Georgians call on president to step down

Georgian protesters enter their fifth day of anti- government demonstrations

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/181716.html

In Georgia, thousands of opposition supporters have continued their protests for the fifth consecutive day, demanding the resignation of President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Georgian opposition leader, Nino Burjanadze says that the country's future would be determined on Wednesday, promising to occupy another central square in the capital of Tbilisi after five days of protests, AFP reported.

The supporters of Burjanadze are hoping to enjoy the same success as other countries in the Arab Spring.

Demonstrators have blocked the city's main street near the Parliament chanting anti-government slogans.

Georgians are protesting against the government's failure to improve the living conditions as well as the country's unemployment rate.

The fifth day of protests comes a day before the government's plans to carry out a military parade marking Georgia's Independence Day on Thursday.

The country's former defense minister's arrest helped spark mass protests after he turned against the Georgian president in 2007.

The opposition National Assembly has accused officials of detaining scores of government opponents and seizing hundreds of activists' cars before the rallies.

The Georgian interior ministry, however, said the allegations were "completely untrue."

Georgians call on president to resign

Georgian opposition rallies against incumbent President Mikheil Saakashvili

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/181123.html

Thousands of Georgian protesters have taken to the streets of the capital Tbilisi, calling on President Mikheil Saakashvili to step down.

Protesters led by former Saakashvili ally and parliament speaker Nino Burjanadze marched along Tbilisi and staged their rally at the central Freedom Square.

Georgian police fired rubber bullets at opposition protesters in Tbilisi in an attempt to disperse the demonstrators after they reportedly attacked a car and beat its passengers.

Meanwhile, hundreds of other protesters marched through the Black Sea resort of Batumi, where their demonstration was broken up by police after protesters tried to break into a local television station, AFP reported.

"We are fighting for democracy and against neo-Bolshevism," Burjanadze went on to say.

"We demand Saakashvili's resignation in order to hold democratic elections," she noted.

The opposition has accused Saakashvili of monopolizing power and losing large parts of Georgian territory during the country's brief war with Russia in 2008.

The Saakashvili government is also being blamed for failing to tackle poverty.

"We will fight to the end together with you. It is the final and decisive fight for all of us and we are not going to make any steps back," Burjanadze told the crowd.

The opposition National Assembly also accused the officials of detaining scores of government opponents and seizing hundreds of activists' cars before the rallies.

The Georgian interior ministry, however, said the allegations were "completely untrue."

Russia launches $650bn military plan

A russian aircraft carrier

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/166974.html

Russia is planning to spend $650 billion on renewing its military equipments, including helicopters, submarines and warships until 2020.

The plan includes the purchase of 100 warships, 8 nuclear submarines, 600 jets and 1,000 helicopters.

Russia's Deputy Defense Minister Vladimir Popovkin says the plan would largely extend the number of modern equipments adding the main task is the modernization of the armed forces. However, Popovkin says Russia is not interested in purchasing any foreign weapons or military hardware.

With only 10 percent of its armed forces considered as “modern,” the Kremlin needs to upgrade its decrepit military by recruiting and training new troops as the country continues to rely on its antiquated equipments and is currently short of manpower. A drive to improve the forces is said to have already begun.

The new S-500 anti-missile system is supposed to back the country's missile defense in the near future. However, on the naval front Russia has failed to regain parity with the US as it has not spent on new aircraft carriers.

An independent military analyst Alexander Golts says “Much of Russia's focus appeared mistakenly aimed at keeping nuclear parity with the United States at a time when the greatest threats to the country's security were coming from North Korea and Central Asia.”

Russian generals sacked without reason

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/166969.html

Russia has fired seven senior interior ministry generals without a clear explanation.

The deputy head of Moscow's interior ministry department and the interior ministry's inspector general are among the officials fired on Friday.

Moscow has vowed to track down on terrorism. However, it is not yet clear if the dismissals are in any way related to last month's bombing of Moscow's Domodedovo airport, which claimed the lives of 37 people.

Following the attack, President Dmitry Medvedev fired the head of interior ministry's transport administration for the Central Federal District, warning of further dismissals.

Medvedev's administration has recently witnessed mass protests against what people call Kremlin's stifling of democracy as well as corruption, and rising prices.

Gilani lashes out at Cameron's stance

Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani



Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=136741§ionid=351020401


Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has dismissed remarks by his British counterpart that Islamabad is guilty of exporting terrorism.

In an address to Pakistan's Senate on Thursday, Gilani noted that his government will take up the issue with Britain via diplomatic channels.

He also sharply criticized David Cameron's remarks questioning Pakistan's sincerity in the war on terror, saying that US-led NATO forces could not bring peace in Afghanistan. The prime minister pointed out that the sacrifices of Pakistani armed forces personnel in war-battered Afghanistan are much greater than those of the multinational force.

"They should assist for capacity building of our law enforcement agencies. Such a criticism would cast negative impact on war on terror," Gilani said.

Cameron risked provoking a diplomatic row with Pakistan on Wednesday when he came close to accusing Islamabad of exporting terrorism.

“We should be very, very clear with Pakistan that we want to see a strong, stable and democratic Pakistan," Cameron said.

“We cannot tolerate in any sense the idea that this country is allowed to look both ways and is able, in any way, to promote the export of terror, whether to India or to Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world," Cameron said in a speech to Indian business leaders in Bangalore, India.

In the past, Britain had warned against the threat of terrorism that emanates from Pakistan. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown once said that the bulk of the threat of terrorism to Britain came out of Pakistan's restive tribal regions near the Afghan border.

Ex-spy chief denies Taliban links

Gul has been accused of planning bomb attacks
in Kabul, a charge he has denied [Reuters]

By: Andrew Wander

Source: Al Jazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/201072691457502592.html


A former head of Pakistan's intelligence service has denied claims contained in leaked US military documents that he provided weapons and support to the Taliban.


General Hamid Gul's name appears in eight separate intelligence reports that were posted on the Wikileaks website on Monday as part of the biggest military leak in history.

Gul told Al Jazeera that the charges were a "pack of lies" aimed at implicating Pakistan in violence in Afghanistan.

"I have no involvement whatsoever," he said. "I'm not involved because I have no means and no wherewithal. This is absolutely, utterly wrong."

The leaked documents show that US officers gathered intelligence suggesting that Gul ordered suicide and roadside bomb attacks on Nato troops, and met with senior Taliban officials to plan operations against international forces.

If true, the documents would confirm what the Afghan government has maintained; that senior Pakistani intelligence figures are involved in arming, training and funding the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Planning attacks

In one classified "threat report", Gul is said to have ordered the planting of magnetic mines, to be hidden in snow on roads, where they would attach themselves to passing military vehicles and could then be remotely detonated to wreak havoc in Afghan cities.

"Gul's final comment to the three individuals was 'make the snow warm in Kabul' basically telling them to set Kabul aflame," the report said.

Another accuses him of meeting with Arab fighters in Pakistan's tribal area to plan a series of suicide bombings in Afghanistan.

Gul is also named in a report that outlines plans to kidnap UN workers to use as a bargaining chip for Pakistanis imprisoned by the US in Afghanistan for involvement in the conflict.

But the former spy chief insists he is being used as a "convenient whipping-boy" for the failings of the US-led mission in Afghanistan, and points out there is no hard evidence against him.

"They took my case to have me declared an international terrorist to the UN sanctions committee and it was vetoed, or placed technical hold on, by the Chinese because they could not produce any evidence," he said.

Prior allegations

The leaked documents are not the first time that Gul has been linked to the Afghan conflict. Earlier reports have said he is contact with senior insurgent leaders, including feared commanders Baitullah Mehsud and Jiluddin Haqqani.

Gul denies having met the men and describes himself as an "ardent friend of Afghanistan," although he is known for his vocal opposition to the US-led military presence in the country.

"I consider American and Nato forces as aggressors- in pursuit of a vicious agenda for the region, especially Pakistan and believe that the Afghan national resistance is fully justified," he said in 2008.

He insists this opposition is "strictly a moral and academic position" and says he had "never provided any material or financial support to the resistance."

But Haroun Mir, the deputy director of Afghanistan's Centre for Research and Policy Studies said he thought Gul was indeed linked to senior Taliban figures.

"He is still very active in this insurgency in Afghanistan," he said on Monday. "He has been seen in meetings with top Taliban leaders."

Complete fabrication?

Reports naming Gul are among hundreds included in the leaked documents that implicate the ISI in supporting the Taliban.


Some of the documents contain allegations of elaborate and implausible plots.

One warned that the ISI and local groupss were planning to spike alcoholic drinks and "use them for poisoning" international troops in Afghanistan; another that the ISI were offering bounties on the heads of Indian workers in Afghanistan.

Some analysts have cast doubt on the veracity of many of the claims made in the intelligence reports, pointing out that few of the alleged plots ever showed any signs of getting off the ground.

"Just about everything which I have been through on this category is rubbish," Michael Semple, a former deputy head of the EU mission in Afghanistan, said.


"Not just rumour, but complete fabrication. This applies to the tales of the adventures of Hamid Gul. He is a man with a reputation and he is a propagandist, so fabricators tell multiple tales about him."

Pakistani agents 'aiding Taliban'

The documents reveal more detail than previously
released, including about civilian deaths [EPA]

Source: Al Jazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/20107265854311217.html


US officials believe that the intelligence agency of ally Pakistan, which receives billions of dollars in aid from Washington, has been secretly supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan, leaked records say.

Wikileaks, the online whistleblower organisation, published more than 90,000 secret US military documentson Sunday, revealing an unedited account of the nearly nine-year-old war in Afghanistan.

The unverified files say that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, the country's spy service, has been holding strategy sessions with Taliban leaders to aid their efforts in Afghanistan.

An ISI spokesman denied the allegations, saying they were "far-fetched and unsubstantiated," but said the agency would be examining the files.

Wikileaks' documents, which cover a period from January 2004 to December 2009, include descriptions of a covert US special operations unit formed to target high-level al-Qaeda and Taliban figures.


They say more than 2,000 leaders are on a "kill or capture" list, but missions to hunt them down have led to unreported civilian deaths.

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, said he expected the leaked records would "shape a [new] understanding of the past six years".

"The real story of this material is that it's war, it's one damn thing after another," Assange said at a news conference in London on Monday. "It is the continuous small events, the continuous death of children, insurgents, allied forces, the maimed people."

Taliban dealings

The New York Timesin the United States, Britain's Guardiannewspaper and the German weekly Der Spiegelwere all given about a month's advanced access to the dosier, with each jointly unveiling their findings on Sunday.

According to the Times report, the documents suggest Pakistan "allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Talibanin secret strategy sessions to organise networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders".

Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the US, called the release of the files "irresponsible" and said it consisted of "unprocessed" reports from the field.

"The documents circulated by WikiLeaks do not reflect the current on-ground realities," Haqqani said in a statement.

"The United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan are strategic partners and are jointly endeavouring to defeat al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies militarily and politically," he said.

The US government also condemned the records' disclosure, saying they could threaten national security and endanger the lives of its forces.

"The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organisations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk," James Jones, the US national security adviser, said.

"These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies."

'Grimmer picture'

According to the records, the US has tried to cover up the fact that the Taliban have heat-seeking surface-to-air "stinger" missiles.

The documents also show that the Taliban's widening use of roadside bombs have killed more than 2,000 civilians.

Eric Schmitt, one of the New York Times reporters who worked on analysing the files over the last month, told Al Jazeera that the documents gave an unvarnished view of the war, a "very fine grain, down on the ground level detail that hasn't been revealed before ... whether it's in firefights or drone activities, secret operations performed by commandos of the CIA".

He said they painted "a much grimmer picture and portrayal than either the Bush or Obama administrations have allowed so far".

Included in the many revelations of the leaked documents were also reports that the CIA expanded paramilitary operations in Afghanistan and ran the Afghan spy agency from 2001-2008.

Pakistan's ISI had helped establish the Taliban's government in the 1990s, when Afghanistan was wracked by infighting following the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

The country's leadership reversed course after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, agreeing to assist the US against the Taliban, which the US accused of sheltering Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader.

But US officials and analysts have persistently questioned whether all of Pakistan's security apparatus is on the same page, with some believing that Islamabad's main interest is to ensure continued influence in Afghanistan.

Iraq video

Wikileaks has become one of the biggest and most controversial sources of classified government information, even publishing a document showing that US intelligence had plans to shut it down.

In April, Wikileaks released video footage from a helicopter cockpit showing a deadly 2007 aerial strike in the Iraqi capital that killed 12 civilians, including two journalists from the Reuters news agency.

Army Specialist Bradley Manning, 22, was charged this month with misconduct and putting national security at risk for allegedly leaking the classified video, and has now been implicated in the release of the Afghan documents as well.

Sunday's released records consist largely of classified reports and assessments from junior officers in the field that analysts use to advise policymakers.

The leak is expected to put further pressure on Barack Obama, the US president, to get results in Afghanistan as he send thousands of additional troops to bolster forces already in the country.

US lawmakers want American military pullout from Pakistan

US troops set out on patrol close to Afghanistan-Pakistan border.


Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=136028§ionid=351020401


Two US Congressmen have proposed a bill demanding the withdrawal of all American troops from Pakistan, where they have been "operating in secret."

Ron Paul, a Texas Republican and Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich introduced the bill late Thursday in a bid to "nip in the bud an expansion of US ground presence in Pakistan,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

"We have known that US forces have been operating in secret inside the territories of Pakistan without congressional approval," Kucinich said, adding that the covert operations are a violation of the 1973 War Powers Resolution.

"The 1973 War Powers Resolution introduced after the Vietnam War only allows the president to send US armed forces into military operations abroad if Congress approves the decision or if the United States is under a serious threat or attack."

According to Paul, there has been a significant increase in US military operations in Pakistan and the use of unmanned drone attacks since US President Barack Obama's inauguration.

"This increasing US military activity in Pakistan has little to do with protecting the United States and in fact is creating more enemies than it is defeating" while "Congress is sitting quietly on the sidelines. This must stop," AFP quoted Paul as saying.

The House of Representatives plan to enforce the resolution, which was initially proposed by Kucinich in March, as early as next week.

The US has repeatedly attributed the volatile tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border as a global headquarters for al-Qaeda, claiming the area is used as a base to launch attacks on US-led forces in Afghanistan.

US tells Russia to leave South Caucasus

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (L) and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili


Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=133559§ionid=351020406



US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has criticized Russia for establishing military bases in Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

At a joint press conference with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in Tbilisi on Monday, she urged Moscow to abide by the ceasefire agreement with Tbilisi and to end its military presence in the country.

"We continue to call for Russia to abide by the August 2008 ceasefire commitment… including by ending the occupation and withdrawing Russian troops from South Ossetia and Abkhazia to their pre-conflict positions," AFP quoted her as saying.

"The United States is steadfast in its commitment to Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity," she added.

Georgia was the final stop of Clinton's five-day tour of the region.

Political analysts have been quick to point out that Moscow views many of Clinton's recent remarks as meddling in the affairs of a region Russia calls its near abroad.

Russia and Georgia fought a brief but destructive war in 2008 following Tbilisi's assault on South Ossetia.

After the war, Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.

Russia also built permanent military bases in the breakaway regions and stationed hundreds of soldiers and border guards in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.