Latest security developments in Middle East region, Turkish warplanes pound northern Iraq

Afghanistan expels EU, UN diplomats

Armed tribesmen head for Yemen's Taiz to free brigadier, 6 soldiers

Killers of French tourists in Mauritania located

Two senior EU diplomats accused of talking to the Taliban have left Afghanistan. The UN employee, a British national, flew out on a UN flight, while the EU official, an Irish national who is the institution's second most senior representative in Kabul, has also departed.

The Afghan government accused the two of meeting Taliban rebels without its consent and of being a threat to the country's security. The two were ordered to leave within 48 hours. The UN says the affair is a misunderstanding. It said the diplomats visited the southern town of Musa Qala, which was in Taliban control for 10 months until a military operation about two weeks ago.

The diplomats — one worked for the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and the other was the acting head of the European Union mission — had traveled to Musa Qala, a former Taliban stronghold in southern Helmand province on Monday, where they met with local leaders, said Aleem Siddique, a spokesman for the U.N. mission. After that trip, the two were accused of meeting with Taliban militants and were told to leave the country, according to officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The diplomats left Afghanistan on Thursday, Siddique said. President Hamid Karzai's spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, has said the two were "involved in some activities that were not their jobs." An official at EU headquarters in Brussels confirmed that the EU official expelled is Michael Semple, deputy EU representative. Semple is Irish. The official, who spoke on condition he not be identified because of the sensitive nature of diplomatic relations, labeled the incident a "misunderstanding."

The U.N. official, Mervyn Patterson, is British, from Northern Ireland. The Afghan government, and particularly Karzai, has voiced a growing interest in meeting with Taliban leaders to try to persuade them to join the government and put down their arms. But the diplomats' expulsion will make some Western nations and international organizations wary of making their own overtures to the militants in an effort to end the insurgency, which has left over 6,300 people — mostly militants — dead this year alone. William Wood, the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, called the issue a "misunderstanding" rising from apparent lack of coordination with the Afghan government.

"I am absolutely confident that the European Union and the United Nations were acting with absolutely the best of intentions. They are good friends of Afghanistan," Wood told a news conference in Kabul. But talking to the Taliban or their supporters in order to bring them to the government's side "is a particularly difficult field which requires particularly close communication, particularly close dialogue (with the government) and apparently that did not take place," he said.

British, Afghan and U.S. forces retook Musa Qala earlier this month from Taliban militants, who had held it since last February. Afghan and Western officials moved quickly into the town to extend governance to an area where the Taliban had run its own court system and collected taxes. "We were in Helmand province to talk to the people on the ground, to understand from the people on the ground what their needs are, what their concerns are, and that includes people who are perhaps less than supportive of the government of Afghanistan," Siddique said.

Siddique said talks were continuing to secure the return of the two diplomats, who have years of experience in Afghanistan, speak the local languages and know the country's complex tribal structures. "Discussions are ongoing with the Afghan authorities to seek the return of (the U.N.) official so that we can continue with the important work of building peace in Afghanistan," Siddique said.

The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) anticipates a slight improvement in Afghanistan’s security situation in 2008 after 2007 proved to be the country’s bloodiest year since the fall of the Taliban. “I expect an improvement,” German General Bruno Kasdorf, ISAF chief of staff, told the DPA in Kabul.

He added, however, that with just more than 40,000 troops, the ISAF could not get a grip overnight on the security problems of a country more than twice the size of Germany.

Another four to five years would also be required to build up the Afghan security forces, Kasdorf said.

“That will also then be the time when we will be able to think about reducing our presence,” the general said.

The more personnel and resources the international community invests in the Afghan security forces, the faster it could begin reducing the number of foreign troops in the country, he said.

“I don’t have any worries about a return of the Taliban as long as international forces remain in Afghanistan,” Kasdorf said, adding that he believed Afghanistan’s former ruling Islamic militia, which was forced from power six years ago, stood no chance militarily against such forces.

The rebels were dealt heavy losses in their leadership in 2007 and the ISAF “nipped in the bud” its spring offensive, the general said, adding that unlike 2006, the Taliban avoided open confrontations this year. The Afghan government exerted its authority over wide areas of the country, he said, adding that 70% of the ambushes and attacks by the Taliban took place in 10% of the country. The rest of Afghanistan remained entirely or relatively peaceful, he said.

The general said among the problems he saw ahead were the cultivation of illicit drugs, which rose dramatically in 2007 in Afghanistan, the world’s biggest opium producer.

“Drugs threaten to destroy everything, much like a cancer,” he said. The Afghans must also improve the capabilities of their government, bring rampant corruption to heel and eliminate the “substantial deficits” of their judicial system, Kasdorf said.

In Yemen, local sources said Sharaab al-Salam town in Taiz province lives in severe tensions after the attack on Yemeni army soldiers in an ambush by tribesmen loyal to Sheikh Abdul Salam al-Qessi, who was killed in the city last October.

The same source said that large number of military forces deployed in the city and al-Qessi's son gave himself up to the security forces and he was sent to the capital Sana'a to meet Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to put an end to these dangerous developments, while local residents said that hundreds of al-Hada tribe, the hometown of Brigadier Abdul Nasser al-Qessi, headed to Sharaab from Taiz to save the brigadier, who is detained in al-Qous tribe in Sharaab after the attack on the security forces.

They said that a total of 500 gunmen of al-Hada tribe in 30 vehicles made for Sharaab, while some other source said that tanks and government's armored vehicles are besieging the city to pressure al-Qous tribe to free the brigadier and six more soldiers detained with him.

In Mauritania, four soldiers were killed near an army position at El Ghallawiya, some 700 km (440 miles) northeast of the capital Nouakchott.

The Mauritanian military official, who asked not to be named, said a unit from the El Ghallawiya army outpost had tried to intercept two vehicles travelling through the desert area, not far from the huge Guelb er Richat crater.

Meanwhile, Mauritanian President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi ordered his government to intensify their search to capture the suspects who killed the four French tourists on Monday near Aleg, some 260 kilometres southeast of Nouakchott.

The search area includes Boghé near the border with Senegal, some 60 kilometres south of the place where the attack has taken place.

A massive manhunt was underway for three men suspected of shooting dead the tourists, including three male members of the same family, and wounding a fifth in the southern town of Aleg on Monday, security sources said.

The suspected killers were believed to have fled in the direction of the Senegalese border to the south.

Two men arrested late Monday were still being interrogated but a female detained with them had been released, security sources said. It was not clear how they were suspected of being involved in the shooting.

The tourists -- four male relatives and a male friend -- were on a driving trek between Paris and Burkina Faso and were on their way to Mali when they were attacked, the French foreign ministry said in Paris.

Earlier reports indicated two children had been killed but the ministry said the victims included two adult children of an elderly man who was shot in the leg and wounded. His brother and a family friend were also killed.

"They were en route to Mali when they were surprised by an armed group comprised of three people who demanded money without success before attacking them in a barbaric fashion," a ministry spokesman said.

The attack in the former French colony in north-west Africa happened as the family was preparing to have a picnic lunch by the side of the road, police and officials said.

In a telephone conversation Monday night, Mauritanian President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi told French President Nicolas Sarkozy his country would do "everything to catch" the attackers.

"The fugitives, last seen near the river frontier with Senegal late Monday, are believed to have successfully crossed it," the governor of Mauritania's Brakna region, Sidi Moloud Ould Brahim, told AFP.

"Everything we could need has been made available to aid the pursuit of these individuals in case they have crossed into Senegal," that country's police communications chief, Major Daouda Diop said.

Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish guerrilla targets in northern Iraq, Turkey's general staff said, in the fourth such cross-border raid in five days.

The Turkish military said its offensive against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) inside Turkey and across the border in northern Iraq would continue.

Jabbar Yawar, spokesman for the Peshmerga security forces of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region, told the AFP the strike lasted about an hour in a mountainous border region of Duhuk province and inflicted no casualties.

The Turkish military claimed to have inflicted massive losses on Kurdish rebels in bombing raids in northern Iraq.

"It is understood that between 150 and 175 terrorists... were rendered ineffective" in a December 16 strike, the general staff said on its website.

"The figure does not include the terrorists who were rendered ineffective as a result of hideouts or caves collapsing in the air raid."

It said many rebels from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) were wounded in the operation.

Turkish warplanes launched another raid in northern Iraq on Tuesday, according to an official from the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga security force. He said Turkish planes bombed three villages as they targeted rebel bases in the Iraqi Kurdish province of Duhuk.

The strike lasted around 10 minutes shortly after midday, and hit the villages of Rikan, Shezee and Samjuhu in the border region of Al-Amadiyah.

"The villages were deserted," the official said on condition of anonymity. The army said in a second statement that five PKK rebels were killed early Tuesday in an operation, backed by helicopters, in a mountainous region in the southeastern Turkish province of Sirnak, close to the Iraqi border.

But it made no mention of any cross-border action and said troops had returned to their bases.

If confirmed, Tuesday's bombing would be the fourth Turkish air strike in northern Iraq since October, when parliament authorised cross-border military action against the PKK armed separatist group.

Since 1984, the PKK's armed rebellion against Turkey for Kurdish self-rule has claimed more than 37,000 lives. The group is classed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

The PKK has denied it has suffered any serious losses in the Turkish raids, saying only five of its militants and two civilians were killed in the December 16 strikes, the first after Turkish parliament gave the go-ahead.

The escalation comes following Turkish threats to invade Iraq's Kurdistan region to halt attacks allegedly carried out by Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq against Turkish targets.

Turkey has amassed up to 100,000 troops along the frontier in preparation for a cross-border operation to crush about 3,000 guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), most recently blamed for attacks that killed 15 Turkish soldiers.

The Turkish parliament approved a memorandum forwarded by the government allowing the Turkish army to hunt down members of the PKK, or Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan in Kurdish, in northern Iraq. Only 19 out of 555 legislators in the Turkish parliament voted against the proposal.

Dozens of people picking up cylinders of cooking gas were victims of a suicide car bomb attack in the northern Iraqi city of Baiji.

The explosion killed at least 25 people and wounded 85 others, a Salaheddin police official said.

A suicide car bomber slammed into a truck loaded with cooking gas cylinders at a checkpoint manned by Iraqi soldiers and members of a local Awakening Council -- a grass-roots movement that fights al Qaeda in Iraq.

A number of people were killed in secondary explosions when cooking gas cylinders exploded, the police official said.

Iraqi security forces and U.S.-led coalition forces were on the scene of the attack. A U.S. military statement said the casualty toll was 20 dead and 80 wounded.

Baiji is about 125 miles (200 kilometers) north of Baghdad.

In a second suicide attack, a bomber blew himself up in the middle of a funeral procession in western Baquba, killing FOUR people and wounding 21 others, a Baquba police official said. Casualties included members of another Awakening Council.

Among the dead was the local head of the Brigades of 20th Revolution, a former Sunni insurgent group that is now an ally of the U.S. military.

According to police, the funeral was for Auday Mohammed Hassan, also an Awakening Council member whom the U.S. military mistakenly killed hours earlier.

The U.S. army said that "Coalition forces killed 13 terrorists and detained 27 suspects Monday and today during operations targeting al-Qaeda in central and northern Iraq."

"During a series of operations south of Samarra Monday and today, Coalition forces targeted an alleged senior level foreign terrorist facilitator for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The targeted individual is also believed to be responsible for the facilitation of weapons and finances and involved in suicide-bombing operations, some of which include female operatives," the army added.

"We continue to disrupt al-Qaeda networks that are conducting attacks against the Iraqi people and the security forces that protect them," said Maj. Winfield Danielson, MNF-I spokesman. "Operations like these show that, while al-Qaeda remains a threat, Iraqi and Coalition forces will take the fight to the terrorists, diminishing their ability to attack innocent civilians."

The United States plans to pour $750 million of aid into Pakistan’s tribal areas over the next five years as part of a “hearts and minds” campaign to win over this lawless region from Qaeda and Taliban militants, said the New York Times.

But even before the plan has been fully carried out, documents and officials involved in the planning are warning of the dangers of distributing so much money in an area so hostile that oversight is impossible, even by Pakistan’s own government, which faces rising threats from Islamic militants.

Who will be given the aid has quickly become one of the most contentious questions between local officials and American planners concerned that millions might fall into the wrong hands. The local political agents and tribal chiefs in this hinterland on the Afghan border have for years accommodated the very groups the American and Pakistani governments seek to drive out.

A closely scripted visit to the hospital here, used for a pilot project by the United States Agency for International Development, showed the challenges on full display. The one-story hospital here was virtually empty on a recent day.

Sher Alam Mahsud, the local political boss who escorted this reporter on a rare visit, said he wanted all the American aid money “delivered to us.” But the precarious security does not allow the Americans to assess the aid priorities firsthand, or to provide oversight for the first installment of $150 million allocated by the Bush administration.

“Delivering $150 million in aid to the tribal areas could very quickly make a few people rich and do almost nothing to provide opportunity and justice to the region,” said Craig Cohen, the author of a recent study of United States-Pakistan relations at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Yet it is here in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA, as the region is formally called, that Washington is intent on using the development aid as a counterinsurgency tool, according to a draft of the Agency for International Development plan given to The New York Times by an official who worked on it.

The draft warns that the “severe governance deficiencies” in the tribal areas will make it virtually impossible for the aid to be sustainable or to overcome the “area’s chronic underdevelopment and consequent volatility.”

"The ambitious plan was publicly highlighted during a visit to Pakistan in June by Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, as a measure of Washington’s support for Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf," the U.S. daily noted.

“The objective driving this decision is the hope that by bringing the FATA into the mainstream and assuring that basic human services and infrastructure are on par with the rest of Pakistan, the people of FATA would be less likely to welcome the presence of Al Qaeda and Taliban,” the draft states. The projects include health and education services, water and sanitation facilities, and agricultural development, it says, making clear that these are a means to a broader end. “The main goal of the United States government in relation to the FATA is counterterrorism,” it says.

The area, home to 3.2 million people, remains a desolate landscape where women are strictly veiled. Female literacy — at 3 percent — is among the lowest in the world. Schools are often used to run businesses. There is no banking system. Smuggling of opium and other contraband is routine.

In Bahrain, while uneasy calm returned to the kingdom after fierce clashes between security forces and young men, some parliamentarians requested a government to be formed from outside the royal family.

Some MPs held the Bahraini government responsible for the recent security confrontations in the kingdom. They called for forming a new government, the matter that spread speculations about possible demands on changing the Bahraini constitution.

Bahraini prosecutors have charged 32 people over last week's clashes between protestors and police which left one person dead.

Three people were charged with attempted murder, while the remaining 29 were charged with offences including holding an illegal gathering, causing unrest, stealing weapons and burning a police car.

The disturbances erupted after a protestor died following an opposition demonstration on December 17.

Police responded by arresting suspected demonstrators. On Wednesday, leaders of one opposition faction began a hunger strike to protest the crackdown. Relatives of those arrested crowded around the prosecutor's office Tuesday before police forced them to leave.

Bahrain's Shura Council, or upper house, condemned the clashes in a statement issued Monday.

Six French charity workers convicted in Chad of attempting to kidnap 103 children arrived in France coming from Chad to serve out their sentences in France.

The office of French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he spoke by phone with Chadian President Idriss Deby about preparations for their transfer, the AFP reported.

They were led in handcuffs to a Boeing 737 owned by Toumai Air Tchad after being taken to the airport from their cells in the capital Ndjamena. The members of L'Arche de Zoe (Zoe's Ark) were convicted Wednesday of attempted abduction for having tried to fly the children to France, claiming they were war orphans from the Sudanese region of Darfur which borders eastern Chad.

They were each sentenced to eight years' hard labour, while a Chadian and a Sudanese who worked as intermediaries were jailed for four years for complicity in the operation.

Authorisation for the departure of the French under a 1976 bilateral accord came from Justice Minister Albert Pahimi Padacke, who said: "I have responded favourably to the transfer request from France this morning. Nothing now stands in the way."

On their arrival, the six were to appear before a French prosecutor before a court was due to adjust their sentences. Forced labour is not a French practice, but commuting it to jail terms will require Chadian judicial approval.

The six may also face charges related to a separate judicial inquiry opened in Paris in October, targeting the charity for possible swindling and for "illegal exercise of an intermediary activity with adoption in mind."

The charity workers protested innocence throughout the trial, saying they had been misled about the children by middlemen. They also launched a fresh hunger strike to protest the verdict.

They were detained on October 25 when their flight, from the east Chad town of Abeche, was foiled.

International aid staff later found almost all the children on board were Chadian and not war refugees from across the eastern border and that all had at least one living parent.

The Chadian court also ordered the six French to jointly pay 4.12 billion CFA francs (6.3 million euros, 9.2 million dollars) to the families of the children caught up in the affair.