US Deligation Meets Prime Minister Gilani
ISLAMABAD: United States Ambassador in Pakistan Ann W. Patterson called on Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani at Prime Minister House here on Friday. The US envoy discussed bilateral relations and cooperation in various fields.
Prime Minister Gilani expressed gratitude for United States joint hosting of the Friends of Pakistan moot and hoped the aid pledges made in Tokyo will be fulflilled.
Gilani urged United States and other countries to extend help to Pakistan to meet the energy crisis in the country. He said the armed forces need modern arms and military equipment to win the war against terrorism.
The US envoy told the prime minister that a team of American experts will visit Pakistan next month to review the energy projects. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will announce the projects during her upcoming visit of Pakistan.
Patterson also informed the prime minister that the Congress will approve the Kerry-Lugar bill in coming weeks.
US Deligation Meets Prime Minister Gilani was first posted on September 18, 2009 at 6:13 pm.
©2009 “News Trends“.
Shutting Guantanamo On Time, US Deligation Confident
LONDON: The US official in charge of closing Guantanamo Bay voiced confidence on Thursday of meeting a deadline set by US President Barack Obama for shuttering the controversial detention centre.
Daniel Fried said resettling the detainees to countries worldwide was “a huge problem and a complicated one,” but he was confident of meeting the January 2010 deadline announced by Obama when he took office.
“I’m confident that we’re going to make the right decisions and we’re going to close the place,” said Fried, the special envoy to Guantanamo, in an interview with the BBC.
Fried also said some of the detainees, captured during the “war on terror”, should never have been held at the US camp in Cuba in the first place, describing them as “relatively benign.”
Fried said he was asking European countries to look at accepting detainees who were not hardened terrorists nor organised fighters.
“Some (detainees) really are awful. Some qualify as the worst of the worst as we’re going to put those on trial,” he said.
“Some frankly should not have been in Guantanamo for the past seven years.”
Asked if they were innocent, he said: “I look at their files and some of them seem relatively benign and I have in mind the Uighurs, in particular, but others.” “There is such a thing as the average Guantanamo detainee, it’s someone who was a volunteer, a low level trainee, or very low level fighter in a very bad cause, but not a hardened terrorist, not an organised fighter.”
“And it is those people who we are asking Europeans to take a look at, and each government has to evaluate the background of each individual and make a decision.” Britain was angered in June when Bermuda agreed to take four Uighur, or ethnic Chinese Muslim, detainees onto the British overseas territory without consulting London first.
The envoy said he had since been “admonished” by Britain over the move, but defended the resettlement as successful.
“I will say that I have been admonished by the British government in very clear terms,” he said. “I have been told, to use my words not theirs, that it was a process foul. But it has been a successful resettlement.”
Fried said more detainees could be settled worldwide if the United States had been willing take some, a move blocked by the US Congress.
“The United States could resettle more detainees had we been willing to take in some. That I think is a fair analytic statement.”
The US administration has made closing Guantanamo a key priority, but has faced difficulty deciding how to deal with about 226 detainees still held at the base. Since Obama took office, 14 detainees have been repatriated or given asylum by third countries.
But the administration has yet to announce how many of those left over will be prosecuted before military courts, how many will be tried in civilian courts, and how many will be held indefinitely without a trial.
Fried acknowledged the difficulty of his job. “It’s miserable because you are cleaning up a problem and the most we can do is close Guantanamo, that is solve a problem and do so in a way that is the best possible.”
“It’s not like we’re advancing liberty or making peace. But cleaning up a problem is important too.”
Shutting Guantanamo On Time, US Deligation Confident was first posted on September 17, 2009 at 12:38 pm.
©2009 “News Trends“.
NKorea’s Deligation Talks With SKorea’s Minister
August 22, 2009 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
SEOUL: Senior North Korean officials visiting the South for the funeral of a former president met Seoul’s unification minister on Saturday, in the highest-level meeting between the rival states in nearly two years.
South Korean minister Hyun In-taek, who has been lambasted in the North’s media for the South’s hardline policy toward Pyongyang, met a high-level delegation sent by North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, the ministry said.
“There is a message just in holding the meeting,” Hyun told reporters ahead of the talks.
But in an indication of the North’s anger at the South Korean President Lee Myung-bak’s government, the group will leave on Saturday before the state funeral for former President Kim Dae-jung, who was awarded the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize for brokering the first summit between the leaders of the two Koreas.
Relations chilled after Lee took office last year and effectively end Kim’s “Sunshine Policy” of engagement by cutting off a steady flow of unconditional aid to the North, calling on it to reduce security threats to the region if it wanted help.
Impoverished North Korea has all but severed ties with Lee’s government, which has cut off aid that was once equal to about 5 percent of the North’s estimated $17 billion yearly GDP.
The first dispatch of envoys to the South in nearly two years follows moves by the communist North this month to reduce tension after conducting a nuclear test in May, firing missiles and threatening to attack its capitalist southern neighbour.
The North’s rare conciliatory move could mean it wants greater contact with the outside world after being hit with U.N. sanctions for its nuclear test.
The North Korean delegation is scheduled to leave later on Saturday.
NKorea’s Deligation Talks With SKorea’s Minister was first posted on August 22, 2009 at 1:11 pm.
