17 dead in Yemen, Saleh loses US favour

SANAA — Yemeni security forces shot dead at least 17 protesters on Monday as Gulf states offered their mediation and Washington reportedly pulled the plug on embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

“The death toll has gone up to 17,” said Sadeq al-Shujaa, head of a makeshift field hospital at a square in central Taez after security forces opened fire on demonstrators marching on the local governorate headquarters.

Witnesses said the demonstrators stormed the courtyard of the governorate and that plainclothes gunmen and rooftop snipers also took part in the gunfire to push them back.

The bloodshed, a day after another protester was shot dead in Taez, 200 kilometres (125 miles) from the capital, sent the death toll to more than 100 in a crackdown on protests in the impoverished state since late January.

Saleh, a longtime US ally in Washington’s fight against Al-Qaeda, appears to be losing American support.

The US government is taking part in efforts to negotiate the president’s departure and a transitional handover of power, according to a report in the New York Times on Sunday.

US officials have told allies they see Saleh’s position as untenable due to the widespread protests, and believe he should leave office, the paper said. Negotiations on his departure had been launched more than a week ago.

The talks centred on a proposal for Saleh to hand over to a provisional government under his vice-president until new polls. The principle is “not in dispute”, an unnamed Yemeni official told the paper.

With the timing still to be worked out, the focus for Washington remains on keeping its Saleh-backed counter-terrorism operation in Yemen unaffected, the Times reported.

The opposition Common Forum on Saturday offered its “vision for a peaceful and secure transition of power”, calling on Saleh to hand power to Vice-President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, who would be a caretaker president.

But the president, who has adopted a defiant tone over the past week, on Sunday told the opposition to end protests and remove roadblocks, offering a “peaceful transition of power through constitutional ways”.

Youth protesters staging sit-in protests, however, said they would accept nothing short of an end to Saleh’s autocratic rule along with the departure of top figures in his regime.

Oil-rich Gulf states also said late on Sunday that they are seeking to mediate between Saleh and the opposition.

“The countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council have agreed to begin contacts with the Yemeni government and opposition with ideas to overcome the current situation,” it said after a meeting of foreign ministers in Riyadh.

On the ground in Sanaa, soldiers who have sided with protesters intervened on Monday to prevent police from taking on thousands of demonstrators camped at a square in central Sanaa.

Thirteen people were shot and wounded late on Sunday as police clashed with tens of thousands of demonstrators in the Red Sea city of Hudaydah, according to witnesses.

Police opened fire as the protesters marched on the city’s main local government building, they said.

In renewed clashes on Monday in Hudaydah, witnesses reported that dozens of people were wounded by police gunfire and rocks, while hundreds needed treatment for tear-gas inhalation.

The demonstrations in Taez and Hudaydah were part of a renewed spurt of protests for Saleh to end his three-decade rule.

The tide appeared to turn against Saleh on March 18 when regime loyalists gunned down 52 demonstrators in Sanaa, sparking widespread condemnation abroad and a string of defections from his camp.

But boosted by two huge pro-regime rallies in the capital and previous US statements on the battle being waged against al-Qaeda in Yemen under its ally Saleh have produced shows of defiance by the president.

Indian model vows to strip for WCup win

MOHALI: Women in India are encouraged to dress modestly at all times, but a brasher side to modern life has been exposed after a popular model vowed to strip naked if the nation wins the cricket World Cup.

Poonam Pandey, 20, who features in a best-selling Indian swimwear calendar, said she wanted to provide an incentive to players by promising them she would bare all – though whether her offer will be welcomed is not known.

“I’m a cricket fanatic and I’m a diehard supporter of my nation. India needs a lot of support and this is my way of supporting the team,” she told several newspapers on Wednesday.

Asked by reporters if she was pulling of a publicity stunt, she replied: “Absolutely not. I’m confident of my body and I’m doing this to excite our boys to play better.”

Pandey received widespread media attention for her pledge, with the Times of India illustrating its story with a colour photograph of her wearing a skimpy bikini.

“Pray for Todays Match that the Boys Play well and make us Proud,” she said on her Twitter page ahead of India’s crunch semi-final game against Pakistan.

Her offer echoes that of Larissa Riquelme, a model who attracted global fame by pledging to run naked through the streets of Paraguay’s capital Asuncion if her country won the 2010 football World Cup.

Paraguay were knocked out by Spain in the quarter-finals and she instead posed nude in front of her national flag. AGENCIES

US seeking to expand raids into Pakistan: NYT

United State News: Top US military commanders in Afghanistan are seeking to expand ground raids by Special Operations Forces across the border in Pakistans tribal areas, The New York Times reported Monday.

Amid growing US frustration with Pakistans lackluster efforts at removing militants from strongholds there, the officials are proposing to escalate military activities in the nuclear-armed nation, the Times said in its online edition.US forces have been largely restricted to limited covert operations and unmanned drone strikes in Pakistan due to fears of retaliation from a population that often holds strong anti-American sentiment in a country rife with militants.Even these limited operations have provoked angry reactions from Pakistani officials. The drones are believed to be largely operated by the CIA.Amid a looming July deadline for American troops to begin withdrawing from Afghanistan, military and political leaders pointed to a renewed sense of urgency.Military commanders told the newspaper that the Special Operations plan which has not yet been approved could help them secure much-needed intelligence if militants were captured, brought back across the border into Afghanistan and interrogated.US officials said they were particularly keen to capture rather than kill militant leaders from the Taliban or the Haqqani network in order to obtain intelligence about future operations.Weve never been as close as we are now to getting the go-ahead to go across, a senior US officer said.But a senior official from President Barack Obamas administration said he did not favor cross-border operations, saying they have been mostly counterproductive unless they targeted top al Qaeda leaders.The official also worried that political fallout in Pakistan over the operations could counter any tactical gains.CIA-backed Afghan militias, previously believed to only carry out intelligence-gathering operations, have also crossed the border into Pakistans tribal belt during secret missions, including one in which a militia destroyed a militant weapons cache, officials told the Times.An Afghan political leader said one of the raids by the Paktika Defense Force one of six CIA-trained Afghan militias was initiated to capture a Taliban commander in Pakistan. The mission was ultimately unsuccessful but Pakistani militants opened fire on the Afghans.Another CIA-backed force near the eastern Afghan province of Khost was recently deployed in the mountains along the Pakistan border, where it is due to try to intercept Taliban fighters during the winter, an American military officer told the Times, saying the militia has so far proven effective.

Afghan war cant be won sans Pakistan in the hunt: NYT

There is a limited chance of success in the Afghanistan war unless Pakistan hunts down insurgents operating from havens on its Afghan border, says the New York Times quoting two new intelligence reports.

The reports, coming ahead of the release of the latest Afghan strategy review, say that although there have been gains for the US and NATO in the war, the unwillingness of Pakistan to shut down militant sanctuaries in its lawless tribal region remains a serious obstacle, the influential US daily stated. American military commanders cited by the Times say insurgents freely cross from Pakistan into Afghanistan to plant bombs and fight American troops and then return to Pakistan for rest and re-supply.The findings in the reports, called National Intelligence Estimates, represent the consensus view of the US 16 intelligence agencies, as opposed to the military, and were provided last week to some members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, the Times said.

The intelligence reports, which rely heavily on assessments from the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, conclude that CIA drone strikes on leaders of Al Qaeda in the tribal regions of Pakistan have had an impact and that security has improved in the parts of Helmand and Kandahar Provinces in southern Afghanistan where the US has built up its troop presence, it said. For their part, American commanders and Pentagon officials say they do not yet know if the war can be won without more cooperation from Pakistan, the Times said. But after years and billions spent trying to win the support of the Pakistanis, they are now proceeding on the assumption that there will be limited help from them. The American commanders and officials readily describe the havens for insurgents in Pakistan as a major impediment to military operations, the Times said. Publicly, American officials and military commanders continue to praise Pakistan and its military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, if only for acknowledging the problem, it said.But many Afghan officials cited by the US daily say that the US, which sends Pakistan about $2 billion in military and civilian aid each year, is coddling Pakistan to no end.

Kayani mused takeover after ousting Zardari: Wikileaks

Pakistan’s army chief mused about forcing out civilian President Asif Ali Zardari who has made preparations for a coup or assassination, leaked US diplomatic cables said.

The latest tranche of memos, obtained by whistleblower site WikiLeaks and reported by The New York Times and The Guardian, also showed the US was more concerned than it let on publicly about Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. General Ashfaq Kayani, chief of Pakistan’s powerful military, told the US ambassador during a March 2009 meeting that he might, however reluctantly, pressure Zardari to resign, according to a cable cited by the Times.Kayani was quoted as saying that he might support Asfandyar Wali Khan, leader of the Awami National League Party, as the new president — not Zardari’s arch-nemesis Nawaz Sharif.In another cable quoted by both newspapers, US Vice President Joe Biden recounted to Britain’s then prime minister Gordon Brown a conversation with Zardari last year.Zardari told him that Kayani and the Inter-Services Intelligence agency will take me out, according to the cable. The Guardian said the cables also showed that Zardari has made extensive preparations in case he is killed.Zardari is the widower of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007.

He took power in 2008, returning Pakistan to civilian leadership after nearly a decade under military ruler Pervez Musharraf.Tensions between Zardari and the army are no secret, and Pakistan often witnesses coup rumors.After Kayani met in September with Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, the now-exiled Musharraf quipped: I can assure you they were not discussing the weather.The cables also laid bare US frustrations at what officials see as Pakistan’s refusal to cut off ties with extremists such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is blamed for carrying out the bloody 2008 siege of Mumbai.There is no chance that Pakistan will view enhanced assistance levels in any field as sufficient compensation for abandoning support for these groups, which it sees as an important part of its national security apparatus against India, Ambassador Anne Patterson said in a cable quoted by the Times.The cables show that the United States was mindful of Pakistani sensitivities about cooperation — both on military action and on Islamabad’s prized nuclear arsenal.One memo quoted by the Times said that 12 US Special Operations soldiers had deployed with Pakistani troops near the Afghan border.The cables also touch on allegations of extrajudicial killings by Pakistani forces, according to the Times.A cable last year suggested there was credible evidence that the Pakistani army or paramilitary forces killed some detainees after an offensive against Taliban insurgents in lawless northwestern regions.The embassy said that news of killings should not be leaked to the press, for fear of offending the Pakistani army. However, this year the United States said it would cut off support for some Pakistani units following the release of a video that appeared to show extrajudicial killings.Wikileaks divulged that Zardari had tried to make Chief Justice Iftikhar Chuadhry to governor of Balochistan well before he himself became president in 2008. Zulfiqar Magsis resignation was also a part of that game. Also, WikiLeaks disclosed the conversation between US Senator John McCain and former president Pervez Musharraf in which the latter talked about the possibility of the presence of Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri in Bajaur Agency. The US embassy cables disclosed Musharraf as saying that although he had no direct evidence, he thought al Qaeda leaders Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri were hiding in Bajaur Agency, bordering Afghanistan’s Konar province where US forces were not deployed.Musharraf, however, added that Mullah Omar was not present in Balochistan.

Wikileaks Release Secret Papers

NEW YORK: A global computer hacking effort by China is among the revelation laid bare by a cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables released by whistleblower site WikiLeaks.

The New York Times, one of the newspapers provided advanced access to the papers, on Sunday offered a preview of the revelations from a huge sampling of the daily traffic between the State Department and some 270 embassies and consulates that it intends to detail in the coming days.

WikiLeaks disclosures involve 3000 cables from Delhi to Washington

The cables show that nearly a decade after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the dark shadow of terrorism still dominates the United States’ relations with the world, said the Times.

“They depict the Obama administration struggling to sort out which Pakistanis are trustworthy partners against Al Qaeda, adding Australians who have disappeared in the Middle East to terrorist watch lists, and assessing whether a lurking rickshaw driver in Lahore, Pakistan, was awaiting fares or conducting surveillance of the road to the American Consulate.”

America’s close Arab allies have urged it to strike Iran – by bombing nuclear sites and decapitating the ruling Islamic theocracy; cyberwarriors from China’s  politburo have attacked U.S. government computer networks.

“They show American officials managing relations with a China on the rise and a Russia retreating from democracy. They document years of painstaking effort to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon – and of worry about a possible Israeli strike on Iran with the same goal,” the Times said.

Dispatches from early this year quote the monarch of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, as speaking scathingly about the leaders of Iraq and Pakistan.

The White House was quick to “condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorised disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information.”

It would jeopardise “our diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the United States for assistance in promoting democracy and open government,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

“By releasing stolen and classified documents, Wikileaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and work of these individuals.”

British intelligence promoted Taliban impostor: report

KABUL: British intelligence agents were responsible for promoting an impostor who they believed was a senior Taliban commander key to the Afghan peace process, the Times newspaper reported Friday.

Intelligence agents paid the man several hundred thousand dollars, convinced he was a senior commander with the authority to negotiate with senior American and Afghan officials on behalf of the insurgents.

It is now believed that he was either a minor Taliban figure or simply a con-man.

A senior Afghan government official told the newspaper: “British intelligence was naive and there was wishful thinking on our part.”

British intelligence agency MI6 believed it had contacted Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, an ex-Taliban government minister and second to Mullah Omar in its leadership. They flew him to Kabul on numerous occasions.

Afghan officials told

Karzai denies meeting ‘top Taliban negotiator’

KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday denied meeting a purported top Taliban negotiator as claimed by The New York Times.

The US newspaper said a man claiming to be Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Mansour was in fact an impostor. The Washington Post quoted Afghan officials as saying that the man was a lowly shopkeeper from the Pakistani city of Quetta.

NATO and Afghan officials told the Times they met the fake Taliban leader three times and that he was flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and ushered into the presidential palace to meet Karzai.

But the president denied the meeting.

“We have not met with anyone named Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour. Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour has not come to Afghanistan,” Karzai told reporters at a news conference in Kabul.

He told reporters not to accept “propaganda” from the foreign media.

“Do not

God did not create the universe, says Hawking

LONDON: God did not create the universe and the “Big Bang” was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

In “The Grand Design”, co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts on Thursday.

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,” Hawking writes.

“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

Hawking, 68, who won global recognition with his 1988 book “A Brief History of Time”, an account of the origins of the

Teenager killed, thousands defy curfew in Sopore

SRINAGAR: In occupied Kashmir, thousands of people defied curfew in Sopore town, this morning, to protest against the killing of an 18-year-old youth, Mudassir Nazir, who was injured in the firing of Indian troops succumbed to his injuries.

Mudassir and two other people were injured last evening when the troops of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) opened fire on peaceful protesters in Chinkipora area of the town. Clashes between the troops and protesters were on when last reports came in.

The occupation authorities had imposed indefinite curfew in the town following Nazir’s death. More than 6,000 people gathered in the town defying the curfew restrictions.

On the other hand, dozens of people were injured when Indian troops and police resorted to firing and brute force to disperse protesters in Islamabad, Kulgam, Qaimoh, Wanpora, Bijbehara, Shopian, Pulwama,

Next Page »