Pakistan is confident Australia's cricket tour in March and April can go ahead despite security fears, officials said on Tuesday.
An emergency meeting of the poll panel chaired on Monday by Chief Election Commissioner Qazi Muhammad Farooq sought reports from poll officials in the four provinces about the impact of the protests on election arrangements.
According to the Constitution, a person has be at least 25 years old to become a member of the Parliament. Thus, Bilawal is ineligible to be the chairperson of the PPP. Under the law, he cannot hold any party position till he turns 25.
Indo-Pak Samjhauta Express, which was suspended due to security reasons in the wake of the assassination of former Pakistan premier Benazir Bhutto, resumed its service on Sunday. The decision was taken after consultation with the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of External Affairs and railway officials of Pakistan, another official said. No decision has been taken on the resumption of services of the Thar Express.
It was being speculated that the polls could be postponed following the assassination of Pakistan People's Party chief and former premier Benazir Bhutto on Thursday.
Adrian Levy , co-author of the recently-published Deception- Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy, told rediff.com in an exclusive interview that an honest investigation into the assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto may reveal the hand of the country's military behind it.
A committee formed by former premier Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party and her political rival Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party has completed 80 per cent of its work on drawing up the charter of demands, which is expected to be completed on Thursday.
Pakistan journalist Hamid Mir on issues like Musharraf's compulsions in resorting to this extreme measure, conducting elections and restoring democracy in Pakistan, whether its nuclear weapons are in danger of falling into extremists' hands and what the ramifications for India would be.
Seeking to lower temperatures, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari on Saturday said Pakistan is not talking of war or vengeance and that dialogue is the solution for all issues in the region.
Paksitan's People's Party nominee Fehmida Mirza, a loyalist of slain former Premier Benazir Bhutto, was on Wednesday elected the first woman Speaker of Pakistan's National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament. 51-year-old Mirza, who has been thrice elected to Parliament, won 249 of the 324 votes cast by the newly-elected members of the National Assembly.
A Pakistani fast bowler set a record of sorts in a Twenty20 domestic cricket tournament when he conceded 30 runs without bowling a single legal delivery. In a match of the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Twenty20 memorial tournament earlier this week, Port Qasim pacer Zaid Mir had to be taken out of the attack after he failed to bowl a single legal delivery with his bowling figures reading 0-0-31-0 (10 NB).
Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf is planning to attack Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry again with the active support of Benazir Bhutto and covert support of the United States. High level meetings are going on in Islamabad in the last two days to chalk out a new strategy against Justice Chaudhry who is becoming a real threat to the Musharraf-Benazir understanding by puncturing the presidential ordinance through which PPP leaders were granted amnesty.
Suspense over Pakistan's next prime minister continued with the Pakistan People's Party, which will head a planned coalition government, on Thursday delaying a decision on its nominee amid differences over the frontrunner Makhdoom Amin Fahim.
'It would not be incorrect to say that the Chinese-Pakistani strategy of containing India began in the aftermath of the 1965 war.'
All the behind the scenes drama and the between the lines intrigue from Pakistan, a day before the presidential poll.
This may be a true elections where people really decide on who will represent them rather than an exercise to legitimise an unrepresentative system
Pakistan's main opposition parties Pakistan Muslim League-N and Pakistan People's Party on Tuesday jointly mustered a simple majority in the new Parliament, local TVchannels said.
The US has said the Bush administration's continuing support for the military ruler for short-term benefits will only make a bad problem worse
Ruling out fleeing Pakistan, embattled President Pervez Musharraf said the killing of Pakistan People's Party leader Benazir Bhutto upset his "plan" under which he would have wielded control over key portfolios of security, foreign and defence while she would be the prime minister. In an interview to the Channel Five, Musharraf said that it was not his nature and training to be a mere spectator and leave things unfinished.
Pervez Musharraf's re-election as president looks fanciful. Nawaz Sharif senses it is time to strike.
Asif Ali Zardari is expected to leave Pakistan after completing his term as President on September 8 due to security threats and fears about the reopening of graft cases, according to a media report on Sunday.
A total of 1,442 terrorist attacks, incidents of political violence and border clashes that occurred in 2007 left 3,448 people dead and 5,353 injured.
While paying tribute to the slain leader, keep in mind her anti-India stance and role in transferring nuclear technology to North Korea.
One of the addresses which have been dropped by the UN Security Council's Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee was found similar to that of a residence of Islamabad's envoy to the UN Maleeha Lodhi.
Australia's Andrew Symonds would not tour Pakistan next year if he considered it is unsafe, the all-rounder said.
"Clearly, Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan does not just comprise Arabs and Uzbeks and Tajiks. It also comprises Pakistanis; and among such Pakistanis it comprises Pathans and Punjabis and possibly Urdu speakers who constitute the Pakistani Taliban," the Daily Times said in an article.
Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in US, Joseph Biden, has said Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is "indirectly complicit" in the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto in view of the kind of protection that was needed for her was never provided.
Bhutto's true Achilles heel was the military. A third time premiership would not have altered the equation. The military is so deeply entrenched in the country's economic and political life that no democratic entity in the country can survive a challenge from it. On both occasions in the past Benazir had been evicted from the prime minister's office by the machinations of the military.
'Benazir Bhutto was not a politician a newly created country like Pakistan needed. But, among the choices that are available, she was the best.'
The tragic irony could well be that what Bhutto couldn't achieve over the recent years, she might well have managed by laying down her life -- the beginning of a parting of ways between Bush and Musharraf.
'They have succeeded in killing Benazir. They will now step up their efforts to eliminate Musharraf. Whoever was responsible for killing her could not have done it without inside complicity.'
"Are things in control now? Had things been in control, would this have happened," he asked, adding that Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf would have to give answers.
In a fresh bid to forge opposition unity, Pakistan's two most popular leaders Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto are expected to meet on Monday to consider boycotting the January 8 polls, while electoral authorities were to decide on the validity of the PML-N leader's nomination papers.
Former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto on Monday filed nomination papers from two more parliamentary constituencies in her hometown for the January 8 general election. The PPP chairperson, who had filed nomination papers for a seat reserved for women in Karachi on Sunday, submitted her papers from two seats in the southern Sindh town of Larkana, a stronghold of the PPP. The PPP has announced its final list of candidates but Bhutto has left the option of a boycott open.
A Pakistani court on Friday issued non-bailable arrest warrant against former military dictator Pervez Musharraf and ordered police to present him in the court in the murder case of Lal Masjid cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who was killed in a military operation in 2007.
Pakistan's Supreme Court on Monday dismissed major legal challenges to President Pervez Musharraf's re-election even as the general reportedly made plans to visit Saudi Arabia for talks with its ruler on the possible return of former premier Nawaz Sharif.
"Are they ready to review their decisions? If they do, we can also review our decisions. Review will be on both sides," Qureshi said.
Clad in a black traditional sherwani, Gillani, the country's 25th prime minister and the first premier from the Pakistan People's Party who is not a member of the Bhutto family, was administered the oath by Musharraf in the central hall of the Aiwan-e-Sadr or presidency in Islamabad. The ceremony was delayed by almost an hour as Gillani had gone to Karachi on Monday to attend the wedding of his son and had to rush back to the federal capital on Tuesday.
Benazir said an interim government must be set up by taking all parties into confidence. The former prime minister said the government had discussed setting up an interim political arrangement with her, but the issue of the caretaker prime minister was yet to be discussed, the Daily Times reported.
PCB chief executive Shafqat Naghmi said the South Africans did not want to play in Karachi following last week's bomb attacks on former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's convoy that killed 139 people.
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