Kabul, February 11
Talliban militants launched suicide bomb aned gun attacks on Wednesday on three Afghan government buildings, killing at least 26 persons, in one of the most daring assaults on the capital to date.

The defence ministry said eight suidcide attackers also died in the near simultaneous stikes on the prisons directorate, and justice and education ministers - the deadliest insurgent attacks in Afghanistan so far this year.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabinhullah Mujahid, said on telephone that 16 suicide attackers had entered the Afghan capital and would carry out awave of strikes, as the violence sowed panic across the city.

“So far, we have registered 26 persons killed and 55 wounded,” health ministry spokesman Abdullah Fahim said by mid-afternoon. Most were civilians, he said.

Of the eight attackers killed, three managed to blow themselves up and five were shot dead, officials said.

Witnesses of the attack on the justice ministry, which is close to the presidential palace in the heart of the capital, said several gunmen burst into the building and opened fire on security guards.

Some of the gunmen managed to run up several floors of the building, shooting as they went, they said.

Terrified ministry employees jumped fromt the windows of the four-storey building, while others locked theselves in their offices as heavy exchanges of gunfire continued for several hours, witnesses said.

Five would-be suicide attackers were killed inside the building, the defence ministry said. A witness said at least one was strapped with explosives.

“I saw several of them running into the ministry after a gunfight with police guards at the entrance, right next to the kitchen,” said a cook, Juma Khan.

The attacks came as new US President Barack Obama considered a plan to double the number of US troops fighting against a widening Taliban-led insurgency which now stands at about 37,000. — AFP

Dhaka, February 11
Veteran Awami League leader Zillur Rahman, a close aide to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, was today declared as new President of Bangladesh, more than a month after his party swept the landmark general elections.

Rahman (79), the nominee of the Awami League, was the lone candidate for presidency after the expiry of the last date for nomination paper withdrawal today.

“Mohammad Zillur Rahman has been elected the President of the Peoples Republic of Bangladesh under Clause 7 of the President Election Act 1991,” Chief Election Commissioner ATM Shamsul Huda said in an announcement.

He said Rahman was declared the country’s 19th President as his nomination was found valid and no other candidate filed his papers for the presidency.

Bangabhaban presidential palace officials said the swearing-in ceremony of the new President would be held tomorrow at 7 pm at the Darbar Hall, where Chief Justice M Ruhum Amin would administer the oath of office to him.

Rahman, who succeeds Iajuddin Ahmed, expressed his desire to work neutrally for the welfare of his countrymen.

“I will work for the people neutrally, even though I will be away from active politics,” Rahman, who joined politics in his student life, told reporters at his residence. — PTI

At a tense meeting across from the White House on July 4, 1999, President Bill Clinton pressurised Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to pull back Pakistani-backed fighters from a confrontation with India that threatened to escalate into a nuclear war.

Bruce Riedel, Clinton’s special assistant and senior director for Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council, was the only other person present at the meeting that resulted in a resolution of the Kargil crisis.

Riedel’s experience dealing with crises in South Asia will come in handy when he takes up his newest task.

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama asked Riedel to conduct an interagency review of US policy towards Pakistan and Afghanistan. A former CIA official, Riedel is expected to complete his work before a NATO summit in April.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan and Michelle Flournoy, the under secretary of defence for policy, will serve as co-chairs. Riedel will report directly to Obama and National Security Advisor Jim Jones.

Riedel will work at the White House for 60 days. He has currently taken leave from the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution where he is a senior fellow.

“I think everyone has mentioned that in order for us to change the direction that we see in Afghanistan, we can’t simply focus on just the military aspects, that we have to focus on the diplomatic, the civil society, the reconstruction,” Gibbs said, adding, "What Bruce is doing, and what other military planners are doing, is looking at the Afghanistan and Pakistan policies in a - not just in how many troops, but in a broad sense of what is possible and what needs to happen in order to change direction."

State department spokesman Robert Wood denied Riedel’s duties overlapped with Holbrooke’s. In a recent interview published on the New York Times’ website, Riedel painted a grim picture of the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“The inheritance that Ambassador Holbrooke gets, though, on the whole is pretty dim and dismal,” he said.

“The war in Afghanistan is going badly, the southern half of the country is increasingly in chaos, and the Taliban is encroaching more and more frequently into Kabul and the surrounding provinces. In Pakistan, the jihadist Frankenstein monster that was created by the Pakistani army and the Pakistani intelligence service is now increasingly turning on its creators. It is trying to take over the laboratory.”

At a panel discussion soon after the Mumbai terrorist attacks, Riedel said the “60-hour massacre in Mumbai will indeed be remembered as a seminal event in the history of international terrorism, and particularly in the history of the global jihad.”

He noted that the targets of the Mumbai attacks were Americans, Israelis, and Indians. “This is the target set not of an indigenous movement. This is the target set of global jihad. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the ideological leader of Al-Qaida and Osama Bin Laden have spoken many, many times to their followers about the danger posed to Islam by what they call the Crusader-Zionist-Hindu Alliance," he said.

On Monday, Al-Qaida threatened India with more attacks similar to the one in Mumbai. Riedel said whether linkages still exist between Lashkar-e-Taiba and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence is the “$64 million question.”

He said it was “difficult to believe that no connections remain, given the size of its activities in Pakistan.”