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Mar. 18 - Pakistan’s army chief called on Thursday for arch rivals India and Pakistan to “bury the past” and move towards cooperation, an overture towards New Delhi that follows an unexpected joint ceasefire announcement last month between the two countries’ militaries.

General Qamar Javed Bajwa stressed however that the burden was on India to create a “conducive environment”, and said Washington had a role to play in ending regional conflicts.

Pakistan and India, both nuclear armed countries, have fought three wars and in 2019 tensions rose dramatically when they sent combat planes into each other’s territory.

“We feel it is time to bury the past and move forward,” Bajwa said in a speech at a conference in Islamabad meant to highlight the Pakistani government’s new security policies.

“But...our neighbour (India) will have to create a conducive environment, particularly in Indian-occupied Kashmir,” he said.

Pakistan’s powerful army has ruled the country for nearly half of its 73-year existence, and the military has long controlled foreign and security policies.

India and Pakistan both control parts of the northern Kashmir region, but both claim the Himalayan region in full - which has been a source for most of the conflicts between the two.

Relations deteriorated in 2019 after Delhi stripped its part of Kashmir of the special status it long had under the Indian constitution.

Bajwa said the economic potential of South and Central Asia had “forever remained hostage” to the India-Pakistan disputes.

The militaries of both countries released a rare joint statement on Feb. 25 announcing a ceasefire along the disputed border in Kashmir, having exchanged fire hundreds of times in recent months.

The United States immediately welcomed the move, and encouraged the two to “keep building on this progress”.

Bajwa said Pakistan had “hope” in the form of President Joe Biden’s new administration, which he said could help facilitate peace in the region. (Reuters)

Mar. 18 - India and Pakistan reported a big jump in new coronavirus infections on Thursday, driven by a resurgence in cases in their richest states.

While authorities in India have mainly blamed crowding and an overall reluctance to wear masks for its spike, Pakistan says the UK variant of the virus found in the country could also be a factor.

Maharashtra state, home to India’s commercial capital Mumbai, reported 23,179 of the country’s 35,871 new cases in the past 24 hours, and the fast-spreading contagion in major industrial areas raised risks of companies’ production being disrupted.

With the worst rise in infections since early December, India’s total cases stood at 11.47 million, the highest after the United States and Brazil. Deaths rose by 172 to 159,216, according to health ministry data on Thursday.

In Pakistan, 3,495 people tested positive in the past 24 hours, the most daily infections since early December. Total cases rose past 615,000. Deaths rose by 61 to 13,717.

Most of the new cases came from Pakistan’s largest and richest province, Punjab.

Pakistani minister Asad Umar said on Twitter that hospital beds were filling fast, warning of stricter curbs if rules were not followed.

“The new strain spreads faster and is more deadly,” he said on Twitter, referring to the UK variant.

India’s first wave peaked in September at nearly 100,000 cases a day, with daily infections hitting a low of just over 9,000 early last month.

India and Pakistan have a combined population of 1.57 billion, a fifth of humanity.

CURBS RETURN

Cases have been rising in Maharashtra since the reopening of most economic activity in February. Mumbai’s suburban trains, which carry millions daily, also resumed.

The state of 112 million people ordered a fresh lockdown in some districts and put curbs on cinemas, hotels and restaurants until the end of the month after infections rose to a multi-month high earlier this week

New cases have more than doubled in the past two weeks in Maharashtra’s industrial towns such as Pune, Aurangabad, Nashik and Nagpur, home to car, pharmaceutical and textile factories.

“We have asked industries there to operate with minimum manpower as much possible,” said a senior Maharashtra government official, declining to be named as he was not authorised to talk to the media. “Most of the IT companies have allowed their employees to work from home.”

Hospital beds and special COVID-19 facilities were filling up fast, especially in Mumbai, Nagpur and Pune, said another state official.

Earlier this month, more than 80% of oxygen and intensive-care beds in Maharashtra were unoccupied.

Half a dozen other states, such as Punjab and Madhya Pradesh, have also seen a rise in cases this month.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday asked state leaders to quickly increase testing and expand vaccination to “stop the emerging second peak of corona”.

India has administered more than 37 million vaccine doses since the middle of January. (Reuters)

Mar. 18 - A top North Korean diplomat acknowledged on Thursday that the United States had recently tried to initiate contact, but blasted the attempts as a “cheap trick” that would never be answered until Washington dropped hostile policies.

The statement by Choe Son Hui, first vice minister of foreign affairs for North Korea, is the first formal rejection of tentative approaches by the new U.S. administration under President Joe Biden, who took office in January.

It came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was visiting South Korea alongside Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, in a first overseas trip by top-level members of Biden’s administration.

The attempts at contact were made by sending e-mails and telephone messages via various routes, including by a third country, Choe said in a statement carried by state news agency KCNA.

She called the attempts at contact a “cheap trick” for gaining time and building up public opinion.

“What has been heard from the U.S. since the emergence of the new regime is only lunatic theory of ‘threat from North Korea’ and groundless rhetoric about ‘complete denuclearisation,’ Choe said.

The White House said earlier this month it had reached out to North Korea, but received no response, and did not elaborate.

Speaking in Seoul on Wednesday, Blinken accused North Korea of committing “systemic and widespread abuses” against its own people and said the United States and its allies were committed to the denuclearisation of North Korea.

Blinken and Austin are due to continue meetings with South Korean leaders on Thursday, before flying to Alaska for the administration’s first talks with Chinese officials, where the North Korea standoff is expected to be discussed.

Talks aimed at reducing tensions with North Korea and persuading it to give up its arsenal of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles have been stalled since 2019, after a series of historic summits between then-U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Choe criticized the United States for continuing military drills, and for maintaining sanctions aimed at pressuring Pyongyang.

No dialogue would be possible until the United States rolled back its hostile policy toward North Korea and both parties were able to exchange words on an equal basis, she said. (Reuters)

Mar. 18 - Japanese courts delivered conflicting rulings on two nuclear reactors on Wednesday, lifting an injunction on one and slapping a no-restart order on another, highlighting the fitful state of the industry’s recovery 10 years after the Fukushima disaster.

The rulings come after Japan’s atomic regulator publicly rebuked Fukushima operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) this week for security lapses that make it unlikely the company can restart its only remaining nuclear station soon. Tepco’s shares slumped 10% on Wednesday.

Shares in Shikoku Electric Power shot up on Thursday after a high court in western Japan overturned a lower court ruling that had kept the company’s only usable reactor shut down for nearly 18 months.

The lower court had ruled that there was insufficient attention to the threat from earthquakes in the design of the facility.

“The court has accepted our assertion that the safety of unit No. 3 at Ikata Power Station has been ensured,” Shikoku Electric said in a statement after the ruling, which sent the company’s shares more than 6% higher.

It was the second time the Ikata reactor had been shut down by a court as anti-nuclear residents and campaigners filed multiple injunction requests in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

Court rulings have contributed to the haphazard return of the sector a decade after the Fukushima meltdowns but only nine reactors have received approval to restart, out of 54 before the disaster. Only four are operating at present.

In another case, a court ruled on Thursday that an old reactor near Tokyo must stay shut.

It closed down automatically 10 years ago when one of the biggest earthquakes in world history caused a tsunami that swamped nuclear plants up and down the Japanese coast and sparked the Fukushima meltdowns.

The Tokai Dai Ni reactor operated by Japan Atomic Power is one of Japan’s oldest and needed special approval to extend its life. Opposition to a restart is expected to make it difficult to return the unit to operation after years of costly upgrades. (Reuters)