by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Islamabad : Pakistan is planning to form a government agency for promoting the country as a tourist-friendly nation so as to attract foreign tourists, local reports said on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday approved to form the 25-member National Tourism Coordination Board for the promotion of tourism, ARY News reported.
The board will work for promoting tourism, enhancing coordination between federation and provinces governments, formulating provincial regulatory framework and highlighting other objectives including the promotion of country’s tourism at international level.
The board will also direct Pakistani embassies across the world to adopt measures regarding promotion of country’s tourism sector, Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday.
The prime minister also decided to organize Pakistan Tourism Expo this year at the international level and form working groups for religious, cultural and historical tourism.
The present Pakistani government is focusing on tourism sector for generating revenue for its economy. Earlier, the country decided to relax visa rules for dozens of countries in the first phase to attract tourists and foreign investment in the country.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Islamabad : Pakistan’s Foreign Office has rejected objection raised by India over Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s telephone call to Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.
The row started after Qureshi called Farooq on Tuesday and spoke about Islamabad’s efforts to “highlight” the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir internationally.
In reaction, India told Pakistan on Wednesday to lay off on the issue of Jammu and Kashmir and Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale summoned Pakistan High Commissioner Sohail Mahmood.
Gokhale condemned in “the strongest terms this latest brazen attempt by Pakistan to subvert India’s unity and to violate our sovereignty and territorial integrity, by none other than the Pakistan Foreign Minister”.
Pakistan’s Foreign Office, however, dismissed India’s objection in a statement, saying: “Kashmir is an unresolved issue between Pakistan and India and acknowledged as such through UN Security Council resolutions, including the Simla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration.
“We also categorically reject any insinuation that seeks to project as ‘terrorism’ the legitimate struggle of the Kashmiri people for self-determination. This is an outright travesty.
“Pakistan will maintain its support and solidarity till the time the Kashmir dispute is resolved peacefully, in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the people of the occupied valley,” it added.
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has also justified the telephone call, asking why was New Delhi so upset.
New Delhi-Islamabad ties are frosted after repeated cross-border terror attacks from Pakistan-based terror outfits.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Bishkek : Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Chingiz Aidarbekov held a meeting here on Tuesday with Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Pakistan to Kyrgyzstan Faisal Niyaz Tirmidhi.
During the meeting, the two sides expressed satisfaction over the existing level of bilateral relations between Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan, stressing the need to further enhance the dynamics of bilateral cooperation between the two countries, the Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Both sides also reviewed the current state and prospects of developing bilateral relations, and measures to enhance economic cooperation. They further discussed the implementation of the Central Asia South Asia Electricity Transmission and Trade Project (CASA-1000), as well as cooperation through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) whose rotating chairmanship has been taken over by Kyrgyzstan since 10 June 2018.
—AB/UNA-OIC
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Islamabad : Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have finalised a $6.2 billion support package to help Islamabad address its balance of payments challenge, the media reported on Saturday.
The package involves $3.2 billion worth of oil supplies on deferred payment, besides a $3 billion cash deposit. It is expected to be announced by Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan during his visit to the country starting Sunday, Dawn reported.
According to a government official, the package was finalised on Thursday evening and was similar to that given by Saudi Arabia.
With this, Pakistan would get a total saving of about $7.9 billion on oil and gas imports from the two countries, accounting for more than 60 per cent of annual oil import bill of about $12-13 billion, he said.
This included about $3.2 billion each of oil supplies on deferred payments from the UAE and Saudi Arabia and about $1.5 billion trade finance from the International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC).
The total financing support from the UAE and Saudi Arabia, including the ITFC’s trade finance, would be around $14 billion when cash deposits of $3 billion each from the two countries were also included, the official said.
This is in addition to a deep-conversion oil refinery to be set up by Parco — a joint venture of Pakistan and Abu Dhabi — worth $5-6 billion and an expected petro-chemical complex by Saudi Arabia.
The government also started backchannel discussions with Qatar for some relief in terms of reduction in LNG prices or a relaxed payment schedule, but that was at an early stage, the daily said.
Pakistan has already received $2 billion in cash deposit from Saudi Arabia at an interest rate of 3.18 per cent while the third tranche of $1 billion was due in the first week of February. The Saudi oil facility would also start rolling out this month with an average $274 million per month.
The daily said that with support from Qatar, Pakistan was expecting about $9 billion cushion in total oil and gas import bill.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews
Pakistani writer Fatima Bhutto
By Saket Suman,
New Delhi : Whatever the state of politics between India and Pakistan may be, the citizens of the neighbouring countries, separated at birth, are naturally drawn to each other and you cannot stop that, says Fatima Bhutto, niece of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and granddaughter of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
She said there has always been “a great warmth” between the people of the two countries, and that she has personally been a witness to it.
“Whether it’s Pakistani serials or Indian films, art or books, as a people we are naturally drawn to each other and open and curious to learn more… Art has always broken barriers — it’s always been a powerful way for people to connect and communicate with each other and I think the ease of the internet has helped us overcome physical obstacles,” the 36-year-old writer, who has been a critic of Benazir Bhutto and her husband Asif Ali Zardari, whom she accused of being involved in her father’s murder, told IANS in an email interview from Karachi.
She recalled that, in the year gone by, she read books by several Indian authors online and even discovered authors she had not read before such as Gurmehar Kaur, Supriya Nair and Raghu Karnad.
“… no amount of downfall anywhere can stop me from seeking out new and interesting voices.”
However, the cultural exchanges between India and Pakistan have hit rock bottom in the past two years, with only books being the exception. On this being pointed out, and asked of her prescription for enriching people-to-people ties between the two countries, Bhutto urged people to engage with each other’s creative and popular cultures.
“What we must do is keep insisting that we want to read each other, want to speak to each other and reject attempts to interrupt that,” she said.
Interestingly, her novel “The Runaways” — about radicalism and the confusions of millennial culture and how difficult it is to survive in a world on fire — which released towards the end of 2018, was welcomed with rave reviews in India.
She said when she began writing it, she was thinking primarily about her two main male characters — Monty and Sunny — who come from very different worlds but are thrown together in the wilds of Iraq. The narrative of the novel also makes it apparent that youngsters are drawn to radicalism as a result of societal and political pressures.
“The narrative we are fed today is that radicalism is born out of religion, I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I think radicalism comes from a hundred different humiliations and wounds — not just one source. To boot, we live in a time where young people are subjected to an overwhelming culture of the self: Everyone wants to be famous, to go viral, to be seen, to be significant,” she said.
Asked if there there was a political ideology that goes into her writings, Bhutto said she doesn’t set out to write about politics, it’s not her intention when she sits down at her desk, but it’s what she is drawn to.
“My way of seeing the world is shaped by a fundamental belief that politics is ingrained in everything. It codes the films we watch, the places we travel to, how we live, how we treat others, how we dress — everything. With ‘The Runaways’ I wanted to write about what has to happen to a person in order to radicalise him — what does it mean to be at war with your society, your family, your friends, your world? But it’s also a novel about loneliness, about social media, about not feeling and wanting to be powerful. I’m not an ideologue, I’m interested in people — I don’t want to judge anyone but to observe them and hopefully understand them.”
The title of her novel may leave some readers wondering if the author is herself a Runaway too, particularly in view of the upheavals that her family has been witness to in the political trajectory of Pakistan.
Bhutto recalled she was born in exile and spent a good part of her life searching for the idea of home.
“I used to say that I always felt like a rootless person but that’s not quite correct, I think it’s the opposite — I have roots everywhere. Not nowhere. I have roots in Afghanistan because of blood and birth, in Syria because it was my first home, the first place I truly loved, in Iran because my Dadi was from Isfahan and so much of the language, the food, the humour of the country remind me of her… and it goes on. I’m at home everywhere in the world and rather than feeling displaced, I feel connected. Home is the people you love, it’s not a geography,” she said.
“The Runaways” is published by Penguin Random House and is available in both bookstores and online.
(Saket Suman can be contacted at saket.s@ians.in)
—IANS
