US may release 'tiny portion' of $45 billion Iran assets

US Secre-tary of State John Kerry Thursday revealed for the first time that the United States
is offering to free up "a tiny portion" of some $45 billion in Iranian assets frozen in bank
accounts around the world. As he campaigns to sell skeptical US lawmakers a nascent deal
with Iran to rein in its suspect nuclear program, Kerry insisted "the core sanctions regime
does not really get eased."
"Ninety-five percent or more of the current sanctions will remain in place," the top US
diplomat told MSNBC in an interview, after talks failed to reach a deal in Geneva at the
weekend. Before the sanctions began to bite, Tehran was earning about $110 billion to $120
billion in annual revenue from oil sales, said Kerry, who is leading the push to rally Congress
behind efforts to strike a deal to halt Iran's uranium enrichment.
"That has been knocked down to about 40 to 45 billion now because of the sanctions and that
45 billion is frozen in banks around the world. They can't access it," Kerry insisted. "All we
are talking about doing is a tiny portion of that would be released because you have to do
something to make it worth while for them to say yes, we are going to lock our program
where it is today and actually roll it back."
Negotiators from Iran and the six world powers leading the talks - Britain, China, France,
Germany, Russia and the United States - are due to meet again on Thursday and Friday next
week in Geneva seeking to nail down a deal which has eluded them for a decade. After the
talks failed to reach an accord at the weekend, Kerry said the world powers were very close
and were just grappling over "four or five concepts."
He blamed Iran for walking away, saying that at that moment they "couldn't take" the offer
that was on the table and had to return to Tehran for consultations. Iranian Foreign Minister
Mohammed Javad Zarif, whose country has denied allegations it is seeking an atomic
weapon, has disputed Kerry's version of events.
Kerry urged Congress in closed-door talks Wednesday not to impose even more sanctions on
Iran, saying it would "break faith with those negotiations and actually stop them and break
them apart." And he told MSNBC that he had just spoken Thursday with Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as he seeks to soothe Israeli anger over the emerging deal.

National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) has re-launched its Islamic Banking

National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) has re-launched its Islamic Banking with tagged
"Aitemaad" to extend Sharia financial service. Under the revamping programme of NBP
Islamic Banking division is being re-branded and aggressive marketing and awareness
campaign of its products and services has been planned. Sources in banking sector told
Business Recorder that the top NBP management is working aggressively to establish a
widespread network of Islamic banking services to scale up Islamic banking businesses and
services to cater the need of customers throughout the country.
NBP exists with its branches in rural and far-flung areas where no financial institutions and
domestic or foreign banks have established their presence. The well established branch
network will provide a support to the bank for the rapid growth of the Islamic Banking. The
bank has already been working aiming to provide banking services to masses without too
much of commercial interest.
NBP management has re-launched Islamic Banking after reviewing the whole industry
products and services and planned to launch that products/ services which could not be given
at the moment by the other industry players, sources said. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP)
has already planned to promote Islamic Banking industry throughout the country and in
Ramazan this year a special media campaign was launched by the regulator, with other
industry stakeholders. Therefore, it's the right time for NBP to re-launch Sharia financing
services.
The NBP management is planning to expand its Islamic banking services through opening of
new branches in various cities and converting conventional banking branches into Islamic in
the cities where the bank's presence is much stronger, they informed.
Sources in the banking industry said that NBP is one of the strong banks through which
central bank could achieve its objective to promote Islamic banking through its wide network
of branches. NBP's management is keen to acquire maximum share in the developing Islamic
Banking Industry (IBI) in the country with all available support from different public and
private sector entities and with the government, they added. It may be mentioned here that
NBP, one of the largest bank, established its Islamic Banking Division late in 2006. It has
branches network of Islamic banking merely in eight major cities despite its branches
network has widened to 1,313 at present.