Mauritanian army raids Al-Qaeda-linked group: sources

NOUAKCHOTT: Mauritanian troops attacked an Al-Qaeda-linked group in the border region of northern Mali and Mauritania to free an elderly French hostage facing execution but did not find him, officials said.

“The Mauritanian army attacked elements of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) on Thursday,” a Mauritanian military source, contacted by telephone from Mali, told media.

The raid was held “in coordination with friendly countries,” the source said, adding that the 78-year-old hostage, Michel Germaneau, an aid worker kidnapped on April 19, was not found.

“What I know is that the Mauritanians went to the Sahara where the French hostage was being held. It seems they went to find him but he could not be located.”

When asked if troops from former colonial power France were involved in the operation, the source said: “I have not heard of French soldiers. I know that the Mauritanians were there, that”s sure.”

Study challenges IPCC”s Bangladesh climate predictions

DHAKA: Scientists in Bangladesh posed a fresh challenge to the UN”s top climate change panel Thursday, saying its doomsday forecasts for the country in the body”s landmark 2007 report were overblown.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), already under fire for errors in the 2007 report, had said a one-metre (three-foot) rise in sea levels would flood 17 percent of Bangladesh and create 20 million refugees by 2050.

The claim helped create a widespread consensus that the low-lying country was on the “front line” of climate change, but a new study argues the IPCC ignored the role sediment plays in countering sea level rises.

IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri defended his organisation”s Bangladesh predictions Thursday, warning that “on the basis of one study one cannot jump to conclusions.”

“The IPCC looks at a range of publications before we take a balanced view on what”s likely to happen,” he said.

But IPCC”s prediction did not take into account the one billion tonnes of sediment carried by Himalayan rivers into Bangladesh every year, which are crucial in countering rises in sea levels, the study funded by the Asian Development Bank said.

“Sediments have been shaping Bangladesh”s coast for thousands of years,” said Maminul Haque Sarker, director of the Dhaka-based Center for Environment and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS), who led research for the study.

Previous “studies on the effects of climate change in Bangladesh, including those quoted by the IPCC, did not consider the role of sediment in the growth and adjustment process of the country’s coast and rivers to the sea level rise,” he said.

Even if sea levels rise a maximum one metre in line with the IPCC”s 2007 predictions, the new study indicates most of Bangladesh”s coastline will remain intact, said Sarker.

“Based on the findings of the study, it appears that most of Bangladesh’s coastline, notably the Meghna estuary, which is one of the largest in the world, would rise at the same pace as the sea level growth,” he said.

“The study shows that the inundation and flooding pattern of Bangladesh will change due to the sea level rise, but it will be less than what has been predicted,” by the IPCC and others, he said.

CEGIS”s past predictions of the number of people likely to be made homeless every year by the two main Himalayan rivers, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, have proved to be 70 percent accurate, according to their own assessments.

The IPCC is made up of several thousand scientists tasked with vetting scientific knowledge on climate change and its impacts.

But its reputation was damaged by a warning in its seminal 2007 report that global warming could melt Himalayan glaciers by 2035, a claim that has been widely discredited and fuelled skepticism about climate change.

According to Pachauri, the glacier mistakes should not be allowed to detract from the fact that the IPCC”s conclusions overall are “robust and they are reliable”.

“One single error doesn”t take anything away from the major findings of the report. The fact is that the glaciers are melting,” he said.

“The science is evolving. In a number of parts of the world there isn”t enough research, so we welcome this study.”

Atiq Rahman, a Dhaka-based member of the panel, admitted that the panel”s research on Bangladesh had “not taken into account the role the sediment plays in shaping Bangladesh”s coast and estuaries.”

“The next IPCC assessment will take it into account,” he said, adding that climate change could still cause a lot of damage in Bangladesh if the “rate of sea-level rise is faster than the level of sedimentation.”

Karzai delays peace Jirga till May

KABUL: A traditional “peace jirga” of Afghanistan”s tribal and community leaders has been delayed until late May because of clashes in the president”s travel schedule, an official said on Wednesday.

The jirga, or meeting, aims to bring together leaders from across Afghanistan, representing the country”s complicated mix of ethnic, tribal, geographic and gender interests.

The exact new date has not yet been set, said Masoom Stanikzai, adviser to the president on internal security.

“The decision (of the jirga preparatory committee) is that it will be held in the last week of May,” he said.

President Hamid Karzai”s travel schedule — which includes a planned May 10-13 visit to Washington — was one major factor, Stanikzai said.

“It would put a lot of pressure on his schedule,” he said.

He said members of parliament had also requested a delay because the original May 2-4 dates coincided with the period of candidate registration for the September parliamentary polls.

Registration started on Tuesday.

Thousands of people are expected to attend the jirga to discuss the main issues facing the fractious country in the context of Karzai”s plans to bring peace and development after more than eight years of war.

Western diplomats in Kabul said earlier that the decision had been made on Sunday to reschedule the jirga to begin May 20.

Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, was quoted by US media as saying the change had been made so the meeting could be held after Karzai”s Washington trip.

Holbrooke was quoted by the Washington Post newspaper as saying the meeting, which could also include “insurgent leaders”, had been postponed to May 20.

A European diplomat said one reason for the delay was that Karzai “is still lagging behind on outreach to different tribal leaders”.

“The Obama visit might just be an excuse,” he said on condition of anonymity.

NATO”s senior civilian representative to Afghanistan, Mark Sedwill, told reporters on Tuesday that the jirga had the backing of the international community.

“It is an important initiative, it has the support of the whole of the international community,” he said, adding it could be a step on the road to peace for the war-torn country.

He said the meeting could bring support from across the country for the reconciliation of insurgent fighters and provide the opportunity for insurgents to reintegrate into society.

Afghanistan is mired in a war with Taliban-led insurgents, with the 126,000 NATO and US troops due to rise to 150,000 by August in an effort to quell the rebellion before the September parliamentary elections.

Seoul believes N.Korea torpedoed navy ship: report

SEOUL: South Korea”s military believes that a North Korean submarine launched a torpedo attack to sink a South Korean warship last month near their disputed sea border, a local news agency said Thursday.

The assessment was reported to the office of President Lee Myung-Bak and the defence ministry immediately after the ship sank last month, an unnamed senior military source said.

“It”s our military intelligence”s assessment that North Korean sumbmarines attacked the ship with a heavy torpedo,” the source said.

US Forces Repeatedly Put “Boots on The Ground” in Pakistan

Pakistan News: US special forces have conducted multiple clandestine raids into Pakistan’s tribal areas as part of a secret war in the border region where Washington is pressing to expand its drone assassination programme, British newspaper claimed. A former Nato officer said the incursions, only one of which has been previously reported, occurred between 2003 and 2008, involved helicopter-borne elite soldiers stealing across the border at night, and were never declared to the Pakistani government. “The Pakistanis were kept entirely in the dark about it, the newspaper reported. While public opinion has grudgingly tolerated CIA-led drone strikes in the tribal areas, any hint of American “boots on the ground” is greeted with virulent condemnation. After the only publicly acknowledged special forces raid in September 2008, Pakistan’s foreign office condemned it as “a grave provocation” while the military threatened retaliatory action. The military source said that was the fourth raid of previous years. Two of the others targeted Taliban and al-Qaida “high-value targets” near the border, while the third was to rescue a crashed Predator drone. He said that the US sent elite soldiers to the downed Predator because they did not trust Pakistani forces. “People were afraid they would take the parts and reverse- engineer its components,” he said.

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US Forces Repeatedly Put “Boots on The Ground” in Pakistan was first posted on December 22, 2009 at 11:05 am.

Blast In Iraq, 15 Soldiers killed

MOSUL: Fifteen Iraqi soldiers were killed accidentally during what were meant to be controlled explosions in a town outside the northern city of Mosul on Friday, a defence ministry official said.

Among the dead was one army officer, while one soldier was also seriously wounded, said the official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

The accident occurred on the outskirts of Baashiqa, around 30 kilometres (18 miles) northeast of Mosul.

A military source said the soldiers were carrying out routine controlled explosions of roadside bombs which had been collected in the area over the previous week.

Iraq took over responsibility for security in its towns and cities on July 1, with US combat troops scheduled to leave the country by August 2010, and all American forces required to leave Iraq by the end of 2011.

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Blast In Iraq, 15 Soldiers killed was first posted on September 25, 2009 at 6:38 pm.
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