A bomb went off outside the Danish embassy in the Pakistani capital on Monday killing at least four people and wounding several, officials said. The blast destroyed the embassy gate and damaged the building and vehicles in the compound in the up-market district of Islamabad.
An agreement banning cluster bombs has cheered human rights campaigners, but powerful military states are refusing to join it and experts say the treaty is riddled with holes and could prove unworkable. The agreement commits 111 countries to banning the use of cluster munitions.
The Canadian Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier, dubbed ”Bumbling Bernier” by his critics, resigned on Tuesday after admitting that he left sensitive government documents at the home of his former girlfriend. Bernier (45) has come under criticism in recent weeks after it emerged that the woman concerned, Julie Couillard, had been involved in relationships with men linked to the Hells Angels.
Australian soldiers are ashamed of their low-risk missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and are scorned by troops of other nations, two officers charged in comments published on Tuesday. ”The restrictions and policies enforced on infantrymen in Iraq have resulted in the widespread perception that our army is plagued by institutional cowardice,” Major Jim Hammett said.
The United Nations said on Monday that a Russian air force plane shot down an unmanned Georgian spy drone over Abkhazia last month, strengthening Tbilisi’s claims that Moscow is aiding the rebel territory.The UN report was the weightiest independent endorsement to date of Tbilisi’s allegation that a Russian jet downed its spy plane on April 20.
Democratic party officials disclosed on Thursday that Barack Obama has sanctioned a hunt for a vice-presidential candidate, a further sign that he regards the battle with Hillary Clinton as being over. Time magazine, in a report in its next issue, quotes a friend of Bill Clinton saying he wants his wife to be the vice-presidential candidate.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili declared victory on Thursday in a parliamentary election that the opposition said was rigged in his favour and vowed to challenge by calling street protests. Saakashvili said Wednesday’s vote was fair, but the rigging allegations and the threat of protests will test his claim to lead the most democratic state in the region.
Seventeen years have gone by since T-90 tanks last rolled across the historic cobbles of Moscow’s Red Square. But on Friday they were back — with an unmistakable diesel-fumed roar — and trundling past Lenin’s tomb and the fantastic domes of St Basil’s Cathedral. Led by a rather tubby general holding a sword, Russia held its annual Victory Day parade.
Russia’s deployment of extra troops in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia has brought the prospect of war ”very close”, a minister of ex-Soviet Georgia said on Tuesday. Separately, the ”foreign minister” of the breakaway Black Sea region was quoted as saying it was ready to hand over military control to Russia.
The Pentagon is considering sending up to 7 000 more United States troops to Afghanistan next year to make up for a shortfall in contributions from Nato allies, the New York Times reported on Saturday. The paper said the push could drive US forces in Afghanistan to about 40 000.
Russia showed off on Tuesday the first modernised Tupolev Tu-160 strategic bomber, which a senior air force official said would help Moscow match the nuclear capability of a potential enemy. Russian television showed the giant, white-painted airplane releasing parachutes to slow down the speed as it landed at Engels airbase in the Volga region of Saratov.
A suspected suicide bomber killed 15 Afghans and wounded 14 more in eastern Afghanistan, close to the border with Pakistan on Tuesday, a Nato spokesperson said. The Taliban have vowed to step up suicide attacks this year to undermine the faith of Afghans in the ability of their government to provide security.
Robert Kagan, author, essayist, former diplomat, pre-eminent thinker of what is called ”neoconservatism” — and now foreign policy adviser to Republican presidential nominee John McCain — would like it to be known that there are many things that he is not.
Denmark has evacuated staff from its embassies in Algeria and Afghanistan because of terror threats following the reprint in Danish newspapers of a caricature depicting the Prophet Muhammad, officials said on Wednesday. The threat ”is so concrete that we had to take this decision”, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said.
The alleged downing by a Russian MiG-29 of a Georgian reconnaissance drone could be a foretaste of battles to come as Georgia seeks Nato membership and protection from the West, analysts say. The dramatic confrontation in the skies over Abkhazia pitted one of the most modern Russian fighter planes against the unmanned aircraft.
Carla del Ponte, the former chief prosecutor for war crimes in former Yugoslavia, has unleashed a storm of recrimination with allegations of a trade in human body parts in Kosovo and Albania after Nato bombed Serbia in 1999. Del Ponte’s claims are based on what she describes as credible reports and witnesses.
Russia will take military and other steps along its borders if ex-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia join Nato, Russian news agencies quoted the armed forces’ chief of staff as saying on Friday. ”Russia will take steps aimed at ensuring its interests along its borders,” the agencies quoted General Yuri Baluyevsky as saying.
Hillary Clinton’s faltering presidential campaign will undergo a ”mini-makeover” that will emphasise her more caring side following the departure of its main strategist, Mark Penn. Penn’s exit, announced on Sunday, follows clashes over his outside work for other clients as well as screaming matches with senior campaign staff and withering criticism of his strategy.
United States President George Bush’s attempts to patch up the US’s battered relationship with Russia failed on Sunday when Vladimir Putin said he continued to oppose the US’s European missile defence plans. Bush and Putin held talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. It was their last encounter before Putin steps down as president.
United States President George Bush and Russia’s Vladimir Putin will have one last chance on Sunday to try to mend frayed relations face-to-face but with little hope of resolving the biggest dispute that divides them. In a farewell summit the two leaders — both in the twilight of their terms — will use their personal chemistry to try to bridge differences.
President Vladimir Putin on Friday maintained Russian opposition to a United States missile defence system and Nato’s enlargement during talks with alliance leaders, officials said. No progress was reported from the summit but Putin, in his last major international appearance before stepping down in May, and Nato leaders said the talks had been positive.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday started a tense summit with Nato leaders amid mounting tensions over United States anti-missile defence plans and the alliance’s expansion toward Russian territory. In a rare moment of cooperation, Russia and Nato concluded a deal on land transit for non-military freight to Afghanistan.
Greek and Turkish Cypriots on Thursday pulled down barricades that have separated them for half a century, reopening Ledra Street, a potent symbol of Cyprus’s ethnic partition. The highly symbolic gesture comes as the two communities prepare talks to end the Mediterranean island’s division.
Zimbabweans waited anxiously on Thursday for an end to a deafening official silence over the outcome of their presidential election, after the opposition took control of Parliament. The country’s electoral commission wrapped up final results on the parliamentary contest in the early hours, in which President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party lost its majority.
United States President George Bush set the stage for a clash at his last Nato summit on Wednesday by pressing reluctant West European allies to set former Soviet republics Georgia and Ukraine on a path to membership. He also urged allies to follow the example of France and host nation Romania in providing extra troops for Nato’s battle against Islamist insurgents in Afghanistan.
Muslim nations on Friday condemned a film by a Dutch lawmaker that accuses the Qur’an of inciting violence, and Dutch Muslim leaders urged restraint. Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration Freedom Party, launched his short video on the internet on Thursday evening, prompting an al-Qaeda-linked website to call for his death.
The fate of bids by ex-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia to join Nato will show if the Western alliance is serious about cooperating with Russia or bent on going it alone, a Kremlin spokesperson said on Friday. Dmitry Peskov said that despite its longstanding status as a partner of Nato, Moscow was still at a loss about the alliance’s plans.
The new United Nations envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, arrived in Kabul on Friday with a pledge to improve coordination with President Hamid Karzai’s government. ”The Afghan government has asked for that for a very long time and we have to respond in a better way than we have managed so far,” said Eide.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday declared the birth of an Anglo-French axis as a force for progress in Europe and the world, on issues ranging from climate change and nuclear power to United Nations reform and the war in Afghanistan.
Russian president-elect Dmitry Medvedev maintained pressure on Nato on Tuesday not to grant membership to Ukraine and Georgia, saying a week before an alliance summit that it would undermine European security. Ukraine and Georgia are lobbying Nato to grant them a Membership Action Plan, which is seen as the first step towards joining the alliance.
Serbia has formally proposed partitioning Kosovo along ethnic lines for the first time, asking the United Nations to ensure that Belgrade can control key institutions and functions in areas of the newly independent country where Serbs form a majority.
Islamic militants in a Pakistani border town blew up 36 tankers supplying fuel for United States and Nato troops in neighbouring Afghanistan, wounding up to 100 people, officials said on Monday. The rebels late on Sunday destroyed the tankers that were parked in Landikotal, the main town of the troubled Khyber tribal district.