Pakistanis began voting on Saturday morning in landmark polls to choose new national and provincial assemblies, setting in motion the first democratic transition of power in the country's 66-year history.
India has told the United Nations General Assembly that it is high time the international community called on Pakistan to take 'effective and irreversible' actions against terror outfits operating on its soil, asserting that Islamabad should not take the 'high road of morality' which is only laden with mines of falsehood.
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is 'simply a deterrent' to protect the country and there will no longer be any need for it once the Kashmir issue is resolved, Prime Minister Imran Khan has said as he asserted that if the Americans have the resolve and the will, the issue can be sorted out.
Militants armed with automatic weapons, grenades and wearing suicide vests tried to storm two heavily-guarded airbases in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's Balochistan province, but the attacks were thwarted by security forces which killed 10 attackers suspected to be foreigners.
Musharraf, 79, was suffering from amyloidosis, a rare disease caused by a build-up of an abnormal protein called amyloid in organs and tissues throughout the body, The Express Tribune reported.
The meeting came in the backdrop of recent developments in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The Jammu and Kashmir government on Friday issued an advisory to Amarnath yatris and tourists asking them to curtail their stay in the Valley, citing security concerns after the Indian Army said that Pakistani terrorists are planning to disrupt the pilgrimage.
Pakistan on Friday agreed to let India transport 50,000 metric tonnes of wheat and life-saving drugs as humanitarian assistance for the people of Afghanistan on Afghan trucks through the Wagah border crossing, after a row erupted between the two countries over the modalities of transportation.
'Just this week, the Indians killed a Kashmiri terrorist, who is a member of Hizbul Mujahideen.' 'This is a nasty terrorist organisation, and did Pakistan welcome this killing?' 'No, in fact, they denounced it and referred to him as a Kashmiri separatist.' 'These Kashmiri terrorist groups have been aided by the Pakistani State.'
Trump reiterated his offer to help the two South-Asian neighbours only if both of them want.
According to a Taliban source, "When the suicide attacks got momentum and it was almost impossible for the government to control the situation, talks between the representatives of Taliban and the government took place in Peshawar--that resulted in a halt in the attacks. Apart from few key commanders no one else was aware about the nature of the agreement,"the source said.
The United States drone attack that killed Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud has done "serious damage" to the Islamabad's efforts for a dialogue with militants, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on Tuesday.
"Imran Khan is exciting because he is enervating the denervating, actually, the Pakistani polity, particularly the youth," said South Asia expert Professor C Christine Fair, at the Brookings Institution conference on The Future of Pakistan, on Monday.
The Indian government expressed its dismay at some of the language used by participating MPs in the Backbench Debate, specifically Pakistani-origin Labour MP Naz Shah.
'If the Chinese are bringing Pakistan more 'behind the curtain,' in terms of intelligence and military cooperation, it will be tailored to their common interests like confronting India over territorial disputes'
"It's clear that the Pakistanis are still supporting the Taliban. This was known well before WikiLeaks disclosed secret documents detailing supposed links between the Pakistani military and Taliban," Gilles Dorronsoro, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, said.
The Blinken visit indicated that the Biden administration is still somewhat tentative about the specifics of its relations with India, observes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan, who has served multiple stints at India's embassy in Washington, DC.
Pakistan's efforts to have the two Chinese engineers kidnapped by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan on August 29, 2008, released before Zardari's visit have not succeeded. This incident, coming in the wake three other instances last year of targeted attacks on Chinese nationals working in Pakistan, have added to the concerns of the Chinese authorities . This is one of the subjects the Chinese are expected to take up with Zardari
In India, the anniversary of 26/11 comes and goes with only the bare minimum of remembrance. We don't even bother very much about honouring those who acted with great bravery that day, rues Vir Sanghvi.
At least 10 people, including some students of a Sunni seminary, were killed and over 80 others injured in sectarian violence that erupted in Pakistani garrison city of Rawalpindi on Friday after a clash during a Muharram procession, following which a curfew was imposed.
'From the Indian perspective, Trump's invitation to Imran Khan to visit the White House is a bitter pill to swallow,' points out Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Pakistan on Wednesday brushed aside India's unhappiness over Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz's meetings with Kashmiri separatists in New Delhi, saying such meets were "customary" and the Kashmir issue remains the "core dispute" between the two countries.
For two decades the US paid in blood and blood money for dependence on Pakistan to carry out one president's boast. Now, having been defeated by its proxies, another president will go into Rawalpindi's embrace to satisfy his constituents, predicts Shekhar Gupta.
'Is Trump going to play a mediating role? Can he play a mediating role? It's out of the question.' 'Kashmir is an Indian responsibility.'
Nine leading Pakistani clerics, who had gathered for a meeting that declared suicide attacks as un-Islamic, fell seriously ill after eating 'halwa' served to them, prompting the police to investigate whether an attempt was made to murder them.
More than anything else, Pathaan is a silent and subtle statement of Shah Rukh Khan about his place, his commitment to cinema and, if one can say, his politics, observes Mohammad Asim Siddiqui.
Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed, who has been replaced as ISI chief, will remain in the forefront of Pakistani initiatives in Afghanistan as also in the peace talks with the Tehrik e Taliban, Pakistan. He will also get a year plus to serve in a corps command, remaining in the race for selection as the next army chief when General Bajwa retires in November 2022, explains Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at the Research and Analysis Wing.
The UK-based Pakistani boxer Amir Khan visited the army-run school in Peshawar where 150 people, mostly children, were massacred by the Taliban and expressed sympathies with the families of the victims.
Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl shot in the head at point-blank range by Taliban for advocating girls' education, has become a millionaire by signing a deal for around $3 million to publish her memoir.
'It is for the first time in 70 years that the US has come out totally in India's favour on the Kashmir issue,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
On the heels of the capture of top Taliban commander Mulla Baradar, Pakistani intelligence has also nabbed two other prominent renegades who are being grilled to trace the whereabouts of elusive Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and Taliban supremo Mulla Omar.
The US State Department, in its Congressional mandated annual Country Reports on Terrorism for the year 2018, on Friday said even though the Pakistani government voiced support for political reconciliation between the Afghan government and the Taliban, it did not restrict the terror group and the Haqqani Network from operating in Pakistan-based safe havens and threatening the US and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.
Taliban's reclusive leader Mullah Muhammad Omar is alive and hiding in the Pakistani city of Karachi, a top Afghan intelligence official has said, echoing a similar assessment by Western intelligence officials.
'They didn't speak Hindi or English, but love is a universal language.'
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said some people in the Pakistani government are aware of the whereabouts of elusive Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Omar.
As Afghanistan gradually realises that there can be no long-term stability in the country as long as Pakistan is involved, the time has come for India to register its solidarity when it would be most appreciated, says former foreign secretary Shyam Saran.
While the Pakistani army and US troops continue to drive the Taliban out of their hideouts in South Waziristan, there is perhaps a dormant, but more dangerous, threat looming overhead.
The blast was claimed by both the local affiliate of the Islamic State terror group and by Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter group of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.
The Pentagon today advised Pakistani military to take the extremists in the country "head on" and defeat them.
The US has been in discussions with Pakistan but there has been not a 'sufficient amount of action' from it against terrorists.
At least 80 militants and seven soldiers were killed on Saturday in clashes between security forces and terrorists in Pakistan's volatile northwest tribal region
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