Mera Ghar: Bribes aside, great projectDAWN: THE decision by the government to review the Mera Ghar scheme, in cold storage since the ouster of the previous government, may be welcome but only if the initial reservations expressed about the scheme are properly addressed. The scheme was a major initiative by the previous government to address the issue of low-cost housing shortage in Pakistan. An important contribution has been the decision to provide land for the housing scheme free of cost in order to keep the prices of built-up units low. It would be appropriate, however, to re-examine the project so that it can be finetuned to reflect a more realistic and workable approach. For one, the controversy surrounding the acquisition of land has to be looked into. Several hundred acres of land, which was earmarked for amenities like parks and playgrounds, was taken over by the then prime minister's Housing Authority to build houses there under the scheme. The government would also do well to takea serious view of the source of funding for this Rs 400 billion project which envisages the building of half a million apartments and housing units over the next five years. The government does not have the means to finance such a venture. The idea of floating Term Finance Certificates was also given a cold response by the private sector. One way would be to make the applicants for the houses pay for the costs in instalments, as is done in the private sector.US not against Islam nor at war with it!THE NATION: WHILE addressing a meeting of the English Speaking Union, Lahore, US Ambassador William B Milam came out with a declaration that his country was neither against Islam nor at war with it, but was against terrorism which it wanted to be eliminated. There were ``a very small minority'' of people within the US and the Islamic world, he believed, who confused ``Islam'' with ``terrorism,'' but Washington did not share that confusion.In support of his contention he pointed out that theupdated list of foreign terrorist organisations which his government maintained contained the names of 28 such bodies that were not ``even predominantly'' made up of Islamic groups. One must assume that Washington would, with all its resources and penchant for truth, have delved deeply into the causes of this ``deeply entrenched. and a potentially dangerous idea,'' to quote Milam, that his country was pursuing anti-Muslim policies. For one, it is not ``a very small minority'' in the Muslim world at least, which entertains this ``pernicious'' impression.The argument about what Washington terms as Baghdad's ``non-cooperation'' with the United Nations Special Commission on Disarming Iraq (UNSCOM) appears just puerile in the face of the known prejudice of its Chairman, Butler, the revelation of hidden cameras used by its members and the role of a former American naval officer whose umpteen visits to Israel hardly needs a fertile imagination to reach the conclusion of anti-Iraq activities.
