US talks with Pakistan over new military assistance

WASHINGTON: The United States said Tuesday it was in talks with Pakistan about new military assistance as part of a partnership against Islamic extremism, in a step sure to trigger unease in India.

The United States and Pakistan on Wednesday open their latest “strategic dialogue,” an initiative by President Barack Obama’s administration to show Pakistan’s skeptical public it is ready to take up its concerns.

Frank Ruggiero, the US deputy special representative on Pakistan and Afghanistan, said the Pentagon and the Pakistani military have been talking about a framework for security assistance.

“We specifically worked with the Pakistanis over the summer to identify what would be the types of military equipment and so on,” Ruggiero told reporters. “That will be a topic of discussion at the strategic dialogue.”

The US Congress last year approved a

US and Afghan govts make contact with Haqqani Group: Guardian

Both the Afghan and US governments have recently made contact with the most fearsome insurgent group in Afghanistan, the Haqqani network, British newspaper Guardian reported.
Hamid Karzai’s government held direct talks with senior members of the Haqqani clan over the summer, according to well-placed Pakistani and Arab sources. The US contacts have been indirect, through a western intermediary, but have continued for more than a year. The Afghan and US talks were described as extremely tentative. The Haqqani network has a reputation for ruthlessness, even by the standards of the Afghan insurgency, and has the closest ties with Al-Qaida. But Kabul and Washington have come to the conclusion that they cannot be excluded if an enduring peace settlement is to be reached. A senior Pakistani official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said you would not be wrong when asked whether talks involving Haqqani, Karzai and the US were taking place. But he refused to comment further, citing the sensitivity of the matter. Calls and emails soliciting comment from the US state department were unreturned by late last night. A senior western official said the US now considers the Haqqani network to be more powerful than the Quetta Shura, the 15-man leadership council headed by the Taliban’s leader, Mullah Omar. The Quetta Shura is still important but not as much as people thought two years ago. Its prestige and impact have waned, and they are increasingly less important on the battlefield. Now the military threat comes from the Haqqanis, the official said. The twin poles of the insurgency are located at least 250 miles apart along the Durand Line, the lawless Pakistani border. The Haqqanis, who come from Khost in Afghanistan, are anchored in the Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan.

Greek truckers protest government vote

Greek truckers step up their protests, with drivers from around the country congregating on Tuesday.
They are participating in ‘sit-ins’ – truckers line their rigs along roadsides, refusing to work, some of them blocking traffic. Others rally within the nation’s capital Athens.
The protests come ahead of a government vote on a bill that will deregulate their trade, allowing more licenses to be issued and more drivers to enter the profession. After recent talks with the drivers, the government has conceded to raise the values of their licenses.
But truckers want the whole bill rescinded, and the government has refused. Over 30,000 truckers took to streets over the summer in protest of the government’s plans, but they were broken up after six days when a court ruled their strike illegal.
The liberalization of their sector comes as part of the economic reforms required by a multi-billion euro EU/IMF bailout plan. Parliament plans to vote on Tuesday, and the bill is expected to pass on Wednesday.

Rodell Vereen

Rodell Vereen :A South Carolina man caught on video having sex with a horse was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison after pleading guilty for the second time in two years to abusing the creature. Rodell Vereen was also ordered never to go near the stable where the horse’s owner caught him and held him for authorities at shotgun point over the summer. He apologized to the woman and to himself after admitting to buggery at the Horry County courthouse

Rodell Vereen:A South Carolina man caught on video having sex with a horse was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison after pleading guilty for the second time in two years to abusing the creature.

Rodell Vereen was also ordered never to go near the stable where the horse’s owner caught him and held him for authorities at shotgun point over the summer. He apologized to the woman and to himself after admitting to buggery at the Horry County courthouse.

“I’m sorry about what I’ve done. I didn’t mean to do it. It’s my fault. I’m sorry for what I’ve done to myself,” Vereen said during Wednesday’s court hearing.

Vereen was arrested in July after Barbara Kenley caught him entering the barn at Lazy B Stables in Longs, about 20 miles northeast of Myrtle Beach. She had been staking out the stable for more than a week after setting up a surveillance camera and videotaping Vereen’s assault on her 21-year-old horse named Sugar.

Kenley said she became suspicious because her horse was acting strange and getting infections, and she noticed things were moved around the barn and dirt was piled up near the horse’s stall.

It wasn’t the first time she’d caught Vereen. In late 2007, Kenley found him asleep in the hay after assaulting her horse. For that offense, he also pleaded guilty to buggery, received probation and had to register as a sex offender.

On Wednesday, the judge sentenced Vereen to five years in prison, but he will only have to serve three years behind bars as long as he successfully completes two years of probation. Vereen also was ordered to undergo additional mental treatment after he gets out of prison and was told to stay away from Kenley’s stable.

Kenley told The Sun News of Myrtle Beach she was mostly happy with the verdict, but wished Vereen had got more prison time.

“I’ve been through hell for the last year and it’s caused a lot of hardship,” Kenley told the newspaper. “There’s a lot of ridicule and jokes going around about this thing. And a person can only take so much.”

US May Increase Military In Afghanistan: Gates

WASHINGTON: Defence Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday left open the possibility of sending more US troops to Afghanistan but warned of stretched military resources and the risk of a possible backlash.

Gates said he and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, had told the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, that “we want him to ask for what he thinks he needs.”

“And I think you have to allow your commanders that freedom,” he told a news conference.

But with about 132,000 troops currently in Iraq, Gates said there were constraints as to how many extra troops could be sent to Afghanistan at least until after Iraq’s elections in January.

“I would say also that the availability of forces is still a challenge, as well,” he said.

Gates also repeated his concerns about too big of a US military “footprint,” saying for the moment Afghans see the coalition as “their partner.”

“I just worry that we don’t know what the size of the military presence might be that would begin to change that.”

“And I think we need to move with considerable care in that respect and in close consultation with both our allies, but especially with the Afghans and the Afghan government,” Gates said.

The defence secretary’s comments come amid intense speculation that the commander in Afghanistan is preparing to make a case for more troops in the fight against the Taliban and allied insurgents.

President Barack Obama already ordered an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan and the number of US forces is set to reach 68,000 before the end of the year.

Asked why US forces were not sent in earlier to southern Afghanistan, where thousands of Marines have deployed over the summer, Gates said “The forces weren’t available to send in until fairly recently. We got them in there as fast as we could.”

McChrystal, who is drafting an assessment of the Afghan war effort that is due to be submitted by early September, is under pressure to seize the initiative from the insurgents amid anxiety in Congress about an open-ended US mission.

Gates said he could not predict how long US troops would have to stay in Afghanistan, saying there were too many uncertainties.

But he said the insurgents could be defeated “in a few years” while economic and civilian aid efforts represented a “decades-long enterprise.”

General James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the same press conference that the military was also looking closely at how to combat improvised explosives, which were the main cause of casualties among NATO-led troops.