But why should India be talking to the Taliban in the first place? There is no love lost there. India will never forget or forgive the humiliation to which the Taliban subjected it in the IC-814 hijack, notes Shekhar Gupta.
US special forces came away with hard drives, DVDs and a trove of documents from the Abbottabad safe house of Osama bin Laden which might tip American intelligence to Al Qaeda's operational plan and lead the manhunt to his presumed successor Ayman al Zawahiri.
Senior analyst B Raman notes that newly appointed Al Qaeda chief Ayman Al-Zahawiri may further advocate for a global jihadi Intifada against 'crusaders and Zionist regimes.'
Months before his killing in May 2011, Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was "utterly" focused on striking the United States in its "heartland".
Concerns that Afghanistan and India became too close in the post-2001 period was one reason why Pakistan was reluctant to act against Taliban and Al Qaeda, according to a report, which recommends engagement with the militants to end the conflict in the restive nation.
Mumbai police has received text messages warning of a '26/11-like' attack on the city from a phone number with Pakistan's country code and a person has been detained in this connection, officials said on Saturday.
Stung by a stunning leak of classified records indicating links between the Inter State Intelligence and the Taliban-Al Qaeda network, the White House came out in defence of Pakistan, insisting that the US-Pak alliance has led to significant blows against the Al Qaeda leadership since 2009.
'We never talk about cut of trade ties with any countries. Rumor about this news has been a propaganda. It is not true'
'The negotiation was a result of -- based on the judgment that we weren't winning the war and therefore time was not on our side and better to make a deal sooner than later'
The world today sees them (Pakistan) as the epicentre of terrorism, Jaishankar said.
"If we have to recognise a government, the first thing is that we will need to wait until the government is formed," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said.
As far as India is concerned, the danger is the potential of the IS to create mischief rather than its actual capability as of now, says Rajiv Kumar
Pakistan Army on Friday said it has arrested nearly 100 terrorists and foiled an imminent jailbreak attempt to free top Al Qaeda leader Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, sentenced to death for the murder of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl in 2002.
Aijaz Ahmad, presently based in Afghanistan, is one of the chief recruiters of Islamic State Jammu and Kashmir.
CIA Director Leon E Panetta said: "The bottom line here is that the war on terrorism is not just about Al Qaeda. It is a series of terrorist groups that are basically confronting us and it is the kinds of changes that we see in their methods of approaching the United States that I think represents the very important threat that we have to pay attention to."
Asim said 53 injured were currently being treated while seven had been admitted to the intensive care unit.
China has put a hold on a proposal moved at the United Nations by the United States and co-supported by India to designate Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist Sajid Mir, one of India's most wanted terrorists and the main handler of the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks, as a global terrorist.
The Al Qaeda has claimed its role in the failed attempt to blow up a US-bound plane, carrying 278 passengers from Amsterdam to Detroit, on Christmas, American monitors have said.
The scale of crisis in Iraq with militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham overtaking each town in the country and vowing to continue their bloodshed till the time they take over Baghdad, has left everyone with the one question they thought they would never have to: Would Iraq have been more stable if Saddam Hussein had been in power?
Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, who was involved in a series of terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir and was one of the released terrorists in the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 in 1999, has been designated as a terrorist by the Union government.
US President Barack Obama, who made a surprise visit to Kabul and met President Hamid Karzai, has vowed to deny the Al Qaeda safe haven and reverse Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan.
'Hakimullah Mehsud was specifically chosen by Al Qaeda to succeed Baitullah Mehsud because he was considered most allied to it. His role in facilitating the attack on the American base in Afghanistan showed how much trust Al Qaeda had vested in him,' the New York Times reported quoting US officials.
The National Investigation Agency has arrested two close aides of gangster Chhota Shakeel for allegedly handling the illegal activities and financial transactions of the crime syndicate controlled by fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, and for indulging in terror financing in the western suburbs of Mumbai, an official said on Friday.
The Al Qaeda has warned vengeance. The dreaded terror group has reportedly threatened Chinese interests in Africa in retaliation to the deaths of Muslims in the riot-hit Urumqi recently, according to a risk analysis firm, reports China Asia.
The concern about such an explosive hidden in a laptop or an electronic device prompted the US and the UK to prohibit travelers flying out of 10 airports in eight countries in the Middle East and Africa from carrying laptops and other large electronic devices aboard planes.
The United States has launched a separate and secret drone campaign managed jointly by the CIA and Special Operation Forces in Syria to target the leaders of the dreaded ISIS in Syria, a media report has said.
A 56-year old British cleric has been sentenced to life in prison by a court in US after being convicted of 11 terror-related charges, including providing material support to Al Qaeda and conspiring to establish a terrorist training camp in the US.
Makki and other LeT/JUD operatives "have been involved in raising funds, recruiting and radicalising youth to violence and planning attacks in India, particularly in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K)," the sanctions committee said, providing a statement for the reasons of Makki's listing.
Two commandos of the special forces were also killed in the rescue operation that was launched after negotiations between the government and the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan militants to end the hostage crisis failed.
The United States has adopted a "completely new approach" in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a top Obama Administration official has said, stressing al Qaeda will be denied a safe haven in the region.
An influential US Senator has asked the Obama Administration to explain how sending more troops to Afghanistan would help in defeating al-Qaeda when its top leaders have moved to Pakistan's unruly tribal areas.
'What America could figure out is that this finally was an American with an American passport operating in Pakistan who had access to Al Qaeda. Now the prime objective of that time was the capture of bin Laden. This is three years before Abbottabad, the only thing that the US intelligence agencies were thinking about was how do they decapitate him, how do they cut the head off of Al Qaeda and here was this tantalising, untrustworthy, difficult, hard to control, psychopathic individual, who was American,' Adrian Levy, co-author of the book The Siege: The Attack on the Taj, tells Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt.
'No one in this administration, not the President nor anyone on the national security team, would suggest that the Taliban are respected and valued members of the global community'
Jaishankar, who presided over the UNSC Briefing: Global Counterterrorism Approach: Challenges and Way Forward, described terrorism as an existential threat to international peace and security and said it knows no borders, nationality, or race.
One of the most dreaded terrorists in the world is now a member of the Taliban cabinet.
Saad bin Laden, the Al-Qaeda leader's third-oldest son, is believed to have been killed by Hellfire missiles fired from a US Predator drone 'sometime this year', National Public Radio reported, quoting unnamed officials.
Within 24 hours over the weekend, two major terrorist attacks by Islamist extremists occurred in different parts of the world. In Kenya, military forces are still fighting terrorists holed up in a shopping mall in Nairobi, where nearly 60 civilians already have been killed. In Pakistan, over 80 were killed in a dual suicide bomb attack following a Sunday morning church service in the northwest city of Peshawar.
'Underwear bomb' creator Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, perhaps the best bomb maker in the world, has been the most high-profile recruit of the Islamic State. And the ability of his bombs to go unchecked through the most stringent security setups has left the US and UK very worried. Vicky Nanjappa reports.
The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan will inspire terrorists and trigger an "explosion" of extremism and security challenges for the world, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace warned on Thursday.
"The fight against impunity is critical to the larger pursuit of securing peace and justice. The Security Council must send an unambiguous and unequivocal message on this count," External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told the 15-nation UN Security Council briefing on Ukraine 'Fight against impunity'.
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