Pakistan will deploy air defence weapons on the border with Afghanistan to pre-empt fresh attacks by NATO forces in the wake of a "pre-planned" air strike that killed 24 soldiers, a top military official has said.
Diplomatic circles in the US were expecting "low-level participation" by Pakistan in the crucial conference beginning on Monday in the German city, Dawn News channel reported, quoting its sources.
United States President Barack Obama on Tuesday said having a large footprint in Afghanistan can be "counter-productive" in the long run and that it was time to pull back troops and turn attention to domestic woes, as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation alliance agreed on a 2014 end to the Afghan mission.
Taliban militants, who have shunned violence, are being provided monthly cash incentive of 100 pounds, besides being given amnesty for all crimes such as murdering children, beheadings and hanging women.
The blast, which could be heard several kilometers away, sent burning debris showering down over an area a few hundred meters from the Justice and Interior Ministries, a top courthouse, and the former office of the prime minister.
Following the closure of a crucial ground line of communication by Pakistan in retaliation to the death of its 24 soldiers in a NATO cross border fire, the use of Northern Distribution Network is costing US an additional $38 million per month, a US Senator has said.
Dismissing the remarks by the Pakistani military on the November 26 deadly NATO cross border strike, the United States on Monday said it stands by its own investigation that it was not an unprovoked firing by the US-led forces.
"Pakistan would allow back US military trainers, including Special Forces teams, and a resumption of close cooperation with the CIA in targeting militants who use the Pakistani side of the border as a safe haven and breeding ground for extremism," Fox News reported.
It also said that the UK's decision to expel 23 Russian diplomats in retaliation for the alleged attack was a 'just response'.
Biden is best qualified to address the root cause of the polarisation in American politics before it turns into terminal malignancy, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Germany will compensate for its non-participation in the United States-led military operation in Libya by sending around 300 additional troops to Afghanistan to relieve its NATO partners involved in airborne surveillance there for similar operations in the war-torn North African nation.
The Pashtu-language message, posted on the taliban website alemara.com, states that the US allegations are merely propaganda through which Washington wants to show that the Taliban are disintegrating and send out the message that the mujahideen are not indigenous but the product of Pakistani secret agencies.
'The real significance of the visit lies in the extent of the receptivity in Myanmar of the account of Chinese perfidy given by India's military and civilian top brass and how they assess the danger to themselves of dancing with the dragon,' notes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Admitting a "credibility gap" between Islamabad and Washington, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has not ruled out closing Pakistan's airspace to United States and said the blockade of the United States supply lines into Afghanistan would stay in place for weeks.
The decision to deploy air defence weapons was made as the country re-evaluates its strategy for safeguarding its western borders from air raids, the Pakistan Army's Director General of Military Operations, Maj Gen Ashfaq Nadeem Ahmed, told the federal cabinet and the Senate's Standing Committee on Defence during briefings on Thursday.
The White House has once again asked Pakistan to attend the upcoming crucial international meet on Afghanistan in Bonn.
India's defence establishment is taking the new Chinese threat seriously, as also that posed by Pakistan's nuclear-tipped MRBMs -- like the Ghauri-2 and the Shaheen-2 -- which can strike targets 2300 kilometres away.
The call from T N Seshan, the then cabinet secretary to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, relayed the pressure by the United States and NATO to delay the launch.
The recent catastrophic attack on US troopers underlines the undamaged capability of the Afghan Taliban to take the NATO forces by surprise and inflict heavy casualties on them and its determination to make the US withdrawal from Afghanistan a humiliating retreat and not a successful withdrawal, says senior analyst B Raman.
Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States Eklil Ahmad Hakimi has not ruled out the possibility of India training Afghanistan's security forces and national army sometime in the future if the necessity arises.
Regional rivalries will only intensify if the perception gains ground that the security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating. India will have to ensure that it does not lose out as in the past as new realities emerge in the region, says Harsh V Pant.
A North Atlantic Treaty Organisation air strike destroyed buildings inside Muammar Gaddafi's office in the capital Tripoli on Monday as forces loyal to the embattled leader pounded western Misurata, despite the regime announcing halt to operations in the besieged city.
Let's see some glimpses of the Afghan war over the decade in PHOTOS.
The destruction of Gaddafi's military capacity is a matter of days or weeks, certainly not months, says France's Ambassador to India Jerome Bonnafont.
Struggling hard to restore its ties with Pakistan in the aftermath of NATO air strike last month, the Obama administration on Tuesday said that it has not cut any civilian aid to Pakistan, noting that this is an on-going move in the Congress right now.
As United States and NATO military commanders mulled over complexities of enforcing a 'no-fly zone' over Libya, the strife-torn nation's newly emerged opposition leaders are approaching the United Nations to ask for foreign air strikes to pulverise Mummar Gaddafi's capabilities to hit civilian targets.
Ignoring fresh calls from the United States, Pakistan on Friday said it will not budge from its decision to boycott a key conference on Afghanistan's future in Bonn next week in the wake of a cross-border NATO air strike that killed its 24 soldiers.
Libya's embattled leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is showing increasing signs of paranoia, he's on the run and has been spending nights hiding in different hospitals to dodge North Atlantic Treaty Organisation air raids, a British news report said.
The United States has asked Pakistan's interior ministry to conduct a probe into Pakistani jihadis, including Lashkar-e-Tayiba operatives, joining militant groups in Afghanistan to attack North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and allied forces, a media report said on Tuesday.
The crash late Friday represents the biggest death toll in a single incident for international forces in Afghanistan since the start of the war in 2001
The brazen Taliban attack on a luxury hotel in the Afghan capital Kabul was similar to the 26/11 Mumbai terror strike, according to an American security analyst.
India must carefully weigh its options, says strategic expert Gurmeet Kanwal.
The imperial arrogance of a superpower is increasing daily for a weak democracy in Pakistan, but it is still counterproductive, feels noted Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir.
"We have from time to time reminded all stakeholders about the red lines that was drawn by the world community and certainly by the participants should not be touched, should not be erased and should not be violated," External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid told media persons.
The TTP, however, did not confirm the death of its chief in the drone strike.
The Japanese triple tragedy earthquake, tsunami and the very dangerous situation in the nuclear power plants has also brought into sharp focus how the effectiveness of complex supply chains, which are at the heart of globalisation of output, is crippled if there is a crisis in a large manufacturing or high-technology economy.
Noting that the United States and its NATO allies have been successful in its mission in Libya, the United States President Barack Obama on Wednesday said that the Muammar-al Gaddafi needs to step down.
The man, dressed in an Afghan border police uniform, opened fire on Isaf troops during the training mission, killing the soldiers in Taliban-infested eastern Afghanistan, Nato announced. The gunman was identified as Azat Gul.
'Anyone familiar with Modi's track record will know he never forgets a slight, a betrayal,' notes Virendra Kapoor.
The deadly American air strike on a hospital in northern Afghan city of Kunduz that killed 22 people, including women and children, was a mistake, a top US commander in Afghanistan on Tuesday said as he conceded that they were taken by surprise by the recent Taliban upsurge.
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