bq. The cover bears an official-looking seal that says “Government of Pakistan” and a photograph of the father of the Pakistani bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan. It promotes components that were spinoffs from Pakistan’s three-decade-long project to build a nuclear stockpile of enriched uranium, set in a drawing that bears a striking resemblance to a mushroom cloud. In other nations, such sales would be strictly controlled. But Pakistan has always played by its own rules. [“NYT”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/international/04NUKE.html]
Do you need “any”:https://varnam.org/archives/000290.html more proof ? If so, “please ask”:http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13351805 Saif al-Islam, son of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gadaffi
[via “LGF”:http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=9500_All_Roads_Lead_to_Pakistan]

Our friendly double speaking General had two assination attempts in the past two weeks. Now the media thinks, it has been “stage managed”:http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=27150
bq. The Saturday Tribune quoted ?a source assigned to a high strategic position? as saying that the previous attempt on December 14 was ?carefully stage-managed by Musharraf?s close staff ? and at his instigation.?
And the reason for the suspicion is
bq. ?The circumstances of the (previous) assassination attempt are strange and alarming.? ?Whoever planted the bomb had to have done so conspicuously, since an explosive of between 800 to 1,000 pounds cannot conceivably be unloaded and planted discreetly, particularly since the bomb was planted on a bridge just half a mile from the headquarters of the Army’s 10th Corps and one of the most secure areas in the country,? it said.
Musharraf does not have many friends in Pakistan. Under American pressure, he had to perform many un-Pakistan activities such as reign in militants, capture some of them and hand over to Americans etc.

Now that Libya has given up its WMD program Anwar Iqbal “wrote”:http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20031219-080728-8118r in UPI
bq. Pakistan, of course, says that its program is only aimed at defending itself against India. This argument, however, will remain valid only as long as Pakistan does not share its nuclear know-how with others. If media allegations that Pakistan has shared nuclear technology with North Korea and Iran are ever proved, Pakistan will have no choice but to abandon the nuclear shield it has built to defend itself against India.
Guess who has been providing crucial technology to Iran to become a “nuclear power”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18170-2003Dec20.html ?
bq. The draft report by Albright’s group, based on experts familiar with the Iranian machine, describes it as a modified version of a centrifuge built decades ago by Urenco, a consortium of the British, Dutch and German governments. The machine is about six feet high and is made of aluminum and a special type of high-strength steel. The design is one of several known to have been stolen in the 1970s by a Pakistani nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who later became known as the father of the Pakistani bomb.
bq. Pakistan modified the Urenco design and manufactured a number of the machines before abandoning the centrifuge for a sturdier model, said Albright, co-author of the study. The blueprints obtained by Iran show “distinctive” modifications similar to the ones made by Pakistan, Albright said.
Pakistanis have been proliferating nuclear technology all over the world. North Korea and Iran are well known. Even in Iraq, the “Pakistani support”:http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11298 was found. Now this front page article in Washington Post is a very serious allegation.

bq. On Sunday afternoon, Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani and External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha got a crisp message from 7 Race Course Road. At that point, Mr Advani was in Mumbai and Mr Sinha was in Iran, so the call held a special significance.
bq. The message carrying the mandate of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee requested them to reach Delhi by evening. Both of them hurriedly finished their business and took off for Delhi in separate Indian Air Force aircraft.
Soon, the Royal Bhutan Army launched a military operations against three Indian separatist groups operating from “Bhutan”:http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_498148,0008.htm
bq. The entire Indo-Bhutan border has been totally sealed and Indian jawans positioned all along the border to prevent any attempt by the fleeing militants to enter India, the Eastern Command sources said.
Assam government is in full alert to prevent “revenge strikes”:http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?gid=51&id=188645
bq. To a query whether he would give safe passage to the fleeing militants as they were ” sons of Assam soil”, Gogoi said “An anti-national is an anti-national. We don’t care they are sons of which soil.”
and there have been lot of “casualities”:http://www.deepikaglobal.com/latestnews.asp?ncode=10283
bq. At least 90 anti-Indian militants and 34 Bhutan Army personnel were killed and about 160 people, including 100 militants, injured in a virtual war between the troops of the Royal Government of Bhutan and rebels in southern Bhutan since yesterday, according to senior officials.
bq. The Central Headquarters(CHO) of the ULFA had been completely demolished by the Bhutan Army jawans, they said, adding some massive encounters occurred at Kalikhola, Tintala and Bukka among other places in that country.
Thanks Bhutan. You are the best neighbor that India has.

“Rajiv Malhotra”:http://www.sulekha.com/memberpages/profile.asp?shortcut=/rajiv_malhotra sent a link to this article from The News International, a Pakistani Newspaper, which is an article on India as seen from Pakistanis perspective. The article titled “Beyond the edge”:http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/dec2003-daily/14-12-2003/oped/o1.htm is written by Masood Hasan, a Lahore-based columnist and a well-known journalist
Here are some points
bq. Many of us associate India?s new progress with its IT revolution and it is partly true. Indian companies like Moser-Baer located in an equally unknown Noida are now the world?s third largest optical media manufacturer and the lowest-cost producer of CD-Recorders. Exports? Only Rs 1,000 crore ? Indian rupees I might add. This firm sells data-storage products to seven of the world?s top 10 CD-R producers. There is another unknown. Tandon Electronics. Its hardware exports are Rs 4,000 crore.
bq. In the recession-hit West, Indian exports are up by 19% this year and the country?s foreign exchange reserves stand at an all-time high of $82 billion. India is dishing out aid to 11 countries, pre-paying their debt and loaned IMF $300 million!! And since we think banning fashion shows is the way ahead, it might be interesting to know that Wal-Mart sources $1 billion worth of goods from India ? half its apparel, GAP about $600 million and Hilfiger $100 million.
The Pakistani author calls all this information _depressing_ from Pakistan’s point of view. In his mail Rajiv writes
bq. In any case, such articles may be safely sent to the self-alienated elitist Indian journalists, who still see any deviation from the ?caste, cows, curry? images of India as something to be suspicions about. We may now tell them that this is also Pakistan?s view, so they might start to believe it.
And here is a great quote from the article
bq. Some years ago, an Indian said to a Pakistani, “It is true we are both in the gutter. The difference is, we are looking at the stars. You are looking at the gutter.”

“Last Month”:http://ushome.rediff.com/news/2003/sep/24pm2.htm
bq. Asked about gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s presence in Pakistan and whether India will take it up with Interpol, Advani avoided a direct response and said the Central Bureau of Investigation Chief P C Sharma is leaving to attend an Interpol conference.
bq. On Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf repeadtedly denying Dawood’s presence in Pakistan, Advani said: “I know that…we have in fact conveyed to them even the telephone numbers he [Dawood] uses. Sometimes he is in Karachi, sometimes he is in Islamabad.”
bq. About the recent statement of a Pakistani minister confirming the gangster’s presence and business interests in Pakistan, the deputy prime minister said: “It only confirms what we have been conveying to the world all these years. It is an official confirmation or rather official admission of something we have been saying for years and which was till now being denied by Pakistan, including by the head of the state. He [Musharraf] formally denied it to me,” Advani said.
Finally what Pakistan and Musharraf has been denying has hit “them hard”:http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=33578
bq. The US Treasury Department tonight announced that Dawood Ibrahim alias Sheikh Dawood Hassan is a ��specially designated global terrorist�� with a Pak passport and a Karachi address.
bq. In one stroke, not only does this nail Pakistan�s lie and put its President General Pervez Musharraf under pressure to deliver Dawood�one of the 20 most wanted by India�it also puts the terrorist label on the D-company and its network in South-Asia, especially the Mumbai underworld.
Global Terrorists in Pakistan ? Looks like the Uncle asked Musharraf to do something and he did not comply. The pressure tactics come out.

Time Magaine asks “Is Pakistan a Friend or Foe?”:http://www.sulekha.com/redirectnh.asp?cid=317634. Hello, which planet have you been for the past one decade ? Here is an interesting piece from that article
bq. Musharraf assured Bush that there were no militant training camps in Pakistani territory. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage reminded Musharraf of that guarantee when the two met in the northern city of Rawalpindi before Musharraf’s last meeting with Bush in June. Armitage then produced a dossier of satellite photos showing camps of that nature. “Musharraf acted outraged and upset,” a State Department official tells TIME, but it wasn’t clear to the Americans whether he was angry that the camps were functioning or that the U.S. had uncovered them.
But then whatever happens in Kashmir never really worried Americans. The issue that concerns them is the nuclear proliferation that the Pakistanis are doing.
bq. American intelligence officials believe Pakistani scientists have shared�with North Korea and Iran�the technology they developed on their way to becoming a nuclear power. That is a possibility Washington cannot ignore when North Korea is explicitly threatening to sell nuclear weapons to terrorists unless the U.S. gives in to Pyongyang’s demands for security guarantees, diplomatic ties and economic aid
And finally here is one Presidential Candidate, who has said what others have failed to say explicitly. “Gen. Wesley Clark”:http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=3477256 said “Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and to a lesser extent, Egypt, those are the central fronts in the war on terror,”

bq. “Idols missing from Pak temples:”:http://www.tribuneindia.com/2003/20030702/main8.htm The government of Pakistan is not allowing even local Hindus to look after their desolate temples on the pattern of Sikh gurdwaras, which reveals its hidden agenda to divide the minorities in the country, says Mr Mathura Dass Arora (72), deputy leader of the last jatha of Hindus that visited the Pakistan temples in 1999. ?After this pilgrimage, the Hindus were not allowed to visit Pakistan on the pretext that they were not safe there. If jathas of Sikhs can be provided with security, the Hindus can be protected as well,? he told The Tribune.
This is how minority places of worship are treated in the land of the pure

“Thousands Riot in Rural Chinese Town Over SARS”:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nyt/20030428/ts_nyt/thousands_riot_in_rural_chinese_town_over_sars
bq. Thousands of residents of this rural town, believing that a local school would be turned into a ward for urban SARS patients, ransacked the interior of the four-story building on Sunday night. The school attack is the first reported instance of civic violence directly associated with China’s epidemic of SARS or severe acute respiratory syndrome. It suggests that social tensions are rising as fear of the invisible, potentially fatal virus spreads faster than the disease itself, although nearly a hundred more cases were reported in Beijing today.
Is this another Tiananmen in the making ?