ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has angrily rejected allegations from Afghan officials that its intelligence agency masterminded the assassination of Kabul’s chief peace negotiator with the Taliban.

An investigative delegation established by President Hamid Karzai said evidence and a confession provided by a man involved in Burhanuddin Rabbani’s killing on September 20 had revealed that the bomber was Pakistani and the assassination had been plotted in Pakistan.

”Instead of making such irresponsible statements, those in positions of authority in Kabul should seriously deliberate as to why all those Afghans who are favourably disposed towards peace and towards Pakistan are systematically being removed from the scene and killed,” Pakistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

”There is a need to take stock of the direction taken by Afghan Intelligence and security agencies.”

Rabbani’s killing derailed efforts to forge dialogue with the Taliban to end the 10-year war, and raised fears of a dangerous widening of Afghanistan’s ethnic rifts.

Hundreds of Afghans took to the streets of Kabul on Sunday to condemn recent shelling of border areas by Pakistan’s army and accuse the country’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency of involvement in Rabbani’s killing.

In another sign of rising Afghan frustration with Islamabad, the peace council which Rabbani headed reiterated earlier comments by Karzai that negotiations should continue, but with Pakistan, rather than the Taliban, suggesting Islamabad was directing some militants from behind the scenes.

Afghan leaders have long questioned Islamabad’s promises to help bring peace to their country. Pakistani intelligence is suspected of ties to militant groups in Afghanistan, especially the Haqqani network, one of the deadliest.

Pakistan sees the group as a strategic asset, a counterweight to the growing influence of India in Afghanistan, analysts say.

ISI chief Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha told Reuters last week that Pakistan never provided a single penny or bullet to the Haqqani network.

The network’s leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani, told the BBC in an interview broadcast on Monday his group was not linked to the ISI.

Pakistan has also came under sharp criticism from its ally the United States — the source of billions of dollars in aid — over its performance against militancy.

The top US military officer has accused Pakistani intelligence of supporting an attack allegedly carried out by the Haqqani group, which is close to al Qaeda, on the US embassy in Kabul on September 13.

In the face of Pakistani indignation, the White House and State Department appeared to quietly distance themselves from the remarks by Admiral Mike Mullen, who stepped down this week as chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The United States wants Pakistan to crack down on the Haqqani network, which it believes is based in North Waziristan in the Afghan border, and other anti-American militants.

Pakistan says it has sacrificed more than any other country that joined the US-led global campaign against militancy after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, losing thousands of soldiers and security forces.

It has been presenting that argument more vigorously since US special forces found and killed Osama bin Laden in a secret raid in May in a Pakistani town, where he apparently had been living for years.

Instead of escalating attacks on militants, Pakistan seems to be searching for other ways to create stability in the unruly tribal areas near the Afghan border that offer sanctuaries.

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani was quoted by Pakistani newspapers on Monday as saying the government was ready to talk peace with militants.

”We should give peace a chance in the first place by holding dialogue with militants,” The Nation quoted him as saying.

The Express Tribune, quoted him as saying: ”If negotiations fail to work. The government will launch military operations in the tribal areas.” (UNI)

TOKYO: As Japan’s leader when the Fukushima nuclear crisis began in March, Naoto Kan concluded atomic power simply was not worth the risk. His successor seems less convinced.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s month-old government begins debate on Japan’s energy policy on Monday, but Noda has already signalled that nuclear power could play a role for decades.

Six months after the world’s worst radiation crisis in 25 years erupted at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima plant, critics say powerful pro-nuclear interests are quietly fighting back.

”It’s been a real bad year for the ‘nuclear village’ but I don’t think they are down and out,” said Jeffrey Kingston, Director of Asian Studies at Temple University’s Japan campus, referring to the nexus of utilities, lawmakers and regulators who long promoted atomic power as safe, clean and cheap.

Public concern about safety leapt after the Fukushima accident, which forced 80,000 people from their homes and sparked fears about food and water supplies. Some 70 per cent of voters polled in July backed Kan’s call to phase out nuclear plants.

A series of scandals in which regulators and power companies tried to sway hearings on reactors has also dented public trust.

In an effort to tap in to that sentiment, Kan floated ambitious targets for renewable energy and embraced a future without nuclear power. He promised an overhaul of a government plan approved last year to build 14 new reactors and raise the share of nuclear power in Japan’s electricity mix to 53 percent by 2030 from about a third prior to the Fukushima accident.

”How should we deal with the risk that nuclear power might cause our country to perish? This question is what led me to propose the creation of a society free from dependence on nuclear power.”

Noda, in contrast, has acknowledged that public safety concerns will make it tough to build new reactors, but on Friday stopped short of saying atomic power would play no role at all by 2050. He said decisions on reactors already under construction would have to be made ”case-by-case”.

He was also vague about the criteria that an advisory panel, which will make recommendations on a new energy plan by next summer, should use in reaching its conclusions.

”Naturally, we are aiming at the best energy mix that can allay the concerns of the citizens about safety,” Noda told a news conference.

The panel is chaired by the head of steel industry giant Nippon Steel Corp , a heavy user of electricity and considered partial to nuclear power, but also includes those opposed to atomic energy.

Bureaucrats with strong ties to the power industry were recently appointed to key posts at the Trade Ministry, which oversees energy policy, in what Sentaku monthly magazine said was a sign the ”nuclear village” was alive and well. (PTI)

London: British Home Secretary Theresa May wants the Human Rights Act should be scrapped as it is hindering the Home Office’s efforts to deport terrorist suspects, RIA Novosti reported Sunday.

May expressed this view during an interview with the Sunday Telegraph.

“I see it, here in the Home Office, particularly, the sort of problems we have in being unable to deport people who perhaps are terrorist suspects. Obviously we’ve seen it with some foreign criminals who are in the UK,” she said, ahead of the annual conference of the Conservative party, which is expected to discuss the issue.

Prime Minister and the Conservatives’ leader David Cameron said he agreed with May that the act should be replaced with a British Bill of Rights, which would include all the fundamental rights.

But, the idea is likely to concern leading Liberal Democrats, some of whom have said the future of the coalition with the Conservatives would be threatened if the Act, which incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, was axed.

Last month Liberal Democrat’s leader Nick Clegg told his party conference he would defend the Act. (IANS)

Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has said that his government is ready to start parleys with Taliban, but evaded questions whether the reconciliation would include the Haqqani faction.

For the first time, Gilani dropped his earlier pre-condition of militants giving up arms before any talks, but warned that if the parleys fail to work, the military will launch operations in the tribal areas.

“If negotiations fail to work, the government will launch military operations in the tribal areas,” he told a small group of journalists at his residence in Lahore on Sunday night.

Gilani provided details about how the talks would be conducted for the first time, days after a meeting of Pakistan’s political parties called for peace talks to end unrest in the militancy-hit tribal belt.

The proposed talks will be monitored by a parliamentary committee to ensure transparency and civilian oversight of the process, he said.

“We want to give peace a chance now…The national interest is above everything, we will give people a chance to reconcile.”

Asked whether the Haqqani network – blamed by the US for high-profile terror attacks in Afghanistan – would be part of the reconciliation, Gilani evaded a direct answer and said a parliamentary committee would implement resolutions passed on such issues by parliament and the All Parties Conference (APC) that was held on September 29.

The APC adopted a resolution which said Pakistan “must initiate dialogue with a view to negotiate peace with our own people in the tribal areas and a proper mechanism for this (should) be put in place”.

This has triggered speculation that the government is preparing for talks with all militant groups, including the Taliban.

During his interaction with the journalists, Gilani did not specifically refer to North Waziristan Agency – the tribal region where the Haqqani network is based – when talking about possible military operations. (PTI)

He said the government’s current approach was similar to the one that was tried in the Swat valley, where it offered a peace deal to Taliban militants in 2009 and launched a military operation after they refused to honour the pact. Gilani made several references to the APC and the unanimous resolution adopted by it.

The premier had called the meeting of all political parties to forge consensus on a response to US accusations that the Inter-Services Intelligence agency was backing the Haqqani network in waging a proxy war in Afghanistan. He contended that the show of unity at the APC had dissuaded the US from its “strident criticism of Pakistan” and claimed that Americans had agreed to forswear future unilateral action in Pakistan.

“There will be no (foreign) boots on Pakistani soil… Pakistan has gotten assurances from the United States that there will not be any unilateral action like the May 2 Abbottabad incident,” Gilani said, referring to the covert US military raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Gilani chose to highlight Pakistan’s desire to play a peacemaking role in Afghanistan.

“Our common enemy, which does not see us united, might be involved in (former Afghan President Burhanuddin) Rabbani’s assassination and I categorically informed (Afghan President Hamid) Karzai that we should not play into the hands of such elements,” Gilani said.

He said a reconciliation process with Taliban was ongoing in Afghanistan and those involved in the parleys “are just Taliban, without any debate on whether they are good or bad”.

Gilani rejected the impression that his government had a secret agreement with the US on the war against terrorism and said Pakistan would only take steps that were in its interest. (PTI)