Biden says US will help Afghanistan after pullout

Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai and US Vice President Joe Biden shake hands during a press conference at the Presidential palace in Kabul. -AFP Photo

KABUL: Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday that America will not cut and run in 2014, when the US-led military coalition plans to hand over control of security to Afghan forces.
Speaking after a meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Biden said training and aid will continue even after responsibility for security is handed over. He added that both sides share a common goal of a ”stable, sovereign Afghanistan.”
If ”the Afghan people want it, we won’t leave in 2014,” the vice president said a day after arriving in the country for a surprise visit.
Tensions have surfaced between the Obama administration and an increasingly nationalistic Karzai, whose government is plagued by charges of corruption. US officials have expressed grave concerns about how this is affecting efforts to stabilize and rebuild the country.
Just a month ago, Obama came to Afghanistan but did not meet with Karzai. The White House said that foul weather foiled plans to take Obama to the presidential palace in Kabul from the Bagram Air Field military base where he landed, and that technical difficulties prevented the two presidents from talking by secure videoconference.
Although the two leaders spoke briefly by telephone, the change of plans was seen by some in Karzai’s circle as a snub.
Biden’s visit could be aimed in part at smoothing things over with Karzai. A senior US official traveling with the vice president tried to present a united front on Monday, saying the US and Karzai are ”very much on the same page.”
Biden himself tried to reassure Afghans at the news conference that it ”is not our intention to govern or to nation build” and that United States had ”moved into a new phase in Afghanistan which relates to the transition of security responsibility to Afghans.”
Biden said he was last in Afghanistan two years ago and that much had changed since then.
”We have a strategy and the resources in place to accomplish the goal of a stable and growing and independent Afghanistan able to provide for its own security,” he said.
”And the process to be able at the same time, to disrupt and dismantle, defeat, eliminate al-Qaida in Pakistan and what little appearance there is in Afghanistan.”

Uzbeks 'behind ethnic clashes in southern Kyrgyzstan'

Thousands of homes were destroyed in the violence in Osh in June 2010

An official investigation in Kyrgyzstan into deadly ethnic clashes last year has said local Uzbek leaders were to blame.

Commission head Abdygany Erkebayev said several local Uzbek politicians had tried to instigate violence.
He said that allies of ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev also played a part.
More than 400 people died in the violence that erupted in southern Kyrgyzstan in June 2010, three months after Mr Bakiyev was overthrown.
Mr Erkebayev said 426 deaths had been confirmed, of which 276 were Uzbeks and 105 were Kyrgyz.
Tens of thousands of people - mostly Uzbeks - were forced to flee their homes.
'Agitating' Speaking in the capital, Bishkek, Mr Erkebayev said: "The tragic events were provoked not by the Uzbek or the Kyrgyz people, but by people with extremist views."
He said the April uprising that ousted Mr Bakiyev had led to calls from the Uzbek community for more political representation, and singled out one prominent Uzbek businessman for blame.
"He travelled to areas of southern Kyrgyzstan densely populated by Uzbeks, agitating and organising rallies," he said.
But he also accused allies of the ousted president - whose support base was in the south - of orchestrating clashes.
"Bakiyev's circle bankrolled the militants and several relatives of the ex-president Bakiyev also took up arms to participate in those events," he said.
Human rights groups have, in the past, accused the authorities of singling out Uzbeks for blame.
They have also criticised them for detaining large numbers of Uzbek men in the wake of the crisis.
Erica Marat of the Caucasus-Central Asia Institute at Johns Hopkins University in the US told the BBC that the report reflected mainstream Kyrgyz sentiment, and failed to answer key questions about what sparked the violence.
The findings showed that the government was not ready to "provide an honest investigation of what happened in June", she said.

North Korean missiles may hit American territory

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has hinted that North Korea can become capable of launching a surprise attack on American territories within five years.

Gates told reporters during a visit to Beijing that North Korea was becoming a direct threat to the United States and could develop an inter-continental ballistic missile within five years. 

"I think that North Korea will have developed an inter-continental ballistic missile within that time - not that they will have huge numbers or anything like that," Reuters quoted Gates as saying 

"But they will have, I believe they will have a very limited capability," he added. 

The United States and South Korea have conducted several massive joint sea- and air-drills in east of the Korean Peninsula in recent months. 

Pyongyang, which claims ownership of nearby waters, considers the military exercises as an infringement of its territory, but Seoul says the drills are defensive. 

North Korea has called for negotiations within weeks, adding it would open a liaison office to ease tensions on the peninsula. 

South Korea, on the other hand, has rejected the North's latest offer of talks, saying that Pyongyang should first show its seriousness about denuclearization. 

The North accuses US President Barack Obama of plotting with regional allies to topple the country's government, insisting that its nuclear program is a deterrent against US forces in the region. 

Wikileaks ‘cannot survive’ further losses: Assange

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange seen arriving at a court in London for his running trial. - REUTERS

PARIS: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said the besieged whistleblower website “cannot survive” if it continues to haemorrhage money, in an interview broadcast in France on Tuesday.
Assange, who has enraged the United States by leaking US diplomatic cables that embarrassed world leaders, has said his site has been losing almost half a million euros (650,000 dollars) a week since those leaks began.
“We cannot survive the way things are going,” he told the French radio station Europe 1, complaining that the organisation’s ability to garner online donations has been blocked. But he vowed Wikileaks would fight back. In a separate interview with France Info radio, he said Wikileaks aimed to continue leaking documents.
Assange was speaking from Britain, where he is on bail facing possible extradition to Sweden for questioning on allegations of sexual assault. A court hearing was due later Tuesday to set a date for his trial.
The Wikileaks website was blocked after it began leaking its flood of cables, but soon sprang up again in various countries.
“The organisation is being attacked but it is growing quite quickly,”Assange told Europe 1.
In an interview published Monday in Swiss newspapers, Assange said Wikileaks was losing more than 480,000 euros since it started publishing the diplomatic cables.
“To continue our business, we would need to find a way or other to get this money back,” he said.
He did not explain exactly how Wikileaks was losing so much money with the website, but several banks or payment systems have reportedly stopped doing business with it.
“I would say that the pressure reinforces my determination,” he said in the Swiss interview. “But from a financial point of view, it’s another matter.”

Viewpoint: A new Sino-US high-tech arms race?

Behind the smiles, both sides remain concerned about the other's intentions

Alexander Neill, head of the Asia Security Programme at the Royal United Services Institute, considers the apparent emergence of a new Sino-US high-tech arms race.

Beneath the veneer of official smiles and neatly choreographed handshakes at the defence summit in Beijing, the Sino-US relationship remains fraught with uncertainty.
A year after military relations were frozen by Beijing in the wake of a $6.4bn (£4.1bn) arms package to Taiwan, the US request for a resumption of a substantial strategic dialogue has been given a lukewarm reception in Beijing.
The People's Liberation Army's (PLA) appetite for engagement with the US has waned considerably over the last year.
Cementing its defence arrangement with Taiwan, and holding large-scale naval war games in China's back yard in recent months, the US has buttressed its alliances with its East Asian allies.
These actions have fuelled resentment in China and fears of US military encirclement.
US irritation is based on a recent spate of harassment by the PLA Navy and Chinese fishing vessels against the US Navy and its allies in the West Pacific.
The US is also frustrated with China's intransigence towards meaningful strategic dialogue on international security concerns, particularly while tension on the Korean peninsula remains high and nuclear proliferation by North Korea continues unchecked.
But the Pentagon's visceral concern is its failure to detect the break-neck speed of Chinese military technological advances and its ability to curb an arms race in East Asia.
'Pressure point warfare' Despite recent headlines reporting the appearance of a Chinese stealth fighter prototype, of more concern to US military planners is the enabling technology that will produce the bite to China's military bark.

Photos of a possible working prototype of a Chinese-made stealth aircraft were recently leaked

This angst is focused on China's decade-long programme of military "informationisation" designed to leap-frog over US capabilities in the Pacific region.
The PLA is rapidly developing asymmetric warfare techniques against US command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance infrastructure, known as "C4ISR" in military parlance.
For China, with its inferior conventional military capabilities, the key to gaining the upper hand in a conflict with the US is to gain dominance of the space theatre and to damage its digital nerve system.
China views space as a corner-stone of its future prosperity: a mandate from heaven for China's growth and military strength. For this reason, China is working hard to counter the Pentagon's monopoly in space and to build its own space-based deterrent.
The PLA's doctrine of "pressure point warfare", a multi-layered approach using space, cyberspace and information operations alongside conventional capabilities is designed to cripple an adversary in one swift strike.
This fast paced and high-tech military modernisation has led to the emergence of weapons systems and technology, which in certain theatres has closed the military capability gap with the US considerably.
These include directed energy, jamming and cyber attack technologies, designed to paralyse the US military machine.
The PLA has recently developed and successfully tested advanced anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons systems, demonstrating it can destroy or manoeuvre close to enemy satellites in space. ASAT weapons are part of a new genre of "assassin's mace" or surprise weapons aimed at the Pentagon's Achilles Heel in space and cyberspace.
All of these capabilities require state of the art signals processing and communications systems, technology which China has been developing indigenously to create its own command and control architecture.
Carrier fears One of the most pressing concerns for the United States navy is the prospect of US aircraft carriers and other vessels being denied access to theatres of operation in the event that the US were dragged into a conflict over Taiwan or in support of its other Pacific allies.

Could Chinese missile systems target US aircraft carriers in the region?

Coined by Pentagon planners as China's "A2/AD" (Anti Access/Area Denial) strategy, the PLA would attempt to prevent US aircraft carriers from deploying to theatre, targeted by Chinese torpedoes, Cruise Missiles and Anti Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBMs).
PLA tacticians know that a successful strike against a moving US aircraft carrier requires advanced space-based targeting assets and an ability to penetrate the US ballistic missile defence umbrella. They also know that their land-based missiles are vulnerable to attack from the US.
One solution is to develop a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) capability, something which is also causing for concern for US defence secretary Robert Gates.
The PLA's latest weapons systems serve as an opportunity to showcase China's considerable achievements and provide an anchor for the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.
What the PLA is prepared to reveal in public is also directed at the domestic audience as much as abroad - hence the roll-out of the J-20 stealth fighter prototype and the likely launch of an aircraft carrier within a year or two.
China, Taiwan and the United States do not want a confrontation; this would likely be a disaster of global proportions.
However, as China's President Hu Jintao and his US counterpart Barack Obama prepare to meet next week, the potential for miscalculation and an East Asian arms race extending into the space domain creates a lingering atmosphere of uncertainty and mistrust in the region.

China conducts first test-flight of a stealth fighter

Photos of the Chinese-made stealth aircraft began appearing on websites earlier this month

China has conducted the first test-flight of its J-20 stealth fighter, Chinese President Hu Jintao has confirmed to US Defence Secretary Robert Gates.

The confirmation came after images of the 15-minute flight in Chengdu appeared on several Chinese websites.
Mr Hu said that the flight had not been timed to coincide with Mr Gates' visit, the US defence secretary said.
The US is currently the only nation with a fully operational stealth plane.
But both Russia and China are known to be working on prototypes of stealth fighters, which are invisible to radar.
Mr Gates' three-day visit to Beijing comes amid US concern over the speed at which China's military is modernising and upgrading its technology.

Analysis

 

Leaked images of what was said to be China's J-20 fighter first appeared earlier this month during taxi tests at the Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute.

On Tuesday, the plane took off and flew for about 15 minutes, according to eyewitness accounts published on unofficial Chinese web portals.
A video clip of the flight was also posted on the web.
China says it expects the stealth plane to be operational some time between 2017 and 2019.
But earlier this month the Pentagon played down concerns over the fighter.
"Developing a stealth capability with a prototype and then integrating that into a combat environment is going to take some time," said US director of naval intelligence Vice Admiral David Dorsett.
China's official military budget quadrupled between 1999 and 2009 as the country's economy grew. In 2010 it stood at $78bn (£50bn).
But the US has by far the largest defence budget in the world at just over $700bn.

Iran vows legal bid on Israeli terror

Iran says it will exploit all its resources to condemn Israel and bring the regime to justice over its terror efforts against Iranian nuclear scientists.

“The issue that we will actively pursue is the condemnation of this illegal regime (Israel) and its punishment as the perpetrator of crimes against humanity and our scientists,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said at his weekly press briefing on Tuesday. 

“We will definitely utilize all our means and capabilities to follow up the case in international legal bodies,” he said. 

We will also pursue a legal case for the Israeli terror efforts using evidence and documentations compiled on the issue, he added. 

The Iranian spokesperson also condemned Western support of the Israeli regime in sponsoring and carrying out acts of terrorism. 

“That the Zionist regime (Israel) officially announces that it has had a hand in such terror efforts is indicative of an ongoing state terrorism and we regret that Western countries support such illegitimate acts by Israel.” 

Mehmanparast's remarks came in response to a question about Iran's legal pursuits against the assassination of Iranian nuclear physics scientist Massoud Ali-Mohammadi. 

Dr. Ali-Mohammadi, a lecturer at the University of Tehran, was killed when a remote-controlled bomb detonated near his house in the north of the Iranian capital, Tehran, in July 2010. 

Iran's Intelligence Ministry said in a statement released on Monday that it has arrested the main perpetrators in connection with the assassination and dismantled a network comprising of Israeli-trained spies and terrorists following extensive security operations.