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Fleeting global goodwill seen key to Afghan aid ISLAMABAD, Nov 30: Failure to rebuild Afghanistan after toppling the Taliban would sow the seeds of future terrorism, the UN official charged with. ...more Osama
bin Laden WASHINGTON, Nov 30 US Vice President Dick Cheney has said that he believed fugitive Islamic militant Osama..more US
feared ISI’s "terrorist NEW DELHI, Nov 30: A belief among US security agencies that Pakistan’s ISI was "badly penetrated by terrorists", ......more LONDON, Nov 30: Former beatle George Harrison has died in Los Angeles at the age of 58 after a long battle against ...more |
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More sex please, LONDON, Nov 30: Forget the reserve and stiff upper lip —Britons are more open about sex, have more partners, homosexual experiences and pay for it more often than they did a decade ago. A national sex survey published today detailing changes and variations in sexual practices and attitudes from a similar poll just 10 years ago, shows .... ..more Fresh gunfire halts ICRC work at Afghan fort KABUL, Nov 30: Fresh gunfire broke out yesterday inside a fortress in North Afghanistan where hundreds of Taliban and foreign Al Qaeda prisoners were .........more Top Al Qaeda official captured: US official WASHINGTON, Nov 30: A top leader of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda guerrilla network has been captured, a senior US official said, and the Pentagon claimed taliban control over their troops has been fractured. .........more |
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Fleeting global goodwill seen key to Afghan aid ISLAMABAD, Nov 30: Failure to rebuild Afghanistan after toppling the Taliban would sow the seeds of future terrorism, the UN official charged with overseeing the country’s economic reconstruction said. Mark Malloch-Brown, the administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, also said it was vital to capitalise on international willingness to aid Afghanistan before Governments and donors shifted their attention to the next crisis. "For those who saw the campaign against the Taliban Government and Al Qaeda as an effort to root out terrorism, that would be a very ephemeral and temporary job if Afghanistan was left as a failed state. It would be to invite new weeds to grow in the same garden," Malloch-Brown told a news conference yesterday. He was speaking at the end of a three-day meeting of more than 350 development officials to draw up Afghanistan’s economic priority needs ahead of a ministerial-level donors’ conference in Tokyo in January. Senior aid officials said it was too early to be precise about the cost of rebuilding a country shattered by more than 20 years of war and three years of drought, but some experts have estimated it at 10 billion dollars over 10 years. Malloch-Brown said the main reconstruction effort would depend on political talks under way in Bonn restoring a degree of peace to Afghanistan. But he said the international community would be able to embark sooner on grassroots projects — such as providing seeds and opening schools — that would help "glue the peace" by delivering visible early results to donors and Afghans alike. "I would hope that we can start very early next year and that they can contribute to making Afghans be brave enough to tell their political leaders, ‘enough. We must build a new society and a new country that can live at peace with itself’," he said. With US forces closing in on Osama bin Laden, suspected of masterminding hijacked-airliner attacks on the United States on September 11 through his Al Qaeda network, Malloch-Brown said Afghanistan was now firmly in the international spotlight. "Now is the moment when many members of the coalition...Recognise that it would be a very morally incomplete (military) operation if it was not followed by as significant an investment of political will and resources in the reconstruction of the country as went into the military campaign," he said. "We have to capture and channel that will and that political energy while it is at this high point — not just into immediate relief, but into at least a five-year plan," he added. Malloch-Brown said he sensed Afghans were looking over the precipice and realising that unless they stepped back their country would cease to function as a nation state. Cambodia, Uganda and, to some extent, Rwanda executed similar U-turns after years of violence had all but destroyed their institutions and economies. "I suspect Afghanistan is at the same moment where a younger generation of Afghans, appalled by the costs of long conflict, are ready to demand of their political leaders peace, stability and the chance to educate their kids — the chance to give their families a proper life," Malloch-Brown said. (REUTERS) |
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Osama bin Laden probably in area of Tora Bora: Cheney WASHINGTON, Nov 30 US Vice President Dick Cheney has said that he believed fugitive Islamic militant Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept 11 attacks on the United States, was probably hiding in the Tora Bora area of eastern Afghanistan. In an interview on ABC’s "Primetime Thursday," yesterday Cheney also said that Ahmed Omar Abdel Rahman, a suspected guerrilla training leader for Bin Laden believed captured by the rebel Northern Alliance, was the type of suspect that could face trial before a US military tribunal. Cheney said the military campaign in Afghanistan had "narrowed the amount of space" where Bin Laden feels safe and he was probably in the area of tora bora, a warren of caves in the white mountains about 35 miles (56 km) southwest of Jalalabad. "I think he’s still in Afghanistan. I think he’s probably in that general area," Cheney said. "I think he was equipped to go to ground there. He’s got what he believes to be fairly secure facilities, caves underground. It’s an area he’s familiar with," he said. Legend says Bin Laden has built a fortress at Tora Bora 1,150 feet (350 metres) beneath the mountains, equipped with water, electricity and ventilation and guarded by hundreds or thousands of fighters ready to die for their leader. Tora Bora has been a repeated target for US jets since the US bombing campaign began in early October. The Northern Alliance, which has driven the fundamentalist Taliban, Bin Laden’s protectors, into small corners of southern and eastern Afghanistan, said on Thursday that it believed Bin Laden was alive and hiding either in the eastern mountains near Pakistan or the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in the south. Cheney said the US Government had a "credible report" from the Northern Alliance that it had captured Rahman, the 35-year-old son of Muslim cleric Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who with nine other militant Muslims was convicted on charges stemming from the deadly 1993 car bombing of the World Trade Center. Cheney said the United States was "not that concerned" about bringing Rahman to the United States but was interested in what he might be able to divulge about the operations of Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network. Pressed on whether Rahman might be the first captured Al Qaeda leader to face trial before a US military tribunal, Cheney said, "the President will have to make that decision, clearly. ... But clearly a high-ranking Al Qaeda official captured in Afghanistan who’s been involved in the organization is exactly the kind of individual that the tribunals were established for." On Nov 13, Bush ordered military courts set up as a way to try suspected terrorists from abroad linked to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The plan, which would allow trials to be held in secret and could result in convictions on a two-thirds majority — both practices contrary to normal US judicial procedure — have drawn fire from civil rights groups at home and critics abroad. (REUTERS) |
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US feared ISI’s "terrorist links" during Clinton’s Pak visit NEW DELHI, Nov 30: A belief among US security agencies that Pakistan’s ISI was "badly penetrated by terrorists", including those from Al Qaida, had prompted them to undertake major diversionary tactics during the visit of President Bill Clinton to Pakistan last year, according to a prominent American daily. "An empty air force one was flown into the country (Pakistan) and the President made the trip in a small unmarked plane. Later, his motorcade stopped under an overpass and clinton changed cars," `The New York Times’ said quoting former US security officials. The "fear was that Pakistani security forces were so badly penetrated by terrorists that extremist groups, possibly, including Osama bin Laden’s network Al Qaida, would learn of the President’s travel route from sympathisers within the ISI and try to shoot down the plane", it said. However, Clinton had "overruled" other steps by the secret service and went ahead with the trip. Quoting these ex-officials as saying that CIA had close links with ISI earlier and these relations were not maintained in 1990s, the report said in the late nineties "the CIA equipped and financed a special commando unit that Pakistan had offered to create to capture Laden." "But this was going nowhere. The ISI never intended to go after Laden. We got completely snookered", it quoted a former official as saying. Stating that tension between the CIA and ISI had grown only in the recent years, the daily said in the 1980’s "when the CIA mounted the largest covert action programme in its history to support Afghan rebels against the Soviets, the Pakistani agency served as the critical link between CIA and the rebels at the front lines". "While the CIA supplied money and weapons, it was the ISI that moved them into Afghanistan. The Americans relied almost entirely on the Pakistani service to allocate the weapons to rebel leaders", `The New York Times’ said, adding after the soviet pullout in 1989, CIA’s relationship with ISI "was neglected". Meanwhile, in a related development, the US authorities have stated that more than a third of those rounded up after the September 11 attacks and still in custody were people of Pakistani origin. Pakistani daily ‘Dawn’ quoted figures given by US Attorney General John Ashcroft saying that of the 641 people detained in the US in connection with the attacks "over 200 came to the United States from Pakistan." (PTI) |
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LONDON, Nov 30: Former beatle George Harrison has died in Los Angeles at the age of 58 after a long battle against cancer, a family friend said today. Long-time family friend Gavin De Becker said: "He died with one thought in mind — love one another." He died at a friend’s home. His wife, Olivia, and son, Dhani, were at his side. Beatle author Philip Hunter said: "Another beatle gone. It’s an awful thought — the group were an entity in people’s lives. "He was overshadowed by Lennon and McCartney and he was never really happy about that. There was a certain bitterness about him, but later in life he realised what good fortune he enjoyed." The youngest member of the world’s most famous pop group will always be remembered for his devotion to oriental mysticism. It was he who persuaded the other beatles to fly to India and sit at the feet of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The group conquered the world with 27 number one hits in the United States and Britain. Harrison, always known as "The quiet beatle," was just 27 when the band split in 1970. The star was treated for cancer in 1997 after he found a lump in his neck. He also had surgery for lung cancer in 2001 and was reportedly treated at a Swiss clinic for a brain tumour. When harrison first disclosed that he had been treated for throat cancer, he said: "It reminds you that anything can happen." As well as his recent struggle with cancer, Harrison’s life was also threatened when he was stabbed by an intruder at his english country home in 1999. Fellow pop star Bob Geldof said of harrison: "He wasn’t a reluctant beatle. He knew that his place in popular culture was absolutely secure. "When the boomtown rats (Geldof’s group) started he came down to see us in Oxford. I was...Shocked and stunned when he walked into the room...A living beatle. "He was very curmudgeonly about the fame thing and everything else...He was the one who wrote ‘taxman’, another early beatle classic, moaning about how much supertax they have do pay. But he was very gentle." Harrison’s biographer Alan Clayson said: "He was stabbed in the lung, at around the time he was diagnosed with lung cancer. It had a psychological effect on him. "After Lennon was assassinated (by a gunman in New York in 1980), he took a very fatalistic view. He was often seen drinking in pubs around henley where he lived. "This (stabbing) more or less finished him as far as being seen in public without a bodyguard." (REUTERS) |
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More sex please, we’re British LONDON, Nov 30: Forget the reserve and stiff upper lip —Britons are more open about sex, have more partners, homosexual experiences and pay for it more often than they did a decade ago. A national sex survey published today detailing changes and variations in sexual practices and attitudes from a similar poll just 10 years ago, shows Britons have come a long way since the strait-laced victorian age. People are better informed, have sex earlier, get married later and are more accepting of homosexual behaviour and one-night stands. "We are now, arguably, a more open, tolerant and even more honest society about sexual attitudes than 10 years ago," Professor Anne Johnson of University College London told a news conference. The computer survey of 11,161 people aged 16-44, which is reported in three studies in the lancet medical journal, involved 200 questions on all aspects of sexual behaviour and lifestyle. People aged over 44 were omitted because of budget restrictions. It showed most people have sex once a week, similar to a decade ago, but nearly one in three men and one in five women had a new partner in the last year. The figures rose to nearly half among those aged 16-24. The average number of partners in the last five years was four for men and two for women. Kay wellings, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who focused on the sexual behaviour of young people, found a quarter of women and nearly one-third of men have sex before their 16th birthday but the average age for both is 16. It follows a steady pattern of earlier sex that began in the 1950s, when the age of first sex was 21, through to the 1980s, when it fell to 17. But an increase in the number of women having sex under the age of 16 has levelled off. "What we are seeing is the tail end of a very long trend," Wellings said, adding that the age of first sex in Britain is consistent with other countries. Up to 80 per cent of young people said they used a condom during their first sexual encounter, a 20 per cent rise from 10 years ago. Fewer than 10 per cent used no contraceptives. Wellings said the findings give rise to cautious optimism for Britain, which has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe. "We may have a better chance of improving sexual health today than we have had in the last three decades," she said. But while early sexual health practices may be improving, the number of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) have increased steadily, particularly since 1995. Rates of Gonorrhea, Chlamydia and Syphilis have doubled since then. "Chlamydia is now the most commonly reported bacterial sexually transmitted infection in Britain today," said Dr Kevin Fenton, of University College London, who reported on STIs. The survey, which will be used by the Government and agency to form sexual health policies, showed that one in 10 adults has had an STI. (REUTERS) |
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Fresh gunfire halts ICRC work at Afghan fort KABUL, Nov 30: Fresh gunfire broke out yesterday inside a fortress in North Afghanistan where hundreds of Taliban and foreign Al Qaeda prisoners were killed after staging a bloody revolt against their captors, the Red Cross said. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said today it had suspended work registering the dead at 1300 hrs Ist yesterday after shooting broke out when three Afghan officials went inside to collect the corpses littering the fort. "Our people outside heard gunfire. Two (of the Afghans) came out wounded and we took them to hospital. The third one, we never saw again," ICRC Spokesman Bernard Barrett said in Kabul. Barrett said the ICRC did not know whether the man had been killed. He also could not comment on whether the shooting suggested some prisoners remained alive and were still putting up resistance at the imposing Qala-i-Janghi fortress, on the northern steppes outside the city of Mazar-i-Sharif. "We don’t know. We were not inside," Barrett said. "We’ve told the authorities that when more bodies are taken out, we will resume the operation." A three-day battle raged at the massive 19th century mud-built fortress this week after some 600 prisoners seized assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons from their Northern Alliance captors on Sunday. US air strikes, Northern Alliance tanks and US and British special forces were called in to help crush the revolt. The Northern Alliance has said probably all 600 prisoners, including Pakistanis, Arabs and Chechens linked to the Al Qaeda network of Saudi-born Islamic militant Osama bin Laden, and more than 40 of its own fighters died. An American CIA officer was also killed. Five US soldiers and some Northern Alliance fighters were wounded when a bomb dropped in a US air strike went astray. International Human Rights Organisation have voiced concern about the bloodbath and called for an inquiry. A Northern Alliance Spokesman, Mohammad Habeel, said yesterday that human rights group Amnesty International would be allowed to investigate. The fortress serves as headquarters to ethnic Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum, whose forces have a record of harsh treatment of rival forces from past fighting in Afghanistan. The prisoners at the fort were taken there after apparently surrendering to Dostum’s fighters in the city of Kunduz, about 150 km east of Mazar-i-Sharif, shortly before it fell to the Northern Alliance. Barrett said the ICRC had begun registering bodies at noon on Wednesday but would not say how many it had dealt with. The ICRC numbers and photographs the corpses and collects and logs any personal effects to help with future identification if relatives of missing fighters come forward. Barrett said the ICRC and the Afghan Red Crescent had buried the bodies retrieved so far in numbered graves in Mazar-i-Sharif according to Muslim rites. (REUTERS) |
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Top Al Qaeda official captured: US official WASHINGTON, Nov 30: A top leader of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda guerrilla network has been captured, a senior US official said, and the Pentagon claimed taliban control over their troops has been fractured. About 1,000 US marines were based at a desert airstrip outside the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, while dozens of troops from the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division were on the ground in the north, preparing air bases for humanitarian and possibly military missions. A US soldier based in Uzbekistan died yesterday, becoming the sixth known death of an American in Afghanistan and the surrounding region since the war on terrorism began on October seven. The Pentagon withheld the soldier’s name but said the death was not due to enemy action. A senior US official speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed reports that the Northern Alliance has captured Ahmed Omar Abdel Rahman, who has been described as a charismatic guerrilla training leader for Bin Laden, the Saudi fugitive Washington blames for fatal Sept. 11 attacks at New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The 35-year-old Rahman is the son of Muslim cleric sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who with nine other militant Muslims was convicted on charges stemming from a deadly 1993 car bombing of the World Trade Center. "We are confident that the reports are true, and very senior people (in the US Government) are working on what to do about it," the official told Reuters of the capture. The Los Angeles Times reported that Rahman was being held by Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan. President George W Bush has vowed to punish those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks and has said that US military courts might be used to put Al Qaeda guerrillas on trial. "Very senior officials (in Washington) are deciding what to do" about Rahman, the official said. The official did not say whether there had been direct communication between the Northern Alliance and the United States on Rahman. At a Pentagon briefing, US Navy Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem told reporters that Taliban leaders’ control over their troops in Afghanistan had been "in a word — fractured." But Stufflebeem and Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said they had no evidence to support claims that opposition forces were moving against Kandahar. "What you are asking for is an assessment of something that may not yet have happened," Stufflebeem said, cautioning that forces of the Taliban supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, could still heed his call to fight to the death in Kandahar. Clarke denied the United States had advised Northern Alliance or other forces against entering Kandahar, adding: "To say that we can control or dictate what the opposition groups might do is just an overstatement. We can’t." Despite the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz and other cities in Afghanistan to opposition control, Mullah Omar has urged his forces to continue to fight in Kandahar. But Stufflebeem, a senior official on the US military’s joint staff, suggested Omar and others could rapidly lose control of their troops. Clarke also denied reports that 160 Taliban prisoners were massacred by opposition forces in Southern Afghanistan last week over protests from US troops. "We have worked really hard to run this one to ground and (the) reports are just not believable," she said. A senior Afghan commander said on Wednesday that scores of captured Taliban fighters who refused to surrender last week in Southern Afghanistan were executed despite protests by US forces at the scene. As part of the continuing push to cut off escape for Bin Laden and his top leaders, American warships were patrolling the Indian Ocean off Somalia’s coast, another US official said yesterday. The official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters the ships were looking for signs of the Saudi-born fugitive who is believed to be in Afghanistan. Clarke turned aside most questions about reports that US, German and British ships were near Somalia, but told reporters, "we are focused hard to make sure that Osama bin Laden and others can’t go fleeing to other places." Meanwhile, the US military on Thursday suspended parachute drops of large containers of humanitarian supplies into Afghanistan a day after a package crashed into a house and killed an Afghan woman. Officials stressed that drops of thousands of small individual daily food packages would continue while big container deliveries of other supplies were halted and investigated. "Obviously it was very unfortunate and we deeply regret the loss of life," Clarke told reporters of Wednesday night’s accident involving a drop of wheat, blankets and cold weather equipment northeast of the city of Mazar-i-Sharif. "Central command for the time being has stopped these particular deliveries while they look into whether there is something wrong that they can and should address," she said. (REUTERS) |
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