Shehbaz Sharif 'better' for China-Pakistan ties than Imran Khan: China

News Network
April 10, 2022

Chinese official media on Sunday sounded upbeat about the prospects of Shehbaz Sharif becoming the new prime minister following the ouster of Imran Khan, saying all-weather ties between China and Pakistan "could be better than under Khan".

A new Pakistan government will be formed most likely under Shehbaz, the younger brother of three-time former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, after Parliament reconvenes on Monday to vote for a new premier, a write up in the state-run Global Times said.

"Chinese and Pakistani analysts consider that the solid China-Pakistan relations will not be affected by the internal political change in Pakistan because to safeguard and develop the bilateral ties is the joint consensus of all parties and all groups in Pakistan,” it said.

"The potential successor of Khan is from the Sharif family which has been promoting China-Pakistan ties for a long time, and cooperation between the two countries could be even better than under Khan," it said, adding that close ties between the two countries were better under the traditional political parties.

The $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) progressed better under the previous Nawaz Sharif government.

China had reservations about Khan as he was a critic of the project when he was in the opposition though he later became its big admirer after assuming office in 2018.

The latest political change in Pakistan is mainly caused by political party struggles and issues with the economy and people's livelihoods, said Qian Feng, director of the research department at the National Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University.

Qian added that due to the impact from the Covid-19 pandemic, many people in the country believe that Khan's administration has failed to stop the economic situation from worsening,

"In general, current internal problems in Pakistan have nothing to do with its solid ties with China, so there will not be a significant impact on China-Pakistan cooperation,” he said.

"Khan is from a newly rising political party…, and when traditional major political parties like the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) or the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) return to power, China-Pakistan cooperation could be even better because these traditional major parties have much closer and deeper ties with China,” Qian told the daily.

When Shehbaz was a regional leader of the eastern province of Punjab, he signed many Belt and Road Initiative cooperation deals with China directly to improve local infrastructure and economic development, and his family has maintained long-standing ties with China as his brother Nawaz Sharif is a three-time former prime minister and the leader who kicked off the CPEC project, the Chinese experts said.

Significantly, the write-up also commented on Khan’s problematic ties with the powerful Pakistan military, which caused his downfall.

Some voices have said that the Pakistani military does not like Imran Khan's diplomatic stance, which they believe has impacted the neutrality of the country and brought unnecessary friction with the superpowers of the world as the country's military also has cooperation with the US,” it said.

"This is another reason why the Imran Khan administration was ousted, but we need to remember that the Pakistani military also attaches great importance to ties with China," Qian said.

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News Network
November 19,2024

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News Network
November 13,2024

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Beirut: The Israeli army on Tuesday continued to launch attacks against civilians in Lebanon, targeting them in several areas without prior evacuation warnings.

However, 13 airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs in the space of only three hours were preceded by evacuation warnings.

The attacks caused no injuries but resulted in widespread destruction of residential buildings and commercial, medical and educational centers.

The airstrikes in southern Lebanon and Bekaa region, reaching Akkar in Lebanon’s far north, erased any hope of a near-term ceasefire settlement.

The strikes were accompanied by an announcement on Israel’s Channel 14 that “the Israeli army has expanded its operations in southern Lebanon to areas it had not reached since the beginning of the ground operation.”

About 50 days have passed since Israel intensified its hostile operations in Lebanon targeting Hezbollah. The death toll from these confrontations and attacks has passed 3,200, with more than 14,000 wounded.

For the first time, an airstrike targeted a mountainous area between Baalchmay and Aabadiyeh on the road leading to Aley, destroying a building housing displaced people.

The mayor of Baalchmay, Adham Al-Danaf, confirmed that “the airstrike targeted a residential building in the Dhour Aabadiyeh area.”

The initial toll from the Ministry of Health showed “five people killed and two injured.”

The raids that targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs for the first time in the morning, unlike nightly raids before, caused huge destruction. Those who evacuated their homes after Israeli warnings, used their phones to record the collapse of empty buildings in Sfeir, Haret Hreik, Bir Al-Abed, Mrayjeh, Laylaki and Hadath.

Israeli warplanes also targeted Tyre, where a strike on a building killed three people and injured many others, while a raid on Tefahta killed a man identified as Kifah Khalil and his family.

Attacks were widespread, with Yater and Zebqine subject to artillery shelling, a civilian being killed in Hermel, and further attacks on Bouday and an area between the towns of Srifa and Arsoun.

A raid on the town of Siddiqin killed two people and injured several others, while an attack on the Mechref farm led to one fatality and multiple injuries.

The search for those missing after an Israeli raid on the town of Ain Yaacoub in Akkar, in the northernmost part of Lebanon, continued until dawn.

During the operation, 14 bodies were retrieved, identified as those of residents displaced from the town of Arabsalim in the Iqlim Al-Tuffah area of the south, along with members of a Syrian family, a mother and three of her children. Additionally, there were 10 people in critical condition.

The targeted residence belongs to a Lebanese citizen, Hussein Hashim, who is reported to be a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.

An airstrike on the town of Saksakiyeh in the Sidon region on Monday night resulted in yet another tragedy.

It appeared that the intended target was the Shoumer family, who just days before lost Hussein Amin Shoumer and his two sisters in a drone strike near Al-Awali River.

Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued additional evacuation warnings for towns in the southern region along the Litani River, which, according to estimates from the mayors, are currently 90 percent uninhabited.

In the meantime, Hezbollah announced its continued efforts to “combat the intrusions of Israeli forces and to strike military installations and towns in the north.”

Hezbollah said in a statement that it confronted “an Israeli Hermes 450 drone in the airspace of Nabatieh and forced it to leave Lebanese airspace.”

The party also announced that it targeted “Kfar Blum settlement with a rocket salvo.”

On the Israeli side, air raid sirens sounded in areas of Upper and Western Galilee and in the town of Kiryat Shmona and its surroundings.

The Israeli army confirmed that “a drone exploded in Nesher, east of Haifa, without activating the air raid sirens,” and that “a drone launched from Lebanon crashed into a school in Gesher HaZiv, north of Nahariya.”

Israel’s Channel 13 reported the Israeli military’s assessment regarding Hezbollah’s military strength, claiming that the group currently possesses approximately 100 precision missiles, thousands of artillery shells, and hundreds of rockets. Additionally, it was highlighted that “there are around 200 Lebanese towns that remain unvisited.”

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News Network
November 18,2024

Advisors to US President-elect Donald Trump have instructed his allies and associates to refrain from using the inflammatory language they previously employed when discussing issues related to migrants and the deportation of asylum seekers, in a bid to avoid “looking like Nazis.”

US media reports said that Trump’s associates had been asked to stop using the word “camps” to describe potential facilities that would be used to accommodate migrants rounded up in deportation operations across the country.

The reports said the US president-elect’s allies had been ordered to stave off such charged terms as they would bring to mind “Nazis,” and be used against Trump.

“I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” one Trump ally told American monthly magazine Rolling Stone.

“Apparently, some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”

The presidential advisers also cautioned surrogates and allies to keep racist terms, which have dogged Trump’s campaign, out of their remarks.

They said with Trump’s heated rhetoric that used to compare undocumented immigrants to “animals” and his slight that they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” detractors did not need to reach too far to find parallels to Nazi Germany.

Stephen Miller, who Trump tapped to be his deputy chief of staff of policy, specifically used the word “camps” to describe holding facilities that he hoped the military could put together for immigrants.

Tom Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is chosen by Trump to be in charge of the US borders, was no stranger to such language.

“It’s not gonna be a mass sweep of neighborhoods,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”

Becoming a little more forthright about the new government’s aggressive deportation plans, Homan likened the early days of the Trump administration to the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“I got three words for them – shock and awe,” he said. “You’re going to see us take this country back.”

Trump made immigration a central element of his 2024 presidential campaign but unlike his first run, which was mainly focused on building a border wall, he has shifted his attention to interior enforcement and the removal of undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

People close to the US president and his aides are laying the groundwork for expanding detention facilities to fulfill his mass deportation campaign promise.

The businessman-turned-politician deported more than 1.5 million people during his first term.

The figure do not include the millions of people turned away at the border under a Covid-era policy enacted by Trump and used during most of Biden’s term.

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