The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings targeting Shia processions in Karachi and Lahore that claimed 16 lives on Tuesday.Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq told reporters in the lawless North Waziristan tribal region on Wednesday that the two attacks on Tuesday were aimed against security personnel because "they serve the United States's interests".
Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Thursday said he may visit India in the first quarter of 2011 if there was a breakthrough in talks between the foreign secretaries of the two countries in Bhutan in February. Qureshi said the foreign secretaries would meet to discuss the agenda for talks and he was likely to visit New Delhi in the first quarter of the year if there was a breakthrough in talks between the top diplomats.
Pakistan on Thursday dismissed reports that Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Muhammad Omar was being treated in a Karachi hospital, with the help of officials of the Inter Services Intelligence, after he suffered a heart attack."This is hackneyed speculation with no substance whatsoever," said Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit.He said such reports were aimed at maligning Pakistan and creating misgivings.
An anti-terrorism court has refused to issue arrest warrants for two clerics whose fiery speeches reportedly incited the police guard who gunned down Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer for criticising Pakistan's controversial blasphemy law. Investigators probing the governor's assassination had submitted an application to Rawalpindi-based anti-terrorism court Judge Malik Mohammad Akram Awan, seeking warrants for the arrest of the unnamed clerics.
India should demonstrate "seriousness" in implementing its announcements regarding reducing troops in Jammu and Kashmir as a confidence-building measure, Pakistan's Foreign Office Spokesman Abdul Basit said.
The Federal Investigation Agency has decided to pursue a petition filed in the Lahore high court to challenge an anti-terrorism court's decision not to declare Kasab and Ansari as fugitives.
The Pakistan government on Monday appeared divided over resuming onion exports to India with the Agriculture Ministry not averse to lifting the ban but the Commerce Ministry has some reservations.
The assassin of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer confessed in a Pakistani court that he had acted alone in killing the politician and that he he had been planning the attack before being deployed to guard him.
A Pakistani policeman attached to Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani's security detail has been detained along with an official of the country's electronic media watchdog in connection with Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer's assassination, while investigators are looking for a cleric who motivated the killer. Mumtaz Qadri, the Elite Force guard gunned down 66-year-old Taseer in Islamabad on Tuesday for opposing the controversial blasphemy law.
A Pakistani Taliban faction linked to terrorist Qari Hussain on Thursday claimed responsibility for the assassination of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer, saying the 'man who killed him was from among us'."We claim responsibility for the killing of Salmaan Taseer. The Punjab governor was our target and we have planned this programme and the man who killed him was from among us," said Shakirullah Shakir, a spokesman for the Fidayeen group associated with Qari Hussain.
Pakistan's Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer, an outspoken leader of the ruling Pakistan People's Party, was on Tuesday assassinated by one of his security guards in a gun attack at a market in the heart of Islamabad. Taseer was getting into his car at Kohsar Market in Islamabad's posh Sector F6/3 area when the guard from the elite force of Punjab police shot him with an automatic weapon at a close range. He was rushed to the Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.
A fresh probe had uncovered the role of nine men, including the brigadier in whose residence the plot was hatched, The Express Tribune newspaper reported, quoting unnamed sources. The findings of the investigation, conducted under the Interior Ministry's supervision, were deliberately kept under wraps, even from the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party's top leaders, it claimed.
Several high-ranking officers of the Pakistan's Military Intelligence and spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence would be quizzed in connection with the 2007 assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto, authorities said.
A Blackberry application from a Pakistani company has made it as a top seller across the world.
Two top Pakistani police officials were on Wednesday arrested in a courtroom on the orders of an anti-terrorism judge who is conducting the trial of suspects accused of involvement in the 2007 assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto.Judge Rana Nisar Ahmed, who is conducting the trial within the high-security Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi for security reasons, rejected the bail applications of former city police chief Saud Aziz and former SP Khurram Shahzad.
Pakistan criticised a multi-billion-dollar agreement finalised by France to sell twonuclear reactors to India, saying the deal would create"mistrust" and have "serious security implications" in South Asia.
Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi is expected to visit India next year if there is agreement on the "agenda" and "outcome" of his parleys with his Indian counterpart, the Pakistani Foreign Office said on Thursday.
President Asif Ali Zardari is scheduled to ink an agreement on the $7.6 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project with the Turkmen and Afghan heads of state at Ashgabat on December 11.
Branding Pakistani intelligence agencies including the Inter Services Intelligence as a 'rogue agency', the country's top nuclear scientist A Q Khan has said that it takes orders from the army chief and not the civilian government. Charging that the ISI operated outside the law and totally ignored court orders, Khan, in a scathing attack on the military intelligence agency, said it was being used against politicians and as an 'extended arm of the dictators'.
Pakistan's political and military elite have been shaken by damaging disclosures about the country's foreign policy and internal politics in hundreds of secret US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, with the media screaming "WikiWreaks havoc" and "WikiLeaks bombs rock Islamabad".
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