Washington—Sending a tough message to Hamid
Karzai as he readies for the second phase of his
presidency, the Obama Administration has said it
would now hold the Afghan government accountable
for the assistance by the US and others in
provid-ing security to the people of the
war-torn country. “We are laying out very clear
expectations. We are willing to offer our
assis-tance, but we are going to hold the
Government of Afghanistan accountable for what
they claim they want, which is the United States
and the international com-munity’s assistance in
providing security for their people and in
producing re-sults for them as well,” Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton said.
Tokyo—Japan will speed up its review of a deal
to move a major U.S. military base on the
southern island of Okinawa, officials said
Thursday, but no final decision was expected in
time for President Barack Obama’s visit to Tokyo
next week. To smooth the way for the visit,
Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell,
Washington’s top envoy in Asia, was in Tokyo on
Thursday to meet with Japanese Foreign Minister
Katsuya Okada to discuss the leaders’ agenda.
“We are making our best efforts to find the most
appropriate solutions to the base allocation
issue,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Yasuhisa
Kawamura said. “We are accelerating the review
process.”
Gaza—Islamic Hamas movement on
Thursday slammed the Pal-estinian UN observer,
citing that he did not deny accusations of war
crimes against Palestinians in an international
report. The Gaza war report, submitted by a UN
fact-finding mission headed by South African
judge Richard Goldstone, accused Israel of
committing war crimes during a 22-day military
offensive that ended on Jan. 18. The UN report,
which was debated Wednesday by the UN General
Assembly, also criticized Hamas for committed
war crimes by firing rockets at Israeli civil-ians.
Bangkok—Washington is
ready to boost ties with Myanmar but will not
lift sanc-tions until there is progress on
democracy, a US diplomat said Thursday after the
highest-level talks with the ruling junta in
years. US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt
Campbell and his deputy Scot Marciel held a rare
meeting with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi
and Prime Minister Thein Sein during their
two-day visit which ended Wednesday. “This is
early days, the first time we met most of these
people. It’s going to take some time to see how
they respond,” Marciel told a public forum on
Thursday in Bangkok, capital of neighbouring
Thailand. “We are willing to move ahead in terms
of bilateral relations but we are only going to
do that if there is real progress.”
IT is little comfort to the families of those
murdered but the evidence is that the life cycle
of a terrorist group is 40 years and of many
much less, and very rarely goes into a second
generation. Policymakers and the media skim over
the built-in weaknesses of terrorist groups. The
highlighting of their dastardly deeds gets full
play, but the potent evi-dence that points to
infighting and fractionalising is downplayed.
The opening of recent archives shows that even
heads of government including the president of
the US have not been given the raw material on
this by their intelligence services to make up
their own mind.
