Top US commander: Burning Quran endangers troops

By KIMBERLY DOZIER, Associated Press Writer

KABUL, Afghanistan – The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warned Tuesday an American church's threat to burn copies of the Muslim holy book could endanger U.S. troops in the country and Americans worldwide.

"Images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence," Gen. David Petraeus said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

His comments followed a protest Monday by hundreds of Afghans over the plans by Gainesville, Florida-based Dove World Outreach Center — a small, evangelical Christian church that espouses anti-Islam philosophy — to burn copies of the Quran on church grounds to mark the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States that provoked the Afghan war.

Muslims consider the Quran to be the word of God and insist it be treated with the utmost respect, along with any printed material containing its verses or the name of Allah or the Prophet Muhammad. Any intentional damage or show of disrespect to the Quran is deeply offensive.
In 2005, 15 people died and scores were wounded in riots in Afghanistan sparked by a story in Newsweek magazine alleging interrogators at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay placed copies of the Quran in washrooms and flushed one down the toilet to get inmates to talk. Newsweek later retracted the story.

At Monday's protest, several hundred Afghans rallied outside a Kabul mosque, burning American flags and an effigy of Dove World's pastor and chanting "death to America." Members of the crowd briefly pelted a passing U.S. military convoy with stones, but were ordered to stop by rally organizers.

Two days earlier, thousands of Indonesian Muslims rallied outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta and in five other cities to protest the church's plans.

Petraeus warned images of burning Qurans could be used to incite anti-American sentiment similar to the pictures of prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Graib prison.

"I am very concerned by the potential repercussions of the possible (Quran) burning. Even the rumor that it might take place has sparked demonstrations such as the one that took place in Kabul yesterday," Petraeus said in his message. "Were the actual burning to take place, the safety of our soldiers and civilians would be put in jeopardy and accomplishment of the mission would be made more difficult."

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul also issued a statement condemning the church's plans, saying Washington was "deeply concerned about deliberate attempts to offend members of religious or ethnic groups."

Dove World Outreach Center, which made headlines last year after distributing T-shirts that said "Islam is of the Devil," has been denied a permit to set a bonfire but has vowed to proceed with the burning. The congregation's website estimates it has about 50 members, but the church has leveraged the Internet with a Facebook page and blog devoted to its Quran-burning plans.

A surge in troop deployments has brought the number of U.S. forces battling the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan to about 100,000 and Petraeus is asking for 2,000 more soldiers to join the 140,000-strong international force here, NATO officials said Monday. It was unclear how many would be Americans.

Coalition officials said nearly half will be trainers for the rapidly expanding Afghan security forces and will include troops trained to neutralize roadside bombs that have been responsible for about 60 percent of the 2,000 allied deaths in the nearly nine-year war.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not supposed to talk about the issue with media, said the NATO-led command had been asking for the troops even before Petraeus assumed command here in July.

Petraeus recently renewed that request with the NATO command in Brussels. The alliance has had trouble raising more troops for the war effort, with at least 450 training slots still unfilled after more than a year.

With casualties rising, the war has become deeply unpopular in many of NATO's 28 member countries, suggesting the additional forces will have to come from the United States.

Also Tuesday, authorities confirmed the ambush killing of a district chief by suspected insurgents in the northern province of Baghlan on Monday afternoon. Nahrin district chief Rahmad Sror Joshan Pool was on his way home after a memorial service for slain anti-Soviet guerrilla leader Ahmad Shah Massoud when rocket-propelled grenades hit his vehicle, setting it on fire, said provincial spokesman Mahmood Haqmal.

Pool's bodyguard was also killed in the attack, and one militant died and two were wounded in the ensuing fire fight with police, Haqmal said.

Five children were killed and five wounded in Yaya Khil district in the southern province of Paktika when an insurgent rocket fired at an Afghan army base hit a home Monday evening, provincial government spokesman Mokhlais Afghan said.

Kidnappers also seized two electoral workers and their two drivers in the western province of Ghor, according to deputy provincial police chief Ahmad Khan Bashir.

Insurgents have waged a campaign of violence and intimidation to prevent Afghans from voting, especially in rural areas, while some pre-election violence has also been blamed on rivalries among the candidates.
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Associated Press writers Slobodan Lekic in Brussels and Amir Shah in Kabul contributed to this report.

US expects to spend big in Afghanistan for years

By DESMOND BUTLER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – The U.S. government's financial commitment to Afghanistan is likely to linger and reach into the billions long after it pulls combat troops from the country, newly disclosed spending estimates show.

The United States expects to spend about $6 billion a year training and supporting Afghan troops and police after it begins withdrawing its own combat troops in 2011.

The estimates of U.S. spending through 2015, detailed in a NATO training mission document, are an acknowledgment that Afghanistan will remain largely dependent on the United States for its security.

That reality could become problematic for the Obama administration as it continues to seek money for Afghanistan from Congress in a time of increasingly tight budgets.

In Brussels, a NATO official said Monday that alliance commander Gen. David Petraeus had asked for 2,000 more soldiers, with nearly half to be trainers for the rapidly expanding Afghan security forces. The NATO official requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the subject.

The training mission document outlines large-scale infrastructure projects, including a military hospital and military and police academies, aimed at "establishing enduring institutions" and "creating irreversible momentum."

Spending for training is projected to taper off from $11.6 billion next year to an average of $6.2 billion over the following four years. Much of the reduction reflects reduced spending on infrastructure.

The Obama administration recently announced that it intends to ramp up the total Afghan army and police force from nearly 250,000 today to more than 300,000 by late next year. The mission will be largely paid for by the United States, with smaller contributions from NATO allies. The projected multibillion-dollar cost of maintaining those forces would be inconceivable for Afghanistan's small economy without foreign aid.

One of the arguments against dramatically increasing the size of Afghan security forces, even during George W. Bush's administration, was that the Afghan government would be unable to pay for them for the foreseeable future. The NATO document shows that the U.S. will end up footing most of the bill.

The Obama administration has boosted the training mission in preparation for next year's drawdown. The United States spent over $20 billion on training between 2003 and 2009 and expects to spend about the same this year and next alone.

The head of the NATO training mission, U.S. Lt. Gen. Bill Caldwell, said bolstering Afghanistan's security forces is cost-efficient.

"It will always be more expensive to have a coalition force doing something than an Afghan counterpart," Caldwell said in a written response to questions from The Associated Press.
Caldwell said he is sensitive to the concern that the United States is creating dependence and is looking for ways of cutting costs.

"This dependency is something that we think about all the time," he said. "We know the sooner the Afghan systems are up and running the sooner coalition forces can transition responsibilities to the sovereign government."

Todd Harrison, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said it will be difficult to wean the Afghan security forces quickly.

"We really do have a long way to go before this winds down," he said.

Caldwell has said he aims to have Afghan security forces at sufficient numbers to begin a U.S. withdrawal by October 2011. The mission has had to deal with illiteracy, corruption and desertion among Afghan forces.

With much skepticism in Congress, the levels of financing outlined in the document are not guaranteed. While the roughly $6 billion annual cost would not be an enormous line in the defense budget, the administration is facing pressure to shrink the federal deficit.

Even Caldwell has predicted that desertion and injury rates are so high among Afghan forces that NATO will have to recruit and train 141,000 people to ensure it has the 56,000 additional personnel needed next fall.

As money for infrastructure tapers off, most of the projected spending is to retain forces by paying salaries, food and housing.
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Associated Press writer Slobodan Lekic contributed to this report from Brussels.

Indonesian volcano erupts again; strongest yet

By BINSAR BAKKARA, Associated Press Writer

TANAH KARO, Indonesia – An Indonesian volcano shot a towering cloud of black ash high into the air Tuesday, dusting villages 15 miles (25 kilometers) away in its most powerful eruption since awakening last week from four centuries of dormancy.

Some witnesses at the foot of Mount Sinabung reported seeing an orange glow — presumably magma — in cracks along the volcano's slopes for the first time.

"There was a huge, thunderous sound. It sounded like hundreds of bombs going off at one," said Ita Sitepu, 29, who was among thousands of people staying in crowded emergency shelters well away from the base. "Then everything starting shaking. I've never experienced anything like it."

Mount Sinabung's first eruption last week caught many scientists off guard. With more than 129 active volcanoes to watch in this vast archipelago, local vulcanologists had failed to monitor the long-quiet mountain for rising magma, slight uplifts in land and other signs of seismic activity.

Indonesia is a seismically charged region because of its location on the so-called "Ring of Fire" — a series of fault lines stretching from the Western Hemisphere through Japan and Southeast Asia.

There are fears that current activity could foreshadow a much more destructive explosion in the coming weeks or months, though it is possible, too, that Singabung will go back to sleep after letting off steam.

More than 30,000 people living along the volcano's fertile slopes have been relocated to cramped refugee camps, mosques and churches in nearby villages.

But some have insisted on returning to the danger zone to check on their homes and their dust-covered crops.

The government sent dozens of trucks to the mountain to help carry them back before Tuesday's eruption, which sent ash and debris shooting three miles (5,000 meters) into the air, said Surono, who heads the nation's volcano alert center.

"It was really terrifying," said Anissa Siregar, 30, as she and her two children arrived at one of the makeshift camps, adding that the mountain shook violently for at least three minutes. "It just keeps getting worse."

Local media said ash had reached as far as Berastagi, a district 15 miles (25 kilometers) from the base of the mountain.

Surono, who, like many Indonesians, uses only one name, said activity was definitely on the rise: There were more than 80 volcanic earthquakes in the 24-hour lead-up to the blast, compared to 50 on Friday, when ash and debris shot nearly two miles (3,000 meters).

The eruption early Tuesday occurred just after midnight during a torrential downpour. Witnesses said volcanic ash and mud oozed down the mountain's slopes, flooding into abandoned homes. Others said saw bursts of fire and hot ash.

The force of the explosion could be felt five miles (eight kilometers) away.

Indonesia has recorded some of the largest eruptions in history.

The 1815 explosion of Mount Tambora buried the inhabitants of Sumbawa Island under searing ash, gas and rock, killing an estimated 88,000 people.

The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa could be heard 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) away and blackened skies region-wide for months. At least 36,000 people were killed in the blast and the tsunami that followed.
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Associated Press writer Niniek Karmini contributed to this report from Jakarta.

Ahmadinejad predicts failure of Mideast talks, Israel - Summary

Fri, 03 Sep 2010

Tehran - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Friday that this week's Mideast peace talks as well as Israel itself were "doomed to collapse" as millions of Iranians were expected to turn out for state-organized anti-Israel rallies.

Iran marks the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan as Quds (Jerusalem) Day, during which the nationwide rallies are held. This year's rallies coincided with the first direct Middle East peace talks in almost two years, which were held in Washington.

The highlight of Quds Day was Friday prayers at Tehran University, where Ahmadinejad held the first sermon.

The president told the worshippers that the future of the Palestinian territories would be determined by the Palestinians themselves "and not in Washington, London or Paris."

"These talks are doomed to fail as the agenda of the talks is irrelevant and not focusing on the main issue, which is the withdrawal of Zionists from Palestinian lands," Ahmadinejad said.

"But more important is that the Zionist regime itself is doomed to collapse anyway," said the president, who in the past has provoked international condemnation for calling for Israel to be eradicated from the Middle East map and questioning the Holocaust.

Iran does not recognize Israel's sovereignty and said the only pragmatic option to resolve the Middle East conflict would be a referendum for all Palestinians, including the millions of refugees, to determine their fate.

According to Iranian state media, millions of people were expected to attend Friday's rallies.
During the demonstrations, the pro-government Basij militia group was to distribute two videogames to reach out to the younger generation and expose "Zionists' crimes and atrocities in Palestine," state television reported.

One of the games was based on the May 31 Israeli commando raid on an aid flotilla trying to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip. It killed nine activists.

The Quds Day rallies were held after US President Barack Obama hosted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Thursday for peace talks.

Abbas and Netanyahu pledged to reach a peace agreement in a year's time, hold a second round of talks September 14-15 in the Middle East and meet every two weeks thereafter.

Iranian leaders, however, downplayed the importance of the negotiations.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast on Friday described the Washington meeting as "futile compromise talks" and told the ISNA news agency that "the Palestinians were smarter than being deceived by this kind of theatre."

Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani told state television Friday that "the dilemma could not be settled by theatrics staged in Washington as the Palestinian issue was not a toy but a very serious matter which solely had one solution: giving Palestinians back their rights."

At prayers, Ahmadinejad called on the West to drop its support of Israel to gain more trust in the Middle East.

"If you do not stop supporting the Zionists, then you would be regarded as accomplices of the Zionist crimes and forced to face the consequences accordingly," Ahmadinejad warned at the university, which was the object of a heavy security deployment Friday.

In a change from last year's rallies, no opposition protests were observed by journalists or reported on opposition websites.

The opposition accused the government of fraud in last year's presidential vote, which led to Ahmadinejad's re-election. It organized a series of demonstrations, and the government responded with deadly crackdowns. There have been no street protests since December.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/342498,talks-israel-summary.html.

Nuclear talks with EU futile, Iran's chief of staff says

Wed, 04 Aug 2010

Berlin - Iran's chief of staff said Wednesday that nuclear talks with the European Union would be a waste of time, ISNA news agency reported.

"We have realized that holding nuclear talks with the EU is futile as the Europeans have nothing to say (in world politics)," Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, widely regarded as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's closest advisor, said.

Tehran insists that the main players in the nuclear dispute are the United States, Russia and China - and that the EU's presence in the negotiations has no major impact.

Ahmadinejad's also insists on direct contact with US President Barack Obama, and on Monday repeated a challenge to debate at the UN general assembly in New York in September, analysts said.

"The Americans should know that for solving the dilemmas in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, first they have to settle the nuclear dispute with Iran," Mashaei said.

Ahmadinejad's chief aide also said the US should start talking with Iran, and know that sanctions will not stop Tehran from pursuing its nuclear projects.

The UN has ordered economic sanctions against Iran for its uranium enrichment drive, and suspicions that it is secretly pursuing nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.

Ahmadinejad said Iran was ready to resume nuclear talks with world powers in September, and also hold technical talks with the US, Russia and the International Atomic Energy Agency for a uranium swap.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/337902,irans-chief-staff-says.html.

Iran stages anti-Israel rallies amid peace talks in Washington

Fri, 03 Sep 2010

Tehran - Iran on Friday staged anti-Israeli rallies nationwide while direct peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians were under way in Washington.

The late supreme leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, grand ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan as Quds (Jerusalem) Day and called for mass rallies against Israel and in support of the Palestinians.

The rallies this year coincided with the first direct Middle East peace talks in almost two years, in Washington, where US President Barack Obama was hosting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

According to Iranian state media, millions of people were expected to attend the state-run rallies throughout the country and voice their support for Palestinians and the "liberation of their lands from the Zionist regime's (Israel's) occupation."

"Today millions of people will shout out their will for liberation of the holy Quds from the devil's claw of Zionists," the Fars news agency reported.

Iran does not recognize Israel's sovereignty and said the only pragmatic option to resolve the Middle East conflict would be a referendum for all Palestinians, including the millions of refugees, to determine their fate.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday predicted that the talks in Washington would once again fail because the main demand of the Palestinian people, which is an end to the Israeli occupation, was once again not being considered.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast on Friday described the Washington meeting as "futile compromise talks" and told ISNA news agency that "the Palestinians were smarter than being deceived by this kind of theatre."

Iran's Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani told state television Friday that "the dilemma could not be settled by theatrics staged in Washington as the Palestinian issue was not a toy but a very serious matter which solely had one solution: giving Palestinians back their rights."

During the rallies, the pro-government Basij militia group was to distribute two video games as an effort to reach the younger generation and expose "Zionists' crimes and atrocities in Palestine," state TV reported.

The highlight of the Quds Day was scheduled to be the Friday prayers at Tehran University where Ahmadinejad planned to hold the first sermon and the hardline Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami the main sermon.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/342467,rallies-peace-talks-washington.html.

Iran says Middle East peace talks futile

Tue, 24 Aug 2010

Tehran - Iran on Tuesday said that the forthcoming Middle East peace talks between Israel and Palestine would be futile.

"As long as the main root of the problem is not solved, no peace talks will have any tangible results and be futile," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said in a press briefing in Tehran.

The upcoming negotiations are to be the first direct peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians in nearly two years.

The last round of direct negotiations was suspended in late 2008, as Israel entered the election campaign which ultimately brought Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to power.
"There can be no real settlement as long as Palestinians are forced out of their country and live as refugees while invaders from other countries live in their homeland," the Iranian spokesman said.

Iran does not recognise Israel's sovereignty and says the only pragmatic option would be a referendum for all Palestinians, including the millions of refugees, to determine their future fate.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/340726,east-peace-talks-futile.html.