In an attempt to steal the spotlight from Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s trip to Washington, the Taliban threatened to launch a series of attacks across Afghanistan — a claim the defense minister quickly dismissed as insurgent propaganda.
The Taliban said their spring offensive, targeting Afghan and NATO military and staff plus foreign contractors, would begin today — the same day that Karzai begins meetings in Washington. A statement in English posted Saturday on the group’s Web site said the offensive dubbed “al-Faath,” which means victory, would include “ambushes, detonations of explosive devices, assassinations of government officials, suicide bombings and detainment of foreign invaders.”
Afghanistan’s defense minister, General Abdul Rahim Wardak, dismissed the threat, saying that the Taliban did not have the capability to launch a series of attacks across the nation. Moreover, he said, intelligence reports show many of the Taliban commanders currently are across the border in Pakistan.
“I do believe it is a propaganda campaign rather than a reality,” Wardak said.
Wardak and nine other members of the Afghan Cabinet are accompanying Karzai to Washington. The trip comes as 30,000 US reinforcements US President Barack Obama dispatched to the war head to the country. About 4,500 have deployed, with another 18,000 due to arrive by late spring and the rest by early fall.
The military buildup is aimed at routing the Taliban from their strongholds, especially in the south and bolstering security needed to start development projects and offer public services — an effort to drain support for the Taliban and swing it to Karzai’s government.
Thousands of US, NATO and Afghan forces just finished a major offensive to oust the Taliban from central Helmand Province in the south. They now are ramping up pressure on the Taliban’s birthplace of Kandahar Province next door.
The Taliban are fighting back with attacks on contractors and government officials. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for killing Manan Khan and two of his bodyguards on Saturday. Khan was a former police chief and current vice president of the shura, or council, in Arghandab District, a dangerous area of Kandahar. Last month, gunmen stormed a mosque and killed the deputy mayor of Kandahar as he knelt for evening prayers.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person