As Nato leaders assemble in Chicago to discuss Afghanistan, the Taliban have issued a 14-point agenda to its leaders, with a succinct message: Get out now, reports Tahir Ali
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari played a key behind-the-scenes role in negotiations that helped end a stalemate in Pakistan-US ties over a deadly cross-border North Atlantic Treaty Organisation attack and paved the way for Islamabad's participation in a crucial summit on Afghanistan, official sources said.
Pakistan may earn $365 million annually under an agreement with the United States, following the reopening of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's supply routes for American troops in Afghanistan.
Terrorists torched 10 tankers carrying oil for North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces in Afghanistan in southern Pakistan, injuring five persons including the vehicles' drivers, police and witnesses said on Monday.
A high-level group of Afghan, Pakistani and American officials will meet on Thursday for the first time since September last year for talks on the peace and reconciliation process in Afghanistan, including efforts to involve the Taliban in negotiations.
The Taliban once again made their intentions clear on Sunday, with spectacular coordinated attacks which resulted in an 18-hour battle with North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and Afghan forces. With the looming political uncertainty, whispers of a civil war, the insurgents are well positioned to fill in the vacuum.
During their telephonic conversation, President Putin briefed Prime Minister Modi about the recent developments regarding Ukraine, the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement.
Afghan security forces have killed all the Taliban attackers who unleashed a wave of coordinated suicide attacks targetting diplomatic area, NATO bases and the Parliament in Kabul, a top official said on Monday.
Heavily-armed Taliban suicide attackers on Sunday struck Afghanistan capital Kabul, with several explosions and gunfire rocking the diplomatic enclave as the militants took over a hotel and tried to enter the parliament.
Outlawed Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and Ahl-e-Sunnat Wal Jamaat leader Ahmed Ludhianvi played a cat-and-mouse game for almost six hours with the police and paramilitary forces who were trying to prevent them from entering the Pakistani capital.
The United States may keep a combat force of around 10,000 in Afghanistan, including a small counter-terrorism force after 2014 as a contingency against re-emergence of the Al Qaeda.
Pakistan is inching towards a decision on reopening North Atlantic Treaty Organisation supply routes, which were closed following a cross-border air strike in November, though it is expected to impose "tough conditions" like a hefty transit fee for the movement of container trucks and oil tankers. The issue of allowing the United States and its allies to resume using Pakistani routes for transporting supplies to foreign troops in Afghanistan figured at a meeting of leaders.
America's top commander in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley A McChrystal, and his advisors have reportedly ridiculed United States Vice President Joe Biden, President Barack Obama's Special Envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard C Holbrooke and the US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry.
Pro-Gaddafi forces pounded the port and launched a new armoured incursion into the western besieged city of Misurata on Monday, as the United Nations pulled out its staff from the Libyan capital Tripoli following violence targetting its offices.
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.
General Stanley McChrystal, who was sacked last year as the United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation commander in Afghanistan after publication of an article that quoted him as criticising the Obama administration, has been cleared of wrongdoing by the Pentagon.
Forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi on Thursday pounded the besieged western town of Misurata amid growing differences among the international community over the military campaign in Libya. Ahead of a key North Atlantic Treaty Organisation meeting in Berlin, Britain and France mounted pressure on the alliance to help defeat the Libyan regime.
Afghanistan has accused Pakistan's Inter State Intelligence of plotting all explosions and terror attacks on its soil, including a recent suicide bombing that killed 18 people, six of them North Atlantic Treaty Organisation soldiers.
The 28-member North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has announced to take over all the international operations in Libya, including military operations to enforce no-fly-zone, enforcement of arms embargo and the civilian protections.
Pakistan on Thursday said that the United States probe report on the last month's North Atlantic Treaty Organisation air attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers is "not based on facts".
The Taliban is ready to completely disown the Al Qaeda, and is willing to work with the United States to improve security in Afghanistan, a major report has disclosed.
The United States is set to give control of a controversial prison having nearly 3,000 Taliban rebels and terror suspects to the Afghan authorities.
Making sure nothing sensitive is left behind, American forces set on fire all their redundant and useless equipment before abandoning the Shamsi airbase in Pakistan's southwest.
The Pakistani military will shoot down any United States drone that intrudes the country's airspace under a new defence policy in which troops have been given greater liberty to respond to incursions by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and allied forces in Afghanistan, according to a media report.
As United States finalises its plan to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, Indian authorities are getting ready to train nearly 30,000 Afghan troops in the next three years. The US has urged other countries to join hands with it to train Afghan troops, which will take over the duties of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's forces after they leave in 2014. Incidentally, the Pakistan government had expressed its interest in training Afghan troops.
Asserting that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers was a "military engagement", the United States has said it is carrying out a crucial investigation to determine the circumstances that led to the tragic incident but Islamabad has refused to participate in the probe.
With a deadly North Atlantic Treaty Organisation air raid sparking outrage in Pakistan, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar has said it was time for the country "to review its relations" while demanding "complete clarity" from the international community on Islamabad's sovereignty.
Islamabad's cooperation is crucial to ongoing American successes in the Pak-Afghan border region, but the fragile bilateral ties don't leave much room to be undermined by disruptive developments such as the latest NATO attack, says Amir Mir.
Pakistan has formally communicated to the United Nations its protest and condemnation of the air-strike by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation that killed 24 soldiers and has strained ties between Washington and Islamabad. Pakistan's Ambassador to the United Nations Abdullah Hussain Haroon has written a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, informing him of the NATO attack of November 26 "on Pakistan's border posts (that) resulted in the martyrdom of 24 officers".
Pakistan on Saturday claimed that North Atlantic Treaty Organisation helicopters from Afghanistan fired on a military check post in northwest tribal region, killing eight soldiers and wounding four others.
Slain Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam has offered to 'surrender' to the International Criminal Court in return for a guarantee of his safety.
According to English daily Dawn, goods manufactured in India are reaching Kabul through Pakistan under the tags of International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
The expression of remorse by United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was enough to break the deadlock that had led to the blocking of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's supply routes for the last seven months, following the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in a cross-border NATO strike at the Salala check-post in November last year.
United States' special forces carried on multiple secret raids into Pakistan's tribal areas as part of their secret wars against terror groups in the border regions with Afghanistan, a former North Atlantic Treaty Organisation officer revealed recently, a report in Guardian, UK stated.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is known for his mercurial nature, recently lost his temper and branded a group of journalists as 'paedophiles' for quizzing him over a corruption scandal. In a furious off-the-record exchange at the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's summit in Lisbon last week, the French president targeted a reporter who asked him a specific question about the 'Karachigate' scandal. "You are a paedophile, I'm deeply convinced," he said.
Pakistan's negative perception of India's role in Afghanistan is a matter of "continuing concern," a Pentagon official has said, while appreciating the development assistance being offered by New Delhi to the war-torn country.
In an exclusive interview with Business Standard, Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen insisted that the military alliance's relations with close ally Pakistan would not be developed at the expense of India.
In a fresh jolt to United States-Pakistan ties, the Pentagon on Monday said it is withdrawing its team of negotiators from Pakistan for a "short period of time", after talks failed to lift the six-month blockade of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's supply routes to war-torn Afghanistan.
A coordinated Taliban assault on the Afghan capital was quelled on Wednesday after raging for 19 hours in a hail of rockets, grenades and suicide blasts that left 14 dead and six foreign troops wounded.
The White House has ruled out an apology to Islamabad for November 26 incident in which 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed in cross-border fire by the North Atlantic Traty Organisation and said it is time that the two countries move ahead. "I wouldn't have anything new to offer on that beyond what we have said, that we deeply regret the incident. We have thoroughly investigated it. We shared the results of that investigation with the Pakistanis," said a US official.
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