U.S. in peace talks with Taliban, Karzai says

Afghan President Hamid Karzai confirmed Saturday for the first time that the Afghan and U.S. governments have begun peace discussions with Taliban insurgents, saying that the talks “have started already” and are “going well,” according to news accounts. He said foreign military forces, “especially the United States,” are “going ahead with these negotiations.”

At the same time, however, Karzai blasted the international governments and forces that have been assisting and defending his government over the past decade.

“The nations of the world which are here in our country are here for their own national interests,” he said, according to the official transcript of his speech to a youth conference at his presidential palace. “They are using our country.”

Karzai’s comments came as three suicide attackers in Afghan army uniforms attacked a nearby police facility in a bustling market district, igniting a three-hour gun battle that killed all three assailants, two policemen and four civilians. A Taliban spokesman quickly asserted the group’s responsibility.

News accounts of the president’s remarks varied, and the official palace version did not include any mention of peace talks. One news agency quoted him as saying talks had gone on “in the course of this year” and that various Taliban emissaries had met with members of the peace council he set up last year to negotiate.

A government spokesman, Hakim Ashur, quoted Karzai as telling the group: “We would like our disgruntled Taliban brothers to come and accept the Afghan constitution, the gains of the past 10 years, democracy and the right of free press and women. Americans support this process and are also involved in the peace process.”

No details were cited on the American role, and U.S. Embassy officials declined to comment. The Washington Post reported last month that administration officials had held several preliminary meetings this spring, in Germany and Qatar, with senior Taliban officials they believed to be close to Afghan Taliban leader Mohammad Omar. Karzai’s comments were the first public confirmation by the Afghan government of what he called “substantial” meetings.

In his comments critical of the international presence in Afghanistan, the president complained that NATO weapons pollute the environment and that foreign aid to Afghanistan amounts to far less than what the foreign forces take away. He also criticized Western forces for killing innocent people in Libya.

“It is just for their national interest that they put our lives under their feet and dishonor the people,” he said.

Karzai has voiced increasing antagonism toward U.S. and NATO forces here, blaming them repeatedly for civilian casualties and suggesting that they are becoming an occupying force. Yet Afghan officials have also expressed concern about Afghan security and stability once U.S. forces begin a withdrawal planned for between now and 2014.

Saturday’s suicide attack on a police station in a crowded area of the capital served as another reminder of the Taliban’s apparent determination to continue spreading terror, even as its leaders entertain initial discussions of peace.

Police officials and witnesses said that just after noon, they saw three young men running through a market toward the police facility. One was shot dead at the entrance gate, and the other two forced their way inside and opened fire. One was shot and killed and the second later blew himself up.

It was the first terrorist assault in downtown Kabul since April 18, when a suicide bomber in army dress penetrated the Ministry of Defense headquarters, killing two soldiers before being shot dead. But Taliban fighters have kept up a drumbeat of attacks across the country, as well as targeting a number of officials in northern Afghanistan for assassination.

“I saw three boys run toward the police station wearing army uniforms. One ran past and the others shouted, ‘Come back, this is the place,’ ” said Omid Ziai, 18, a shopkeeper selling sheets and towels on the next block. “One of them was shot right away, but the others went inside, and there was furious fire for a long time.”

Deputy city police chief Daoud Amin said the attackers who entered the police facility killed two officers and four civilians who were visiting the office. None of the civilians was immediately identified, but another police official said at least one may have been a foreigner.

Other witnesses, including a guard at a nearby bank, described hearing or seeing a rocket land in the immediate area just before the attack, causing a huge explosion and setting numerous shops on fire. The area, one of the busiest shopping centers in the capital, was quickly deserted, with abandoned merchandise scattered across the sidewalks.

The body of one attacker lay outside the police building for several hours amid the noise of the gun battle and the chaos of police and emergency vehicles. A second was brought out later, and both were put in ambulances. Both appeared to be men in their late teens or early 20s and were wearing camouflage uniforms over Muslim robes. 

Syria forces storm border town near Turkey

(Post by Khorsheda-Newstoday)Syrian troops and gunmen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad stormed a town near the Turkish border Saturday, burning houses and arresting dozens, witnesses said, in a persistent military campaign to crush popular revolt.

The latest assault followed another Friday of protests, which have grown in size and scope over the last three months, despite Assad's violent clampdown on public dissent. Activists said security forces shot dead 19 protesters Friday.

"They came at 7 a.m. to Bdama. I counted nine tanks, 10 armored carriers, 20 jeeps and 10 buses. I saw shabbiha (pro-Assad gunmen) setting fire to two houses," said Saria Hammouda, a lawyer living in the border town in the Jisr al-Shughour region, where thousands of Syrians had fled to Turkey after the army clamped down on the area this month.

Bdama is one of the nerve centers providing food and supplies to several thousand other Syrians who have escaped the violence from frontier villages but chose to take shelter temporarily in fields on the Syrian side of the boundary.

Bdama's residents don't dare take bread to the refugees and the refugees are fearful of arrests if they go into Bdama for food," Rami Abdulrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Another witness said government troops were also burning crops on nearby hillsides in an apparent scorched earth policy.

European powers initiated a detente with Assad before the unrest to try to draw the Syrian leader away from Iran and also stabilize Lebanon.

But they now say Damascus should face tougher sanctions over the violence against demonstrators seeking more political freedoms and an end to corruption and poverty.

Syrian rights groups say at least 1,300 civilians have been killed and 10,000 people detained since March. One group has said more than 300 soldiers and police have also been killed.

"SECURITY GRIP IS WEAKENING"S

Tens of thousands rallied across Syria Friday, defying Assad's repression and ignoring a pledge that his tycoon cousin Rami Makhlouf, a symbol of corruption among the elite, would renounce his business empire and channel his wealth to charity.

People rallied in the southern province of Deraa where the revolt began, in the Kurdish northeast, the province of Deir al-Zor near Iraq's Sunni heartland, the city of Hama north of Damascus, on the coast and in suburbs of the capital itself.

"The security grip is weakening because the protests are growing in numbers and spreading. More people are risking their lives to demonstrate. The Syrian people realize that this is an opportunity for liberty that comes once in hundreds of years," opposition figure Walid al-Bunni.

The Local Coordination Committees, a main activist group linked to protesters, said 10 demonstrators were killed on Friday in Homs, a merchant city of 1 million people in central Syria.

State television said a policeman was killed by gunmen.

One protester was also reported killed in the northern commercial hub of Aleppo, the first to die there in the unrest.

Thousands of people turned up to a funeral of a dead protester in Deir al-Zor, chanting anti-government slogans, Abdulrahman said.

The state news agency said nine people, including civilians and police, were killed in attacks by gunmen. Syria blames armed gangs and Islamists, backed by foreign powers, for the violence.

The Syrian government has barred most international journalists from the country, making it difficult to verify accounts from activists and officials.

Two towns on the main Damascus-Aleppo highway north of Homs were also encircled by troops and tanks, residents said, five days after the army retook Jisr al-Shughour, sending thousands fleeing across the border into Turkey.

Refugees from the northwestern region said troops and gunmen loyal to Assad known as "shabbiha" were pressing on with a scorched earthed campaign in the hill farm area by burning crops, ransacking houses and shooting randomly.

The International Federation for Human Rights and the U.S.-based Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies said in a statement that, according to local sources, Syrian forces had killed more than 130 people and arrested over 2,000 in Jisr al-Shughour and surrounding villages over the last few days.

The number of refugees who have crossed over into Turkey from Syria has reached 10,114, and another 10,000 were sheltering by the border just inside Syria, according to Turkish officials.

Journalists were given a brief tour of the Boynuyogun refugee camp in Hatay, where some 3,500 people were living in 600 tents.

One refugee described how security forces clamped down on anti-Assad demonstrations.

"We wrote anti-regime slogans on the walls. Then the government reacted by erasing the slogans and they arrested the guy who tore down Assad's picture," said a 26-year-old man from Jisr al-Shughour who said his name was Mohammed.

Another refugee named Adam said security forces arrested people in the middle of the night a couple of weeks after the demonstrations.

"They came to my house ... they started hitting me with the butts of their rifles on my back and head. They said "Is this the freedom you're asking for?'"

SECURITY COUNCIL DEADLOCK

Assad has responded to the unrest with a mix of military repression and political gestures aimed at placating protesters.

He has faced international condemnation over the bloodshed, and has seen the first signs of cracks in his security forces after a clash in Jisr al-Shughour earlier this month in which the government said 120 security personnel were killed.

There have been no mass desertions from the military, but the loyalty of Sunni Muslim conscripts might waver if the crackdown on mainly Sunni protesters continues.

Assad's family and many military commanders are members of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam. In a spillover of the unrest into Lebanon, Sunni and Alawite gunmen clashed in the northern city of Tripoli and four people were killed.