Kabul, Oct.31 (ANI): Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s political opponent and former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah is expected to decide whether to withdraw from, or boycott, a presidential election run-off next Saturday.
According to The Times, Abdullah is meeting his main allies in Kabul today and tomorrow to discuss his options after failing to strike a power-sharing deal with Karzai in talks this week.
Sources were quoted as saying that it seemed increasingly unlikely that Dr Abdullah would stand in the run-off, because his staff were not even campaigning, and that without a power-sharing deal he was more likely to boycott in anger than withdraw gracefully.
“He wants to make a deal as he doesn’t think the second round will be any cleaner than the first,” one source close to Dr Abdullah told The Times.
Dr Abdullah’s decision will govern whether Afghanistan’s presidential election can finally produce some sort of legitimate result after the debacle of the first round, in which a quarter of all votes were found to be fraudulent.
It will also dictate to a large extent whether President Obama decides in the next few days that he has a credible enough partner to send more troops to Afghanistan as part of a new counter-insurgency strategy. (ANI)
Islamabad, Oct.31 (ANI): Visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continued to reprimand Pakistan on its laid back attitude towards tackling the terror menace, and has said that the country can not come of the crisis until it works sincerely to dispose-off Al-Qaeda and other outlawed organisations.
“I think it is absolutely clear and I am convinced that you will never rid Pakistan of the threat of terrorism unless you rid it of Al Qaeda,” Clinton told media person here.
Clinton said Pakistan should take the threat posed by Al-Qaeda seriously as it not only threatens its own people, but is a serious risk for the whole world including the US.
“We don’t know where, and I have no information that they know where, but this is a big government… Somebody, somewhere in Pakistan must know where these people (Al Qaeda operatives) are… and we’d like to know because we view them as really at the core of the terrorist threat that threatens Pakistan, threatens Afghanistan, threatens us,” The Daily Times quoted Clinton, as saying.
Acknowledging the fact there was trust deficit between both the countries, she said the Obama Administration is committed to having a long-term partnership with Islamabad.
Clinton said Washington would not only continue to provide military assistance for the success of the South Waziristan offensive against the Taliban, but would also help the troubled nation in the reconstruction work after the operation is called-off.
She said that it was important that the extremists are rooted out from the region, and cautioned that the remnants of the terrorist networks may strike once again.
“We will have to remain vigilant,” Clinton added. (ANI)
New Delhi, Oct 31 (IANS) Barack Obama’s election as president of the US was an “uplifting moment”, his predecessor and Republican rival George W. Bush said here Saturday.
The election of Obama, a Democrat and the US’ first African American president, “was an uplifting moment for our democracy… not my first choice, but I wish him every success”, Bush said amid laughter at the HT Leadership Summit here.
New York, Oct 31 (DPA) Major US stock indices sank nearly three percent Friday as investors exhibited uncertainty about the economy, despite figures that showed a return to growth in the third quarter.
Weak consumer spending, which fell 0.5 percent in September, contributed to the sell off, even as the White House said President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package has created or saved more than 640,000 jobs since it was enacted earlier this year.
The numbers indicated the US was on track to create 3.5 million new jobs by next year through government spending on infrastucture projects, education, health care and green technology, spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
But the new jobs have yet to dampen the high unemployment rate, which still stands at 9.8 percent – the highest in more than 25 years. The White House numbers were based on stimulus spending through September.
The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 249.85 points, or 2.51 percent, to 9,712.73. The broader Standard and Poor’s 500 Index slid 29.92 points, or 2.81 percent, to 1,036.19. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index lost 52.44 points, or 2.50 percent, to 2,045.11.
The slide erased large gains from Thursday after the Commerce Department said US economic output grew at an annualised 3.5 percent in the third quarter of 2009. Stocks ended down for the week, with the Dow shedding 2.60 percent, the S&P 500 plunging 4.02 percent and the Nasdaq dropping 5.08 percent.
The US currency gained against the euro to 67.94 euro cents from 67.41 euro cents Thursday. The dollar fell against the Japanese currency to 90.09 yen from 91.47 yen.
Washington, Oct 31 (DPA) US President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package has created or saved more than 640,000 jobs since it was enacted earlier this year, the White House said Friday.
The numbers indicated the US was on track to create 3.5 million new jobs by next year through government spending on infrastucture projects, education, health care and green technology, spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
But the new jobs have yet to dampen the high unemployment rate, which still stands at 9.8 percent – the highest in more than 25 years. The White House numbers were based on stimulus spending through September.
That has left the White House having to defend the massive stimulus measure. The package was passed in February and cost taxpayers $787 billion.
The job figures followed an announcement by the commerce department Thursday that the economy grew a surprising 3.5 percent in the third quarter of 2009, likely showing an end to the worst recession in the US in decades. The third quarter ended Sep 30.
The annualised gross domestic product (GDP) rate was higher than the 3.2 percent that economists predicted for the summer months.
Washington, Oct 30 (DPA) A US rule banning foreigners with HIV or AIDS from entering the US will be lifted by early January, President Barack Obama announced Friday.
The elimination of the 22-year-old rule is meant to put an end to the stigma of being infected with the disease, Obama said.
“We lead the world when it comes to helping stem the AIDS pandemic, yet we are one of only a dozen countries that still bar people with HIV from entering our own country,” Obama said.
The effort to lift the ban began under Obama’s predecessor, George W Bush, who enacted an unprecedented programme that spent billions of dollars to fight AIDS in Africa.
Obama said the ban was “fear rather than fact.”
New Delhi, Oct 30 (IANS) It was nostalgia time Friday when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Friday hosted a lunch for former US president George W. Bush and lauded him for bringing the landmark India-US nuclear deal to fruition.
Manmohan Singh held wide-ranging talks with Bush on an entire spectrum of India-US relations at the prime minister’s 7 Race Course residence. He thanked Bush for his crucial role in ending India’s decades-long nuclear isolation through a landmark nuclear deal last year, sources said.
The two leaders recalled their last meeting fondly at the White House in September last year when the fate of the nuclear deal was still uncertain.
The prime minister told Bush he was looking forward to his meeting with US President Barack Obama in Washington Nov 24, the first bilateral summit since the change of guard at White House, sources said.
During his first visit to India after leaving office last year, Bush will be speaking on India-US relations at the annual leadership conclave Saturday. He has been invited by Hindustan Times, a privately-owned Indian media house.
Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party leader L.K. Advani, ruling Congress president Sonia Gandhi, her son Rahul Gandhi and Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna were among those invited for the exclusive lunch in honour of Bush. Shyam Saran, the prime minister’s special envoy on climate change who played a key role in the progress of the deal, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and her predecessor Shivshankar Menon were also present.
Bush underlined his optimism about the course of India-US relations in the days to come amid anxiety in some quarters here about an apparent cooling off of ties under the Obama dispensation.
“Absolutely, President (Barack) Obama will continue working with Indian governments. He’s made that clear in his statements. I believe future presidents will recognise the importance of India as a global partner and India’s influence on the global scene,” Bush said in an interview to the Hindustan Times.
Earlier in the day, Manmohan Singh described Bush as “a great friend of India” and lauded him for his “important role” in bringing the civil nuclear deal to fruition and underlined that India was working with other countries to promote civil nuclear cooperation.
“We in India recognise the important role he played in the fruition of the civil nuclear cooperation initiative,” said Manmohan Singh, who has enjoyed warm relations with the two-time US president.
“We are working with our international partners to give a boost to our nuclear programme,” he said.
Civil nuclear energy, the prime minister said, will contribute to India’s efforts to use cleaner energy and to combat climate change.
London, Oct. 30 (ANI): Only one in three Brits want former Prime Minister Tony Blair to be appointed as the president of the European Union, a new poll has found.
According to a Daily Telegraph/YouGov poll, just 31 per cent of voters want to see him become president of the European Council, while another 31 per cent are opposed.
Thirty-eight per cent remained undecided.
The lack of overwhelming domestic support for Blair is set to fuel European doubts about him.
At a EU summit in Brussels, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is now publicly campaigning for his predecessor, accepted that Blair may lose out.
“It may not happen,” Brown was quoted, as saying.
Brown’s remark came in the wake of more countries openly opposing Blair’s candidacy.
The group of countries, which includes Ireland, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Sweden, used a dinner discussion over “rules of procedure”.
Ireland abandoned its previous support for Blair after John Bruton, a former Irish prime minister, put himself forward for the job.
The socialists, who include Prime Minister Jose Zapatero of Spain, put Miliband’s name on a list of names for that post, although he insisted he is not interested.
Blair was first backed for the presidency by Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s right-wing president.
However, senior EU sources said that both Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, have now cooled on Blair’s candidacy. (ANI)
Washington, Oct 30 (IANS) US President Barack Obama has appointed Suresh Kumar, an Indian-American with expertise in public-private partnership who worked as a news anchor in India for 15 years, to a key administration post in the commerce department.
Kumar, currently president and managing partner of KaiZen Innovation, was nominated assistant secretary of commerce and director general of the United States and Foreign Commercial Service in the US Department of Commerce, the White House announced Thursday.
“I am grateful that these individuals will bring their energy and expertise to my administration and look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead,” Obama said about Kumar and another new appointee.
According to the White House, Kumar served as special advisor to the Clinton Foundation where he worked with governments in Sub-Saharan Africa and corporate CEOs to establish private-public partnerships to stimulate economic development in the region.
Kumar previously served on the Group Operating Committee at Johnson & Johnson and as vice president of Consumer Products for Latin America at Warner Lambert/Pfizer.
He has published on global management and served as adjunct faculty member at the Schulich School of Business at Toronto’s York University, Bombay University and has been appointed Professor of International Business at Rutgers University EMBA program.
Between 1970 and 1985, Kumar was a news anchor on national television in India. He has an economics degree from Delhi University, an MBA from Bombay University, and is alumni of the Thunderbird International Consortium Program.
In 2004, Kumar was named Distinguished Executive-in-Residence by Thunderbird School of Global Management for his contributions to global trade.
Washington, Oct. 30 (ANI): Just hours after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted that “we are ready to cooperate” with the West, Tehran has backtracked from the deal agreed in Vienna last week to send its stockpile of uranium out of the country.
The Islamic country has reportedly told IAEA, UN’s nuclear watchdog that it won’t go along with the central feature of the draft agreement reached this weekend in Vienna.
The deal would have required the country to send about three-quarters of its current known stockpile of low-enriched uranium to Russia to be processed and returned for use in a reactor in Tehran used to make medical isotopes, The New York Times reports.
The details of Iran’s objections have neither made public by the Iranians nor the International Atomic Energy Agency.
But a senior European official termed the Iranian response to IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei as “basically a refusal.
”The Iranians want to keep all of their lightly enriched uranium in the country until receiving fuel bought from the West for the reactor in Tehran. The key issue is that Iran does not agree to export its lightly enriched uranium. That’s not a minor detail. That’s the whole point of the deal,” the official was quote, as saying.
American officials, however, were not clear about whether Iran’s declaration to Dr. ElBaradei was its final position, or it was seeking to renegotiate the deal.
According to the report, Iran’s rejection of the deal could unwind President Barack Obama’s effort to buy time to resolve the nuclear standoff.
American officials said they thought that the accord would give them a year or so to seek a broader nuclear agreement with Iran while defusing the possibility that Israel might try to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. (ANI)
