ISLAMABAD: The Sindh government has blamed the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) for violating the inter-provincial Water Apportionment Accord (WAA) 1991, The News has learnt.

“As far as water distribution is concerned, the only thing in vogue is the 1991 Water Accord. The Irsa is a creation of the 1991 accord and the creation cannot alter or violate the accord under which it was created,” an official letter sent to the Irsa by the Sindh government says.

The document was duly signed by Sindh Minister for Irrigation and Power Murad Ali Shah and was addressed to the Irsa through its provincial member Mohammad Khan Memon.“The Irsa decided, in its last advisory committee meeting, not to entertain any provincial pressure in water distribution since all federating units have their representation in the authority to discuss and take vital decisions,” an Irsa spokesman responded when approached.

The Irsa spokesman said not only Sindh Minister Murad Shah but also Punjab Minister Raja Riaz, in their separate letters, had sought water distribution in accordance with their respective province’s interpretations.

“All Irsa members, five in all, unanimously took a decision to go by the accord in accordance with the three tier mechanism instead of accepting any pressure,” he said while expressing indifference to Sindh’s latest letter wherein Irsa was directly blamed for violation of WAA.

Sindh Minister Murad, early October, wrote a letter to the water and power minister, calling for water distribution under para-2 of the WAA which Punjab Minister Riaz has rejected.“It is requested that looking at the people’s government manifesto of equity, the Irsa may be directed for fixing water shares of all provinces proportionate to the allocation given in para-2 of the accord,” Murad’s earlier letter said.

In the latest communication on the Rabi season allocations, finalised by Irsa on Oct 13, 2009, Murad again sent an official communication to the Irsa on Oct 22, 2009. “I want to reiterate to Irsa that as far as water distribution is concerned, the only thing in vogue is the 1991 Water Accord.

“Any use of historic uses in any form will be a violation of the accord as determined by the law division,” his letter reads. “How can Irsa decide to use any criteria in the absence of decision?”The Irsa conveyed in its Oct 15 official letter: “In the absence of any decision by the authority on the issue, it has been decided by Irsa that criteria for Rabi 2009-10 as per practice in vogue may be issued”. However, Murad described this statement as self-contradictory. “In view of the expected pressure, the five Irsa members took a decision not to bow before any pressure,” Irsa spokesman Khalid Idris said. http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=25337

THATTA, Nov 1: Chairman of the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz Basheer Khan Qureshi has said that he has received life threats from personnel of intelligence agencies who said that he would be eliminated before Nov 7, when the party has planned a march in Karachi.

Mr Qureshi said JSQM vice-chairman Akash Mallah and activist Noor Mohammed Khaskheli had gone missing from Bhitai Nagar, Hyderabad, and added claimed that the two had been picked up by the agencies.

Speaking at a press conference here on Sunday, Mr Qureshi said he wanted to lodge an ‘FIR’ through media that if any thing happened to him and his colleagues, an FIR should be registered against PPP rulers and the ISI.

Mr Qureshi said the JSQM had chalked out a comprehensive programme to stage rallies across Sindh against the missing of Mallah and Khaskheli. If they were not released, the party would call for a strike in the province, he said.

He said the PPP that had betrayed Sindh and Sindhi people was afraid of the Nov 7 march of the JSQM in Karachi.

In reply to a question, the JSQM chairman admitted that none of the nationalist leaders had so far offered to participate in the march. However, he was of the firm belief that all sons of the soil would step forward for the independence of the motherland.

He said party vice-chairman Akash Mallah, who was recently released, had been picked up again by the agencies to prevent the party from taking out rally in Karachi.

Our Hyderabad Bureau adds: JSQM activists staged a protest demonstration outside the press club to protest against the missing of Mallah and Khaskheli.

Speaking on the occasion, Haji Anwar Mallah, Mushtaq Umrani and Fatah Channa said that the Sindh government was harassing JSQM leaders and workers to sabotage the scheduled “March for Independence in Karachi on Nov 7.

They warned the government to stop conspiracies against the nationalist forces and not to create any hurdles in the programme of march.

They said that the people of Sindh would foil all conspiracies against Sindh by joining the rally in Karachi. They demanded immediate release of Mallah and Khaskheli. http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/national/jsqm-chief-fears-he-may-be-killed-by-agencies-119

By Tariq Naqash in The Dawn, Nov 2
MUZAFFARABAD, Nov 1: Renowned Kashmiri human rights activist Dr Syed Nazir Gilani has asked Pakistan to stick to the right to self-determination instead of using the vague term of “aspirations” of the people of Kashmir.

“It would be wrong and unwise on the part of Pakistan to skip the urgent need to clarify between accession, self-determination and aspirations on the one hand and unfairly hope to manipulate ‘wishes and aspirations’ through an interchange of political culture on either side of the Line of Control on the other,” he said.

Dr Gilani who is secretary general of London-based Jammu Kashmir Council for Human Rights (JKCHR) was talking to Dawn during his visit to Azad Kashmir.

According to him, ‘aspirations and wishes of Kashmiri people’ was a vague term and ran the risk of diluting and confusing the basic issue.

Kashmir, he said, was not a dispute as ordinarily understood but it was the question of a title of the Kashmiri people to self-determination, embedded in 132-year-old rights movement, charter obligation of 194-member nations of the UN and envisaged in the UN resolutions on the region.

Disputes could fluctuate with the change of political climate but self-determination could not be changed, he said.

He feared that India and Pakistan might not act in fairness and equity if Kashmir was treated as a dispute “because at the time of settlement of disputes, sovereign interests of both nations will reign supreme.”

“The two sides may continue to dispute with each other but they have no right to sandwich us and our inherent right to self-determination for their self-serving disputes,” he said.

He said it would be unwise and unhelpful if India continued to avoid its contractual obligations and international commitments due towards the Kashmiri people.

“The Kashmiri people are equal to any other people under the principle of self-determination and as members of the UN, India and Pakistan have Charter obligations to discharge towards self-determination and equality among people,” he said.

He said death of a generation in Kashmir had caused a serious number deficit in the process of self-determination. “In fact, we have killed the right of self-determination for some time. It is not realisable in the near future and we need to defend this principle at least,” he said.

The JKCHR secretary general pointed out that the position taken by Libya at the 64th session of UN General Assembly and by China to endorse visa to the citizens of the state of Jammu and Kashmir was in accordance with the Charter obligation of the two countries as envisaged in the UNCIP resolutions on Kashmir.

Dr Gilani who was elected at the UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in June 1993 to represent the ‘Unrepresented peoples and nations of the world’ termed the Chinese interest in Kashmir as a ‘significant development.’

China which shared a border with Kashmir had played a lead role during the discussion of Kashmir at the UN and at the 241st meeting of the UN Security Council held on February 5, 1948, making a serious case for ‘pacification,’ he said, recalling that China had also come up with Articles of Settlement on 18 March, 1948 at the 269th meeting of the Security Council.

He said Pakistan should adopt a stand like that of China and also press the OIC nations to follow the suit. “The OIC should also accept Kashmiris as a separate nation,” he said. http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/national/kashmiris-right-to-selfdetermination-should-be-supreme-119

NEW DELHI: When India’s central bank admitted discovering 400,000 fake notes in its currency reserves, many here woke up to the scale of the country’s counterfeit money problems.

Worse still, the embarrassing admission related to a survey from the last financial year to March 2009 and authorities say the problem has since got worse.

Police and the central bank have observed a tripling in the value of notes detected or seized in raids in recent years and authorities are convinced the source of the deluge is a familiar foe across the border: Pakistan.

“We have had some success in tracking the routes and will continue to counter it, but behind this racket is an organised effort in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir,” Home Minister P Chidambaram said recently. “It’s not just a cottage industry.”

Hardly a day passes without news of arrests of currency smugglers, but police say they are only catching the ‘smallfry’, while the ‘big fish’ act with impunity “over the border”.

Many locals here complain of withdrawing fake notes from bank machines and ever-vigilant shopkeepers routinely check the watermarks that are meant to protect the larger denomination 500 and 1,000-rupee notes.

A report this year by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), a state body that tracks money flows, said counterfeit currency was brought in by militants from abroad and then moved through criminal networks.

Smuggling: The DRI said that 130 million high-quality counterfeit notes were being smuggled into India every year and only a fraction were detected.

The security establishment is now clamouring for more scrutiny of India’s banking system and the central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has instructed nationalised banks to install sorting machines to weed out fakes.

“If the circulation of counterfeit notes was not checked then the economy could be running with over 25 percent fake notes making the rounds across the country,” said analyst Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Managment.

The RBI is also running awareness campaigns, even educating schoolchildren to detect fake notes, and plans to introduce a billion special plastic-coated notes that are tougher to counterfeit. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\11\02\story_2-11-2009_pg7_4