By Arun Kumar
Washington, June 30 (IANS) Gen. David Petraeus, set to be the top commander in Afghanistan, has said that the US would work with both Pakistan and India, as New Delhi without question has a legitimate interest in the region.
In efforts to bring about reconciliation in Afghanistan, the US was with both Afghanistan and Pakistan “and by the way with India as well”, he said at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday.
“I think it’s very important that they realise that we are in this with them, with both of them,” Petraeus said when asked how he would work with Afghanistan as Islamabad wants to utilise reconciliation as the “mechanism to influence Afghanistan and avert Indian regional encirclement”.
“India has a legitimate interest in this region without question as do others if you want to extend it further,” he told Democratic Senator Kay Hagan.
After the approval of his nomination by the senate panel Tuesday, the full Senate is expected to vote Wednesday on his confirmation to succeed Gen. Stanley McChrystal sacked over a Rolling Stone magazine article disparaging the Obama administration officials.
Asked by 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain if the US was concerned about Pakistan and its spy agency ISI continuing to work with the Taliban, Petraeus said any residual links between ISI and Taliban would not be a surprise.
“The question is what the character of those links is and what the activities are behind them,” the key architect of the successful surge strategy in Iraq said.
“What we have to always figure out with Pakistan is, are they working with the Taliban to support the Taliban or to recruit sources in the Taliban.
“And that’s the difficulty, frankly, in trying to assess what the ISI is doing in some of their activities in the federally ministered tribal areas in contacts with the Haqqani network or the Afghan Taliban,” he said.
“There are no questions about the longstanding links. Let’s remember that we funded the ISI to build these organizations when they were the mujahadeen and helping to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan,” the officer said.
“And so certainly, residual links would not be a surprise. The question is what the character of those links is and what the activities are behind them,” he added.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
Bhopal, June 30 (ANI): Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Wednesday said he was disappointed with Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh for not discussing the extradition of former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson with US President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the Toronto G-20 Summit.
‘It was expected that the Prime Minister would discuss the Bhopal Gas Tragedy with Obama but he did not do so,’ Chouhan told reporters here.
Chouhan claimed that the Indian Government is not serious about the plight of the Bhopal gas victims, and questioned the central government, demanding to know who would try to extradite Anderson and when?
He also said that the government of Madhya Pradesh has formed a one-member high power committee of retired High Court judge to look into all issues around the Bhopal gas incident.
‘The government of Madhya Pradesh has decided to set up an inquiry commission. And this commission will look into the circumstances in which this incident took place and also the reasons behind the release of Anderson, on whose instructions was he let off, and who all are responsible for this. All the evidences will be probed by this commission,’ said Chouhan.
Earlier, the Group of Ministers (GoM) headed by Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram held four sessions to deliberate on areas that require attention for providing relief to people affected by the disaster.
It recommended a payment of Rs 10 lakh to the next of kin of the dead.
Those permanently disabled or suffering from critical ailments arising out of the deadly methyl isocyanate gas leak are likely to get Rs five lakh, while those partially debilitated will get Rs three lakh. (ANI)
Washington, June 29 (DPA) General David Petraeus, slated to head US and international forces in Afghanistan, said Tuesday the military and diplomatic effort in the country are united behind President Barack Obama’s strategy for defeating the Taliban.
Petraeus appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is considering his nomination to replace General Stanley McChrystal, who left his position after he and his staff made comments in a magazine critical of the White House.
“We are all firmly united in seeking to forge unity of effort,” Petraeus said.
Petraeus, currently head of US Central Command, which oversees military operation in the region, said he backs Obama’s July 2011 timeframe for transitioning security to Afghan security forces.
“We must also help our Afghan partners develop their security forces and governance capacity so that they can, over time, take on the tasks of securing their country and seeing to the needs of their people,” Petraeus said.
The Senate is expected to confirm Petraeus to the new post. He is widely credited for reining in the violence in Iraq while heading US forces there before moving to chief of Central Command.
McChrystal was hastily recalled to Washington last week after a story appeared in Rolling Stone magazine containing remarks from his staff critical of the White House and the diplomatic effort. Some of that criticism was directed at Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
New Delhi, June 29 (IANS) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh returned here Tuesday from Toronto after making an overnight halt in Frankfurt on his way back from the G-20 summit.
In Toronto, Manmohan Singh attended the G-20 summit and held bilateral meeting with US President Barack Obama, French President Nicholas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
New Delhi, June 29 (IANS) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh returned here late Tuesday after attending the G-20 summit in Toronto and signing a civil nuclear pact with Canada.
In Toronto, Manmohan Singh attended the G-20 summit and held bilateral meetings with US President Barack Obama, French President Nicholas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
The prime minister had made an overnight halt at Frankfurt on his way back.
–Indo-Asian News Serivce
ap/vd/vm
Washington, June 29(ANI): Russia has dismissed allegations that it ordered 11 secret agents to run a “deep cover” spying operation in the US as “baseless”.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said the arrests by the FBI were “deplorable” at a time when the two countries’ leaders were trying to improve relations.
“Such actions are baseless and improper. It is highly deplorable that all of this is happening against the background of the reset in Russia-US ties announced by the US administration itself,” The Telegraph quoted a Russian Foreign Ministry statement, as saying.
The defendants are accused of being so-called “illegals”, working for the Russian foreign secret service under false identities to penetrate US government policy-making circles.
It is alleged that they were tasked with gleaning intelligence on nuclear weapons, foreign policy and Congressional politics.
The scandal comes just days after a bilateral summit between President Dmitry Medvedev and US President Barack Obama that was designed to underscore warming ties between the two Cold War adversaries. (ANI)
By Arvind Padmanabhan
On Board Air India One, June 29 (IANS) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday said time alone will tell what would be the outcome of the revived dialogue with Pakistan though the recent talks between the home ministers held out “some hope”. But he said there has to be greater trust in the relationship.
“The home minister has been in Pakistan earlier last week,” the prime minister said, referring to P. Chidambaram’s meeting with his counterpart in Islamabad Rehman Malik last Saturday.
“I think there is some hope,” he told the accompanying Indian media on his way back from the G20 Summit in Toronto, only to add an immediate caveat.
“As I have said, in dealing with Pakistan our attitude has to be trust: Trust but verify. So only time will tell which way the animal will turn.”
The prime minister also said that US National Security Advisor James L. Jones would be visiting India next month to begin the preparatory work for President Barack Obama’s maiden visit to India in November.
“We have a really ambitious agenda,” Manmohan Singh said.
“He will be sending his national security adviser in the second week of July. He will meet our National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon,” he said. “They will chalk out the agenda for President Obama’s visit.”
At Toronto, the US president had praised the statesmanship of Manmohan Singh and the rise of India and said he was looking forward and “excited” about visiting India with First Lady Michelle later this year.
“It is a trip that I’m very much looking forward to,” said Obama, before holding talks with Manmohan Singh after the end of the G20 Summit where there was convergence of views expressed by India and the US.
“We are also just excited because of the tremendous cultural, as well as political and social and economic examples, that India is providing the world and has in the past.”
On his part, Manmohan Singh had said it was his privilege to enjoy Obama’s friendship and that he was waiting to welcome the US president and his family to India so that they could see for themselves the transformations the country was undergoing.
(Arvind Padmanabhan can be contacted at arvind.p@ians.in)
Islamabad, June 29 (ANI): At least eight people were reportedly killed in a US drone strike in the restive tribal region of South Waziristan on Tuesday.
According to reports, unmanned US Predator aircraft fired two missiles at a house, supposedly a militants hideout, in Karikot village, situated seven kilometres from Wana, the main town in South Waziristan.
The house and a vehicle parked nearby was destroyed in the attack on the region which is said to be controlled by Taliban leader Mullah Nazir.
Local residents said that the Taliban surrounded the rubble soon after the attack and took the bodies in their possession, Xinhua reported.
Over 900 people have been killed in nearly 200 missile attacks in the troubled northwest tribal areas of Pakistan since 2008.
Earlier this month a report by a top UN official had criticised the Obama administration for continuing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operated drone attacks in the semi-autonomous tribal areas of Pakistan, as it has resulted in countless civilian deaths.
UN’s special rapporteur on extra judicial, summary or arbitrary executions Phillip Alston, in his report, argued that drone strikes amount to a “license to kill” without being held accountable, a license the U.S. would not want any other country to have.
While the Obama administration is yet to publicly accept responsibility for the drone hits, the CIA maintains that the attacks carried out by the unmanned aircraft are in fact overseen by the White House and Congress, and refuted reports that the agency lacked accountability. (ANI)
By Arun Kumar
Washington, June 29 (IANS) Less than a week after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and President Barack Obama signalled the end of the Cold War with a burger lunch in Washington, the United States picked up ten people on charges of working as Russian spies. The arrests Sunday capped an almost surreal investigation that extended to the Clinton administration and involved video surveillance, hidden microphones and surreptitious FBI searches of homes along the East Coast.
In what looked like a plot straight out of a John le Carré novel in the Cold War days, the Justice Department Monday accused the ten of taking on fake identities and trying to ferret out intelligence about US policy and secrets by making connections to think tanks and government officials.
Five of the arrested suspects appeared in a New York courtroom Monday. Four of the five, including a longtime US-based columnist for the Spanish-language “El Diario” newspaper, were advised of their rights and ordered held due to flight risk, with their next hearing scheduled for July 1.
It climaxed Saturday with a fake “drop” in a park in Arlington County, when one of the suspects left $5,000 in an envelope inside a folded newspaper, which was recovered by the FBI.
Court documents depict a trail of covert meetings between the suspects and undercover agents just blocks from the White House and in midtown Manhattan. At one point, agents videotaped an alleged conspirator brushing past his Russian handler and surreptitiously exchanging bags to be paid.
The operation, referred to by US investigators as “the Illegals programme,” was aimed at placing spies in nongovernmental jobs, such as at think tanks, where they could glean information from policymakers and Washington-connected insiders without attracting attention.
According to the court documents, some of the suspects adopted phony identities, including those of dead Americans, and posed as married couples.
The suspects engaged in secret communications including exchanges of bags, money drops and use of invisible ink, as well as more modern touches such as private wireless computer networks between specific laptops, the documents said.
A decrypted message from Moscow to two of the suspects said they were sent to the United States for “long-term service,” one of the documents said.
“Your education, bank accounts, car, house, etc.-all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e., to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in US and send intels (intelligence reports),” it said.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
By Ashok Dixit
Onboard Air India One, June 29 (ANI): Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on Monday said that he was looking forward to the visit of US President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and their children in November this year, while adding that he was quite satisfied with the way Indo-US relations were progressing.
“Our relations with the United States are very good. We have a really ambitious agenda (for his visit). He will be sending his National Security Adviser (Lt. Gen (retired) James Jones) in the second week of July. He (Jones) will meet with our National Security Adviser Shiv Shanker Menon, and they will chalk out the agenda for President Obama’s visit,” said Dr. Singh.
“We look forward to a very successful visit of President Obama, and so does the President (Pratibha Devisingh Patil),” he added. (ANI)
