Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates traded barbs on Wednesday during briefly overlapping visits to Afghanistan, where Washington has troops at war but Tehran has growing clout.
Ahmadinejad, who arrived as Gates was wrapping up a three-day visit, told a press conference alongside Afghan President Hamid Karzai that US and Western troops would never defeat terrorism by waging war in Afghanistan.
Gates said earlier in the week Iran was playing a “double game” in Afghanistan by being friendly to the government, while trying to undermine the US. He said on Wednesday he had passed those concerns on to Karzai.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband joined the fray during a speech in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that was focused on strategies to end the war in Afghanistan.
Miliband rapped Ahmadinejad’s latest comments in Kabul as “unhelpful posturing and bombast.”
Washington, which will have 100,000 troops in Afghanistan by the end of this year, says it believes Iran provides some support for militants there, although not nearly on the same scale as in Iraq, another Iranian neighbor where US troops are fighting.
The Afghan insurgency is mainly led by Sunni Islamists, who are sworn enemies of Shiite Iran.
Tehran blames Western military intervention in Afghanistan for causing instability, however, and Ahmadinejad turned Gates’ earlier comment around.
“Why is it that those who say they want to fight terrorism are never successful? I think it is because they are the ones who are playing a double game,” Ahmadinejad said. “They are the ones who set the terrorists on their course and now they say: ‘Now we want to fight them.’ Well they cannot, it is impossible.”
As if addressing Gates, he said: “What are you even doing in this area? You are from 10,000km over there. Your country is on the other side of the world. What are you doing here?”
Shortly before the news conference started, Afghan security guards anxiously collected half-empty bottles of mineral water from reporters. One said it was to prevent anyone from throwing the bottles at Ahmadinejad.
Gates left Kabul shortly after Ahmadinejad landed. Before leaving, he described the timing of the Iranian leader’s visit as “clearly fodder for all conspiratorialists.”
“I told President Karzai that we want Afghanistan to have good relations with all of its neighbors, but we also want all of Afghanistan’s neighbors to play an upfront game dealing with the government of Afghanistan,” Gates said.
Iran was the only major regional country to reject an invitation to an international conference on Afghanistan in London in January.
Miliband called that decision “completely short-sighted” on the part of Iran’s leadership.
“The Iranian regime ... must acknowledge that the best way to protect its investments or promote the interests of Afghans that share its Shia faith is to work to promote peace, not undermine it,” Miliband said in a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
RSS