Addressing senior journalists and intellectuals at the Aiwan-e-Iqbal in Lahore, the minister, however, refused to give a definite date for unblocking YouTube.

Turning to the ongoing militancy, Rashid said that there were two types of terrorists. “There are those who use weapons – and there are those who [seek domination] through ideas and beliefs,” he said. “Now it’s up to the media to decide whether it supports the state or the ideology of terrorists.”

He stressed that media houses should not highlight the extremist standpoint of those, ‘who want to create a state within state and impose their opinion and beliefs on others’.

The information minister said it was against the interests of the state to highlight nefarious acts of terrorists and keep them alive through media coverage.

He said terrorists believed that only their faith was true and the rest were false. Rashid urged the media to condemn terrorists as it was ‘their prime responsibility as an independent institution in a democratic country’.

He dispelled the perception that there was a ‘super-committee’ comprising the prime minister, interior minister and an adviser to hold talks with Taliban

“Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan is the focal person and the prime minister himself gets briefings on the progress of the government negotiating committee with the Taliban. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif also attends these briefing,” he added.

Regarding terrorist attacks by militants despite the ongoing talks, the minister said pro-dialogue Taliban had disowned these acts of terrorism. “Let the dialogue with the Taliban complete,” he said, adding that the government would take action against those who were not amenable to peace talks.

Express Tribune

After verifying the strength of the response mechanism placed by the PTA to handle blasphemous material on the Internet next week, the government will forward the issue of re-opening of YouTube to the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC), it is learnt.

“We are actively pursuing this sensitive issue to ensure the blockage of viewership of blasphemous film “Innocence of Muslim” in Pakistan, but we want to ensure placing of an effective system under the PTA to handle complaints of its re-loading on the YouTube,” Minister of State for Information Technology, Anusha Rehman, said when The News sought her comments on Friday.

To another query about grey trafficking monitoring system, the minister said after the ICH policy, the LDI operators in 2012 contributed Rs270 million towards the monitoring of grey trafficking which will have interface to PTA and this system would be in place by September 15.

However, the sources said the PTA authorities would brief the minister of state on the strength of their complaint handling mechanism on coming Monday.

The PTA, the sources said, replied back to an official communication sent out by the Ministry of Information Technology (MoIT) about response mechanism on complaints in case of reloading of blasphemous film or pornography, stating that the PTA had set up a toll-free number and complaint email (complaint@pta.gov.pk) processed by the Services Division of PTA where blasphemous URLs can be sent.

The MoIT had given a three-day deadline to the PTA to apprise them about complaint handling mechanism after which this issue will be forwarded to the IMC for decision.

Keeping in view the sensitivity of the issue, the letter states that a comprehensive mechanism was already in place whereby upon receipt of complaints all obnoxious content relating to blasphemous or pornographic is blocked.

Sources in the PTA said that this complaint cell was established in 2006 and in 2009 Complaint Management System was put in place which was also shared with cellular companies at that time.

Taking decisions on blocking of content does not fall under the jurisdiction of PTA, as it is the domain of IMC (Inter-Ministerial Committee) which comprises different stakeholders including the intelligence agencies under the chairmanship of Federal Secretary MoIT.

However, the sources in MoIT say an effective enforcement on the directives of PTA was a problematic area and they cited different examples such as the regulator remained unable to enforce its directive on spam filters.

They said the PTA also remained unable to install filters in accordance with the policy directive of MoIT. “There is need to understand the difference between the mandate of the ministry and regulator, as the PTA is not under the direct control of MoIT,” said the official sources.

The sources also pointed out that there were some top guns who in official briefing claimed that there were eight million URLs having blasphemous film and it was not possible for them to clean such a massive URLs. They had argued that only 0.5 million URLs could be blocked in Pakistan.But after the PML-N took the reins of power, the minister of state for IT formed a 14-member committee which identified only 4,000 URLs.

The News

LAHORE: Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf said on Tuesday the government would reopen YouTube after completion of work on a filtration mechanism.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority directed internet service providers and mobile phone firms to unblock YouTube on Dec 29 but within an hour the prime minister re-imposed the ban because the anti-Islam film “Innocence of Muslims” had not been removed.

“We believe in access to free information. The only reason not to unblock YouTube is the presence of blasphemous material on it. We will open it as soon as we have a filtration mechanism,” the prime minister said while addressing Safma delegates at the Governor’s House on Tuesday.

He said there should be no visa restriction for media people because they bring the people closer and know how to connect people. He said Pakistan attached importance to Saarc and was committed to its principles and objectives.

Pakistan, he said, supported liberalisation of Saarc trade within the region and looked forward to increasing bilateral and multilateral trade with member countries.

“We have peculiar challenges which can be tackled effectively by developing home-grown solutions. It is in this context that diversity among the member countries needed to be employed to accelerate the process of development through greater connectivity. South Asia can do well to learn from the best global practices and apply them to the regional context.”

He said that conflict over disputes must give way to reconciliation, connectivity, openness and regional cooperation.

“The collective wellbeing of people of South Asia cannot be left at the mercy of any one country. We need to resolve all political and economic issues with an open mind and sincerity of purpose.”

Pakistan Press Foundation