WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama Monday said multi-million-dollar bonuses planned for executives and traders at bailed-out insurance giant AIG were an “outrage” and vowed to pursue a clampdown.
“How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?” he said at the White House, pledging to “pursue every legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole.”
source : jang.com.pk
WASHINGTON: The United States is praising Pakistan’s plan to reinstate a fired Supreme Court chief justice whose supporters had threatened to march on the capital.
State Department spokesman Robert Wood told reporters Monday that the decision by Pakistan’s leaders had “brought Pakistan back from the brink.”
Wood says Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s calls over the weekend to U.S.-allied President Asif Ali Zardari, who had refused to restore the independent-minded justice, and to opposition leader Nawaz Sharif were meant to signal a concern over the situation and a desire for a nonviolent outcome.
Wood was careful to note that there were no U.S. demands and “no threats at all” in Clinton’s calls.
source : jang.com.pk
RIYADH: Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz has arrived in New York for follow-up medical checks and treatment after convalescing in Morocco, the royal court said.
source : jang.com.pk
LONDON: A US soldier has been convicted of murder for his involvement in the killing four Iraqis who were shot and dumped in a Baghdad canal in 2007, a British news channel reported.
A military court at a US Army base in Vilseck, Germany, late Friday convicted Sgt. Michael Leahy following his confession that he shot an Iraqi in the back of the head from close range.
The victims were a group of Iraqis who were detained briefly and questioned over an attack on a Baghdad military base.
Leahy was one of a group of soldiers who took detainees away after it was decided there was not enough evidence to charge them. Blindfolded and gagged, the four were then shot and dumped in a canal, the report said.
The soldier faces a possible sentence of life without parole. The military court has not yet handed down a sentence.
Meanwhile, his lawyers argued that the stress of being in a conflict zone for so long meant he was unable to reason properly.
Last year, two other soldiers were sentenced to seven and eight months prison as accomplices in the murder of the four Iraqis.Two more suspects in the crime are still to be tried by the US military court.
source : jang.com.pk
DAMASCUS: Syria’s president has told a visiting US senator that his country wants to develop relations with the United States after several years of tensions.
Syria’s official news agency says Assad held talks Wednesday with Sen. Benjamin Cardin, a Maryland Democrat that focused on developing bilateral relations through serious dialogue.
source : jang.com.pk
WASHINGTON: The United States State Department had no specific comment to offer on the Swat peace agreement, saying it is in contact with the Pakistani government to learn about the full strategy.
“We are in touch with the government in Pakistan, we are discussing the issue, but that is all I have for you at the moment,” a State Department spokesman said at the daily briefing in his cautious response to questions on the development that Pakistan said would help bring peace to its restive valley in the northwestern province, bordering Afghanistan.
Spokesman Gordon K. Duguid, asked to comment on enforcement of Shariat-based justice system in Swat said, “As I understand that Islamic law is within the constitutional framework of Pakistan, so I don’t know that is particularly an issue for anyone outside of Pakistan to discuss.”
Pressed if Washington saw the agreement as a good or bad development, he said “We have seen these sorts of actions before, what is important is that we are all working together to fight terrorism, and particularly to fight the cross-border activities that some Taliban engage in, in attacking in Afghanistan.”
Asked if the United States shared NATO’s comments on the possible impact the agreement may have in terms of providing sanctuaries for militants, he said: “We are a part of NATO, I saw those comments, I did not see the full context of them, however. So I won’t, I don’t have anything further to offer on that.
source : jang.com.pk
HEART: U.S. forces killed at least one child, video footage obtained on Wednesday showed, in an air strike in western Afghanistan that Afghan police say killed 12 civilians and U.S. forces said killed 16 militants.
Videos taken in the Gozara district of Herat province in the aftermath of the attack on Monday showed mangled, unrecognizable clumps of flesh - all that remained of several people and dozens of animals killed in a tented nomad encampment. One body that was recognizable was that of a young boy. “The information we have is 12 civilians, including six women, four men and two children have been killed in the bombardment,” General Ikramuddin Yawar, chief of police in western Afghanistan told.
source : jang.com.pk
TEHRAN: The Iranian judiciary denied on Tuesday that it was holding former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who went missing almost two years ago on an island in the Gulf.
“We do not have anyone with this name in our prisons, no cases have been formed in prisons or by judicial authorities,” judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi told reporters when asked whether Levinson was being held in a secret jail in Iran.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last month called on Iran to release Levinson, who retired from service a decade ago. According to his family, Levinson travelled to the Iranian island of Kish in March 2007 to investigate cigarette counterfeiting in the region. Florida Senator Bill Nelson told this month that he believed Levinson was alive and that “he’s being held by the Iranians.”
The report further said that “some US intelligence officials” believe Tehran may consider releasing Levinson as part of a swap for several Iranians seized by US military forces in northern Iraq in 2007. The mystery of Levinson’s disappearance is a further strain in relations between the United States and Iran, which have had no diplomatic ties for nearly three decades and remain at loggerheads over the Iranian nuclear drive.
source : jang.com.pk
PARACHINAR: The death toll of US drone attack in Kurram Agency has raised to 30.
According to reports, four US drones fired four missiles at suspected hideouts of militants in Sarpal area of tehsil Sadda of lower Kurram. Intially, 15 people were killed in the attack.
Many bodies were trapped under the rubble and 30 bodies have been recovered so far. Several people sustained injuries in the attack.
Sources said there was a camp of Afghan Commander Bahram Khan Kochi in Sarpal area. US drones continued patrolling in the area after the attack.
This was the first US drone attack in Kurram Agency, however, drones made regular flights in these areas in the past.
BERLIN: Germany on Monday followed the lead of the US and Britain in announcing the appointment of a special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The appointment of Bernd Muetzelburg, currently Germany’s ambassador to India, to the role will “further intensify Germany’s diplomatic engagement in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” the foreign ministry in Berlin said.
Germany is currently raising troop levels in Afghanistan to around 4,500 under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Most of Germany’s soldiers are based in the relatively peaceful north.
Last Monday Britain appointed Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles as its envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
NEW YORK: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged Friday to deepen US bonds with Asia in order to tackle the global economic crisis and climate change as well as prevent nuclear proliferation.
On the eve of her tour of Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and China, her first foreign trip, Clinton said in a speech she is “ready to deliver a message about America’s desire for more rigorous and persistent commitment and engagement.”
She added she is “ready to work with leaders in Asia to resolve the economic crisis and to strengthen our historic partnerships and alliances while developing deeper bonds with all nations.”
In her first foreign policy speech, which she delivered before the Asia Society, a non-profit educational institution, Clinton said she also is “ready to help prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in Asia.”
Clinton added that North Korea’s nuclear program remains “the most acute challenge to stability in northeast Asia.”
She said President Barack Obama’s administration would build a strong relationship with the reclusive Stalinist regime if it scraps its nuclear program, which alarmed the world in 2006 with the test of a nuclear device.
KABUL: US President Barack Obama has accepted Kabul’s request to be part of a major review of US strategy in the “war on terror” in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai and a US envoy said Sunday.
Karzai said he asked Obama by letter for Afghanistan to have a role in the review, which is under way amid concerns about worsening security in this country seven years after a US-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime.
US envoy Richard Holbrooke brought the message to Karzai on Saturday that Obama had accepted, the Afghan leader told a joint press conference. A delegation from Afghanistan chaired by Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta would travel to Washington “and will be working jointly with the US government in the review of the strategy in the war on terrorism,” he said.
Holbrooke arrived late Thursday and met with a range of Afghan officials and politicians, international military commanders and diplomats before holding talks with Karzai late Saturday. He has held similar wide-ranging meetings in Pakistan and is due to continue his tour of the region in India.
BEIJING: China and the United States will resume military consultations this month that were postponed last year when Washington announced a planned weapons sale to Taiwan, state press said Sunday.
The defence consultations will be held in Beijing on February 27-28, the People’s Daily reported on its website, citing an unnamed official with the US Department of Defence. “We want to continue exchanges with China and are seeking positive cooperative ties,” the official was quoted as saying.
The defence talks will resume only days after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton makes her first visit to China from February 20-22 as the top envoy of the new administration of US President Barack Obama, the report said. The talks will take place once a year and could include discussions on the fight against global terrorism, it said.
China called off high-level military exchanges last October after the Pentagon notified Congress that it planned to sell 6.5 billion dollars of military hardware to Taiwan.
WANA: Over twenty victims, who were killed in yesterday’s drone attack in South Waziristan Agency (SWA), were buried here in tears and sobs.
US drone continued hovering over North and South Waziristan and Kurram Agency even today. Over thirty persons were killed in US drone attack on Saturday at Ladha area of South Waziristan, out of which over twenty persons’ burial prayer was offered and later buried in different areas.
On the other hand, drones continued hovering over North and South Waziristan and Kurram agency. The drones are flying low on the militants’ hideouts, which is creating harassment and panic among the local people.
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