UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday warned that the world body was vulnerable to more attacks in the week leading up to the Afghan elections and pleaded for more help to protect his staff.
“We cannot do it alone,” Ban told a crisis meeting of the UN Security Council following Wednesday’s suicide attack by Taliban fighters on a UN guesthouse in Kabul that killed five UN staffers and wounded nine.
“We need the support of the member states,” he told diplomats from the world’s most powerful countries.
PHOTO: REUTERS
A little more than a week before Afghanistan’s run-off presidential election next Saturday, Ban said UN staff faced a “dramatically escalated” threat and were seen as a “soft target.”
“Increasingly, the UN is being targeted, in this case precisely because of our support for the Afghan elections,” Ban said.
The Security Council issued a statement promising “strong support for the secretary-general” and saying that it “commends the determination of the United Nations not to be deterred by the tragic incident and to carry on its mission in Afghanistan.”
Ban gave few details of what could be done to secure the unarmed UN staff, who are playing a crucial role in the holding of Afghanistan’s run-off election.
Wednesday’s attack on the Bekhtar guesthouse, carried out by three Taliban fighters who blew themselves up after a two-hour gun battle, has raised the stakes for the international community ahead of the crucial poll.
The Taliban have vowed to disrupt the vote, which was called in response to massive fraud in the first round.
“We’ll intensify our attacks in the coming days. We’ll disrupt the elections,” Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told reporters by telephone from an undisclosed location.
“We have new plans and tactics for attacks to disrupt the elections,” he added.
More than 100,000 foreign troops are in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban and US President Barack Obama is mulling a request by his commander on the ground, General Stanley McChrystal, for tens of thousands of reinforcements.
ROADSIDE BOMB
A roadside bomb yesterday struck a station wagon in eastern Afghanistan, killing eight civilians, a provincial government spokesman said.
The vehicle was traveling through the Khwarano area of Khogyani district in Nangarhar Province, which shares a long, porous border with Pakistan.
“Eight civilians, including one woman, were killed in the roadside bomb explosion,” Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, a spokesman for the provincial governor’s office, told reporters.
No one had claimed responsibility for the attack yesterday.
SOUTH KOREA
Meanwhile yesterday, South Korea’s foreign ministry said the country would send a security contingent of police and troops to Afghanistan to guard the work of a new and larger team of civilian engineers.
South Korea will not allow the troops to engage in combat operations, a ministry spokesman said.
Seoul has been under pressure to contribute troops to US-led operations in Afghanistan, but has said it would not send combat forces.
The announcement comes a week after US Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ visit to the country and eases a potential point of friction ahead of a visit next month to Seoul by Obama.
South Korea pulled about 200 military engineers and medics from Afghanistan after 23 South Korean church workers were kidnapped and two killed by the Taliban forces there in 2007.
“The team we are planning to create is to aid in the overall reconstruction work at one of the Afghanistan provinces ... aside from the existing team of medical training we are operating in the Bagram US air base,” ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young told a news conference.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
RSS