WASHINGTON, Oct 8 (Agencies):Some members of Pakistan's spy service ISI may be encouraging the Taliban to continue fighting US and coalition forces in Afghanistan, US officials say, but insist the agency's leadership is not behind the effort.
'The ISI as an organisation does not support terrorism, but whether there are elements within the ISI that are doing things that are not productive, that's what we are discussing,' Pentagon spokesman Col.
Dave Lapan told reporters Thursday.
Reacting to a Wall Street Journal report that officers from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency are pushing Taliban field commanders to fight against the US and other NATO troops in Afghanistan, he said the US has been talking with the Pakistani Army chief, Gen.
Ashfaq Parvez Kayani about the problem.
'The ISI has done a great deal in fighting terrorism,' he said, but added that US officials 'also have some concerns with the strategic focus of the ISI'.
'Gen Kayani is aware and shares that, and they are working toward making changes.
But change happens slowly, over time,' Lapan said.
The Defence Department spokesman stressed that the US is not blaming official leaders of the Pakistani spy agency, but the Pentagon's concern is that 'elements of the ISI might be interacting with terrorist organisations in ways that aren't consistent with what the government and the military are doing.' CNN cited another unnamed official as saying there is no indication the leadership of the ISI is trying to direct the Taliban.
The official said Pakistan has a patchwork of security agencies, some of which have had ties to extremist groups.
Although it's possible there are some elements within the ISI that are encouraging the Taliban -- 'this is Pakistan, you can't rule out anything' -- the official said there is no centrally directed effort by the ISI.
The official added: 'We keep our eyes wide open here, because historical relations are hard to break for some people.' White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the situation with Pakistan is 'very difficult and complicated'.
Pakistani leaders will be in Washington later this month for discussions focusing on 'fighting insurgents and extremists that we know threatened Pakistan, threatened the stability of Afghanistan, and ultimately threatened the security of our homeland,' he said.
Bomb kills Afghan governor, 15 others-official KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, Oct 8 (Reuters): A bomb attack inside a mosque killed the governor of Afghanistan's northern Kunduz province and 15 others as they attended Friday prayers, the local police chief said.
The attack on governor Mohammed Omar happened in neighbouring Takhar province, where he had a home.
At least 20 people were wounded.
"The situation is chaos, we do not know whether it was a suicide attack or whether the bomb was already planted in the mosque," Shah Jahan Noori, police chief for Takhar province, told Reuters.
It was the most serious attack since parliamentary elections last month, when a wave of assaults killed at least 17 people as the Taliban vowed to disrupt polling.
The war in Afghanistan, now in its tenth year, is at its bloodiest since the 2001 ouster of the Taliban.
The insurgency has spread to northern parts of the country, that until recently were relatively peaceful, from its heartland in the south and east.
Attacks during Friday prayers are relatively rare in Afghanistan.
In July, a candidate for parliamentary elections was killed by a bomb planted in a mosque in eastern Khost province.
More than 2,000 foreign troops have been killed since the war began -- over half in the last two years -- and US President Barack Obama and his NATO allies are under pressure at home over the increasingly unpopular war.
Jailed Chinese dissident Liu wins Nobel Peace Prize OSLO, Oct 8 (Reuters): Jailed Chinese pro-democracy activist Liu Xiaobo today won the Nobel Peace Prize for decades of non-violent struggle for human rights, infuriating China, which called the award "an obscenity".
The prize puts China's human rights record in the spotlight at a time when it is starting to play a bigger role on the global stage as a result of its growing economic might.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Liu for his "long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China" and reiterated its belief in a "close connection between human rights and peace." Liu is serving an 11-year jail term for helping to draw up a manifesto calling for free speech and multi-party elections.
China said the award went against the ai of Alfred Nobel and would hurt ties between China and Norway, which are currently negotiating a bilateral trade agreement.
"This is an obscenity against the peace prize," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement.
But Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said China, the world's second biggest economy, should expect to be under greater scrutiny as it becomes more powerful, just as the United States was after World War Two.
"We have to speak when others cannot speak," Jagland told reporters.
"As China is rising, we should have the right to criticise ...
We want to advance those forces that want China to become more democratic." PRIZE FOR ALL Liu's wife, Xia, said she had not expected her husband to win the prize: "I can hardly believe it because my life has been filled with too many bad things.
"This prize is not only for Xiaobo but for everyone working for human rights and justice in China," she said in an emotional telephone interview with Hong Kong's Cable television.
Rights groups said the prize came at a time when human rights have dropped down the agenda of Western governments focusing on China's growing economic power.
Nicholas Bequelin, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, called it "a victory for all the courageous Chinese dissidents, activists, lawyers and human rights defenders who have continued to stand up to tyranny for all these years".
Earlier this year, Deputy Foreign Minister Fu Ying had warned the head of the Nobel Institute against granting the prize to Liu, saying it would damage ties between China and Norway as they negotiate a bilateral trade deal.
China strongly criticised Norway after the 1989 prize went to Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
The last dissident to win the Nobel Peace Prize was Iranian lawyer and human rights campaigner Shirin Ebadi in 2003.
JAILED FOR SUBVERSION Liu was jailed for 11 years last December for subversion of state power, a year after being arrested as lead author of Charter 08, a manifesto by Chinese intellectuals and activists calling for democratic reform in the one-party state.
The former literature professor rose to prominence as a strike leader during protests on Tiananmen Square in 1989.
He was later jailed for 20 months and then spent three years in a "labour re-education" camp during the 1990s, as well as months under virtual house arrest.
China's foreign ministry said last month that Liu's actions were "diametrically opposed to the ai of the Nobel Prize".
The Nobel Committee, whose members are selected by Norway's parliament, said the human rights sought by Liu were consistent with the "fraternity between nations" clause in Alfred Nobel's will, which sets out the guidelines on picking laureates.
The prize is worth 10 million Swedish crowns (1.5 million dollar) and will be awarded in Oslo on December 10.
It was not immediately known who would collect the prize if Liu could not do so.
Liu Xia said she planned to visit her husband in jail on Saturday.
"I will give him a big hug.' Myanmar court agrees to hear Suu Kyi appeal YANGON, Oct 8 (Reuters): Myanmar's Supreme Court will hear a special appeal lodged by detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi against her house arrest for a security breach last year, it said in an announcement today.
The appeal by Suu Kyi, the figurehead of Myanmar's fight against military rule, will be heard in the capital Naypyitaw, but no date was set, the court said in an announcement posted on on its notice board.
Suu Kyi is due to be released on November 13, six days after the country's first election in two decades.
Myanmar's courts, which usually make rulings favourable to the junta, have rebuffed previous appeals lodged by the former opposition leader.
Speculation has been rife about whether the regime would honour a pledge to release the influential Suu Kyi or find a legal reason to detain her further to ensure a smooth transition for the government that will emerge from the election.
Analysts say it is unlikely Suu Kyi would keep a low profile if released and would attract huge public attention that could spark protests against an election dubbed by critics a sham to appear democratic while cementing military rule.
A failure to free her on Nov.
13, however, could also trigger some form of civil disobedience in a country where the military has shown no qual about crushing dissent and jailing activists.
A court gave Suu Kyi an 18-month house arrest term in August last year for allowing American intruder John Yettaw to stay at her home.
Yettaw claimed God had told him to warn her she would be the target of an assassination plot by "terrorists".
A retired judge, who declined to be identified, said the junta was playing games by hearing the appeal at such a late stage.
"It's just a ploy of the regime -- we can't expect anything out of this," he said.
Suu Kyi, the daughter of the leader of the then Burma's campaign for independence from British rule, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, a year after her party swept Myanmar's last parliamentary election.
The military ignored the result.
She has spent 15 of the past 21 years in detention, most of it under house arrest in Yangon.
The return of "great power politics" LONDON, Oct 8 (Reuters): From currency battles to computerised corporate espionage, fractious international conferences to a new scramble for Africa, "great power politics" is back on the map.
The growing power of emerging economies -- particularly China, Russia, India and Brazil -- is redrawing the priorities of foreign and defence ministries, driving financial markets and reshaping the global business environment.
Speaking in Geneva last month, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger compared the approach of powers "emerging into confident nationhood" to those of states in the 19th or early 20th centuries.
Their rivalries eventually riggered the carnage of World War One.
The rise of China in particular is putting international relationships and syste into flux, Kissinger warned.
"Chaos may occur but when it does it will sooner or later settle down to some new order," he said -- saying it was essential that statesmen managed this process well to "save humanity from untold suffering".
The global financial crisis of 2008 appeared to produce a fragile consensus on economic interdependence and regulatory reform at a G20 summit in London in April 2009.
But that has all but broken down.
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn lamented fading global cooperation this week.
"I think it's fair to say that momentum is not vanishing but decreasing and that's a real threat," he told a news conference ahead of twice-yearly IMF and World Bank meetings.
"Everybody has to keep in mind this mantra that there is no domestic solution to a global crisis," he said.
Private sector analysts see the change even more starkly.
"Even a year ago, they thought they needed each other," said Elizabeth Stephens, head of credit and political risk at London insurance broker Jardine Lloyd Thompson.
"Now, it's survival of the fittest." "CURRENCY WAR" Some say that was inevitable -- not least because of growing imbalances in the global financial system and upward pressure on emerging nations' currencies.
Governments are relying on export-led growth to bring jobs and ensure social stability, inherently producing rivalry over foreign exchange and access to resources.
Everyone wants a competitively weak currency and guaranteed cheap fuel and food.
China is at the centre of these tensions, due both to its currency, still effectively pegged to the dollar, and to its insatiable appetite for resources.
But the unstable dynamics go beyond the Beijing-Washington axis, sometimes dubbed the "G2".
The last month has seen a host of signs of the new world rivalries and disagreements that may point to what is to come.
There has been the growing rhetoric over what Brazil's finance minister warns may be an "international currency war", with key economies vying to weaken their exchange rates.
Governments fear a domestic backlash if they are seen to blink first, potentially losing jobs to their rivals.
The West wants rapid Chinese currency appreciation -- but Beijing is strongly resistant, warning it could unleash social turmoil.
Brazil this week effectively increased capital controls and other emerging economies such as South Korea are considering following suit to control currency rises.
Fears of a repeat of Great Depression-style currency and trade tariff struggles dominated the run-up to the weekend's IMF and World Bank meetings as well as Friday's G7 finance talks.
"If one lets this slide into conflict, or for of protectionism, then we run the risk of repeating the mistakes of the 1930s," World Bank president Robert Zoellick told reporters.
In a more conventional national dispute, Beijing and Tokyo locked horns last month after Japan's coastguard detained a Chinese trawler skipper near disputed islands.
That escalated to an apparent de facto embargo of Chinese exports of "rare earth" minerals vital to Japanese industry before the ship's skipper was released.
Some see Japan and Asian nations' sovereign wealth funds following China and Middle Eastern powers in trying to lock down food, mineral and energy supplies in Africa and elsewhere.
Those resource struggles may define the 21st century in the same way conventional wars defined the 20th, some say.
"We are now armed in a different way," said Michael Power, global strategist at Investec.
"We shouldn't sensationalise this idea of a currency war -- but there is a modicum of truth that this is some kind of conflict." He is not alone in that thinking.
The US Naval War College in Rhode Island is teaching mid-ranking officers more than ever before about finance and markets.
"There is growing appreciation for rising and resurgent powers and their abilities...
to complicate US freedom of action," said Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security at the college.
"But there is also hope that effective US outreach to "middle powers" could help constrain China, Russia and others to be more cooperative." CYBER THREATS In a clue as to another form warfare may take in the years to come, Iranian computer syste last month came under attack from what analysts said was likely a "state-built" worm aimed at its nuclear program.
Many analysts suggested Israel or the United States were the likely points of origin -- but cyber attacks offer an appealing deniability.
A Reuters special report this week showed for the first time the scale of U.S.
preparations to meet the threat -- seem largely from emerging powers such as China and Russia.
"While economic interdependence makes conventional hot wars between major powers much less likely, the combination of a rapidly changing geopolitical balance and technological advances on offensive cyber attack capabilities will make state-sponsored industrial espionage a more serious outcome," said Ian Bremmer, president of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group.
Israel kills two Hamas militants in W Bank HEBRON, West Bank, Oct 8 (Reuters): Israeli troops today shot dead two Hamas militants in the West Bank, who were held responsible for the killing of four Israelis a month ago, Israeli and Palestinian officials said.
Security forces killed the two militants in an early morning raid in Hebron, long a flashpoint of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said in a statement that the operation was "a quick response to the murder of the four Israelis".
He said Israel would "continue to act in any place, without compromise and with determination against terror organisations" to maintain calm in the West Bank.
A senior Palestinian security official said Hamas militants Nashat al-Karmi and Mamoun al-Natshi, who were behind the killing of four Israelis on the eve of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks launched last month, were killed in an early morning raid.
Hamas later confirmed two of its local commanders were killed.
The Islamist group, which seized control of the Gaza Strip from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction, opposes the talks and vowed further attacks.
The four Israelis were shot in their vehicle on a highway near Hebron on Aug.
31 in the most lethal attack in the West Bank in four years.
Japan revives push for climate bill,outlook unclear TOKYO, Oct 8 (Reuters): Japan's government today agreed to resurrect a climate bill calling for an emissions trading system and an environment tax, but it remains unclear if the legislation will be enacted in a divided parliament.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan has said he wants to prioritise passing the bill during an extra parliament session ending on December 3., which will also focus on a proposed supplementary budget to support the fragile economy.
But Kan could face a tough time getting it passed.
Opposition parties can block legislation in the upper house and the same bill was shelved earlier this year after parliament ran out of time for debate.
Japan is the world's fifth-biggest greenhouse gas emitter and its pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020 is government policy.
Enacting the bill would make the tough goal legally binding and set a one-year deadline for Japan to design a compulsory emissions trading system.
Currently it only has a voluntary market at the national level based on companies' pledged goals.
The bill also includes a plan for Japan to consider imposing an environment tax from next fiscal year, an aim to boost renewable energy sources to 10 per cent of primary energy supply by 2020 from around 3 per cent currently and a target to cut emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
In addition to the environment tax and emissions trading scheme, the government has been considering a so-called "feed-in" tariff system for consumers to share the costs electric power fir pay to introduce renewable energy.
Vietnam defence talks to steer clear of controversy HANOI, Oct 8 (Reuters): Concerns over China's maritime ambitions are likely to remain muted at an Asia-Pacific defence ministers' meeting in Hanoi next week as participants steer clear of friction to nurture a potentially useful new security forum.
China, for its part, is likely to play nice at the defence meeting and a summit in Vietnam later this month in an effort to reassure its neighbours that it can be reasonable and cooperative as the dust settles from an angry territorial row with Japan.
On Tuesday, defence chiefs from the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) will come to the table for the first time with eight partners -- the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, Russia, India, Australia and New Zealand.
Carlyle Thayer, with the University of New South Wales in Australia, said success for the so-called ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM) Plus talks would be measured by the fact that "the ministers met and no one country gets singled out".
Underscoring that point, Vietnam's Deputy Defence Minister Nguyen Chi Vinh said the meeting would try to identify common interests and avoid becoming "a place for a war of words".
Vietnam this week asked for the unconditional release of nine sailors detained by China fishing near the Paracel Islands.
But Vinh said that issue was not linked to the meeting and Vietnam's top priority was to have the ADMM Plus get off to a smooth start.
Beneath the surface, Vietnam and others harbour renewed concern about the hardening of China's position in long-running disputes over sovereignty in the South China Sea and elsewhere, and China's recent hawkish behaviour.
The South China Sea issue leapt to the fore when foreign ministers from six ASEAN members, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and several others raised concerns at the last major ASEAN meeting in July, prompting a tirade from China.
REASSURING NEIGHBOURS China's territorial ambitions again made headlines when Beijing issued threats and effectively suspended the supply of rare earth metals to Japan after it detained the captain of a Chinese fishing boat that collided with Japanese vessels off disputed islands.
China denied any fresh restrictions on rare earth exports.
But Susan Shirk, a China security expert at the University of California, San Diego, said China would probably want to project a calming message at the ADMM Plus and the East Asia Summit later in October.
"I expect that China will use these two meetings to reassure its neighbours and the US that despite its sharp words over the past months, it remains a responsible power interested in cooperation," she said.
On the sidelines next week, China's Defence Minister Liang Guanglie and Japan's Toshimi Kitazawa may meet to try to help soothe bilateral ties still strained by the boat incident.
US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates was also likely to meet Liang for their first talks since China froze military ties in protest against planned US ar sales to Taiwan.
Ernest Bower, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank, said he expected participants to try to play down U.S.-China tension in an attempt to build up the fledgling Asian defense ministers' forum.
"I think there will be every effort to not make the Chinese feel singled out.
The goal here is to build confidence," he said.
"This is really significant to the US because it's the core of regional security and defense architecture for the region that will be key to solving the problem of a rising China that is feeling pretty muscular." The 10-member ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Pakistan to probe video showing "army killings" ISLAMABAD, Oct 8 (Reuters): Pakistan army chief General Ashfaq Kayani ordered today an investigation into a video posted on the Internet showing men in Pakistani military fatigues shooting at a group of what the military said were civilians.
The video raised fresh questions about alleged extra-judicial killings by the army, while Pakistan faces mounting US pressure to crack down harder on militants launching attacks on Western forces in Afghanistan from Pakistani sanctuaries.
The US officials said last week they had asked Pakistan for information about the Internet video purporting to show Pakistani troops lined up in a firing squad shooting bound and blindfolded men in traditional Pakistani clothing.
Human Rights Watch this year briefed the US State Department and congressional officials about evidence of more than 200 summary executions of suspected Taliban sympathisers by Pakistani soldiers in Swat, a former Taliban stronghold.
Pakistan denied the allegations.
Tom Malinowski, Washington director for Human Rights Watch, told Reuters last week although the video's authenticity remained a subject of debate, the occurance of such abuses was not.
The military said Kayani vowed to take action if the perpetrators were found to be soldiers, and has set up a board of inquiry to establish the identity of "uniformed personnel".
"It is not expected of a professional army to engage in excesses against the people whom it is trying to guard against the scourge of terrorism," the military quoted Kayani as saying in a statement.
"(It is) unacceptable under any circutances." However, Kayani cautioned against "reaching hasty conclusion" as previously militants had disguised theelves as soldiers during a number of attacks including one on military headquarters in the city of Rawalpindi last year.
If the blurry, amateurish video is found to be genuine, it is likely to raise troubling questions for Washington about its support for an army which is vital for efforts to stabilise Afghanistan.
law forbids funding foreign military units singled out for human rights violations.
The video has been on YouTube since late last month and has been circulated on blogs related to Pakistan, Afghanistan and the region, as well as on a Facebook page for a group called Pashtuns' International Association.
There is no clear indication in the video where the events occurred but it is labeled "Swat", a valley northwest of the capital, Islamabad, where many ethnic Pashtun people live.
The military drove most Pakistani Taliban militants from the valley after a couple of years of intermittent fighting.
Trial urged for US soldier accused of Afghan murders SEATTLE, Oct 8 (Reuters): A military judge has recommended the court-martial of a US soldier charged with murdering Afghan civilians for sport, collecting fingers from bodies and other crimes, according to documents obtained by Reuters.
The investigating officer who conducted an evidentiary hearing yesterday in the case last week found "reasonable grounds exist to believe" that Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock committed the offenses he is accused of and should stand trial, according to a 10-page report.
Morlock, 22, the first of 12 infantrymen from his unit to be prosecuted in the case, is charged with three counts of premeditated murder and other offenses for which he could face the death penalty if convicted.
The case has drawn intense media attention because Morlock and fellow soldiers are accused of taking ghoulish photos of corpses and taking body parts as war trophies -- inflammatory charges that recall worldwide outrage at pictures of nude Iraqi prisoners of war taken by US military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
The US Army confirmed the investigating officer's report was complete but declined to comment on its contents.
The report is now in the hands of a special court-martial convening authority, said Army spokeswoman Major Kathleen Turner at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington, where Morlock's brigade is based, and where the so-called Article 32 hearing was held on September 27.
For the military equivalent of a trial to be held, the recommendation must ultimately be affirmed by a general court-martial convening authority, a process that could take several weeks.
'ROGUE PLATOON' Morlock, a corporal from Wasilla, Alaska, is one of five soldiers charged with murder in the investigation and described by prosecutors as part of a band of hashish-smoking infantrymen who terrorized innocent Afghan civilians.
Seven others from his unit are charged with lesser offenses, such as conspiracy.
The case against all 12 men ste from their recent deployment as part of the 5th Stryker Brigade, recently renamed the 2nd Stryker Brigade, in Kandahar province, a stronghold for Taliban insurgents.
Prosecutors characterized Morlock as the right-hand man to the accused ringleader, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs.
Morlock's civilian lawyer, Michael Waddington, said the three slain Afghans -- two killed by grenades and rifle fire, one by gunfire only -- were victi of a "rogue platoon running around killing people," and that his client, while present, "did not cause the deaths of any of these individuals." Army Colonel Thomas Molloy, the presiding officer for the Article 32 hearing, wrote in his report that Morlock had confessed to the most serious offenses against him during three interviews with investigators.
Molloy added Morlock was also implicated by the accounts of other soldiers.
While acknowledging a lack of physical evidence tying Morlock to the three deaths, Molloy disputed Waddington's suggestion that Morlock's judgment had been impaired due to a cocktail of drugs he was using at the time, including hashish, opium and various prescription medications.
"In the eyes of his leaders and fellow soldiers, he (Morlock) was an effective, reliable, engaged team leader," Molloy wrote, adding he "found no evidence that the accused was behaving in an erratic, impaired or irrational manner ...
at the time of the alleged offenses." Another lawyer for Morlock, Geoffrey Nathan, said the overall case against his client, who is in pretrial detention, was built on the thinnest of evidence.
"How do you hold someone when there were no bodies, no weapons, no bullets, absolutely no forensic proof, except cry babies who pointed the finger at my client?" Nathan said.
A Pentagon spokesman said the next Article 32 hearing in the case was set for October 19 for a soldier charged with conspiracy to commit murder of Afghan civilians.
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