Thirty captured Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters were on their way to Cuba yesterday as US bombers continued pounding a former militant base ahead of a visit by US Secretary of State Colin Powell to Afghanistan.
Powell's visit is intended to support reconstruction of the nation shattered by two decades of war, but the interim government and aid organizations say their work is being frustrated by a lack of funds.
The second batch of detainees from the Afghan campaign to be flown to the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, left in a C-17 US military cargo plane late Sunday, a spokesman for the US Central Command said.
The US has so far failed in the key objective of capturing Sept. 11 terror suspect Osama bin Laden and his protectors from the ousted Taliban regime, but US planes continued bombing former bases of bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization yesterday.
US warplanes attacked caves around the eastern Afghan town of Zhawar overnight and early yesterday, according to the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP), quoting residents in the neighboring Pakistani town of Miran Shah.
US ground troops scouring the area have found heavy weapons and ammunition in a network of bunkers, caves and buildings much larger than had been apparent from earlier aerial reconnaissance.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has acknowledged some of the recent strikes against the area were solely for the purpose of destroying weaponry.
Powell said he would meet Afghanistan's new interim leadership before going on to a Jan. 21-22 conference of Afghan donor countries in Japan.
An acute lack of funds is hampering the ability of the interim government and non-governmental organizations working in the war-shattered country to provide basic needs.
SILENCING CRITICS: In addition to blocking Taiwan, China aimed to prevent rights activists from speaking out against authoritarian states, a Cabinet department said The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday condemned transnational repression by Beijing after RightsCon, a major digital human rights conference scheduled to be held in Zambia this week, was abruptly canceled due to Chinese pressure over Taiwanese participation. This year’s RightsCon, the world’s largest conference discussing issues “at the intersection of human rights and technology,” was scheduled to take place from tomorrow to Friday in Lusaka, and expected to draw 2,600 in-person attendees from 150 countries, along with 1,100 online participants. However, organizers were forced to cancel the event due to behind-the-scenes pressure from China, the ministry said, expressing its “strongest condemnation”
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Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) yesterday said the US faced a choice between an “impossible” military operation or a “bad deal” with Tehran, after US President Donald Trump disparaged Iran’s latest peace proposal. Negotiations between the two countries have been deadlocked since a ceasefire came into effect on April 8, with only one round of direct peace talks held so far. Iran’s Tasnim and Fars news agencies reported that Tehran had submitted a 14-point proposal to mediator Pakistan, but Trump was quick to cast doubt on it. “I will soon be reviewing the plan that Iran has just sent to us, but
A group affiliated with indicted Chinese immigrant Xu Chunying (徐春鶯) is to be dissolved for monitoring Chinese immigrants in Taiwan, a source said yesterday. Xu, the secretary-general of the Cross-Strait Marriage and Family Service Alliance, was indicted on March 24 on charges of violating the Anti-Infiltration Act (反滲透法). The alliance “illegally monitored" Chinese immigrants living in Taiwan on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Ministry of the Interior is expected to dissolve the organization in the coming days under provisions of the Civil Associations Act (人民團體法), the source said. Xu, who married a Taiwanese in 1993 and became a Republic
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