WB gives $1.8 billion for Pakistan’s energy and water sectors

The World Bank has allocated an unprecedented amount of $1.8 billion for Pakistan’s development projects in the energy and water sectors. Finance Minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh made the announcement after holding a meeting with Vice President of the World Bank, Isabel Guerrero, on the sidelines of the IMF-World Bank annual spring gathering of economic leaders from around the world.

The financial institution has also expressed its willingness to assist with financing the multi-year Dasu dam project, to be built in the Kohistan area on the River Indus, with a 1,500MW power generation capacity. They have already approved the power generation enhancement project.

“The World Bank allocating this unprecedented amount in one year is a big sign of confidence in Pakistan’s ability to accomplish development for its people,” Dr Shaikh said.

The amount follows last year’s $1.2 billion in assistance, and will be spent on upgrades and completion of development projects in the energy and water sectors as well as infrastructure, social and reform programs.

“The World Bank vice president was appreciative of Pakistan’s economic performance in these difficult times of global economic and regional challenges,” the finance minister added.

Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, Sherry Rehman, also attended the meeting. “This signifies that both the international community and the financial institutions have a growing confidence in Pakistan’s dedication and ability to realise development for its people,” said Ambassador Sherry Rehman.

Vice President Guerrero expressed satisfaction with the measures Islamabad has taken to enhance its revenue generation, which has increased by 25% over the last nine months. Other measures include the continuing strong performance of the external sector, both exports and remittances and a healthy 4% GDP growth expected this year.

Dr Shaikh acknowledged the World Bank’s sustained cooperation with Pakistan, calling the financial institution a reliable development partner of Pakistan.

1,014 arms licences issued on MPs’ fake signatures cancelled

By Ijaz Kakakhel

* Interior secretary tells PAC ministry has imposed complete ban on issuing new licences

ISLAMABAD: The Public Accounts Committee on Monday directed the Interior Ministry to submit a report of cancellation of arms licences, which were issued on fake signatures of parliamentarians, to the committee within three months.

Interior Secretary Qamar Zaman Chaudhry informed the committee that the ministry had dug out 1,014 arms licences applications on fake signatures of parliamentarians. After this case, he said the ministry imposed a complete ban on issuing new licences. All licences, which might be issued in the future, would be sent to NADRA for proper verification to make the system more secure. A summary of new arms policy has been sent to the Prime Minister’s Secretariat, under which new licences will be issued from the secretariat.

The cancellation of licences issued on fake signatures of parliamentarians was in progress and it will take some time, he said, to which the PAC directed the Interior Ministry to submit the report of the cancellation of the licences within three months.

The PAC was informed that the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) Police had collected Rs 32.533 million under different heads (11 in number) during 2007-08, but the receipts were not deposited in the national exchequer.

The management was utilising such receipts to meet departmental expenses over and above the government budgeted fund without the approval of the Finance Ministry. PAC Chairman Chaudhry Nisar Ali questioned why the Finance Ministry was not improving the system. He said the ministry was always the main cause of financial irregularities. “If the Finance Ministry improves its system, about 70 percent of problems related to financial irregularities/mismanagement would be automatically finished. It is always the auditor general of Pakistan that highlights such issues, while the ministry never does its job,” he said. The interior secretary informed the committee that after being given instructions by the PAC, the collection of fees under different heads was stopped, but the Finance Ministry never provided adequate funds. He claimed that these funds were utilised for public welfare and the general people would suffer. Nisar formed a committee, including the finance secretary, interior secretary, auditor general of Pakistan, IG Islamabad, and himself. The committee will hold informal discussion over the issue so as to resolve it permanently. Nisar said that wrongdoers would not be protected, adding that no person from any government service should be allowed to go away if he/she commits isappropriation/irregularities.

About the Pakistan Rangers, he said the former rangers DG was very controversial and claimed that the unit was mainly used for political purposes. He said the role of the rangers was always under emphasised and said that due credit should be given to the unit. About misappropriation by the rangers, he said the PAC wanted financial rules in every government department. “Millions of rupees were deposited by different forces and ministries in the national exchequer,” he said.

Afghan children face world’s worst conditions

Sugita Katyal

HERAT, Afghanistan (Afghanistan is the hardest place in the world to be a child, the South Asia regional director for UNICEF said, with high child mortality rates, poor levels of nutrition and rampant sexual abuse.

“The situation in Afghanistan as a whole is one of the most dramatic in South Asia and also in the world. Afghanistan is the most difficult place to be born as a child,” Daniel Toole said on a visit to Afghanistan this week.

“If I could take one challenge, it’s survival.”

Three decades of war and a worsening insurgency have made it ever tougher for an Afghan child just to survive, Toole told Reuters during a visit aimed at highlighting what UNICEF calls the worst conditions for children on earth.

One of the girls he had just met in a woman’s shelter was only nine years old when she was forced to marry a total stranger. Another was just 11.

More than a quarter of Afghan children — 257 out of 1,000 — will die before they reach their fifth birthday and 165 out of every 1,000 will die in the first year of their lives, more than any place in the world, according to UNICEF data from 2008.

Afghanistan also has the second highest maternal mortality rate in the world after Sierra Leone, with 1,800 women per 100,000 live births dying during child birth, according to UNICEF estimates from 2005.

“On top of that, we overlay the conflict, and so children are being displaced, their food production has been disrupted, so the chances of being yet further endangered by the security situation … make it that much more dramatic,” said Toole.

“DRAMATIC STORIES, PAINFUL STORIES”

Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst levels since a U.S.-led invasion in late 2001 overthrew the Taliban. Since then, intense fighting between insurgents and foreign and Afghan troops has forced thousands of civilians to flee their homes.

An increasing number of children are also fleeing across Afghanistan’s borders, said Toole, with many turning up as far away as Western Europe without their parents.

Last April, 24 Afghan children aged between 14 and 16 were found living on a sidewalk of a railway station in Rome. The Save the Children aid group said Afghan children now made up one of the biggest groups of unaccompanied minors in the city.

Other major problems facing children in Afghanistan, particularly girls, said Toole, is underage marriage and sexual abuse. Forty-three percent of girls aged 20-24 were married before they were 18, according to UNICEF figures from 2009.

Girls are often married against their will to men more than twice their age and are forced to have sex with their husbands before they reach puberty.

Toole described a visit he made to a women’s shelter supported by UNICEF in the western city of Herat. The shelter is the only place in the city where girls who have been sexually abused or married at a young age can seek refuge.

“Two young girls, one who was nine who was married. She didn’t even know she was being married until she arrived and was told, ‘here is your husband’. Another married at 11 against her will,” said Toole after meeting the girls at the shelter.

“Dramatic stories, painful stories, but I think it’s the tip of the iceberg. I found myself thinking, ‘how many girls have had this happen and and can’t get to this centre?’,” he said.

But despite the difficulties facing Afghan children, Toole said progress was being made, especially in education with an increasing number of girls being sent to school. “There is a lot of improvement but there is still so much more to do here, even if I just think about survival,” Toole said.

Israeli envoy sees “historic crisis” with U.S

Israel and the United States are in a “crisis of historic proportions” over a settlement dispute that has brought relations to a 35-year low, Israel’s ambassador to Washington was quoted on Monday as saying.

The comments attributed to envoy Michael Oren clashed with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to play down tensions with U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration over a West Bank settlement project threatening to derail the renewal of Israeli-Palestinian talks.

“Israel’s ties with the United States are in their worst crisis since 1975 … a crisis of historic proportions,” the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper quoted Oren as telling other Israeli diplomats in a telephone briefing over the weekend.

The remarks, also carried by other Israeli media, appeared to refer to U.S. pressure in 1975 for an Israeli redeployment in the Egyptian Sinai, occupied by Israel since the 1967 war and the site of renewed fighting in 1973.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment.

An Israeli plan to build 1,600 more homes for Jews in West Bank land annexed to Jerusalem was announced during a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden aimed at ushering in indirect peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

Using unusually blunt language, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Israel’s behavior “insulting”. But in a CNN interview on Friday, she said bilateral ties were “not at risk. I mean, our relationship is durable and strong.”

Netanyahu voiced regret on Sunday for what he described as bureaucratic happenstance.

“We know how to deal with these situations — with equanimity, responsibly and seriously,” he said.

SETTLEMENT CONSTRUCTION

Israeli media reported that Clinton, in a telephone call to Netanyahu on Friday, demanded he reverse the decision to construct the settler homes at Ramat Shlomo.

A spokesman for Netanyahu declined to comment. Palestinian officials have said indirect peace talks, which they agreed last week to hold with Israel under U.S. mediation, could not begin unless the settlement project was canceled.

Scrapping the construction could destabilize Netanyahu’s governing coalition, dominated by pro-settler parties, including his own.

During his visit to Israel, Biden steered clear of any public demand of Israel to cancel the project. He termed “significant” assurances from Netanyahu that building at the site, a religious settlement, would not start for years.

In Washington, the influential pro-Israel lobbying group, AIPAC, weighed in with a statement that called on the White House to take immediate steps to defuse tension with Israel.

“The Obama administration’s recent statements regarding the U.S. relationship with Israel are a matter of serious concern,” AIPAC said.

Netanyahu, who has vowed to continue building in and around Jerusalem while reining in construction of Jewish settlements on other occupied land where Palestinians seek a state, is due to attend AIPAC’s annual conference in Washington next week.

A U.S. envoy is expected back in the region later in the week to try to get peace talks, suspended since December 2008, under way. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had resisted restarting negotiations without a settlement freeze. (Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Dan Williams; editing by Samia Nakhoul)

British pair faces jail time in Dubai over kiss

REUTERS

A British pair caught kissing in public in Dubai face up to a month in jail in the Gulf Arab emirate for indecency after an Emirati mother complained her child had seen their indiscretion.

The pair, a British man living in Dubai and a female friend, were arrested in November on accusations of kissing and touching each other intimately in public and consuming alcohol, their lawyer said. They were ordered jailed for a month.

The case is the third time in under two years in which Britons have hit the headlines by falling foul of decency laws in Dubai, a flashy Muslim emirate popular with sun-seeking Western tourists and expatriates.

A lawyer for the pair, who launched an appeal on Sunday, said there had been no inappropriate kissing and the two were just friends. A verdict in the appeal is expected on April 4.

“There was no lip kissing. It was just a normal greeting that is not considered offensive,” lawyer Khalaf al-Hosani told the court, adding the complainant’s testimony was contradictory.

The British man’s mother in London said her son, Ayman Najafi, had vowed to clear his name.

“My Ayman is a good boy, he’s very wise and mature. I can’t believe it,” his mother Maida Najafi was quoted as saying in The Independent. “He knows the rules over there. He would never do that. He wouldn’t even do it over here.”

The pair, free on bail, were also fined 1,000 dirhams ($NZ387) for illegal consumption of alcohol, the lawyer said. They were to be deported after the completion of their jail sentence.

Dubai’s foreign population has expanded rapidly in recent years as expatriates flocked to the Gulf Arab trade and tourism hub for its tax-free earnings and year-round sunshine.

The changes have challenged the Emirati population, which is now vastly outnumbered by foreigners, raising concern that their emirate’s rapid pace of growth is a threat to their social and religious identity in what remains a deeply conservative region.

In a high-profile case in 2008, a British couple narrowly escaped jail after a court found them guilty of engaging in drunken sexual activity out of wedlock, and for doing so in public on a beach in the emirate.

They were sentenced to three months in prison followed by deportation, but had their jail terms overturned on appeal.

In a separate case this year, a British couple who shared a hotel room managed to escape trial in Dubai for having sex out of wedlock by producing a marriage certificate.