Should Pakistan receive more help from the US?

Pakistan wants its share of nuclear play: After India managed to reach an agreement with the Bush Administration over a nuclear energy deal, Yousuf Raza Gilani, Pakistan’s PM, has demanded that the US government give them the same kind of help.

Gilani met with George W. Bush this week and has made it clear that Pakistan should receive the same treatment as India.

“There should be no preferential, there should be no discrimination. And if they want to give civilian nuclear status to India, we would also expect the same for Pakistan too,” Gilani said at a press conference in Washington.

Now that sounds sensible, but the real question is: Hasn’t Pakistan already received a preferential treatment form the US since the 9/11 attacks in 2001 for its contribution to the fight on terror?

Live blogging: Bookies pay $12m for MPs vote

Independent MPs in India’s parliament are having a hard time deciding whether to vote for or against the UPA government led by Manmohan Singh. The challenging decision, though, is not related to political principles or beliefs, but its related to picking the best monetary offer.

Newspapers in India and abroad have been reporting all kinds horse trading, but the one that beats them all is the bookies offer to buy MPs vote to help them win their bets.

The Times of India reports that: “bookies — [who ] consider the UPA government as the odds-on favourite to survive the trust vote — have developed huge stakes in the continuance of the UPA government and are going all out to try and fix the outcome of the trust vote.”

Chidambaram’s dialectic approach to the Nuclear deal

In a comment piece in the Hindustan Times on Sunday, India’s finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram makes his case in favour of the nuclear deal by adopting a dialectic approach: