ISLAMABAD: The party of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday held formal reconciliatory talks with the government, aimed at cooling political instability in the 241-million South Asian nation, both sides said.
The talks come a day ahead of a crucial court ruling in a land corruption case against the 72-year-old former cricket star-turned-politician.
The verdict in the graft case due on Friday is the largest that Khan faces in terms of financial impropriety, involving possible bribes of land in return for a 190-million-British-pound favor to a real estate tycoon.
The case is linked to the Al-Qadir Trust that Khan and his wife set up while he was in office. Prosecutors say it was a front for Khan to receive land as a bribe from a real estate developer. Khan’s party says the land was not for personal gain but was a spiritual educational institution.
Khan’s removal from office in 2022 stoked the instability, which has worsened with his party leading violent protests to urge his release, and threatens an economic recovery under a $7 billion IMF bailout.
“We have presented our demands to the government,” Khan’s aide Omar Ayub, who is leading his side in the talks, told reporters. The government agreed to party leaders’ meeting with Khan in jail, which should be done without any monitoring, he said.
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party’s demands mainly include setting up two judicial commissions to probe into the events which led to his arrest in August 2023, and the violent protest rallies, including one on May 9, 2023, when his supporters rampaged through military offices and installations.
Speaker of the parliament Ayaz Sadiq who is facilitating both the parties said he had received the PTI’s list of demands.
“We will respond to the demands within seven working days,” said Iran Siddique, lead negotiator from the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
Pakistan ex-PM Khan’s party holds talks with government ahead of ruling in graft case
https://arab.news/w54vs
Pakistan ex-PM Khan’s party holds talks with government ahead of ruling in graft case
- The verdict in the graft case due on Friday is the largest that Khan faces in terms of financial impropriety
- The case is linked to the Al-Qadir Trust that Khan and his wife set up while he was in office
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
