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Letters to the Editor

US NEEDS TO TRAIN ITS GUNS ON PAK

The United States has accused Pakistan of illegally modifying the Harpoon anti-ship missiles they supplied in a bid to tweak them for land strikes, thus posing a new threat to India. Islamabad has also been charged with altering the P-3C maritime aircraft to equip it for land attack missions.

Citing senior US officials, The New York Times disclosed on Sunday that the Obama administration lodged an unpublicized diplomatic protest with Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani. Washington maintained that the modifications to the missiles and the P-3C are in violation of the US Arms Control Export Act.

Reports from Islamabad said that the Pakistan government has rejected the accusation commenting that “no modification has been made to the missiles under reference".

It is not tough to believe that. After all Pakistan has a history of deception. It now depends on the US government to react appropriately and ensure that Pakistan doesn't succeed in its sick motives.
- Jagannath S. California

ANAND JON SHOULD HAVE BEEN ALLOWED A FRESH TRIAL

Celebrity Indian-American fashion designer Anand Jon's sentence of 59 years in prison for sexually assaulting aspiring models may be justified. However the denial of a fresh trial by the Los Angeles Superior Court Judge is something worth debating. The allegations on him may or may not be true but I believe every individual deserves a fair trial. In this case the 35-year-old designer decided to fight for himself. It was indeed a fall from fame for him and it is praiseworthy of the US judicial system that it doesn't favor the celebrities, quite unlike India where the likes of Salmon Khan and Sanjay Dutt walk out of prison despite mowing down people on streets and possessing illegal weapons.
- Dines Kathie New Jersey.

 

JINNAH CONTINUES TO ROCK INDIAN POLITICS

India and Pakistan celebrated their 62nd Independence Day but it is the partition of the Indian sub-continent by the British colonial rulers in 1947 that has come to haunt the Bharatiya Janata Party. A book on Mohammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, by a retired major of the Indian Army who was also one of the founding member of the BJP., is now at the center of a raging controversy that threatens to consume India's main opposition party. Feuding among the top members of the BJP comes at a time when the nation is facing its worst drought conditions—with more than half of the country under its grip—global recession, job losses and zooming prices of essential commodities. Jaswant Singh is the second BJP to be attacked by the Hindu party for praising Jinnah. The first was the Hindu party's founder and leader Lal Krishna Advani who, during his visit to the Pakistani port city of Karachi in 2005, praised Jinnah's secular credentials in an attempt to tell the Pakistanis that they had deviated from their leader's ideals. Soon after that statement, all hell broke loose in BJP Advani was forced to resign as BJP president. The party passed a resolution reaffirming its opposition to Jinnah. Advani later apologized but later returned to lead the party.
- Vishwesh Ghatak Chicago