Musharraf praises Manmohan, but says he ‘lacks courage’

LONDON: Former president Pervez Musharraf has said that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh deserves “full marks” for his “sincerity” in resolving the Kashmir issue and wanting peace with Pakistan, but has held back from making a “bold” move, fearing a domestic political backlash.

Musharraf said that it was Singh, and not his predecessor, Bharatiya Janata Party’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who deserved the real credit for the breakthrough in Pakistan-India realtions.

Musharraf said that it was Singh, and not his predecessor, Bharatiya Janata Party’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who deserved the real credit for the breakthrough in Pakistan-India realtions.

“It was with Manmohan Singh that we moved towards an agreement, not with Vajpayee,” he told NDTV in the second part of his widely reported interview with Barkha Dutt. “I give full marks to Manmohan Singh,” he said, but claimed that the Indian prime minister lacked “boldness” and “courage” in making any concessions on Kashmir for fear of domestic pressures. “In any agreement, there is give and take… and it is the ‘give’ part that creates problems,” he said while calling for a “bold and courageous” Indian response.

Musharraf said that India and Pakistan were very close to an agreement before he lost power. “We were as close as drafting the final agreement.”

Asked how close they came to an agreement on Kashmir and whether there was a specific draft on the issue, he said: “Well it was being formed. The draft was being formulated, that is the good thing, and it was being formulated in good spirit.” He dismissed the Lahore Declaration signed during former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s visit to Pakistan in February 1999 with then prime minister Nawaz Sharif. He said there was “nothing in the Lahore Declaration” that could form the basis for a settlement of the Kashmir dispute, which, he insisted, must be resolved in the interest of genuine peace.

Musharraf said that he happened to see the draft of the Declaration and was surprised that there was “no mention” of Kashmir. He said he had told Sharif that it made no sense following which a few sentences were then drafted in. “But he removed them from the final Declaration. In a way, he (Sharif) bluffed,” he said.

Referring to the “Agra Agreement” of 2001, Musharraf said that there was no agreement. It was only when the Congress returned to power in 2004 with Singh as prime minister that the two countries “moved forward towards an agreement.” He said Singh had a “very good sense” about India-Pakistan relations. “I respect him very much,” he added. Musharraf said he had “no regrets” over the Kargil affair, terming it the result of the history of “confrontation” between the two countries.

29 degrees are fake, 33 still doubtful: HEC

By Saadia Khalid

ISLAMABAD: The Chairman of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Javed R Leghari, at the eleventh hour, changed his decision to hold a press conference due to unknown reasons while other officials later claimed that it was never meant to be a press conference but an update on the degrees issue.

Media persons were called to the HEC building at 4 pm for a press conference by Javed R Leghari. However, after waiting for more than half-an-hour, it was revealed that other officials would brief them.

HEC Adviser Quality Insurance Mahmood Raza updated the media persons on the degrees issue and said that 452 out of 511 verified degrees were original while 29 had proved to be fake. “We have received 1,065 degrees so far among which 936 were sent to different universities, Deeni Madaris (seminaries) and foreign universities,” he said.

Raza said that as many as 129 degrees were not readable and sent back to the Election Commission. However, the EC has again sent these degrees in a better shape on 8th July. “We will not disclose the name of any of the fake degree holders to anyone except to the Chairman National Assembly on 16th of July and if he would ask us to disclose it publicly, then we would,” he said.

He said that the HEC was still reviewing and could not confirm any detail until the committee finished its task. “After receiving results from the relevant universities, the committee verifies the results on its own on the basis of intermediate and matriculation certificates,” he said.

Raza said that the verification results from nine universities, including the University of Punjab, University of Balochistan, Allama Iqbal Open University, Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai University and University of Engineering Taxila, were still awaited. “We are hopeful that we would receive the response of these universities by tomorrow (Wednesday),” he said.

He stated that there were four degrees of those foreign universities that are not recognised by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) while the results of five foreign universities were still awaited.

Raza, however, neither responded to any of the queries regarding the mounting pressure on the HEC on the degrees issue nor did he disclose the reason HEC Chairman Javed R Leghari being reluctant to face the media.

Meanwhile, MPA Tariq Mehmood Bajwa, whose degree is currently under prosecution in a court, is learnt to have obtained a graduation degree from the Bahauddin Zakariya University in the year 2006 while his masters degree is from Tanzeem-ul-Madaris-ul-Islami in the year 1992.

Allow them to own a home? La, Abadan! ( No, never!)

By: Franklin Lamb

No “implantation” of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon!

Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp, Beirut

are these children not humans?

The explosive issue of Palestinian civil rights in Lebanon will move to center stage under the Parliamentary spotlight this week, with meetings of parliamentary committees and a legislative session now scheduled to consider late breaking proposals by the March 14 alliance, led by Prime Minister Saad Hariri. The main holdouts, as predicted, will be the right wing Christian Phalange party and its allies and former Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has been tasked this week with getting them on board.
The Washington DC-Beirut based Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, not heeding the admonition of the late Mahatma Gandhi, who when following various pre-Independence reports of ‘progress’ with representatives of Her Majesty the Queen, Bapu told the assembled media: “Promises are made and fools rejoice!.”

The PCRC, admittedly with temerity is predicting progress in the Palestinians struggle for the right to work and just maybe some progress with home ownership.

What will likely be achieved is at least an ‘adjustment’ to the current Kafkaesque administrative process so that Palestinian refugees can more easily apply for a work permit.

According to a PCRC Board Member, Lebanese Human Rights Ambassador Ali Khalil: ” We expect at least the loosening of the current impossible to fulfill work permit requirements for Palestinians. It won’t be enough, but it will be a significant first step on a long March for justice. This campaign must and will continue until full civil rights are achieved for Palestinians including the right to own a home, obtain an ID card that allows travel, and access to some social services pending their return to Palestine.”

The struggle continues for the civil right to own a home

Were one to contrast the vitriol spewing from certain political/religious quarters in Lebanon and refracted into Parliament resulting from the proposal to grant Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees the right to work with the invective resulting from the additional Parliamentary proposal to allow the refugees the elementary right to own a home, the latter might just white out the former in a blinding light of fury.

Over the past decade arguments have not changed significantly since the March 2001 law forbidding Palestinian home ownership was enacted. But the political alignment n Parliament has. In favor of granting Palestinian refugees the right to purchase a home, are the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), the Loyalty to the Resistance grouping (Hezbollah+Amal), the Nationalist Syrian Social Party, the Arab Socialist Baath Party, and the Hariri group, now called the Future Movement. Those opposed to Palestinians owning a home are the right-wing Christian parties, the Phalange (the Gemayals), Lebanese Forces ( Samir Geagea), National Liberal Party ( Dori Chamouns) and their allies.

Pro March 14 (US and Saudi backed) Minister of Labor Boutro Harb has declared Palestinian home ownership out of the question and even expressed his concern this week about using the “civil rights” label that could connote rights close to those Lebanese citizen possess and as mandated by international and Lebanese law. According to Harb: “Among the major principles that should be adopted when it comes to addressing the Palestinian refugees’ “rights” (emphasis his) is to put an end even to the use of the term “civil rights”, given its political connotation which is linked to the concept of citizenship, to which only the Lebanese are entitled.”

Minister Harb’s position is seen by many as a ‘red herring’ since the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have no interest, as some here seem worried about, in citizenship, naturalization, settlement, tawtin, integration, implantation, voting rights, seeking political office, normalcy, nationality, permanent residency, setting down roots, normalization, ‘staying in Lebanon all their lives’ or even, ‘hanging around’ an hour longer than necessary. As ‘Mona’, a Palestinian nurse would works at the rehabilitating clinic in Beirut’s Mai Elias refugee camp put it the other day: ” While we are grateful for Lebanon allowing us to stay here as refugees, we just seek some dignity and the right to own a home while we our struggle to return to Palestine.

Lebanese law historically has imposed relatively modest restrictions on foreign ownership of real estate beginning with the 1956 (Decree 15740), Law 59 of 9/1/69, Decree 16614 of 6/4/69/ and on 1/4/69 when the cabinet adopted Decree 11614. The result made foreign ownership of land conditional upon the acquisition of a license if the size exceeded 5,000 square meters (10,000 square meters for foreign companies).

But on March 20, 2001, a blatantly discriminatory home ownership law designed specifically to target Palestinian refugees as part of a wave of an anti Palestinian measures following the expulsion of the PLO and the 1989 Taif Accords. This blatantly discriminatory and internationally illegal action of outlawed the refugees right to own a home or purchase any kind of real estate in fee simple. Law 296 of 2001 abolished the right of any Palestinian refugees to own real estate in Lebanon period. Never mind if refugees had purchased the home before the law was enacted, had registered the property with the Ministry of Interior or that they had inherited the home from their parents. The draconian law prohibits “the acquisition of any real estate property, by any person who is not carrying a nationality from a recognized state ( Ed:the discriminatory use of the ‘reciprocity requirement’ again), or by any person if the property is contradictory with the constitutional precepts concerning the rejection of (Palestinian) (Tawteen)”. This law means in practice that no home ownership is allowed to Palestinians. Tawteen (naturalization) being an often employed scare tactic and catch-all political/legal black hole designed to prevent Palestinian refugees from obtaining civil rights.

The law was claimed by its supporters to be necessary to encourage foreign investment. It has never been convincingly articulated how in any way if achieves that and in fact the opposite proposition could be much more convincingly argued.

Another argument against allowing Palestinians refugees the right to own a home, as Phalange Party MP Sami Gemayel warned during an interview with LBC TV on 7/3/10, is that “allowing Palestinian refugees the right to own a home risks keeping them in Lebanon rather than helping their return home.” Gemayal, with a straight face, advised the Palestinians refugees “to be aware that giving them civil rights in Lebanese society is an Israeli and U.S. plot to prevent their return to their homeland.”

On the question of Palestinian home ownership, Gemayel argues that it is out of the question since many Lebanese don’t own a home and Lebanon is one of the countries with the highest number of Palestinian land ownership relatively to its size. Academic and NGO studies suggest otherwise. So do statistics supplied by the Lebanese Ministry for Finance, dating back to 1993 which reveal that combined Palestinian ownership of real estate in Lebanon is less than one quarter of what foreigners own in Lebanon, or 0.00001 percent of Lebanon’s total area.

Change and Reform bloc leader MP Michel Aoun, allied with Hezbollah but playing to his political base of Maronite Christians, which the Gemayals are trying to cut into these days, told his followers on 7.7.10 that Palestinian refugees in Lebanon cannot ever be granted the right to own property.

Democratic Gathering bloc leader MP Walid Jumblatt questioned recently how public figures could be against granting Palestinian refugees in Lebanon the right to own a home while foreigners from Arab countries have the right to own three percent of the properties in every district in Lebanon. “We allow other Arabs to own properties saying this would encourage investment, yet we deprive poor Palestinians from this right,” Jumblatt said.

The 2001 law also forbids Palestinian refugees from bequeathing real estate, even if the property was acquired and legally registered before the law took effect. The draconian law, shocked not just the Palestinian refugees but many others in Lebanon and it was immediately contested when 10 members of Parliament led by Hezbollah, filed an appeal before the Lebanese Constitutional Council. The Appellants quickly lost the case when the Council ruled, without oral argument or presenting in their finding any rational nexus between their ruling and the fact of Palestinian home ownership. The CC simply concluded that ” preventing the permanent settlement of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is of higher national interest.”

The effect of the 2001 law meant that thousands of Palestinian refugees who had purchased apartments on installments, even if they had one payment left to make or had made all their payments were not able to register and legally own them. The ruling also means that even if Palestinians had registered property they had purchased or their parents had purchased and bequeathed to them before the 2001 law, their title is still null and void. It was widely alleged that two weeks before the 2001 law came into effect, the relevant Ministries instructed Lebanon’s Notaries Public not to register Palestinian property in order that they could not possibly escape its provisions. This practice has been viewed by some as simply a governmental effort to ‘loot’ Palestinian property.

Other problems the 2001 law created include:

If a Palestinian rented a property she/he inherited or purchased before the 2001 law, the Tenant, learning about the 2001 law sometimes stopped paying rent with the explanation: “Show me that your property is legally yours and is registered and I will pay rent. Otherwise this is my property!” No court in Lebanon would find for the Palestinian in a case like this according to legal experts here.
Children who inherited the family home and continue to live in it become ‘occupiers’ after their parents death and gain no legal title, with each succeeding generation having even less of a right to live in the family irrespective of any testamentary devise document or Will from their parents.
One Palestinian academic, at a Palestinian research center who has studied this dilemma thoroughly told this observer, “About the only thing that keeps some in the government from trying to physically confiscate Palestinian real estate like they do in occupied Palestine is their sure knowledge that someone like Ahmad Jabril of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) would resist on behalf of the refugees. So we don’t expect the government to move for Israeli style evictions no matter that some would like to, but the 2001 law must be changed.”

The simple, sisterly, moral, and internationally mandated Parliamentary solution is to amend the 2001 law to correct the pre 200l law registration problems and to allow Palestinians to own at least one home if they are able to afford it. Like granting the Palestinian refugees the elementary civil right to work, allowing the right to own a home and inherit and bequest it becomes a win-win solution for Lebanon and the refugees pending the latter’s return to their country.

All parties join forces on fake degrees

MPAs blast media, judges and generals in Punjab Assembly

By Babar Dogar

LAHORE: Punjab Assembly members across the divide came down hard on the media and the judiciary for taking up the fake degrees issue, in Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s presence, during Wednesday’s session. They termed the issue an attempt to target democracy.

Speaker Punjab Assembly Rana Iqbal suspended the routine agenda and allowed the parliamentarians to speak against the media and other institutions for taking up the issue of their fake degrees. The media was their prime target, and they called it the mother of all evils.

Quite surprisingly, the parliamentarians, be they from PML-N, PML-Q or PPP, actively participated in the debate against the media and alleged that the media was portraying the politicians as liars and discredited persons. They branded media persons as corrupt who exhorted money from them through blackmailing and portraying their image as villains.

They did not spare the military and the judiciary and labeled them as corrupt, who were hatching conspiracy against the supremacy of parliament. The assembly session also reverberated with “shame, shame,” slogans for the media.

The members asked why the degrees of politicians alone were being checked, sparing judges, soldiers and journalists. They were of the view that the 18th Amendment had lifted the bar of condition of bachelor’s degree, so there was no justification of making such hue and cry against the fake degree holders. They alleged that the media was serving its own interest and making issues out of nothing.

It was a rare session in the assembly’s history when the Speaker neither stopped anyone from speaking against the military or the judiciary nor did he bother to expunge any of their remarks in a session that lasted for almost three hours and a half.

PML-N parliamentarians were leading the show and it was quite evident that the parliamentarians had planned it before the assembly proceedings started, probably because mostly the PML-N parliamentarians were either disqualified or are still facing cases for possessing fake degrees.

The attack on the media started with PML-Q (Likeminded) MPA Shaukat Aziz Bhatti, who started weeping in the house with a graduation degree in his hands, complaining that the media had been holding his trial on the charge of possessing a fake degree.

He told the House that his mother had a heart attack after she received the news about his fake degree. He showed the house his degree and contended that it was original, but due to the media trial he had lost face.

Immediately after Bhatti, there was a long row of parliamentarians who made lengthy speeches against the media. Another PML-Q woman parliamentarian Seema Kamran also started crying in the House and claimed that the media had been holding trial of her colleague Samina Khawar without waiting for the court’s verdict.

Quite interestingly, when opposition leader Ch Zaheer tried to defend the media, he was silenced by parliamentarians. Even Speaker Rana Iqbal asked him as to what he felt after watching television? Don’t you feel yourself an outcast then? the Speaker asked him.

Ali Haider Noor Niazi from MMA said it was strange that only politicians were being made a scapegoat and the degrees of judges and generals were not being scrutinised. He demanded scrutiny of degrees of judges and generals from universities.

He saw invisible forces out to defame the politicians to invite subversive forces to take over. He lamented that the judiciary could not take a decision against Musharraf during his stay in power.

Amina Buttar from the PPP claimed that the same judiciary had not decided petitions on fake degrees during the five-year tenure of Musharraf and questioned what had went wrong that that the parliamentarians had been put to scrutiny. She termed it an attempt to derail democracy.

Amina Ulfat from the PML-Q said that it seemed as if the fake degrees were the only issue in the country. She claimed that there were hundreds of fake registry cases involving the land mafia pending in courts. Arifa Khalid from the PML-N was of the view that it was not an era of yellow journalism and they expected cooperation from the media, not non issues.

Rana Ijaz Ahmed from the PML-N stated the media had ignited a ray of hope among the masses when they made live coverage of a march for the sacked chief justice. But now, he alleged, the media was holding only politicians responsible for all the ills and never raised its voice against judges and generals. He demanded accountability of judges, generals and journalists. He claimed that there were programs in news channels showing caricatures of politicians but they had never dared to show caricatures of judges and generals.

The parliamentarians who spoke also included Amina Ulfat, Ishtiaq, Ali Haider Noor Niazi, Sana Ullah Mastikhel, Mian Amina Buttar, Shaikh Allaudin, Mian Naseer, Naveed Anjum, Arifa Khalid, Zulifqar Gondal, Rana Abdur Rehman, Shamas Haider, Sakeena Shaheen Khan, Dr Tahir Ali Javed, Waris Kalu, Jalal-ud-Din Dhakku, Nargis Faiz Rasool, Waqar Akhtar Malik, Manzoor Mohal, Yaseen Sohal. The deputy speaker adjourned the proceedings till Thursday morning (today) 10.00 pm.