Washington: Even as there is a sense of positivity over Indo-Pak ties after the outcome of Pakistan polls, a former Pakistani diplomat believes a regime change is unlikely to bring any substantial shift in Islamabad's approach. Former Pakistan Ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani noted this while giving an analysis of the post-election scenario in Pakistan.
"We will have a kind of a hug-hug, embrace-embrace, but no substantial changed attitude towards India," he said. According to the reports in Pakistani media, Sharif has invited Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for his swearing in ceremony.
"I think Nawaz Sharif will move to have relatively better relations with India, at least at a superficial level, cricket matches, cultural exchanges, speaking to Punjabis in Punjabi, on the Indian side," Haqqani said in response to a question. "But strategically, will he say, let's put Kashmir on the back burner and move forward? I don't see that happening. Will he say that we need to actually implement the Most Favoured Nation agreement that the PPP reached, which has been held in a sort of limbo by the military?" Haqqani questioned.
The former diplomat said developments like setting up of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Kargil war have always contradicted Sharif's intentions of having good ties with India....
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09:21 AM, May 14, 2013
Security forces in the Afghan capital have defused a truck bomb packed with nearly eight tonnes of explosives, the biggest of its kind discovered in the country, the spy agency said on Friday amid heightened security. Intelligence forces discovered the explosives in eastern Kabul, wired and ready for detonation, security officials said. ...
05:56 PM, Mar 15, 2013
United Nations: The UN Security Council, under India's presidency, has imposed global sanctions against the dreaded Pakistan-based Haqqani militant network and the group's chief of suicide operations. The Council's Afghanistan/Taliban Sanctions Committee on Monday added the Haqqani group and Qari Zakir to its list of entities which face an assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo. The move comes the same day that the US State Department designated Zakir as...
09:56 AM, Nov 06, 2012
Kabul: The Haqqani insurgent network, based in Pakistan and with ties to al Qaeda, is suspected of being a driving force behind a significant number of the "insider" attacks by Afghan forces that have killed or wounded more than 130 US and allied troops this year, American officials said on Friday. Until now, officials had said the attacks seemed to stem either from personal grievances against the allies or from...
02:57 AM, Oct 06, 2012
Washington: There is no move by the US to begin the process of designating Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism, officials said, after the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton informed the Congress that the Haqqani network is being designated as a global terrorist organisation. Such a statement from senior US officials, who spoke to journalists on the condition of anonymity, came as a top Pentagon official had last year...
10:27 PM, Sep 08, 2012
New York: The US on Friday designated the Pakistan-based dreaded Haqqani network as a terrorist group, a move that could degrade the organisation's ability to execute violent attacks and pressurise Islamabad to act militarily against the outfit. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton formally designated the militant network as terrorist organisation in a report to the Congress on Friday. "I have sent a report to Congress saying that the Haqqani...
10:11 PM, Sep 07, 2012
Rarotonga: US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said she will meet next week's deadline to report to Congress on whether the Haqqani network should be designated as a terrorist organisation. As she praised the contributions of Australia and New Zealand to the international military mission in Afghanistan, Clinton said on Friday she would present the report on the Haqqani network by September 9 as called for by lawmakers....
11:29 AM, Sep 01, 2012
Kabul: Afghanistan's intelligence agency said on Sunday its operatives have confirmed that the son of the founder of the powerful Haqqani militant network was killed in an airstrike in Pakistan, even as the Taliban vowed that he was alive and well. Shafiquallh Tahriri, the spokesman for Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security, said Badruddin Haqqani was killed last week. He did not provide any further details, and would not say what...
11:11 PM, Aug 26, 2012
Washington/Islamabad: Badruddin Haqqani, the key operational commander of the al-Qaeda linked Haqqani network, and top Pakistani Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah are believed to have been killed in US drone and air strikes in the tribal region of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Badruddin, the son of Afghan warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani, is ranked as a deputy to his elder brother and the network's chief Sirajuddin and was believed to be killed in one...
02:16 PM, Aug 25, 2012
Washington: After over a year of rancorous relations, US and Pakistani authorities are considering to launch joint counter-terrorism operations against the dreaded Haqqani network, which has carried out several attacks on American troops, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The operations would be intended to help stamp out major security threats facing each country, targeting what the US says are sanctuaries for the Haqqani network in Pakistan, and what Pakistan says are...
06:00 PM, Aug 05, 2012
Washington: As ISI chief Lt Gen Zaheer-ul-Islam held crucial talks with his CIA counterpart David Petraeus, a damning report by a prestigious US military academy has said that the dreaded Haqqani Network receives financial and logistic support from the Pakistani military. The report on financing of Haqqani network by Combating Terrorism Center of the US Military Academy in West Point, New York, also said the Afghan Taliban-linked group has a...
03:13 PM, Aug 02, 2012
Washington: The US Senate has unanimously passed a resolution urging the Obama Administration to designate the dreaded Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organisation. The resolution comes after the US House of Representatives passed Haqqani Network Terrorist Designation Act of 2012 early July. The bill, which was passed in 2011, had to be passed by the Senate again because of the changes made in it by the House. After Senate's...
11:31 AM, Jul 28, 2012
Washington: Ramping up the pressure on Obama Administration to designate the Haqqani Network as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has passed a bill through voice vote. The bill, which was proposed by Senator Richard Burr and was brought to the House Floor under suspension of the rules on Tuesday, requires the State Department to decide within a month whether the Haqqani Network meets the criteria for...
11:03 AM, Jul 18, 2012
Kabul: Elite Afghan police backed by NATO forces ended a 12-hour siege on Friday at a popular lakeside hotel outside Kabul, leaving at least 20 dead after Taliban gunmen stormed the building, bursting into a party and seizing dozens of hostages. The night-time assault on the hotel with rocket-propelled grenades, suicide vests and machine guns again proved how potent the Islamist insurgency remains after a decade of war. The commander...
09:23 PM, Jun 22, 2012
Washington: US military and intelligence officials are so frustrated with Pakistan's failure to stop local militant groups from attacking Americans in neighbouring Afghanistan that they have considered launching secret joint US-Afghan commando raids into Pakistan to hunt them down, officials told The Associated Press. But the idea, which US officials say comes up every couple of months, has been consistently rejected because the White House believes the chance of successfully...
05:43 PM, Jun 22, 2012
Washington: Pakistan's former ambassador to the US, Husain Haqqani, on Tuesday dismissed the memo commission's report and launched a veiled attack on the judiciary claiming the findings were made public to divert the attention from from "more embarrassing developments". The commission had concluded that Haqqani was behind a mysterious memo that sought US help to stave off a feared coup and said he was "not loyal" to the country while...
01:56 PM, Jun 12, 2012
New Delhi: A report submitted in Pakistan's Supreme Court by the judicial commission probing the Memogate scandal has claimed that former envoy to the United States Husain Haqqani had authored the confidential memo. Pakistan Supreme Court has directed Haqqani to appear before it in two weeks. The Supreme Court has issued the notices to all the respondents of memo scandal including Haqqani. It has adjourned the hearing in the memo...
11:11 AM, Jun 12, 2012
Washington: The United States aspires to have greater engagement with India sitting on an enormously important geostrategic location on the sea lines of communication from the Mideast into Pacific, according to a top US military officer. "We have for some time said that we aspired to a closer relationship and greater engagement with India," General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the foreign media on June...
11:26 AM, Jun 08, 2012
Kabul/Washington: In the strongest warning so far to Pakistan, US has said it is reaching the limits of its patience with Islamabad for allowing safe havens to terrorists, specially the dreaded Haqqani network. The warning was sounded by Defence Secretary Leon Panetta who on an unannounced visit to Afghanistan declared, "It is difficult to achieve peace in Afghanistan as long as there is safe haven for terrorists in Pakistan". Singling...
04:52 PM, Jun 07, 2012
Washington: The US has slapped sanctions on two individuals linked with the Taliban and the Haqqani network based along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, barring American citizens from any dealings with them. Bakht Gul, a Haqqani Network communications official, has been designated for acting for or on behalf of Badruddin Haqqani. Abdul Baqi Bari, a Taliban financier, is being designated for providing financial support for or financial services to, the Taliban, Adam...
12:21 PM, May 18, 2012
