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‘US can attack Al-Qaida in Pak’
The inscrutable general
Beijing Olympics
Iran must ‘answer’ or face sanctions: Rice
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Middle East deal doable: Brown
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‘US can attack Al-Qaida in Pak’
Washington, July 21 "... what I've said is that if we had actionable intelligence against high-value Al-Qaida targets and the Pakistani government was unwilling to go after those targets then we should," Obama, currently on a tour to Afghanistan and Iraq, said. "Now, my hope is that it doesn't come to that. The Pakistani government would recognise that if we had Osama bin Laden in our sights, we should fire or capture..." the 47-year-old Senator from Illinois said in an interview to CBS News which was broadcast on its Face The Nation programme. Obama's remark came as secretary of state Condoleezza Rice also asked Pakistan government to do more to stabilise the region. "It's very clear that more has to be done to stabilise the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. More has to be done," Rice said on the 'Late Edition' of CNN aired yesterday. The Democrat, who aspires to be the first black-American president, said: "I think actually this is the current doctrine. There was some dispute when I said this last August. Both the administration and some of my opponents suggested, well, you know, you shouldn't go around saying that. But I don't think there's any doubt that it should be our policy and will continue to be our policy... I don't think there is going to be a change there." "The US has to take a regional approach to the problem. Just as we can't be myopic and focus only on Iraq, we also can't think that we can solve the security problems here in Afghanistan without engaging the Pakistani government," he said. — PTI
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The inscrutable general
A recently retired senior Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official said of all the foreign spymasters the Agency had dealt with, Gen Ashfaq Kayani was the most formidable and a master manipulator. Gen Kayani, when he was the head of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was described by American officials as a smart and urbane general, at once engaging and inscrutable, an avid golfer with occasionally odd affectations. During meetings, he would often spend several minutes carefully hand-rolling a cigarette. Then after taking one puff, he would stub it out, a report received here from Washington quoted Mark Mazzetta, a former CIA official, as saying. Most CIA veterans agree that relations between CIA and ISI are like a bad marriage, in which both spouses have long-stopped trusting each other but would never think of breaking up because they have become so dependent on each other. The grumbling at the CIA about dealing with Pakistan’s ISI comes with a certain grudging reverence for the spy services’ scheming qualities. Some former spies even talk about the Pakistani agency with a mix of awe and professional jealousy. According to Mazzetta, without the ISI’s help American spies in Pakistan would be incapable of carrying out their primary mission of hunting militants in the country, including top members of Al-Qaida. Without the millions of covert American dollars sent annually to Pakistan, the ISI would have trouble competing with the spy service of its arch-rival, India. The top American goal in the region is to shore up Afghanistan’s government and security services to better fight the ISI’s traditional proxies.
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Beijing Olympics
Beijing, July 21 “Intelligence reports show that the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) has been planning to carry out terrorist attacks during the games,” director of the security command of the Beijing games Ma Zhenchuan said. "It is not imaginary. We have been focusing on the group and it has been labelled as a terrorist group not only by our country but also the international community," he said. China recently said it had smashed five terrorist groups plotting attacks on the Olympics and arrested 82 terrorists linked to them in the first six months of this year. The Chinese police had also claimed to have destroyed 41 Islamic military training bases from January to June and busted 12 terrorist cells of overseas-based outfits in the restive Muslim-populated Xinjiang region. "The command had already worked out detailed counter-terrorism plans," Zhenchuan was quoted as saying in an interview to CCTV by the state-run China Daily. The UN listed the ETIM as a terrorist group in 2002 with alleged links to the Al-Qaida. The World Uyghu Congress, however, denies it and accuses China of religious repression. Xinjiang is home to Muslims and Turkic-speaking Uighurs and Beijing had accused militant Uighurs of working with the Al-Qaida and other groups for an independent state called East Turkistan. Zhenchuan, however, said the ETIM was only part of the terrorist threat to the Olympics. — PTI
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Iran must ‘answer’ or face sanctions: Rice
Shannon (Ireland), July 21 Rice said Iran must give a "serious answer" within the deadline laid down by the six world powers to an offer of trade and technical incentives to halt uranium enrichment. "We are in the strongest possible position to demonstrate that if Iran does not act then it is time to go back to that (sanctions) track," Rice said in her first comments after Washington broke from usual policy and joined nuclear talks with Iran in Geneva on Saturday. Rice, speaking to reporters on her way to Abu Dhabi en route to Asia, said the US would impose more bilateral sanctions on Iran and the Europeans would look at what they could do if Iran failed to meet the world powers' demand. "The main thing is we will have to start considering what we do in New York," she said referring to the Security Council which has already imposed three rounds of sanctions on Iran. Envoys from the US, Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain attended the Geneva meeting.
— Reuters
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Middle East deal doable: Brown
Jerusalem, July 21 After talks in Jerusalem and Bethlehem with leaders from both sides, Brown said he was confident that all outstanding issues preventing an agreement could be hammered out.
Brown clashed with his Israeli counterpart Ehud Olmert over his demand to freeze the building of settlements in the West Bank and pledged new aid to the Palestinians as a part of the efforts to kick-start their economy. Brown was on a visit to Israel and the West Bank for the first time since becoming premier in June last year.
The US-sponsored talks between the two sides are aimed at resolving the conflict before US president leaves office next January. However, the talks were bogged down amid violence in the Islamist Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Asked whether he was confident that a deal could be reached on schedule, Brown said: "When I say the difficulties can be bridged, that the problems that I have had described to me I believe can be solved, then I think there is an opportunity within our grasp." "There is a sense from what I have heard today that people feel that they can get to a solution. The sooner that happens, the better it is. I'm urging people to move forward with as great speed as possible," he said.
— AFP
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Jerusalem, July 21
