KARACHI: Four armed men barged into the residence No B-59 of Manzoor at Punjab Town within the Al-Falah police jurisdiction. When Manzoor resisted, they opened fire and fled, leaving him injured, without the looted valuables.

Bandits looted Rs 300,000 and a Mercedes car (B-6515) from Mrs Inayat in Taimuria, Rs, 200,000, jewellery and other valuables from the residence of Mairaj in Model Colony, Saudi Riyal 4,500 from Ishaq and Rs 30,000 from the owner of the shop in New Town.

Armed men looted Rs 49,000, gold ornaments, and electrical appliances from the residence of Majid in Samanabad, Rs 150,000 from Irshad in Ferozabad, cash, jewellery and other valuables from the residence of Faisal Ahmed in Mehmoodabad, Rs 50,000 from Abdul Shakoor in Liaquatabad.

Car-lifters took away five cars and nine motorcycles from the different parts of the megapolis, while city police claimed having recovered only six cars.

ARRESTED: A CIA handout said its squads raided a hideout in Frontier Colony after receiving a tip and nabbed Tanveer Ahmad, Muhammad Yusuf Iqbal and Salar Khan while their two accomplices managed to escape. The accused disclosed the names of the two as Muhammad Akram and Ramzan and confessed that they were involved in heinous crimes. Police claimed recovery of four TT pistols from them.

KARACHI: This is not being written with hindsight. Nor is it being written only now, after the Nawaz government has been ousted from office. Almost ten years ago, when the first Nawaz government had been in office for only a few months, I had said in a Newswatch column published in The News on February 23, 1991 that, given the ban on US economic and military aid to Pakistan imposed by the Bush administration on October 1, 1990 under the Pressler Amendment, the Pakistan government should not make any more installment payments to General Dynamics, the company that was manufacturing the 60 F-16 aircraft bought by Pakistan under an FMS (Foreign Military Sales) credit deal signed in 1989.

Up to that time (February 1991), Pakistan had only paid the initial down payment of $ 50 million for the aircraft, which had a price tag of $ 23.5 million per plane. If further payments had been stopped there and then, only this $ 50 million would have got stuck in the United States, not $ 658 million.

I had further pointed out in that Newswatch article that Pakistan's then-defence minister, Ghous Ali Shah, had told some PML councilors who had called on him at his home village near Sukkur on February 19, 1991 that he had had "a very satisfactory meeting with the chairman of General Dynamics" who had "assured" him "that the delivery of the F-16s was on track."

I had said in that Newswatch article that the chairman of General Dynamics would say that, of course, because the only thing he was interested in was getting the next installment payment - each quarterly installment being around $ 90 million, a lot of money by any standard.

But, I had pointed out in that Newswatch column, it was not for the chairman of General Dynamics to give any such assurance, since, under the terms of the sale, the aircraft were to be delivered by the company to a US Air Force base in Tuscon, Arizona, and that it was then up to the US government to hand over the planes to Pakistan.

I had further pointed out that the US government, for its part, had said on several occasions, after the imposition of the October 1990 ban, that there was now no question of delivering the F-16s or any other military equipment to Pakistan.

I had said in that Newswatch column that, given this oft-stated US government position on the issue, Pakistan would be throwing money down the drain if it were to make any more installment payments for the F-16 aircraft. I had added that, by agreeing to continue paying installments, Defence Minister Ghous Ali Shah had failed to protect Pakistan's interests in the matter and should be sacked.

I had added that, if the Nawaz government felt that it had to continue paying installments in the hope that it might be able to get the ban lifted at some future date, it should at least take the precautionary step of depositing such payments in an interest-bearing escrow account in a US bank, with the money to be released to the manufacturer pro rata only against planes actually delivered to Pakistan. That way, I had argued, Pakistan would retain control of the money until the aircraft were delivered to it, and would, meanwhile, continue to earn interest on the money deposited in the US bank.

Over the next 26 months, that is, until the sacking of the first Nawaz government by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan in April 1993, I wrote more than a dozen articles and stories in The News on the F-16 issue, with every one of those articles and stories urging the government not to make any more installment payments for the F-16s.

Like most governments in this country, however, the Nawaz government had evidently thought that it knew best and that no one else, least of all the press, knew anything, and had, in its wisdom, chosen to go on making installment payments to General Dynamics.

Further payments were only stopped after the Nawaz government's ouster, when Ilahi Baksh Soomro, a minister in the Balakh Sher Mazari caretaker government, had written a letter to the US manufacturer stating that no more payments would be made.

By the time further payments were stopped, however, Pakistan had paid out a total of $ 658 million on account of the F-16s, with nothing to show for its money. To compound the problem of Pakistan getting its money back, General Dynamics had, in the meantime, sold its F-16 plant at Fort Worth, Texas to Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. So who was Pakistan to claim its money from? General Dynamics or Lockheed?

While the second Benazir government (which had taken office in October 1993) was still dithering over what to do about the F-16 issue, the chances of Pakistan getting its money back grew even dimmer due to the fact that Lockheed Aircraft Corporation had, meanwhile, merged with Martin Marietta Corporation, with the merged entity now being called Lockheed Martin.

So now yet another element had been added to the equation. Against whom should Pakistan's claim now be lodged? General Dynamics, the original manufacturer, to whom the money had been paid; Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, which had bought the F-16 Fort Worth plant from General Dynamics but which no longer existed as a corporate entity; or Lockheed Martin, the successor corporate entity?

To further compound the problem, the Fort Worth plant had, in the meantime, delivered 28 F-16s to the US Air Force base in Tuscon, Arizona. Since that was what the sales agreement stipulated, the manufacturer could have claimed that it had fulfilled its part of the bargain and was therefore not liable for refunding any money to Pakistan. The manufacturer could have further taken the position that any such claim had to be made against the US government since it was the US government that had stopped delivery of the planes to Pakistan. The figure of 28 F-16s had been worked out on the basis of the total of $ 658 million paid by Pakistan divided by the per-plane price of $ 23.5 million.

By 1995, some people in the government in Pakistan had at last begun to argue in favour of suing the US government for the money, which, if interest at the rate of, say, 10 per cent a year, compounded, were to have been added to the principal sum, would by then have amounted to over $ 1 billion. But there were problems standing in the way of Pakistan's chances of winning any such lawsuit.

For one thing, the FMS agreement under which the planes were bought contained no money-back provision in the event of non-delivery. For another, if Pakistan were to sue the US government for the money, the US government could claim that it was not liable since the money had been paid not to it but to the manufacturer. Third, the US government could claim that delivery of the planes to Pakistan had been blocked not by any discretionary action on its part but under a law (the Pressler Amendment) enacted by Congress, which had made the imposition of an embargo mandatory in the event of the US president being unable to certify that Pakistan did not possess nuclear weapons.

During then-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's state visit to Washington in April 1995, President Clinton had publicly acknowledged that it was unfair of the US to keep both the money and the planes. He had promised to resolve the issue. That had set the stage for the passage by Congress of the Brown Amendment, so named after its mover: Senator Hank Brown.

Enacted in October 1995, the Brown Amendment had cleared the way for the delivery of certain other items of military hardware bought by Pakistan from the US in 1989 (including three P3C Orion maritime reconnaissance aircraft and Harpoon missiles for the navy, and howitzers for the army, for which Pakistan had paid an additional $ 362 million) and for the refund of the money paid for the F-16s.

But a dispute had soon arisen over the amount of money that was to be refunded. According to Pakistan, the figure was $ 658 million. According to the US government, it was $ 538 million. Eventually, Pakistan got back $ 120 million in cash on account of the embargoed F-16s, plus it got delivery of the 3 PC3 Orions and some other military hardware. However, the US government had put off refunding the remaining amount paid for the F-16s when a controversy arose over the supply of $ 70,000 worth of ring magnets to Pakistan by China. According to the CIA, the magnets were dual-use equipment that could be used in Pakistan's nuclear programme.

Now, yet another controversy has erupted over the manner in which the remaining F-16 money was returned, with Mr Sharif claiming, in a statement issued by him from jail on December 2, that his government had "resolved the 10-year-old issue of the 500 million dollars stuck up" (sic) and that the present government was "levelling baseless accusations" against him in this regard.

In saying this, Mr Sharif seems to have conveniently overlooked the fact that the whole F-16 imbroglio would never have arisen in the first place if his government had not gone ahead and paid more than $ 600 million in installment payments for the F-16s between February 1991 and April 1993 despite the October 1990 ban on US military sales to Pakistan.