new round of discussions on Friday.The Taliban have killed two of the 23 South Korean aid workers they abducted July 19 and threatened to kill more. On Monday they released two women hostages as a "gesture of goodwill."

US Bent upon Striking Pakistan But will Take Care!

The US State Department has said that Washington will not hesitate to hit ‘high-value’ Al Qaeda targets inside another country, but will do so in a way that it does not harm America’s relations with that state.“If there is actionable intelligence on high-value targets, wherever they may be, we are going to do everything that we can to act on that information,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told a briefing in Washington.“And we are confident that we will be able to do that in such a way that we don’t harm our relations with any states that may be in question, whether that’s Pakistan, Afghanistan or some other state,” he said.The debate over a possible US action against suspected Al Qaeda targets started late last month when a US intelligence report claimed that Al Qaeda had established a safe haven in Pakistan’s tribal territory.Later, several senior US officials said that if they had ‘actionable’ intelligence about suspected Al Qaeda hideouts inside Pakistan, they would launch direct military strikes at those targets.The statements caused a bitter reaction in Islamabad where both government and opposition leaders said that such an attack would violate Pakistan’s territorial integrity.Since then, Washington has softened its stance, with President Bush declaring earlier this week that the US respects Pakistan’s sovereignty but expects Islamabad to take immediate action against terrorist hideouts.

London bombing plot foiled

Police defused a car bomb packed with petrol, gas and nails in London’s busy theatre district on Friday, foiling an attack that could have killed many people and which echoed a previous Al Qaeda plot, police said.Police also sealed off two more central London streets — Park Lane and Fleet Street — as they investigated other suspicious vehicles.The bomb was found in a green Mercedes parked outside a night club shortly after 1am, when hundreds of people were packed in the busy night-life district 1km from the prime minister’s Downing Street residence.The police, alerted by ambulance workers who thought they saw smoke inside the car, defused the bomb, which Sky News said was rigged to detonate with a mobile-phone-triggered device.Authorities said they did not know who left the bomb but they had begun a counter-terrorism investigation.“It is obvious that if the device had detonated there could have been significant injury or loss of life,” said Peter Clarke, the head of London’s anti-terrorist police.He said there were similarities between Friday’s incident and an earlier plot, uncovered in 2004, in which an Al Qaeda militant planned to detonate gas-fuelled bombs inside limousines in London, among other targets.It might also have echoes of another recent plot to attack targets including a high-profile nightclub, Clarke said.Prime Minister Gordon Brown, facing a major challenge two days after succeeding Tony Blair, convened Britain’s top security committee, Cobra.

SECOND BOMB:Police found a second car bomb near Park Lane, a senior officer said, saying the two were “clearly linked.”The Metropolitan Police anti-terrorism chief Peter Clarke said the second vehicle, a blue Mercedes which was taken to a car pound after being discovered near the first one, contained similar material to the first, including nails

Dick Cheney Pushing For Strike On Iran

WASHINGTON, June 15 — A year after President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a new strategy toward Iran, a behind-the-scenes debate has broken out within the administration over whether the approach has any hope of reining in Iran’s nuclear program, according to senior administration officials.

The debate has pitted Ms. Rice and her deputies, who appear to be winning so far, against the few remaining hawks inside the administration, especially those in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office who, according to some people familiar with the discussions, are pressing for greater consideration of military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

In the year since Ms. Rice announced the new strategy for the United States to join forces with Europe, Russia and China to press Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities, Iran has installed more than a thousand centrifuges to enrich uranium. The International Atomic Energy Agency predicts that 8,000 or so could be spinning by the end of the year, if Iran surmounts its technical problems.

Those hard numbers are at the core of the debate within the administration over whether Mr. Bush should warn Iran’s leaders that he will not allow them to get beyond some yet-undefined milestones, leaving the implication that a military strike on the country’s facilities is still an option.

Even beyond its nuclear program, Iran is emerging as an increasing source of trouble for the Bush administration by inflaming the insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and in Gaza, where it has provided military and financial support to the militant Islamic group Hamas, which now controls the Gaza Strip.

Even so, friends and associates of Ms. Rice who have talked with her recently say she has increasingly moved toward the European position that the diplomatic path she has laid out is the only real option for Mr. Bush, even though it has so far failed to deter Iran from enriching uranium, and that a military strike would be disastrous.

The accounts were provided by officials at the State Department, White House and the Pentagon who are on both sides of the debate, as well as people who have spoken with members of Mr. Cheney’s staff and with Ms. Rice. The officials said they were willing to explain the thinking behind their positions, but would do so only on condition of anonymity.

Mr. Bush has publicly vowed that he would never “tolerate” a nuclear Iran, and the question at the core of the debate within the administration is when and whether it makes sense to shift course.

The issue was raised at a closed-door White House meeting recently when the departing deputy national security adviser, J. D. Crouch, told senior officials that President Bush needed an assessment of how the stalemate over Iran’s nuclear program was likely to play out over the next 18 months, said officials briefed on the meeting.

In response, R. Nicholas Burns, an under secretary of state who is the chief American strategist on Iran, told the group that negotiations with Tehran could still be going on when Mr. Bush leaves office in January 2009. The hawks in the room reported later that they were deeply unhappy — but not surprised — by Mr. Burns’s assessment, which they interpreted as a tacit acknowledgment that the Bush administration had no “red line” beyond which Iran would not be permitted to step.

But conservatives inside the administration have continued in private to press for a tougher line, making arguments that their allies outside government are voicing publicly. “Regime change or the use of force are the only available options to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapons capability, if they want it,” said John R. Bolton, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations.

Only a few weeks ago, one of Mr. Cheney’s top aides, David Wurmser, told conservative research groups and consulting firms in Washington that Mr. Cheney believed that Ms. Rice’s diplomatic strategy was failing, and that by next spring Mr. Bush might have to decide whether to take military action.

The vice president’s office has declined to talk about Mr. Wurmser’s statements, and says Mr. Cheney is fully on board with the president’s strategy. In a June 1 article for Commentary magazine, the neoconservative editor Norman Podhoretz laid out what a headline described as “The Case for Bombing Iran.”

“In short, the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force — any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938,” Mr. Podhoretz wrote.

Mr. Burns and officials from the Treasury Department have been trying to use the mounting conservative calls for a military strike to press Europe and Russia to expand economic sanctions against Iran. Just last week, Israel’s transportation minister and former defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, visited Washington and told Ms. Rice that sanctions must be strong enough to get the Iranians to stop enriching uranium by the end of 2007.

While Mr. Mofaz did not threaten a military strike, Israeli officials said he told Ms. Rice that by the end of the year, Israel “would have to reassess where we are.”

The State Department and Treasury officials are pushing for a stronger set of United Nations Security Council sanctions against members of Iran’s government, including an extensive travel ban and further moves to restrict the ability of Iran’s financial institutions to do business outside of Iran. Beyond that, American officials have been trying to get European and Asian banks to take additional steps, outside of the Security Council, against Iran.

“We’re saying to them, ‘Look, you need to help us make the diplomacy succeed, and you guys need to stop business as usual with Iran,’ ” an administration official said. “We’re not just sitting here ignoring reality.”

But the fallout from the Iraq war has severely limited the Bush administration’s ability to maneuver on the Iran nuclear issue and has left many in the administration, and certainly America’s allies and critics in Europe, firmly against military strikes on Iran. On Thursday, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the international nuclear watchdog agency, warned anew that military action against Iran would “be an act of madness.”

The debate over “red lines” is a familiar one inside the Bush White House that last arose in 2002 over North Korea. When the North Koreans threw out international inspectors on the last day of that year and soon declared that they planned to reprocess 8,000 rods of spent fuel into weapons-grade plutonium, President Bush had to decide whether to declare that if North Korea moved toward weapons, it could face a military strike on its facilities.

The Pentagon had drawn up an extensive plan for taking out those facilities, though with little enthusiasm, because it feared it could not control North Korea’s response, and the administration chose not to delivery any ultimatum. North Korea tested a nuclear weapon last October, and American intelligence officials estimate it now has the fuel for eight or more weapons.

Iran is far behind the North Koreans; it is believed to be three to eight years away from its first weapon, American intelligence officials have told Congress. Conservatives argue that if the administration fails to establish a line over which Iran must not step, the enrichment of uranium will go ahead, eventually giving the Iranians fuel that, with additional enrichment out of the sight of inspectors, it could use for weapons.

To date, however, the administration has been hesitant about saying that it will not permit Iran to produce more than a given amount of fuel, out of concern that Iran’s hard-liners would simply see that figure as a goal.

In the year since the United States made its last offer to Iran, the Iranians have gone from having a few dozen centrifuges in operation to building a facility that at last count, a month ago, had more than 1,300. “The pace of negotiations have lagged behind the pace of the Iranian nuclear program,” said Robert Joseph, the former under secretary of state for international security, who left his post partly over his opposition to the administration’s recent deal with North Korea.

US 'to unblock' Palestinian aid

The US will lift a 15-month embargo on aid to the Palestinians once a new emergency government excluding Hamas is sworn in, a US diplomat has said.

US consul-general in Jerusalem Jacob Walles said there were no obstacles to re-engaging with the new government, which would have full US support.

Palestinian President and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is expected to swear in a new prime minister on Sunday.

He sacked the Hamas-led government after clashes left more than 100 dead.

On Saturday, violence between the rival factions spread from Gaza to the West Bank, as Fatah gunmen stormed the Hamas-controlled Palestinian parliament building in Ramallah.

Quartet backing

Mr Welles met President Abbas on Saturday and said afterwards that he expected announcements in Washington about "our assistance and about the financial regulations" early next week.

"There won't be any obstacles, economically and politically, in terms of re-engaging with this [emergency] government," he told Reuters news agency.

The quartet of Middle East peace mediators - the US, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union - has also said it backs the decision to dissolve the Hamas led-administration.

Western nations imposed sanctions on the Palestinians after Hamas, considered a terrorist organisation by the US and EU, won elections in January 2006.

Hamas has denounced the move to form an emergency administration as illegal.

Last week, it ousted Fatah from Gaza after a week of fierce fighting.

On Saturday, Fatah gunmen seized the parliament building in Ramallah in the West Bank.

Second deputy speaker Hassan Khuraishah, an independent, told the BBC he had been beaten up as he tried to prevent Fatah gunmen from raising their flag.

In a show of strength, Fatah supporters paraded around Ramallah, firing weapons into the air and chanting "Hamas out".

Almost all Hamas politicians and prominent supporters in Ramallah have either fled or gone into hiding.

Fatah supporters also took over the Hamas-controlled legislative council in Nablus.

Fleeing Gaza

Meanwhile, hundreds of Fatah supporters are reported to have been fleeing Hamas-controlled Gaza by land and sea.

Gaza, and the much larger West Bank, are just 45km (30 miles) apart, but correspondents say they now look poised to function as two separate territories.

President Abbas declared a state of emergency when he sacked the government of Ismail Haniya on Thursday.

Mr Abbas has said he will rule by presidential decree until conditions are right for early elections.

His nominee for prime minister, Salam Fayyad, is a former World Bank economist, whose impending appointment Israel has welcomed.

George Galloway on Altaf "Bhai" (Address to the House of Commons)

Address to the House of Commons of the UK Parliament - Monday, 11 June 2007

By GEORGE GALLOWAY

I have an interest in Pakistan. I hold the highest civil award that the country can bestow, the Hilal-i-Quaid-i-Azam, given to me at the end of the 1980s for my work for the restoration of democracy in Pakistan at the end of an earlier bout of military dictatorship supported at the time by the then British Government. I also hold the second highest civil award in Pakistan, the Hilal-i-Pakistan, given to me for my work on behalf of the rights of the people of Kashmir. Until the military overthrow of democracy in Pakistan, I worked closely with all the democratic parties in the country.

It is worth establishing a time line. General [Pervez] Musharraf, as we used to call him when he seized power in a military coup in 1999 - before we began to call him “President” Musharraf, an office to which he appointed himself - came to power having imprisoned and then exiled the democratic political leaders in the country. In 2002, he held a referendum, an extraordinary one even by the standards of eastern potentates, in which he ‘won’ 97 percent of the vote. The referendum was described by Transparency International as blatantly rigged, and the accompanying parliamentary elections in 2002 were described in the same way by all international and disinterested observers. At that time Musharraf made a promise that he would cease to be Chief of the Army general staff, a promise on which he has reneged.

In September 2006, Amnesty International issued a detailed report on human rights abuses in Pakistan, alleging that the Musharraf Government were responsible for violating “a wide array of human rights.”

The alleged violations included torture, unlawful detention, enforced disappearance, extrajudicial execution, unlawful transfer of persons to the United States and other countries, and arbitrary arrests.

That date, September 2006, is important. Two months later, in November 2006 - just over six months ago - the British Prime Minister [Tony Blair] visited “President” Musharraf, and this is what he said. He paid tribute to General Musharraf for “symbolising the future for Muslim countries the world over.”

I want the House to keep those words in its mind. The Prime Minister praised Musharraf, the military dictator of Pakistan, for “symbolising the future for Muslim countries the world over.”

Let us see what has happened in Pakistan since the Prime Minister uttered those words. The [Pakistan Supreme Court] Chief Justice, Iftikhar [Muhammad] Chaudhry, insisted on hearing cases of “missing persons” and objecting to the privatisation of a steel mill.

I think we know who may have taken over; perhaps new Labour’s biggest donor, Mr. [Lakshmi N.] Mittal, who has given millions of pounds to the Labour party. The Chief Justice would have none of it and was told by “President” Musharraf that he must resign. He refused to resign and, on 16 March, just three months after Prime Minister Blair held Musharraf as symbolising the future for Muslim countries, the Chief Justice was supported by demonstrations throughout the country by lawyers, civil society groups and Opposition parties, which were savagely assailed by General Musharraf’s armed forces. That included the first of many attacks on independent television stations.

On 26 April, the Chief Justice made a 26-hour journey by car from Islamabad to Lahore and was welcomed by vast crowds along the way. On 12 May, the Government of Sindh, a coalition Government of Musharraf’s king’s party and the Muttahida Quami Movement [MQM], led from London by a British citizen, Altaf Hussain, to whom I shall return, laid siege to the city. The main thoroughfares were blocked, lawyers and their supporters were attacked outside the Karachi Bar with batons and the MQM militants fired bullets indiscriminately into the peaceful demonstrators.

Eleven members of the Pakistan Peoples Party [PPP] were killed, 10 members of the Justice Movement [Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)] of Imran Khan, with whom I met today and who is meeting the Leader of the Opposition tomorrow - I am not sure whether the Minister will find time in his busy schedule to meet Imran Khan - were wounded, as were scores of others. Last week, just seven months after the Prime Minister said that Musharraf symbolised the future for Muslim countries around the world, all independent television stations were closed down and a draconian ordinance [Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) Ordinance] on the press was introduced.

Human Rights Watch [HRW], an organisation often quoted approvingly by Her Majesty’s Government, says that “As President, Musharraf has arbitrarily amended the Pakistani Constitution to strengthen the power of the presidency, marginalized elected representatives and formalized the role of the Army in government” and claimed military impunity for abuses. It goes on: “These abuses include extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrests.”

In The Guardian today, there is a story about how those independent television stations have been taken off the air and journalists fired upon. One television station, Aaj TV, was attacked for six hours in Karachi during the unrest accompanying the Chief Justice of Pakistan’s visit to the city [on Saturday, 12 May 2007]. The report states that a large demonstration was tear-gassed, bullets were fired, batons and rubber bullets were used, television stations were taken off the air and 52 bullets were fired into the television studio of Aaj TV.

The U.S. State Department - I quote it because the United States Government often acts in synchronicity with our own - says that the MQM, which is the power in Karachi, “has been widely accused of human rights abuses since its foundation two decades ago” and it goes on:

“In the mid-1990s, the MQM-A was heavily involved” - not alleged to be heavily involved - “in the widespread political violence that wracked Pakistan’s southern Sindh province.”

Three Members of Congress, led by Joseph Biden, another man close to new Labour, wrote the following letter just a few days ago to Condoleezza Rice:

“Dear Secretary Rice…we have witnessed the spiral of civil unrest and harshly-suppressed protest in Pakistan…We ask that you publicly call for an immediate end to the violence, and urge the government of Pakistan to commit to holding free and fair elections by the year’s end.”

Nothing less will be acceptable from the Minister this evening.

Joe Biden and his fellow Senators say that “President” Musharraf’s dismissal of the Chief Justice has sparked protests from tens of thousands, “spearheaded by bar associations, and supported by moderate political parties and civil society organizations.”

They say: “The violence in Karachi appears to show disturbing signs of collusion between MQM and government forces” leading to the deaths and wounding of opposition party militants and other protestors - and they go on, and on.

They say in the final paragraph: “The national interests of the United States and of Pakistan are both served by a speedy restoration of full democracy to Pakistan, and by an end to state-sponsored intimidation - often violent - of Pakistani citizens protesting government actions in a legal and peaceful manner. We urge you to make a public appeal to this end, and to raise these matters forcefully in your interactions with Pakistani government officials.”

Again, nothing less will be acceptable from the Minister when he addresses the House this evening.

Following my discussions today with Imran Khan, I want to emphasise that my primary concern, and that of most Pakistanis living in Britain, is this: Why is Altaf Hussain being allowed to conduct from a sofa in Edgware a terrorist campaign and a campaign of extortion of businesses and citizens in Sindh, and why was he given British citizenship? I would like the Minister to answer the following question tonight, and if he does not have the answer to hand I would like him to write to me to inform me of it: Was Altaf Hussain ever refused British citizenship, and if he was, what changed between that refusal and the granting of citizenship to him?

It is extraordinary that in the middle of a so-called ‘war on terror’ there is such a bloody reign of terror in a major Pakistani city - and there are millions of Pakistanis who are citizens of our country. A terrorist cell is operating from Edgware in the form of the MQM. Every day, Altaf Hussain, a British citizen, addresses his puppets in Karachi, giving them instructions on how they should govern, including how they should handle peaceful demonstrations.

The Minister smiles smugly. He might think that this is a small matter, but if this man, instead of being a stooge of General - sorry, “President” - Musharraf and of a Government allied to his own, were a hook-handed, glass-eyed ranting mullah, he would at best already be in Belmarsh and at worst he would be on a plane being deported to the country from where he absconded from murder charges.

This man is the godfather of Sindh - he is the godfather of Karachi - and he is living high on the hog from the extortion of the citizens of Karachi. I really do not know why the Minister finds this funny. It is a serious matter. The question that must be answered is this: How long will the British Government tolerate this situation that is occurring under their noses? Citizenship was given to [Altaf] Hussain under this Government in 1999, and it is my belief that he was refused citizenship under the previous Administration. I want to know why he was given citizenship, and why he is being allowed to operate with impunity.

Far from symbolising the future for the Muslim countries around the world, General Musharraf crystallises the problem which Western governments have in those countries. We tell people that we are invading countries in order to defend democracy and liberty, but we support dictators who crush democracy and liberty as long as they do so in concordance with Western policy on other matters.

The slogan, “My enemy’s enemy is my friend” is a deeply flawed one, but the Government do not seem to have learned that. They did not read the novel “Frankenstein” to the end. Dr. Frankenstein created a monster, but he lost control of it because we cannot control monsters. Across the border in Afghanistan, we helped to create the monster of jihadism and Islamist fundamentalism that became bin Laden and became the Taliban, on the principle that my enemy’s enemy is my friend. However, Madam Deputy Speaker, as we are finding in Iraq and to some extent in Palestine, our enemy’s enemy is not always our friend. Sometimes, our enemy’s enemy is worse than our enemy, and by allying ourselves with the former, making him our friend, we become complicit in the crimes that he commits.

Nobody in the Muslim World can believe that this Government are really interested in democracy and liberty in the Muslim World, so long as they are kissing Colonel [Muammar Abu Minyar] Gaddafi in the tent at Sirte - the same Colonel Gaddafi who brought down the Lockerbie airliner, we were told, with the deaths of hundreds of people; the same Colonel Gaddafi whom we said funded the IRA’s bombing campaign in Britain through the 1970s and 1980s; the same Colonel Gaddafi whom we said shot down an English policewoman in a London square. Nobody can believe that Colonel Gaddafi deserves the kisses of the British Prime Minister. Nobody believes that Colonel Gaddafi has changed - just that he has changed sides.

Nobody believes that General Musharraf really is the President of Pakistan, and to treat him as if he is - is an insult to the hundreds of millions of Pakistanis living under the iron heel of his dictatorship, not to mention the Pakistanis living as citizens in Britain, many of whom have traditionally voted for the Minister’s party. So I hope that the Minister will bear that in mind when he answers this debate. General Musharraf is a tyrant who is about to fall. I urge this Minister not to do as the now Lord Owen did in backing the tyrant Shah of Persia until the last moments before he fell. It was because of Western support for tyrants such as the Shah [of Iran] until the last moments that the radicalisation of such as the Islamic revolution in Iran took place.

My last words are these. Pakistan is a nuclear power. After Musharraf falls, no one knows who will replace him. Whose finger will be on the nuclear trigger in Pakistan once Musharraf falls? The Government would be doing Britain the favour that Biden and others are doing America by intervening now to distance themselves from this tyrant and to help the democratic forces come back to power in Pakistan.

Mr. George Galloway is the Respect Member of UK Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow.

From: Saim's Blog

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Musharraf's Second Term In Doubt

The embattled Musharraf regime in Pakistan seems to be "buckling" under the weight of the growing unrest in the country after the suspension of the top Supreme Court judge, putting in question the General's "ability to win the next presidential election," a US-based think tank has said.

There are "significant doubts" now about President Pervez Musharraf's ability to secure a second term in the presidential election due in the second half of September, said the online news intelligence portal Stratfor.

Referring to the president's dressing down his team for not standing up for him in the ongoing domestic crisis, the Texas-based think tank said, "These comments.....show that the Musharraf regime is buckling under the weight of the crisis, which has created serious fissures within the civilian side of the hybrid Musharrafian political system."

"Infighting among his allies upon whom he depends to secure a second presidential term and the rapidly intensifying unrest in the country raise serious doubts about Musharraf's ability to win the next presidential election," the 'Daily Times' of Pakistan reported Stratfor as saying in its commentary.

"If the president cannot win re-election, he could try to impose an emergency rule of sorts, but that would only exacerbate matters," the online news intelligence portal said.

Sketching a post-Musharraf scenario, Stratfor says, "The military is unlikely to continue to directly run the country." "Moreover, because of the assertiveness of the judiciary and the media, and an increasingly vibrant civil society, the military will have to give the civilian setup more freedom than it did in 1988, when military rule came to an end after military-chief-cum-president Zia-ul-Haq died in a mysterious plane crash," it said.

From: Saim's Blog

US, Russia hail Pakistan’s move to combat nuclear terror

WASHINGTON: The United States welcomed Monday Pakistan’s decision to join a global program led by Washington and Moscow to combat nuclear terrorism.

Islambad on Saturday announced its intention to join the the “Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism” although its participation would reportedly not cover the country’s military nuclear program and installations.

About 50 countries are involved in the joint initiative launched by US President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin last July.

“The United States and Russia welcome the decision of the government of Pakistan to become a partner nation of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism,” a statement from the US State Department said.

It added that at the most recent meeting of the group in Ankara, Turkey, in February, member states “emphasized the importance of increasing partnership and participation by nations committed to combating nuclear terrorism.”

Pakistan, like its nuclear archrival India, is not a member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

Islamabad’s decision to join the global initiative comes amid concerns that a Pakistani nuclear smuggling network reportedly crippled three years ago could resume business amid strong demand for atomic technology from governments and terrorist groups.

Although the United States had declared that the network led by disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan had been rolled up, only a few of the 40 individuals identified as having worked with him are in prison, said a report last month by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

From: Saim’s Blog