Reuters
Pakistan said Monday it did not regard Afghanistan's ruling Taliban as terrorists and wanted to see a short war waged by the United States in its hunt for Saudi-born fugitive Osama bin Laden hiding there. The duration of the current U.S.-led military strikes on Afghanistan would be discussed with Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was due to arrive in Islamabad later in the day, a Foreign Ministry spokesman told a news conference. Guess that all depends on what your definition of "terrorist" is.
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10/15/2001 ||
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Times of India
Afghanistan's Northern Alliance on Monday indicated it would hold back from an offensive to take Kabul alongside US-led strikes until a political agreement was reached on the form of a post-war government. "If we reach an agreement before entering Kabul, that would be an ideal situation," Northern Alliance foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah told BBC radio. "If the military situation evolves in such a way that we have to move closer to Kabul, we will do that. In that case, one should think about the role that the United Nations can play in establishing a security force in Kabul or other options."
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10/15/2001 ||
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Reuters
The latest U.S. air raids cut a major part of the Afghan capital's already limited communication links with the rest of the world. Ninety telephone links operated by a Chinese and Pakistani company to a microwave exchange at Lataband were cut, around 35 km east of the capital. The only remaining links are through the Afghan Wireless Company.
The handful of international lines that existed at the start of the current fighting were mainly reserved for top Taliban officials. The United States is monitoring all communications in the country, which appear increasingly confined to easily intercepted satellite transmissions. Afghanistan's international communications are mainly through satellite telephones as most of the telephone system has been destroyed in more than two decades of warfare. The handful of international lines that existed at the start of the current fighting were mainly reserved for senior Taliban officials. Taliban Minister of Communications Mulawi Yar Mohammad Rahimi said in a March radio broadcast that government efforts to repair the old city systems had provided only a limited resumption of phone services.
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10/15/2001 ||
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AFP
Special envoys from former Afghan king Mohammed Zahir Shah Monday began talks with Pakistani leaders on any post-Taliban scenario in Afghanistan. A Pakistani foreign ministry official said former Afghan foreign minister Hedayat Amin Arsala was leading the delegation, which is also understood to include Haji Abdul Khaleq Farahi and Rahim Sherzoy. He said the former king's envoys had started talks with Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar and were scheduled to meet President Pervez Musharraf later in the afternoon. The discussions come hours before the arrival here of US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Powell will meet Musharraf to discuss the US-led military action against the Taliban militia and alleged terrorists based in Afghanistan, as well as Pakistan's tense relations with nuclear rival India. Details of Powell's itinerary have been kept secret amid fears of reprisals for US air strikes against the Taliban, now in their second week. Powell is also expected to visit New Delhi en route to the Asia-Pacific Economic Forum in Shanghai.
Zahir Shah's delegation left Rome on Saturday night carrying a message to the Pakistani leader from the former king who has lived in Italy since his ouster in a coup in 1973. Musharraf earlier this month invited Zahir Shah to send a mission to discuss a post-Taliban Afghanistan should the ruling militia be toppled by the current US-led military strikes. But royal family sources said the visit had upset the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance which blames Pakistan for supporting the Taliban since its emergence in 1994.
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10/15/2001 ||
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Gulf News/Reuters
The trial of eight foreign aid workers accused of promoting Christianity in Afghanistan resumed yesterday and their lawyer was set to present their defence after a one-day delay to translate his rebuttal, officials said. However, Supreme Court Chief Justice Maulawi Noor Mohammad Saqib had yet to appear in the court and it was not clear how the trial would proceed in the capital, Kabul, which has been under attack by U.S.-led forces for seven days. The Pakistani lawyer for the eight, Atif Ali Khan, had presented his written defence in Arabic. "It (the trial) will start as soon as he brings the defence either in Pashto or Dari," Saqib told Reuters on Saturday.
Taliban sources said the eight foreign aid workers were all well and safe after seven nights of a U.S. bombardment on Afghan cities, with much of the fire concentrated on military and strategic targets around Kabul. Two Americans, two Australians and four Germans â all working for German-based Shelter Now International (SNI) â were arrested in early August on charges of promoting Christianity in the deeply Islamic country.
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10/15/2001 ||
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BY JIM RITTER HEALTH REPORTER
With at least three more Americans exposed to anthrax, a Bush administration Cabinet member said Sunday that sending the deadly germ through the mail is âan act of terrorism.â This is a "duh" statement if there ever was one. If it wasn't a terrorist act, what would it be?
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10/15/2001 ||
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AP
A letter opened Monday in the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle "had anthrax in it," President Bush said. The envelope was field-tested shortly after being received, and the staffers who were exposed were being treated, he said. Within a few hours of the delivery of the letter to Daschle's office, officials in the House and Senate issued orders to all congressional offices to refrain from opening mail. A memo from the House sergeant-at-arms said the mail would be "picked up ... for additional screening and returned to you as soon as possible."
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10/15/2001 ||
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NT Times
In a stunning denunciation of what he called a "shameful" betrayal of the United States, a former Kuwaiti government minister and member of the ruling family has scorned what he called his country's "hesitant and timid" support for America's war against terrorism. Writing in a London-based Arabic daily, Sheik Saud Nasser al-Sabah, Kuwait's former oil and information minister, criticized what he described as his country's lackluster support for the American-led campaign against Osama bin Laden and his associates. He blamed his government's policy of "abdication" on Kuwait's militant Islamic groups and some of their charities, which he accused of having "hijacked" the country's foreign policy.
"I say that this country of ours is kidnapped, hijacked by groups that call themselves Islamic but in truth use Islam as a cover and a garb for political goals," he wrote in Asharq al-Awset, a popular Saudi- owned newspaper. Sheik Saud called such groups "a menace" not only to the future of Kuwait, but to "the Arab world as a whole," and urged his fellow Kuwaitis and other Arabs to be "brave" in opposing them. "We should remove the veil of secrecy that protects these groups and their financial and political activities in Kuwait and abroad," he wrote. If not, he warned, "we will face more destruction and ruin."
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10/15/2001 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
