World Information Thursday

Marines say killed 400 militants
in Afghan operation
Agence France-Presse . Kabul
More than 400 militants have been killed in a 10-week-old operation led by US Marines in a remote district of southern Afghanistan but fighters remain in the area, a commander said Wednesday.
Marines and British troops under NATO command in late April launched the operation in Garmser district, a desert area on the border with Pakistan described as an insurgent ‘logistics hub’ and key opium-producing centre.
Citing figures from Helmand province governor Gulab Mangal, the Marine commanding officer in Afghanistan told reporters in Kabul that more than 400 Taliban-linked rebels had been killed.
‘We were a little busy to count but having spoken with governor Mangal sometime afterwards, we believe the number is somewhere beyond 400 and I’m confident that his number is very correct,’ Colonel Peter Petronzio said.
The colonel said despite some major battles around May, insurgents were still in the area sometimes hiding among ordinary people. Troops had however not had any recent clashes with Taliban, coming into contact with them largely through rebel bomb attacks and when soldiers found weapons arsenals.
Garmser had been a ‘stopping point’ for militants – Afghan and non-Afghan – as they moved from the border into the insurgency in the rest of the country, Petronzio said.


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Anwar Ibrahim challenges sex
accuser in Islamic court
Agence France-Presse . Kuala Lumpur
Malaysian opposition figurehead Anwar Ibrahim Wednesday filed a complaint in the Islamic court that challenges a young male aide who accuses him of sodomy to prove his allegations.
Mohamad Saiful Bukhari Azlan, 23, has been under police protection since accusing Anwar of sodomising him – the same charge that saw the opposition leader jailed a decade ago.
‘On the advice of Muslim scholars... I have decided to make this report to Islamic courts in Malaysia, under the provision of malicious attack on my character... and as demeaning to me and my family,’ Anwar said.
‘This slander is a major issue because it involves a sexual crime and the attempt is of course to mislead the Muslim population, to attack me and my character.
’Under sharia laws, which run in parallel to the secular courts in predominantly Muslim Malaysia, Saiful will be required to produce four credible witnesses to back up his claims, lawyers said.
If he fails to do so, he can be declared a ‘fasid’ or unreliable person, and faces three years imprisonment for bearing false witness.


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Cautious optimism ahead of North
Korea nuclear talks
Agence France-Presse . Beijing
Six-nation talks aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear activities were to resume in Beijing on Thursday amid cautious optimism they would move a step closer to securing complete disarmament.
The talks have not been held for nine months amid delays in securing from the reclusive North Korean regime a declaration of its nuclear activities, as agreed in a landmark six-nation accord reached last year.
But the North, which conducted an atomic test in 2006, last month finally delivered the declaration, clearing the way for progress in the negotiations between China, the United States, Russia, the two Koreas and Japan.
The US nuclear envoy, Christopher Hill, said after arriving in Beijing for the talks they would focus on how to verify the communist state’s declaration, including working out site visits and interviews.
‘I don’t think there will be any surprises, but it’s never over until it’s over (in) the six-party process, so let’s see how we do,’ Hill told reporters on Tuesday night after meeting his North Korean counterpart ahead of the talks.


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McCain, Obama at odds over Iraqi
withdrawal demand
Agence France-Presse . Washington
Iraq’s hardening demand for a pullout deadline for US troops on Tuesday sent shockwaves through the White House campaign, putting Republican hopeful John McCain on the defensive.
McCain, who says it is too early to leave Iraq, said US pull-backs must be dictated by security conditions, after Democrat Barack Obama said the Iraqi government now shared his desire for a timetable for withdrawals.
The Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, said on Monday that Iraq was seeking such an arrangement in talks with Washington on the future US force structure in the country.
Iraq hardened its position on Tuesday, saying it would reject any security pact with Washington unless it set a date for the pullout of US-led foreign soldiers – a condition turned down by the president, George W Bush.
But McCain, who has made staunch support for the US troop ‘surge’ escalation strategy a centrepiece of his campaign, said that recent security gains should not be put at risk by an artificial timetable.
‘The Iraqis have made it very clear, including the meetings I had with the president and foreign minister of Iraq, that it is based on conditions on the ground,’ McCain said in an interview with MSNBC.
‘I have always said we will come home with honour and with victory and not through a set timetable,’ he said, adding that Iraqis would act in their national interest and the United States would act in its own interests.
‘We will withdraw, but ... the victory we have achieved so far is fragile and the redeployment has to be dictated by events and on the ground,’ McCain said, mirroring the Pentagon’s line on the issue.
The Obama campaign responded by bringing up a comment by McCain from 2004, when he said that if a sovereign Iraqi government asked American forces to quit Iraq, ‘it’s obvious we would have to leave.’
‘The American people need a strategy for succeeding in Iraq, not just a strategy for staying,’ said Obama foreign policy advisor Susan Rice.
‘John McCain’s stubborn refusal to adjust to events on the ground just shows that he has no plan to end this war,’ she said.
Obama and McCain have been waging a fierce political battle over their plans for US policy in Iraq, an issue that looks set to dominate the presidency of whichever of them emerges triumphant from November’s general election.


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US confident on passage of UN
sanctions against Zimbabwe
Agence France-Presse . United Nations
The United States said Tuesday it was confident proposed sanctions against Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe’s regime would be adopted by the UN Security Council this week despite strong objections from South Africa and Russia.
‘Absent a veto from Russia which we do not anticipate, the votes are there’ for passage, the US ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, told reporters after closed-door council consultations on his sanctions draft resolution.
The draft would slap a travel ban and an assets freeze on Mugabe and 13 of his cronies as well as an arms embargo on the Harare regime.
‘We want to go to a vote on the resolution as soon as possible ... this week,’ Khalilzad said.
A resolution requires nine votes out of 15 and no veto from any of the five permanent members – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
The Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said elements of the US draft were ‘quite excessive’ and clearly ‘in conflict with the notion of sovereignty’ of a UN member state.
He also questioned whether the crisis spawned by Zimbabwe’s flawed, one-man presidential runoff vote on June 27 amounted to a threat to international peace and security.
And he noted that G8 leaders meeting in Japan made no reference to sanctions against the Mugabe regime.
‘We do not accept the legitimacy of any government that does not reflect the will of the Zimbabwean people,’ the G8 leaders said in a joint statement issued at their summit on Japan’s northern Hokkaido island Tuesday.
‘We will take further steps, inter alia introducing financial and other measures against those individuals responsible for the violence,’ they added.
A senior Russian official however said earlier Tuesday that Moscow was opposed to new sanctions on Zimbabwe.
Khalilzad told reporters that council experts were to meet behind closed doors later Tuesday to try to fine-tune the draft to make it more acceptable to some members but made clear that no substantive changes were contemplated.
He stressed that sanctions were needed to push the Mugabe regime to stop the violence and start substantive negotiations with the opposition led by Morgan Tsvangirai.
But the South African ambassador, Dumisani Kumalo, whose country is mediating the Zimbabwe crisis on behalf of the Southern African Development Community, insisted that UN sanctions were not needed and ‘would create more complications.’