Declaring that joint counterterrorism efforts have put al-Qaeda on the defensive, US Secretary of State Colin Powell arrived yesterday for a fleeting visit to coalition forces in insurgency-wracked Afghanistan and talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Powell, on the second leg of a tour of South Asia and the Middle East, arrived from India and was due to visit Pakistan later yesterday -- a day after Pakistani forces undertook their bloodiest counterterrorism operation yet near the Afghan border, leaving at least 33 people dead.
In an opinion piece published yesterday in Pakistan's leading English-language newspaper, the top US diplomat hailed Pakistan's alliance with Washington as "crucial to protecting both our countries, and the world, from terrorism."
"Our joint efforts have put al-Qaeda on the defensive, and we will take the fight to them until [Osama] bin Laden and his supporters have been brought to justice and their networks are destroyed," Powell wrote in The News.
In Kabul, Powell was due to visit a girls' school where voters can register for landmark Afghan elections, slated for June. The polls are key to bringing democracy to Afghanistan, recovering from a quarter century of conflict, but preparations have been slowed by continuing security problems, as insurgents of the former ruling Taliban and al-Qaeda stage frequent attacks in the country's lawless south and east.
Powell was scheduled to meet with Karzai at the presidential palace in the capital. Roy Glover, a US Embassy spokesman, said they will discuss security, Afghanistan's new constitution and the planned elections. Karzai's spokesman Jawed Ludin said the president and Powell would discuss "matters of mutual interest," including an international donor conference on Afghanistan, planned in Berlin at the end of the month.
Powell will also visit a provincial base where US-led coalition forces have been deployed to help improve security and promote reconstruction of the war-battered country, officials said. Some 13,500 US-led forces are hunting al-Qaeda and Taliban rebels in Afghanistan, and earlier this month launched a new operation, hoping to trap bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. The two top fugitives are widely believed to be hiding somewhere on the Afghan-Pakistan border.
Some 70,000 Pakistani forces have been deployed in the semiautonomous tribal regions near the border in the past two years -- the first such deployment since independence from Britain in 1947.
On Tuesday, Pakistan launched its latest counterterrorism operation in the tribal regions, leaving at least 24 suspects and nine paramilitary soldiers dead -- provoking anger in this Islamic country.
Powell said Tuesday in India that he would urge Pakistan to take greater military action along the Afghan border in an effort to capture former Taliban and al-Qaeda suspects. On Monday, a large bomb was defused outside the US Consulate in Pakistan's southern city of Karachi.
No suspects have been named in the thwarted attack, but suspicion is focused on Islamic extremists.
Powell, who is not due to visit Karachi, is also expected to raise concerns with Musharraf over nuclear proliferation out of Pakistan. The US diplomat said Tuesday he plans to ask whether Pakistani officials aided rogue scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan in leaking nuclear weapons technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS