Pakistan Lawmakers Agree to End Karachi Clashes With 80 Dead, Bloomberg, 4 February 2010
EXCERPT: "Pakistan’s chief minister of the southern province of Sindh said lawmakers from different parties have agreed to end political violence that has claimed 80 lives in the commercial capital of Karachi. 'All the coalition partners have agreed in the best interests of the country to coordinate with each other,' Qaim Ali Shah told the provincial parliament in a speech today. The government yesterday gave the Pakistan Rangers, a paramilitary force, powers to conduct raids and carry out arrests in Karachi. Members of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the Awami National Party have been killed in gun battles since early January. 'The political parties blame each other instead of catching the main culprits' said Mahmood Ghaznavi, a former professor at Karachi University and an independent analyst. 'Any destabilization of Karachi will help anti-state elements so their involvement cannot be ruled out.' Pakistani Taliban fighters are moving from the country’s tribal northwest to Karachi to escape U.S. drone attacks and military action by Pakistani troops, the Combating Terrorism Center, which is part of the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, said in a report last month."
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Related articles:
Political solution [op-ed], DAWN, 4 February 2010
MQM lashes out at PPP ministers, DAWN, 3 February 2010
Karachi mayor tries to clean up city, politics, NPR, 3 June 2008
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