US panel rejects bid to end Pakistan aid

By AFP

Published: July 21, 2011

A US Congress panel on Thursday rejected a proposal to cut off all aid to Pakistan due to concerns over the country's relationship with militants after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. PHOTO: REUTERS/FILE

WASHINGTON: A US Congress panel on Thursday rejected a proposal to cut off all aid to Pakistan due to concerns over the country’s relationship with militants after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee easily rejected the measure, with five lawmakers voting yes and 39 voting no. But the bill in its current form would still impose tighter controls over aid, making it contingent on measurable progress by Pakistan.
Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican from California, had offered the amendment to a spending bill for the year starting in October that would have barred any US funds to provide assistance to Pakistan.
Rohrabacher raised questions about how Pakistan was using assistance from the United States at a time that Washington is seeking to curb spending to tame a ballooning debt.
President Barack Obama’s administration recently suspended about one-third of its $2.7 billion annual defense aid to Pakistan. But it has assured Islamabad it is committed to a five-year, $7.5 billion civilian package approved in 2009 that aims to build schools, infrastructure and democratic institutions.
The rival Republican Party controls the House and has drafted a measure, which remains in the spending bill, that would also cut off civilian aid unless Pakistan is certified to be fighting militants.
But even if it passes through the committee, the measure’s prospects are uncertain. Obama’s Democratic Party controls the Senate, where Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry is a staunch advocate of civilian support to Pakistan.
Democratic lawmakers argue that civilian aid is crucial in the long-run to strengthen democratic institutions and raise educational levels in Pakistan in hopes of reducing the appeal of Islamic extremists.

Court Martial: Canada’s ex-Afghan commander pleads guilty to affair

By AFP

Published: July 22, 2011

Menard, who is married with two children, was relieved of his post as commander of the Joint Task Force Afghanistan. PHOTO: REUTERS

MONTREAL:  Canada’s former top officer in Afghanistan, Brigadier-General Daniel Menard, pleaded guilty on Thursday to having an affair with a female corporal under his command on active duty.

At a court-martial in Montreal, Menard pleaded guilty to having had an “intimate personal relationship” with a corporal under his command and to seeking to impede the military police investigation into the affair.
Four obstruction of justice charges were dropped, military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Luc Gaudet told AFP, confirming the pleas.
Menard, who is married with two children, was relieved of his post as commander of the Joint Task Force Afghanistan, responsible for the Kandahar region, in May last year due to the affair with a female master corporal.

Iran hopes for end to 'misunderstandings' with Saudi Arabia

By AFP

Published: July 22, 2011

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Friday that he hoped "misunderstandings" with Saudi Arabia could be resolved after a war of words erupted over its military intervention in Bahrain. PHOTO: AFP/FILE

TEHRAN: Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Friday that he hoped “misunderstandings” with Saudi Arabia could be resolved after a war of words erupted over its military intervention in Bahrain.
Saleh said that Iran respected the sovereignty of Sunni-ruled Shia-majority Bahrain and hoped that a national dialogue launched by King Hamad after the March crackdown on Shia-led protests would bear fruit.
“We have no particular problem with Saudi Arabia and we regard it as an important country in the region that has influence in international affairs,” Salehi said in an interview with the official IRNA news agency.
“We have had friendly relations with Saudi Arabia for a long time. After recent events in the region there were differences of analysis and interpretation,” he said without elaborating.
“I believe these misunderstandings can be resolved. I hope that we will find an acceptable way to continue consultations between our two countries.”
Salehi’s overture to Saudi Arabia came after a sharp downturn in relations in the months since Saudi-led troops intervened to help Bahrain’s Sunni rulers put down the Shia-led protests.
Several Iranian officials and Shia clerics have spoken out against the intervention, drawing an angry response from Gulf Arab states.
Salehi inisted that Iran “respects the national sovereignty and independence of Bahrain and wants peace, stability and security in Bahrain.”
“We think that the Bahrain issue needs to be settled between Bahrainis,” he said.
“We have political relations with the government of Bahrain and we regard as positive the decision by the king of Bahrain to launch a dialogue with the people. We hope that this dialogue will allow a solution to be found.”
Iran received a formal protest note from the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on Monday after senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ahmed Janati used a sermon at the main weekly prayers in Tehran on July 8 to criticise the Bahrain crackdown and dismiss the dialogue as a “ploy.”
Janati said that the protesters in Bahrain had done nothing more than call for “one person, one vote,” and hit out at the prosecution of doctors and academics for their part in the protests.
GCC secretary general Abdullatif Zayani said Janati’s comments were “provocative and false,” and constituted  “blatant and unacceptable interference” in Bahrain’s internal affairs.
In a major blow to the national dialogue, Bahrain’s main Shia opposition bloc, the Islamic National Accord Association (Al-Wefaq), which took a majority of the vote in the last parliamentary elections, announced on Sunday that it was pulling out, saying the talks were not aimed at achieving serious results.

Clinton urges India to be more assertive in Asia

Updated 8 hours ago

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CHENNAI: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged India on Wednesday to be more assertive in Asia, saying the country should play more of a leadership role.

"India's leadership has the potential to positively shape the future of the Asia-Pacific... and we encourage you not just to look east, but continue to engage and act east as well," she said in a speech here.

 

‘Most humble day of my life’, Murdoch tells UK lawmakers

BSkyB Chairman James Murdoch (L) and his father, News Corp Chief Executive and Chairman Rupert Murdoch, appear in images made from television as they are questioned by parliamentary committee on phone hacking at Portcullis House in London July 19. – Reuters photo

LONDON: News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch told British lawmakers “this is the most humble day of my life” at the start of a parliamentary hearing Tuesday over the News of the World phone hacking scandal.
But he refused to accept ultimate responsibility for what one lawmaker described as the hacking “fiasco” which led to the closure this month of the 168-year-old tabloid, formerly Britain’s biggest selling weekly.
Kicking off the session, his son James Murdoch, chief executive of News Corp’s Europe and Asia operation, said: “I would like to say just how sorry I am and how sorry we are, to particularly the victims of illegal voicemail interceptions, and to their families.”
“It’s a matter of great regret of mine, my father’s and everyone at News Corporation.”
“These actions do not live up to the standards that our company aspires to everywhere around the world and it is our determination to both put things right, make sure these things don’t happen again and to be the company that I know we have always aspired to be.”
Despite the apologies, Murdoch senior would not go as far as to accept ultimate responsibility for the scandal.
Asked by Labour lawmaker Jim Sheridan: “Do you accept that ultimately you are responsible for this whole fiasco?”, Murdoch tersely replied: “No”.
The media mogul added there was “no evidence” at all that the voicemails of 9/11 victims had been hacked into, claims that have prompted the FBI to launch a probe in the United States.
“We have seen no evidence of that at all and as far as we know the FBI haven’t either,” Murdoch said.
James Murdoch said that the company took swift action when it became aware of fresh phone-hacking evidence following a series of civil actions in 2010.
“Subsequent to our discovery of that information in one of these civil trials at the end of 2010, which I believe was the Sienna Miller case, the company immediately went to look at additional records around the individual involved, the company alerted the police and restarted, on that basis, the investigation that is now under way,” he said.
Labour party lawmaker Tom Watson asked Rupert Murdoch whether he had been misled by senior employees, to which Murdoch replied: “Clearly”.
The 80-year-old retorted: “The News of the World is less than one per cent of our company. I employ 53,000 people around the world who are proud and great and ethical and distinguished people, professionals in their work.
“I’m spread watching and appointing people whom I trust to run those divisions.” He said he was “absolutely shocked, appalled and ashamed when I heard about the Milly Dowler case two weeks ago,” referring to the case of a murdered teenager whose phone was allegedly hacked by the News of the World.
James Murdoch told the committee News International, News Corp.’s British newspaper wing, currently had no plans to launch a new Sunday tabloid to replace News of the World, despite speculation that a new paper was being planned.
“There is no decision on that,” he told lawmakers. “There are no immediate plans for that.”

FBI raids tribal resort

The Golden Moon Hotel and Casino in Neshoba County was raided by FBI agents on Tuesday. A search warrant was also issued for the Silver Star Hotel and Casino on resort grounds. / File photo/The Clarion-Ledger

Written by

Jerry Mitchell

FBI agents on Tuesday raided the Mississippi Choctaws' Pearl River Resort - an indication there is some evidence or allegations of a federal crime, a former federal prosecutor said.
To obtain the search warrant, agents had to convince a magistrate there was "probable cause to believe that a federal felony crime was committed and that there was evidence of that crime at those facilities," said former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones of Birmingham.
The raid comes a week after a new chief was elected. A split Tribal Council on Friday threw out the election.
Casino officials confirmed a search warrant had been executed at the Neshoba County casinos by the U.S. Department of Justice but gave no further details.
"The resort is monitoring the situation closely and will continue to cooperate fully with law enforcement authorities in their investigation," CEO Maj. Gen. Paul Harvey said in a statement. "There will be no interruption in the operation of business at the resort."
The raid reportedly involved the seizing of computer hard drives at the Silver Star and Golden Moon hotel-casinos in Neshoba County.
Ty Breedlove, spokesman for the FBI in Jackson, would not weigh in on the matter. "We cannot comment on the situation at this time," he said. "We may be able to provide some information at a later time."
It is unique for the FBI to raid a casino on an Indian reservation, Jones said. "It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out."
Phyliss J. Anderson would have taken office Tuesday, but the Tribal Council voted Friday to throw out that election and hold a new one Sept. 6. Salary for the job is $466,000 a year.
Current chief, Beasley Denson, who lost to Anderson, last week cast the deciding vote in favor of a new election.
After that meeting, Anderson declared the vote "an attempt to steal our election."
"The Choctaw voters elected a new chief to lead our tribe and clean up the financial mess. The 'Atlanta group' that has controlled our money is trying to take our vote away," she said referring to Mercury Gaming Management and its affiliate marketing firm, the Titan Agency, the management company that runs Pearl River Resort.

War crime charges against Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami leader

By AFP

Sayedee is detained along with other war crime suspects from his Jamaat-e-Islami party. PHOTO: AFP/FILE

DHAKA: Bangladeshi prosecutors have filed war crime charges against an Islamic leader, accusing him of genocide, murder and rape during the country’s 1971 liberation struggle, officials said Tuesday.
Delwar Hossain Sayedee, a senior official of Bangladesh’s largest Islamic party, has been also accused of “crimes against humanity, looting, arson and forcible conversion to Islam”, said chief prosecutor Ghulam Arif Tipoo.
“We have submitted the charges against Sayedee to the International Crimes Tribunal. The investigators have completed their job and we have found compelling evidences of war crimes,” Tipoo said.
The tribunal, a Bangladeshi special court created last year to try people suspected of atrocities during the independence campaign from Pakistan, will hold a hearing on Thursday to access the charges, he said.
The government has said some three million people were killed during the nine-month long struggle. Independent researchers put the figure much less.
A citizens’ group that has investigated the conflict has identified 1,775 people, including Pakistani generals and members of local religious groups, as complicit in the atrocities.
Sayedee is detained along with other war crime suspects from his Jamaat-e-Islami party and from the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
The BNP and Jamaat have dismissed the tribunal as a government “show trial”.
The New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch said Tuesday the rules being used by the tribunal to prosecute war crime suspects fall short of international standards.

I read the Holy Quran everyday: Tony Blair

Former British Premier, Blair reads the quran everday to stay "faith literate". PHOTO: AFP

LONDON: In a startling revelation during an interview to The Observer magazine, the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair confessed to reading the Holy Quran, the holy scripture for the 1.5 billion global Muslim population, as reported by the Daily Mail.
Blair, who was famously reluctant to discuss his faith during his time in office, converted to Catholicism months after leaving 10 Downing Street in 2007, and set up the ‘Tony Blair Faith Foundation’, to promote respect and understanding between the major religions.
In the interview, he said “I read the Bible every day. I read the Quran every day, partly to understand some of the things happening in the world, but mainly just because it is immensely instructive.”
Reading Islam’s holy book ensured he remained ‘faith-literate’ said Blair, adding that he believes being faith-literate is crucial in today’s globalised world.
Blair believes that knowledge of Islam informs his current role as Middle East envoy for the Quartet of the United Nations, United States, European Union and Russia.
This isn’t the first time that the former British Premier had spoken so highly of the religion. In 2006 he said the Quran was a ‘reforming book, it is inclusive. It extols science and knowledge and abhors superstition. It is practical and way ahead of its time in attitudes to marriage, women and governance’.
He praised the Muslim faith as being ‘beautiful’ and that the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) as being ‘an enormously civilizing force’.
Last October, Blair’s sister-in-law Lauren Booth raised eyebrows after announcing that she had converted to Islam after what she described as a ‘holy experience’ during a visit to a shrine in Iran.

Taliban claim assassination of Hamid Karzai's brother

By AFP

This August 16, 2009 file photo shows Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, praying along with Karzai supporters at an election gathering in Kandahar. PHOTO: AFP

KANDAHAR: The Taliban claimed responsibility for the assassination of President Hamid Karzai’s younger brother on Tuesday, calling it “one of our biggest achievements” in nearly a decade of war.
Taliban spokesman Usuf Ahmadi told AFP by telephone that the group had recently assigned a gunman to kill Ahmed Wali Karzai, a hugely powerful and controversial figure in the Afghan south.
Ahmed Wali Karzai, the younger brother of the Afghan president and a hugely powerful if controversial figure in southern Afghanistan, was assassinated at home on Tuesday, officials said.
The killing of his chief local powerbroker will be a huge loss for President Hamid Karzai in Kandahar, the heartland of the Taliban insurgency as NATO troops rush to start withdrawing combat troops after a decade of war.
Initial details were sketchy, with a family friend telling AFP on condition of anonymity that he was killed by a bodyguard while entertaining guests at home and an Afghan intelligence official saying he was shot dead by a guest.
“We can confirm he has been martyred,” Kandahar provincial government spokesman Zalmay Ayubi told AFP, providing no further details.
A health official, also speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said Wali Karzai had been shot dead.
“He was shot dead at his house by one of the visiting guests not by a body guard, at around 11:30 am (0700 GMT),” said an official at Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security.
The official said the gunman had himself been killed by other bodyguards.
The family friend said a number of Wali Karzai’s guests were also killed in the gunfire, but there was no immediate confirmation of who or how many.
The assassination came just before the Afghan leader received French President Nicolas Sarkozy, on a surprise visit to Afghanistan where he announced that Paris would recall 1,000 soldiers by the end of next year.
Wali Karzai, head of Kandahar’s provincial council, was for years a deeply controversial figure, dogged by allegations of unsavoury links to Afghanistan’s lucrative opium trade and private security firms.
American documents leaked by Internet whistleblower WikiLeaks late last year painted him as a corrupt drugs baron, lifting the lid on Western thoughts long kept private on the president’s younger half brother’s tainted record.
Kandahar is a make-or-break battleground in the US-led fight to defeat the insurgency, where the United States has poured in thousands of extra troops to wrest the initiative from the Taliban and bolster the Afghan government.
Afghanistan is ranked one of the most corrupt countries in the world, where official graft undermines public support for the Western-backed government and is believed to help fuel support for the Taliban insurgency.
A US cable in 2009 said a meeting with Wali Karzai captured one of the “major challenges in Afghanistan: how to fight corruption and connect the people to their government, when the key government officials are themselves corrupt.”
Wali Karzai, who ran his own private militia in the province, is reported to have said the plethora of independent security firms run by different men in the region should be brought under the control of one man.

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