Balochistan is the home of Gwadar port a proposed gateway for the external trade of the Xinjiang province and a promising regional base for the Chinese navy.
This would put the Chinese navy next to Iran’s shipping lane the Strait of Hormuz. The Chinese have a considerable investment in Iran’s oil and gas. Bush plans on attacking Iran by choking the Strait of Hormuz.
Bush is going for a takeover of Balochistan setting up a military occupation as a means to contain Iran. This is a clandestine operation and the American public will as usual remain oblivious. See #msg-4799713
Former Lahore High Court Bar (LHCBA) president Hafiz Abdul Rehman Ansari said that the foundation of Pakistan was laid in Bengal, but that very part broke away from the country. A similar conspiracy could now be witnessed to realise the American dream of “Greater Balochistan”, he claimed. He demanded that the government stop the operation, in which innocent citizens were being killed.
Mohammad Kamran adds from Islamabad: The Joint Action Committee of Lawyers on Friday protested in front of the Supreme Court against the military operation in Balochistan and called it a step towards a massive militarisation of civil Officials of the Pakistan Bar Council, Supreme Court Bar Association and representatives of high courts and district bars took part in the demonstration. They shouted slogans against ‘Pentagon-GHQ alliance’, ‘Musharraf-Bush friendship’ and called prime minister-in-waiting Shaukat Aziz ‘an agent of the United States and Israel’.
Pakistan Bar Council Vice Chairman Rashid A Rizvi said the government was depriving the smaller provinces of their basic rights. He said any military operation in Balochistan or any other province would be against provincial autonomy. Mr Rizvi said the plan to form three cantonments in Balochistan was tantamount to military occupation of civilian areas.
Supreme Court Bar Association President Justice (r) Tariq Mahmood said that the government was responsible for provincial disharmony. Citing the example of Balochistan, he said no civilian could enter the cantt area without an entry sticker. “Nowhere in the country is such a practice followed. Why is the government so harsh with Balochistan”, he asked. Justice Mehmood said ISPR Director General Major General Shaukat Sultan was making immature statements to justify the military measures in the area which were absolutely illegal and unconstitutional. SCBA Vice President Muhammad Ikram Chaudhry said Thursday’s public meeting in Shaukat Aziz’s election campaign held on the premises of the Cadet College Hasanabdal was ample proof of the government’s partiality in the by-elections. Mr Ikram called Shaukat Aziz an American agent who would pursue a US agenda.
Foreign involvement could not be ruled out in the bomb blasts that had rocked the province, he said. When told that the BLA had claimed responsibility for the bombing, he said foreign elements could be using local proxies to carry out terrorist activities. Such activities could hurt negotiations between the nationalist parties and federal government, he said, adding that it was the nationalists’ moral duty to separate themselves from such organisations. Talking about the BLA, the chief minister said such organisations might be active in their territories, but the government would bring them to justice. – Told to Daily Times by Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Yousaf
"Dioxin is not a poison with an immediate effect, its toxicity builds up over years, dozens of years, and it is impossible to receive a dose one day that would poison you the next," said Yuri Ostapenko, head of the Russian health ministry's poison centre.
-Am
Russia doubts poison claims 12/12/2004 15:40 - (SA)
Kiev - Ukraine's repeat election campaign officially kicked off on Sunday but the country's ruling elite was silent after news that Western-oriented opposition leader and presidential frontrunner Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned earlier in the race in this former Soviet republic.
Yushchenko, in Vienna where physicians said the mystery pre-election illness that dramatically disfigured his face had been caused as a result of ingesting poison, was shown on Ukrainian TV saying he was "very happy to be alive in this world today."
Amid speculation that the attempt to poison Yushchenko had been intended to kill him, as he has insisted, a senior European envoy was arriving in Kiev to check on the chances of the country holding a fair vote December 26.
But there was no immediate information on whom the Council of Europe's secretary general Terry Davis would meet amid struggles between Europe and Russia over influence in a country that has served in the past decade as a bridge between Moscow and the West.
And though officials were saying nothing, everywhere on the streets there was talk of Saturday's report of dioxin poisoning from the Austrian doctor who said Yushchenko's face had been disfigured so suddenly because he probably ingested the chemical in his food.
Speculation
The findings follow three months of speculation about an ailment that struck Yushchenko on September 6, leaving him in pain and barely recognisable with a severely disfigured face.
Yushchenko's doctor said in Austria that he has "a thousand times above the normal levels" of dioxin in his tissue and that it could have been fed to him by a foe.
Yushchenko was due to speak later on Sunday about the medical findings, which analysts say are likely to boost his election campaign.
He is currently on a campaign stump in Russian-leaning regions of Ukraine and his new campaign manager has so far refused to comment on the clinic's report.
The outgoing President Leonid Kuchma, who had groomed Yanukovich for the presidency after a 10-year rule, has also failed to comment on the doctor's report.
Yushchenko has repeatedly claimed that he was poisoned by political rivals.
And he is seen as the likely winner of an election to a November 21 vote that the former Soviet republic's supreme court agreed was mired by fraud.
Both camps have accused one another of fixing the results, but European observers sides with Yushchenko.
In Russia, which strongly supported Yanukovich, a health ministry official questioned the conclusions reached by the Austrian doctors.
"Dioxin is not a poison with an immediate effect, its toxicity builds up over years, dozens of years, and it is impossible to receive a dose one day that would poison you the next," said Yuri Ostapenko, head of the Russian health ministry's poison centre.
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