‘US strike’ kills 27 in Pakistan

At least 27 militants have been killed in a suspected US missile attack in north-west Pakistan, officials say.

The missile strike hit a house in the South Waziristan area, near the Afghan border, which officials said was used as a hide-out for Taleban militants.

The US has carried out more than 20 air strikes from drones in north-western Pakistan in recent months.

President Asif Zardari has told US TV that the Taleban are now established across much of Pakistan.

“We’re fighting for the survival of Pakistan. We’re not fighting for the survival of anyone else,” CBS says he told them in an interview to be screened on Sunday.

Islamabad has long argued that US air strikes complicate its own fight against insurgents, and violate its sovereignty.

Pakistani leaders had expressed hope that the new US administration of Barack Obama would halt the controversial manoeuvres.

But earlier this week Mr Obama said there was no doubt militants were operating in safe havens in Pakistan’s tribal belt and that the US would make sure Pakistan was a strong ally in fighting that threat.

Wanted militant

The latest suspected drone attack took place on Saturday morning in a village near the town of Ladha.

A house owned by a local clan member was struck by two missiles. Most of the dead were Uzbeks, officials say. Several people were wounded.

Witnesses in the area say the rockets were fired from a drone and say the house was frequented by militants from Pakistani Taleban leader Baitullah Mehsud’s organisation.

The BBC’s Shoaib Hasan, in Islamabad, says Mehsud is one of the most wanted men in the region.

Our correspondent says Mehsud is believed to be responsible for a number of atrocities, including the assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto – President Zardari’s wife.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7889950.stm

China banks told to halt lending to US banks

BEIJING, Sept 25 (Reuters) – Chinese regulators have told domestic banks to stop interbank lending to U.S. financial institutions to prevent possible losses during the financial crisis, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday.

The Hong Kong newspaper cited unidentified industry sources as saying the instruction from the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) applied to interbank lending of all currencies to U.S. banks but not to banks from other countries.

“The decree appears to be Beijing’s first attempt to erect defences against the deepening U.S. financial meltdown after the mainland’s major lenders reported billions of U.S. dollars in exposure to the credit crisis,” the SCMP said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSPEK16693720080925

Rice to make ‘significant’ speech on Russia

*I am starting to really wonder if the webbot predictions are correct…I believe there will be some interesting events transpiring the next month *

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will give “a significant speech” on Thursday about the consequences for Russia over its invasion of Georgia, a senior US official said.

“I would describe it as a significant speech about US-Russia relations as well as about Russia’s place within the international system,” the State Department official told reporters Wednesday on the condition of anonymity.

The speech will provide “an analysis of how we have gotten to this point, it talks about the kinds of choices Russia had before it and it talks about the international system and its response to Russia,” he said.

The official was referring to choices Russia had before it invaded neighboring Georgia on August 7 and recognized the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

When asked if the speech would mention future possible measures or would be limited to the current responses of the international community, the official replied by saying “future possible” measures.

Since mid-August, Rice has hinted at retaliatory steps for Moscow’s “disproportionate” military action against Georgia.

Several US officials have since raised the possibility of suspending negotiations for admitting Russia to the World Trade Organization.

They have even talked of excluding it from the Group of Eight leading industrial nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080917190529.6pmgtbo5&show_article=1

Suspected U.S. missiles hit Pakistani village

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — Pakistani intelligence officials are reporting a suspected U.S. missile strike on a militant stronghold near the Afghan border.

Two intelligence officials said informants told them that several missiles hit a house in the South Waziristan region on Wednesday evening. They had no immediate word on any casualties.

They said an unmanned drone of the type used by U.S. forces in Afghanistan was heard in the area shortly before the attack.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak openly to the media.

A spokesman for the Pakistan army said it was looking into reports about the incident.

http://www.wral.com/news/national_world/world/story/3560285/

US agrees to sell mini bunker-busters to Israel

Last week Israel’s request for a fresh supply of GBU-28 bunker-busters, each weighing two tons and capable of punching through reinforced concrete, was turned down by the US.

Instead, America has agreed to sell 1,000 versions of a much-smaller satellite-guided bomb capable of hitting underground targets, albeit at a shallower depth.

Iran’s nuclear facilities are located at a number of separate locations, some of which are buried underground.

The United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, yesterday said Iran had increased its uranium enrichment programme and was not co-operating with an inspections process.

Its latest report came as dozens of Iranian warplanes carried out their most extensive military exercises for several months.

Israel has said it will not rule out the use of military force to prevent Iran, the sworn enemy of the Jewish state, from “going nuclear”.

Israel is the recipient of more US aid than any other country, with a memorandum of understanding signed last year between the two countries committing Washington to provide $30 billion spread over the next decade.

This is up from the annual $2.4 billion package of recent years and reflects concerns in America that Israel faces a growing military threat, most acutely from Iran.

Throughout the 1990s Israel used to receive a joint military-civilian package of $2.4 billion in aid each year but recently it was shifted to be purely military aid.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/2963036/US-agrees-to-sell-mini-bunker-busters-to-Israel.html

Pakistanis furious over U.S.-led border raid

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan is determined to defend its territorial integrity, the country’s foreign minister said on Thursday, as anger mounted over a raid by U.S.-led troops on a remote border village.

The pre-dawn helicopter-borne ground assault on the village of Angor Adda on the Afghan border on Wednesday was the first known incursion into Pakistan by U.S.-led troops since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Twenty people, including women and children were killed, officials said, and a new civilian government, more sensitive to public anger than the previous government, summoned the U.S. ambassador to lodge an angry protest.

Foreign Minister Shah Memood Qureshi said the raid was a shameful violation of rules of engagement agreed with U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.

“We will not compromise on any violation of our sovereignty,” Qureshi told the National Assembly.

“We will defend and … we have a resolve and we have national consensus in Pakistan to defend our territorial integrity,” he said. Both houses of parliament later adopted resolutions condemning the attack.

The United States, a major source of aid to nuclear-armed Pakistan, has not officially commented on the raid but there is little, if any, doubt it was carried out by U.S. troops.

The United States says al Qaeda and Taliban militants lurk in sanctuaries in northwest Pakistan’s ethnic Pashtun tribal areas on the Afghan border, where they orchestrate attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan and plot violence in the West.

Pakistan has been a close U.S. ally in the unpopular campaign against terrorism and has tens of thousands of troops battling militants but it rules out incursions by foreign troops.

There have, however, been numerous missile strikes on militants in Pakistan, most believed launched by U.S.-operated pilotless drone aircraft.

NATO’s Afghan peacekeeping force, led by a U.S. general, denied involvement. The United States leads a separate, counter-insurgency force in Afghanistan.

Asked about the raid in South Waziristan, a Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said: “I have nothing for you on those reports.” The CIA referred questions to the Pentagon.

“FURIOUS”

Analysts said the raid will test ties between the allies.

“The people of Pakistan are furious,” said former foreign secretary Shamshad Ahmed Khan.

“At a minimum they want an apology … and an assurance that this kind of operation will not be repeated … It could have an irreparable effect on long-term relations.”

Since the emergence of a civilian-led government after February elections, there has been growing concern that U.S. military operations were becoming more aggressive.

The number of missile attacks launched by drones has multiplied, and there had been fears U.S. forces would use helicopter gunships or put troops on the ground for “hot pursuit” or commando-style raids to destroy al Qaeda nests.

“This is what Pakistan feared,” said military affairs analyst Ayesha Siddiqa, adding she expected more U.S. strikes.

“The government has protested, there will be a lot of anger, but the situation will continue … the relationship won’t break down but there’s going to be more bitterness.”

While in the past, the government led by former president Pervez Musharraf could virtually ignore public anger, the civilian government led by the widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto will feel pressure.

Asif Ali Zardari, who looks set to become president in an election by legislators on Saturday, is seen as close to the United States but ordinary Pakistanis, many of whom harbor anti-American feelings, will expect him to take a stand.

Zardari, in a commentary published in the Washington Post, repeated his determination to defeat the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan and ensure that Pakistani territory is not used for attacks into Afghanistan. He did not mention the raid.

Pakistani military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said such raids risked forcing people into the arms of the militants and inciting an uprising in the tribal lands.

Khan said the raid looked like an act of U.S. desperation: “They are in election mode and apparently the Bush administration is desperate to score points.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080904/wl_nm/pakistan_usa_dc

US in Pakistan??

ISLAMABAD, Sept. 3 — At least 20 people were killed in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday after U.S. and Afghan troops crossed from Afghanistan to pursue Taliban insurgents in an early morning attack that marked the first known instance in which U.S. forces conducted an operation on Pakistani soil since the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan began, according to witnesses and a Pakistani official.

The United States has conducted occasional air and artillery strikes against insurgents lodged across the border in Pakistani territory, and “hot pursuit” rules provide some room for U.S. troops to maneuver in the midst of battle. But the arrival of three U.S. helicopters in the village of Musa Nika, clearly inside the Pakistani border, drew a sharp response from Pakistani officials.

“We strongly object to the incursion of ISAF troops on Pakistani territory,” said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, chief spokesman for the Pakistani military, referring to the International Security Assistance Force, the coalition of U.S. and other NATO troops that has been battling the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan since 2001.

A U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan referred requests for comment on the incident to U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa. A CENTCOM spokesman reached by phone in Tampa on Wednesday declined to comment.

Many details of the incident remain unclear, including the number of ground troops and helicopters involved, and whether U.S. troops were among those that left the helicopters and conducted a ground operation in the village. Pakistani military officials said two helicopters landed at Musa Nika, while villagers said there were three.

According to Pakistani military and other sources, the attack began a little after 3 a.m. when three U.S. army helicopters carrying American and Afghan troops landed in Musa Nika in the Pakistani tribal area of South Waziristan. According to a Pakistani security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly on the incident, several of the troops then left the helicopters and launched a ground assault on three houses where Taliban fighters were believed to be hiding.

One of the homes belonged to a villager named Pao Jan Ahmedzai Wazir, a local tribesman, said Anwar Shah, a resident of a neighboring village. Several women and children who were inside Wazir’s house and two other homes nearby were killed when U.S. and Afghan troops opened fire on the buildings. “The situation there is very terrible. People are trying to take out the dead bodies,” Shah said.

Maj. Murad Khan, a spokesman for the Pakistani military, said Pakistani authorities have verified that an attack took place in South Waziristan a little before 4 a.m. But he could not confirm whether U.S. troops were involved until an investigation into the incident is complete.

Khan said that coalition troops in Afghanistan are generally barred from crossing into Pakistan’s tribal areas. “We don’t allow foreign troops to operate in our area. Our troops are quite capable of handling the militants on our side,” Khan said.

The attack in Musa Nika comes amid debate over the rules of operation along the area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. In recent months, U.S. officials have intensified pressure on Pakistan to clamp down on Taliban insurgents and al-Qaeda fighters sheltering in areas along the 1,500-mile-long border.

Owais Ghani, governor of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier province, immediately condemned the attack in Musa Nika, saying that several women and children had been killed in the skirmish. Ghani called the cross-border incursion a “direct assault on Pakistan’s sovereignty” and demanded a response from Pakistan’s military.

The Pakistani military appears to have acceded recently to U.S. pressures to step up attacks on extremists in its border areas, launching major offensives on Taliban and al-Qaeda strongholds in two of the country’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas within the past two months.

Yet analysts here in Pakistan’s capital say the incursion into South Waziristan could augur a new strategic turn aimed at cutting off an insurgency that threatens to engulf large swaths of Pakistan and reverse any gains made by U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Last week, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, held a secret meeting with Pakistani Gen. Ashfaq Kayani aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean in the wake of several devastating setbacks for Western and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.

U.S. and Pakistani officials have released few details about discussions at the high-level meeting, which was also attended by Gen. David D. McKiernan, NATO’s top commander in Afghanistan. But a senior Pakistani military official with knowledge of the meeting said that talks between Mullen and Kayani focused in large part on the threat to coalition forces in Afghanistan emanating from insurgents operating inside Pakistan’s borders. The Pakistani military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said the meeting touched on a possible agreement to allow U.S. Special Forces to begin ground operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Abbas denied reports of any agreement for U.S. troops to operate inside Pakistani territory.

A NATO spokesman in Afghanistan said foreign forces are generally prohibited from mounting cross border attacks into Pakistan. The spokesman, who only gave his name as Sgt. Yates, said NATO forces occasionally employ artillery or aerial missiles to target insurgents who attack coalition troops from Pakistani territory, but the rules of engagement are very carefully proscribed. “Our area of operations stops at the border. We don’t go over the border period,” Yates said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/03/AR2008090300523.html?hpid=topnews

U.S. tells Russia to pull forces out of Georgia

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States told Russia on Friday to withdraw its forces from U.S. ally Georgia and stop its air attacks on the tiny Caucasus state following fighting in the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

“We call on Russia to cease attacks on Georgia by aircraft and missiles, respect Georgia’s territorial integrity, and withdraw its ground combat forces from Georgian soil,” U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement.

Rice issued her statement as Georgia, a former Soviet state that now wants to join NATO, said it would declare martial law and battled to get control of the rebel enclave, which was fortified by Russian forces.

Georgia said Russian fighter jets bombed container tankers and a shipbuilding plant in the port of Poti, prompting Washington’s sharpest rebuke of Russia since the crisis began.

“We deplore the Russian military action in Georgia, which is a violation of Georgian sovereignty and territorial integrity,” U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters at a U.N. Security Council meeting in New York.

The State Department summoned the Charge d’Affaires at Russia’s Embassy in Washington, Aleksander Darchiyev, to see Rice’s deputy John Negroponte, who pressed Moscow to stop its military activities in Georgia.

“The deputy secretary said that we deplore today’s Russian attacks by strategic bombers and missiles, which are threatening civilian lives,” said State Department spokesman Robert Wood of Negroponte’s meeting with the Russian diplomat.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/idUSSP24176320080809?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

Mexican Military Infiltrate U.S. Border & Hold U.S. Border Agent At Gunpoint

*This SHOULD be bigger news than it is. Un freakin believable.*

Four Mexican army soldiers entered southern Arizona and pointed their rifles at a U.S. Border Patrol agent early this week, the Border Patrol said.

The incident Sunday was the Mexican military’s 43rd incursion across the U.S. border since October, the agency said. However, it was unusual because firearms were involved. The Border Patrol and the Mexican government are investigating, Border Patrol spokesman Mike Scioli said.

Details remain sketchy, but the incident occurred at 2 a.m. on the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation about 50 miles southeast of Ajo. The incident took place just north of
the border in sight of the new border fence.

The soldiers held their weapons on the agent for several minutes until he identified himself in Spanish, whereupon they lowered their guns and walked back across a gap in the fence, Scioli said.

In Washington, D.C., State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said the encounter “stemmed from a momentary misunderstanding as to the exact location of the U.S.-Mexican border.”

The Mexican army has told the Border Patrol it knew of an incident involving its soldiers, but it did not confirm the details. In years past, the Border Patrol has arrested Mexican soldiers who crossed the border, then typically released them back to Mexico.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2008/08/07/20080807incursion0807.html