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Sunday, 19 June 2011

US in talks with Taliban: Afghan president

03:30 rabiul islam No comments

The United States is holding talks with the Taliban, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said, in the first official confirmation of such contacts after nearly 10 years of war.

Although diplomats and officials say talks are at a very early stage, Karzai's remarks highlight the increasing focus on finding a political solution in Afghanistan as foreign combat troops prepare to pull out by 2014.

"Talks with the Taliban have started... the talks are going on well," Karzai said, addressing a conference in Kabul.

"Also foreign forces, especially the United States, are carrying out the talks themselves."

But the problems surrounding any reconciliation bid were thrown into sharp focus shortly afterwards when nine people died as three Taliban attackers armed with suicide vests and machine guns stormed a Kabul police station.

A British soldier was shot dead in an insurgent attack, the defence ministry said, while France confirmed one of its troops was also fatally wounded by militant gunfire.

The militants have consistently rejected any efforts to talk peace in public statements.

"We have already said this and have repeated it many times. We have no negotiation with the United States and we deny any report as such," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP.

A US State Department spokeswoman in Washington had "no comment" on Karzai's statement.

"However, we have consistently supported an Afghan-led process of reconciliation," spokeswoman Megan Mattson told AFP.

"Currently, we have a broad range of contacts across Afghanistan and the region, and at many levels, to support that effort."

The US embassy in Kabul did not respond to a request for comment on the latest remarks from Karzai, who is known for dropping unscripted, headline-grabbing remarks into speeches.

Western officials acknowledge on condition of anonymity that attempts to set up contacts with the Taliban are at a very early stage, while efforts to open up a communication channel with Taliban leaders are still being made.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earlier this year called on Taliban members to split from Al-Qaeda, renounce violence and accept the constitution so they can be re-integrated into society.

Drone strikes and covert operations have weakened Afghanistan's Al-Qaeda network and could justify a White House decision to withdraw troops quicker than planned.

20 of Al-Qaeda's 30 prominent leaders in the region had been killed in the past year.

And US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on a visit to Kabul this month that there could be talks with the Taliban by the end of the year if foreign troops make sufficient gains.

A report last month in Der Spiegel magazine claimed Germany was helping to mediate secret, direct talks between the US and the Taliban on German soil while the New Yorker magazine reported in February that the US had begun direct discussions with senior Taliban figures.

Karzai's comments came the day after the United Nations Security Council agreed to split the international sanctions regime for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

The move sends "a clear message to the Taliban that there is a future for those who separate from Al-Qaeda, renounce violence and abide by the Afghan constitution," said Susan Rice, UN envoy for the United States, which led the campaign for the division.

Afghan attempts to pursue talks with the Taliban have been public for months -- Karzai last year set up a High Council for Peace to look at the issue.

But efforts to negotiate hit an embarrassing set-back when reports in November said a Pakistani shopkeeper posing as a senior Taliban leader had been brought to Kabul for talks with the president before being exposed as a fake.

US President Barack Obama is expected to announce soon how many troops from his country will pull out from July as the process of handing control from foreign to Afghan forces starts.

It is due to conclude in 2014, when all foreign forces are scheduled to leave Afghanistan.

Obama is facing mounting pressure to announce a significant drawdown after last month's killing of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and amid domestic economic woes and a mounting US death toll.

The Taliban's harbouring of bin Laden was the reason for the US-led invasion in 2001 following the September 11 attacks.

US hails death of top al-Qaeda militant

23:49 rabiul islam No comments

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the death of top African al-Qaeda militant Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is a "significant blow" to the group.

He and another militant were killed earlier this week in a shootout with police at a checkpoint in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, officials said.

Mohammed was the most wanted man in Africa, with a $5m bounty on his head.

After landing in Tanzania's capital, Dar es Salaam, on the second leg of a tour of Africa, Mrs Clinton told reporters: "[His] death is a significant blow to al-Qaeda, its extremist allies, and its operations in East Africa."
"It is a just end for a terrorist who brought so much death and pain to so many innocents in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and elsewhere - Tanzanians, Kenyans, Somalis, and our own embassy personnel."
He was suspected of having played a key role in the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa, which killed 224 people.

He was also accused of attacking Israeli targets on the Kenyan coast in 2002, and was recently believed to have been working with the Islamist militant group, al-Shabab, which controls much of southern Somalia.
Born in the Comoros islands in the early 1970s, Mr Mohammed is believed to have joined al-Qaeda in Afghanistan during the 1990s.

Powerful quakes rattle New Zealand city, six injured

23:04 rabiul islam No comments

Lightning flashes around the ash plume at above the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano chain near Entrelagos June 5, 2011. The volcano in the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle chain, dormant for decades, erupted in south-central Chile on Saturday, belching ash over 6 miles (10 km) into the sky, as winds fanned it toward neighboring Argentina, and prompted the government to evacuate several thousand residents, authorities said. REUTERS/Carlos Gutierrez

A series of powerful tremors rattled the quake-prone New Zealand city of Christchurch Monday, destroying a building and sending boulders tumbling down hillsides.

Six people suffered minor injuries.

New Zealand's GNS Institute put the strongest of the quakes at a magnitude of 6.0 at 2.20 pm (10:20 pm ET). The United States

Geological Survey also pegged it at 6.0 -- with the epicentre four miles east south east of the city at a depth of 5.6 miles.

Four tremors above 4.3 were recorded from 0029 GMT.

Shopping malls and office buildings were evacuated across the city, which is still trying to recover almost four months after a magnitude 6.3 earthquake killed 181 people and caused extensive damage.

A building in the city center collapsed and minor damage occurred in buildings affected in previous earthquakes, Christchurch Police spokesman Steven Hill told.

"The building has been checked and been given the all-clear," Hill said, meaning no one was trapped inside.

The St John ambulance service said six people had been taken to hospital with moderately serious injuries, all caused by falling building materials.

As with the initial quake, Monday's aftershock sent boulders on the city's Port Hills tumbling toward houses. Parts of the eastern city, which suffered the most damage in February's tremor, suffered from flooding and liquefaction - where solid ground is turned into liquid by the force of the quake.

Power was cut to about 10,000 houses.

Christchurch has experienced a number of strong earthquakes since a magnitude 7.1 quake struck the city on Sept 4 last year.

Parts of the central city have been closed to the public since the Feb 22 quake, and one of the city's tallest buildings, the Grand Chancellor Hotel, has been declared unstable and is being prepared for demolition.

Hillary warns Africa of 'new colonialism'

02:46 rabiul islam No comments

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday warned Africa of a creeping "new colonialism" from foreign investors and governments interested only in extracting the continent's natural resources to enrich themselves and not the African people.
Hillary said that African leaders must ensure that foreign projects are sustainable and benefit all their citizens, not only elites. A day earlier, she cautioned that China's massive investments and business interests in Africa need to be closely watched so that the African people are not taken advantage of.
"It is easy, and we saw that during colonial times, it is easy to come in, take out natural resources, pay off leaders and leave," Clinton said. "And when you leave, you don't leave much behind for the people who are there. We don't want to see a new colonialism in Africa."
Clinton said the United States didn't want foreign governments and investors to fail in Africa, but they should also give back to the local communities.
"We want them to do well, but also we want them to do good," she said.
"We don't want them to undermine good governance, we don't want them to basically deal with just the top elites, and frankly too often pay for their concessions or their opportunities to invest."
Clinton said that American development aid and infrastructure projects come with good governance conditions and that the Obama administration is interested in Africa and the African people. Their success, she said, is in the long-term interest of both the African people and the US.
She spoke in a pan-African television interview in the Zambian capital. Clinton is the first secretary of state to visit Zambia since Henry Kissinger came in 1976.

Pakistan Leaders Must Make Choice After Clinton’s Warning: View

01:13 rabiul islam No comments

Illustration by Bloomberg View

By the Editors Jun 2, 2011 6:29 AM GMT+0600 0 Comments

When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Pakistan last week, she noted that U.S.- Pakistani relations were at a turning point after the killing of Osama bin Laden. It was up to the Pakistanis, she said, to decide “what kind of country they wish to live in.”
The brutalized body of investigative journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad, which turned up outside of Islamabad on May 31, may provide a clue to the answer.
Shahzad disappeared after publishing the first of two promised articles linking elements of the Pakistan navy to al- Qaeda following a deadly May 22 attack on a Karachi naval station. Last fall, after being questioned about a different story by Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Shahzad wrote that he was threatened by the spy agency.
Alternatively, it could be that foul play like Shahzad’s murder will become a thing of the past in Pakistan. While in Islamabad May 27, Clinton and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen demanded authorities take “decisive steps” to crush the violent extremists the government has long supported, which would end the need to intimidate journalists who expose that support. Whichever way the Pakistan government goes, the May warnings by the U.S. ought to be the last.
The U.S. administration has continued to insist, as President Barack Obama did in a May 22 interview with the BBC, that the Pakistanis have “generally been significant and serious partners against the terrorist threat to the West.” This simply isn’t the case.

Victim, Sponsor

For much of the past decade, Pakistan has been both a victim and a sponsor of Islamic militants. Its soldiers are fighting bravely against homegrown terrorists seeking to install an Islamic government. In 20 attacks in May, these radicals killed some 150 people.
At the same time, the Pakistani army, led by General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, is a longstanding patron of violent groups targeting Afghanistan and India. Guided by excessive fear bordering on paranoia about India, Pakistan’s military and intelligence services believe that nurturing those extremists is an effective way to frustrate India’s regional ambitions. The ISI largely created and continues to support the Taliban and the Haqqani Network, the principal groups battling U.S. forces in Afghanistan and the fledgling government in Kabul. It also backs Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group responsible for the 2008 attacks in Mumbai that killed more than 160 people.

Double-Dealing

President George W. Bush’s administration tried to end this double-dealing by giving Pakistan billions in economic and military assistance. Yet Bush didn’t make the aid contingent on a crackdown on extremists. The Pakistanis cooperated somewhat with U.S. efforts to dismantle al-Qaeda but refused to act against other groups, including the Afghan Taliban, which was given refuge inside Pakistan’s borders.
The Obama administration accelerated the failed Bush policy, substantially increasing military and economic assistance, again without imposing rigorous conditions. And Pakistan continued to ignore administration warnings about continued support for extremists.
In one incident reported by the Washington Post, Obama’s first national security adviser, James Jones, warned officials in Islamabad that there would be “consequences” if a terrorist attack directed at the U.S. was traced to Pakistan. Yet when a man who had trained at a terrorist camp in that country attempted to detonate a car bomb in Times Square in May 2010, the U.S. administration did nothing. Shortly thereafter, Obama watered down Jones’s words, telling Kayani that a “successful” attack would have consequences.

Meaning Business

So when U.S. authorities learned that Osama bin Laden might be housed in a villa in a Pakistani garrison town, they dispatched Navy Seals to capture or kill him without so much as notifying the Pakistanis in advance. The raid provoked great outrage from officials in Pakistan. Since then, emotions have cooled. Clinton and Mullen have delivered their warnings, public and private. And this time, the Americans may mean business.
Will the Pakistanis respond?
Shahzad’s murder is a bad sign. On the other hand, reports from Pakistani tribal leaders suggest that the Pakistani army may be preparing a serious campaign in North Waziristan, where the leaders of the Haqqani Network and other extremist groups live.
It will soon be clear whether Clinton’s latest message got through. If not, the administration must consider new ways to persuade Pakistan to change course, recognizing that the country is behaving more like an adversary than a partner

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Hillary Clinton in Islamabad, Pakistan, for surprise visit

07:22 rabiul islam No comments

Clinton makes a surprise trip to Pakistan to sooth tensions between the two countries.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during a press conference in London on May 23, 2011. (Ian Nicholson/AFP/Getty Images)

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Islamabad, Pakistan, Friday morning on a surprise visit aimed at soothing tensions between the two allies, BBC reports.
The trip comes at a time of particularly heightened tension between the United States and its ally Pakistan.
A U.S. raid that captured and killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on May 2 frayed relations between the two countries. The finding of bin Laden just 30 miles from Pakistan's capital Islamabad raised concerns about Pakistan's competence and credibility as a partner in U.S. efforts to fight Islamic militancy.
Pakistan welcomed the death of bin Laden but criticized the United States for breaching its sovereignty.
Clinton's visit is the first such high-level visit to Pakistan since the killing.
Clinton has pressured Pakistan to act more decisively against terrorists, but she has also stressed that the United States needs it as an ally, calling Pakistan a "good partner," Reuters reports.
"We do have a set of expectations that we are looking for the Pakistani government to meet but I want to underscore, in conclusion, that it is not as though they have been on the sidelines," Clinton said in Paris on Thursday, it states.
Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen has accompanied Clinton on the visit, and the two leaders are expected to put more pressure on Pakistan to support the United States as it fights Al Qaeda and Taliban militants, reports BBC.
The pair will meet with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Pervaiz Kayani and Lt. Gen. Shuja Pasha, head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, states CNN.

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Officials told CNN Clinton and Mullen will demand that Pakistan go after senior Al Qaeda targets, take action against factors producing explosive devices used against American troops and support Taliban reconciliation.