theSun | TUESDAY DECEMBER 30 2008
news without borders
Hamas targets
A Palestinian man’s corpse is
trapped in the rubble of a collapsed
building which was a Hamas
security compound and was hit by
the Israeli Air Force in Gaza City.
offensive. The negotiations over
the past year have achieved
little visible progress.
The UN Security Council
called for a halt to the violence,
but US President George W.
Bush’s administration, in its
final weeks in office, has put
the onus on Hamas to renew
the truce.
Egyptian Foreign Minister
Ahmed Aboul Gheit said during
a visit to Turkey that “Israel
must stop its killing operations
against Palestinians”.
Turkey, one of Israel’s leading
Muslim allies, announced it was
ending efforts to organise peace
talks between Israel and Syria.
“The continuation of the talks under
these conditions is naturally impossible,”
Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said.
A senior Israeli official dismissed
any suggestion that Israel had acted
now because it believed a window of
opportunity was closing with Bush leaving
office and Barack Obama preparing to
China steps up effort
to ease India-Pakistan tension
ISLAMABAD: Indian and Pakistani military
officials held an unscheduled hotline call, a
Pakistani security officer said, as China joined
efforts to ease tension between the neighbours
inflamed by last month’s militant attacks in
Mumbai.
India has blamed Pakistan-based militants
for the assault on Mumbai in which 179 people
were killed, inflaming old hostilities between
the nuclear-armed rivals and raising fears of
conflict.
China’s Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei ar-
rived in Pakistan on Sunday and was due to
meet Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi,
the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said.
“He is visiting in the context of this current
situation between India and Pakistan. China is
playing a very positive role,” said Pakistani For-
eign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Sadiq.
The South Asian neighbours both tested
nuclear weapons in 1998. They have fought
three wars since independence from Britain
in 1947 and came to the brink of a fourth after
gunmen attacked the Indian parliament in
December 2001.
Although most analysts say war is very
unlikely, international unease is growing and
the United States has urged both sides not to
further raise tension.
Senior military officials from India and
Pakistan held an unscheduled conversation
on a hotline at the weekend, said a Pakistani
security officer, who declined to be identified.
The two countries’ directors general of
military operations talk every Tuesday, but
spoke at the weekend because of “the current
situation”, said the officer. He declined to give
details.
 15
Israeli tanks manoeuvre near the Gaza
Strip border in the vicinity of Sufa, inside
southern Israel.
enter the White House.
“Why should everything be connected
to the United States? A far more important
date for Israel is Feb 10,” the official
said, referring to the upcoming Israeli
parliamentary election.
“It wasn’t politically sustainable for
leaders in Israel to idly stand by and let
Hamas continue shooting.” – Reuters
Pakistan has condemned the Mumbai at-
tacks and has denied any state role, blaming
“non-state actors”.
India, the United States and Britain have
blamed the attacks on Pakistan-based Islam-
ist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, set up by Pakistani
security agencies in the late 1980s to fight
Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region.
The group was banned in Pakistan in 2002.
Since the attacks, Pakistan has detained
scores of militants, including several top lead-
ers, and shut offices and frozen the assets of
the Jamaat-ud-Dawa charity group, which the
United Nations says is a front for the LeT.
India is demanding Pakistan dismantle what
it calls the infrastructure of terrorism.
Sadiq said China was not pressing Pakistan
to do more to suppress militants.
“China is not putting any pressure. We are
acting against militants anyway and they are
here to defuse tension. They are not the ‘do-
more’ crowd,” he said, referring to countries
such as the United States which Pakistan says
continually demand more action. The Chinese
minister was due to travel to India later yester-
day, another government official said.
As tension has increased, Pakistan has
cancelled army leave and shifted some troops
from its western border with Afghanistan.
Pakistani military spokesmen have denied
any build-up of troops on the eastern border
with India, but a security official said some
troops had been moved to that border.
Pakistani officials have declined to say how
many troops had been moved off the Afghan
border, where 100,000 soldiers had been fight-
ing Al Qaeda and Taliban militants, saying only
“limited numbers” were involved. – Reuters