The top US military officer held talks in Pakistan yesterday on the new war strategy for Afghanistan, which Washington says hinges on Pakistan’s own battle against Islamist extremists.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, began talks with Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani yesterday morning, a senior official said.
Mullen arrived from Kabul late on Tuesday and has already met General Tariq Majid, ceremonial head of the armed forces, during which US President Barack Obama’s plan for turning around the Afghan war topped the agenda.
PHOTO: EPA
He discussed the “evolving regional security situation with particular focus on revised US strategy for Afghanistan and the region, especially its impact and short and long term implications for Pakistan,” a military statement said. “Aspects of bilateral military cooperation also came under discussion.”
Obama is deploying an extra 30,000 troops to try and turn the tide in the eight-year war against a Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, while he has also set a July 2011 deadline to start withdrawing US forces.
The plan has been criticized in Pakistan, as officials and analysts fear a troop surge in Afghanistan will send militants into Pakistan, while a drawdown date will embolden Islamist insurgents on both sides of the border.
Islamabad is also under increasing Western pressure to dismantle Taliban strongholds in its lawless northwest tribal area and stop militants slipping over the border to attack NATO and US troops.
Visiting Afghanistan earlier this week, Mullen expressed concern about “growing” collusion between Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda and other extremist groups sheltering in nuclear-armed Pakistan.
Mullen’s visit coincided with a suicide car bomb in a busy market in the town of Dera Ghazi Khan in central Pakistan on Tuesday that killed at least 27 people.
Meanwhile, Pakistani troops backed by helicopter gunships have pounded suspected Taliban hideouts in the northwest tribal belt, killing at least 43 militants, officials said yesterday.
The armed forces targeted Orakzai and Kurram districts, strongholds of the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked fighters and part of a lawless tribal region where the military is trying to dismantle insurgent sanctuaries.
“At least 18 militants were killed when helicopters pounded Toorikhel town of Orakzai when militants were holding an important meeting Tuesday,” paramilitary spokesman Major Fazlur Rehman said.
The meeting, chaired by local Taliban commander Qari Ismail, was held to arrange a reconciliation between two feuding groups of militants, he said. It was not immediately clear if Ismail was among the dead.
Local official Riaz Khan confirmed the toll, and said four more people were killed in air strikes in Orkazai’s Sultanzai town. Seven militant hideouts and five vehicles were also destroyed, he said.
The military also mounted a ground and air operation in Dagar town of Kurram region on Tuesday, killing 21 militants, Rehman said, adding that the operations continued yesterday.
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
RSS