Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi visited Afghanistan yesterday for talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Italian troops taking part in an international effort against a growing and deadly insurgency.
Prodi's Christmastime visit follows those on Saturday of the leaders of France and Australia, who also have troops in NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) working against the intensifying Taliban-led insurgency.
"He came to visit the Italian troops and he will meet the president," an Italian embassy official said.
The prime minister started his visit in Kabul and was due to travel to the western city of Herat, where most of Italy's more than 2,300 troops in Afghanistan are based, another official said.
Italy has lost 10 soldiers in Afghanistan, one of them an intelligence officer wounded when Italian and British commandos freed him and a colleague from capture by rebels in September.
Ten people died in the raid -- nine of the abductors, said by Afghan police to be Taliban rebels, and an Afghan interpreter.
Afterwards one of the communist factions within Prodi's left-wing government called for the withdrawal of Italian troops from the international effort launched after the Taliban were ousted from government six years ago.
Support for the often-criticized mission has been waning in some of the other nearly 40 nations in ISAF, a force of about 40,000 that works with the Afghan security forces and a US-led coalition of about 20,000 mostly US troops.
US President George W. Bush said last week he was concerned people would say, "`Well, we're kind of tired of Afghanistan and, therefore, we think we're going to leave.'"
"It's going to take time for this democratic experiment there in Afghanistan to work. And I believe it will," Bush said.
Both French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd used their visits on Saturday to stress commitment to Afghanistan.
Sarkozy told journalists the international community could not afford to lose the"war against terrorism" in Afghanistan.
He said the world must be united and committed in efforts to build Afghanistan and help it withstand insurgents linked with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
France has in particular increased its efforts to train the Afghan army and police, destroyed by the end of the Taliban's deeply conservative religious regime, and has moved six French fighter jets to a southern base.
Rudd said Australia would be involved in Afghanistan for the "long haul." He announced extra economic aid but did not say if he would keep the country's nearly 1,000 troops in the country after their mandate expires next year.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
RSS