For ransom: Doctors threaten strikes if kidnapped neurosurgeon not rescued - The Express Tribune

Dr Quresh­i was kidnap­ped as he left his clinic near Taj Comple­x on Saturd­ay night. Dr Qureshi was kidnapped as he left his clinic near Taj Complex on Saturday night.

HYDERABAD: 

The Pakistan Medical Association has given the government three days to rescue neurosurgeon Dr Aftab Qureshi who was kidnapped on May 12 from Karachi. It warned of a province-wide strike in all government hospitals. 

Dr Qureshi was kidnapped as he left his clinic near Taj Complex on Saturday night. His car was found abandoned outside Patel Hospital on the same night, according to advocate Naeemul Haq, his family lawyer.

Addressing a press conference here on Monday, the PMA general secretary Dr Hadi Bux Jatoi said the doctors are forced to protest and abandon work due to such threats. “Seventy to eighty per cent of well-known doctors are paying extortion just to survive. But they are still being killed or abducted.”

Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences (LUMHS) called a general body meeting and protested. The doctors whose clinics are located in the Doctor’s Lines area in Saddar observed a voluntary boycott of work on Monday. The Young Doctors’ Association also organised a demonstration in government hospitals. The PMA has requested the associations of paramedics, nurses and the medical wings of the political parties to join them.

Dr Qureshi is a dialysis patient. One of his kidney’s was removed when he was a child.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 15th, 2012.

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Pakistan says US not listening: drone strikes must stop - Reuters

ISLAMABAD | Thu Apr 26, 2012 2:58am EDT

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan has spelt out in no uncertain terms that U.S. drone aircraft strikes against militants inside its territory must stop, but Washington is not listening, the country's foreign minister said.

"On drones, the language is clear: a clear cessation of drone strikes," Hina Rabbani Khar said.

"I maintain the position that we'd told them categorically before. But they did not listen. I hope their listening will improve," she told Reuters in an interview late on Wednesday.

The attacks by the unmanned aircraft from Afghanistan, which U.S. officials say are highly effective against militants, fuel anti-American sentiment in Pakistan because they are seen as violations of sovereignty that inflict civilian casualties.

Khar's sharp comments on the drone strikes came ahead of a two-day visit to Islamabad by the United States' special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Marc Grossman.

Ambassador Grossman was due to hold bilateral meetings with Pakistani officials and take part in a "core group" meeting with officials from both Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the United States is hoping to revive stalled peace talks with the Taliban.

Ties between Pakistan and the United States, allies in the war on militancy, have lurched from crisis to crisis as they spar over security, assistance and the future of Afghanistan.

An unannounced raid on Pakistani soil by U.S. special forces who killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden last May plunged relations to a low, and tensions were further stoked in November when a NATO attack across the border from Afghanistan killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

After a review of ties with Washington, a Pakistani parliamentary committee laid out a series of demands, including an end to U.S. drone strikes.

Khar said other methods should be used to take out militants in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"We have to look at effective tools which are mutually acceptable. The cost of using tools which are not mutually acceptable is far, far too high. We're looking at alternatives," she said, without elaborating.

The commander of the frontline corps in Pakistan's northwest told Reuters last week that one alternative would be for the United States to share intelligence so that its ally's F-16 fighter jets could target militants there.

(Reporting by John Chalmers and Michael Georgy; Editing by Chris Allbritton and Sanjeev Miglani)

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