Taliban Kill Eight Afghan Police

Taliban gunmen killed eight local policemen in an attack on a remote post in westernAfghanistan, a provincial official said Thursday.

The attack happened late on Wednesday, said Naqibullah Farahi, spokesman for the provincial administration of Farah, which bordersIran. Earlier a suicide bomb attack had claimed 12 lives in northern Afganistan the same day.

“The Taliban attacked an Afghan local police post” in Khaki Safed district, he told AFP. “There were eight people in the post and all were killed.” Investigators have gone to the area, he added.

Contacted by AFP, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the attack and said 12 local policemen had been killed. The Taliban regularly exaggerate their claims.

Afghan police are regularly targeted by the militants who have been fighting a decade-long insurgency against President Hamid Karzai’s Western-backed government.

Earlier this week six people including four policemen were poisoned and shot dead at a police post inHelmandprovince, which neighbours Farah, days after a policeman in Paktika province poisoned and then shot dead nine of his colleagues while they slept.

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Iran Advises Arab Neighbours Against Missile Shield

Iranian Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi on Wednesday “advised” neighbouring Arab states in the Gulf not to adopt a missile shield project being promoted by the United States.

“From the start we have rejected such a project, which is contrary to regional security, and we advise our friends to not take part in such a game,” Vahidi was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency.

“The anti-missile shield in the Persian Gulf is an American-Zionist project and anybody who goes into that project will be playing the game of the Americans and Israel,” he said.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last Saturday promoted the missile shield idea at a Gulf-US security forum in Saudi Arabia.

US officials have said it is their “priority” to help the six Gulf Cooperation Council states build“regional missile defence architecture” against what they see as a looming ballistic missile threat from Iran.

Clinton stressed Washington’s “unwavering” commitment to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, all longstanding US allies.

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Syria Agrees April 10 Deadline For Peace Plan: Annan

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to an April 10 deadline to start implementing a peace plan proposed by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, the envoy told the UN Security Council on Monday.

The partial implementation of his plan would include a full cessation of hostilities within 48 hours of the deadline, diplomats at a closed briefing by Annan told AFP.

Annan appealed to the 15-member council to support the deadline, the diplomats said. The Syrian government would start by halting the movement of troops into cities, withdraw heavy weapons from cities and start to pull back troops.

Annan also said the Security Council had to start considering the deployment of an observer mission with a broad mandate to monitor events in Syria where the UN says more than 9,000 people have been killed in the past year.

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A Helicopter Crashed & Burst Into Flames On The Outskirts Of The Afghan Capital Kabul

Personal grievances, battle stress, and domestic problems are behind more attacks by rogue Afghan security forces on Nato troops than are Taliban infiltrators, the coalition said on Monday.

Western forces have stepped up security to prevent more attacks, after the killing of 17 foreign soldiers by Afghan security personnel this year, Nato spokesman Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson told reporters.

In some cases, that includes increased protection on hand in case more Afghans turn their guns on Western mentors. A series of insider attacks has raised doubts over the ability of local forces to take over security responsibility.

“The vast majority (of reasons for attacks) lie in the individual. Personal reasons, personal grievances are one of the major causes,” Jacobson told reporters.

“One of the things that we are finding is that in many cases there were signs and symptoms that could have been seen, and leadership has to be improved to make sure that those signs are seen in the future, in time before an incident happens.”

The rise in insider attacks on foreign soldiers has stoked fears that both Afghan soldiers and police have turned against their colleagues, or the security force has been infiltrated by Taliban insurgents.

Last month, an Afghan general said the Taliban have a sophisticated system in place to breach Afghanistan’s security forces.

Attacks by Afghan forces against Nato have grown more frequent as relations between the Kabul government and its western backers has frayed.

A US soldier has been charged with killing 17 Afghan civilians in a village massacre last month, and the inadvertent burning of copies of the Koran at a major Nato base in February sparked days of rioting.

After the killing of the villagers in Kandahar’s Panjwai district, Afghan President Hamid Karzai demanded foreign soldiers withdraw from the small bases which underpin the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force’s anti-insurgency strategy ahead of the expected withdrawal of most foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.

US commanders in Panjwai say they have not made any changes to their existing precautions against insider attacks.

Jacobson said Afghan counter-intelligence agents were being placed into local police and army units to stop attacks by looking for disgruntled or distressed personnel.

“A soldier that returns from leave has to be watched for any changes in his behaviour, a soldier that has seen considerable battle stress has to be observed and a soldier who hasn’t been on leave for a long time has to be looked at,” Jacobson said.

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Iran Vows To Stick To Nuclear Path

Iran declared on Monday it will not be swayed from its nuclear “path” by sanctions, a week before talks with world powers that are increasingly seen as a last chance for diplomacy in its showdown with the West.

“The sanctions may have caused us small problems but we will continue our path,” Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi vowed in an interview with the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

“We do not underestimate any enemy, no matter how tiny and lowly they are. The regime’s officials — the supreme leader, the president, the army, the (Revolutionary) Guards and Basij (militia) — are completely vigilant. And the nation is prepared to defend the achievements of Islamic Iran,” he said.

The defiant words came after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Saturday that the talks between Iran and the world powers would take place April 13 and 14 in Istanbul.

She and US President Barack Obama have both publicly said that the window for diplomacy in the standoff over Iran’s nuclear programme is closing.

“Our policy is one of prevention, not containment,” Clinton said in Saudi Arabia after talks with her Gulf Arab counterparts.

“It is incumbent upon Iran to demonstrate by its actions that it is a willing partner and to participate in these negotiations with an effort to obtain concrete results,” Clinton said.

Israel and the United States have threatened military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities if diplomacy and sanctions fail to curb the Islamic republic’s nuclear ambitions.

The UN Security Council has imposed four sets of sanctions of Iran because of suspicions over its nuclear programme, which the West and Israel believe includes a drive to develop atomic weapons capability.

Iran denies any military dimension to its nuclear activities.

Its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called nuclear weapons a “sin”. But he has also refused to bow to sanctions, and warned Iran would retaliate in kind if attacked.

Foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said in an interview with the Fars news agency that Iran considered the talk of war to be a “psychological”gambit “to affect the Iranian nation, to lower the support of the people for the system.” But, he said, “our readiness (to ward off any threat) is at its peak. We take any threat, even those with a low probability of happening, seriously.

“If any practical action, either surgical or long-lasting, is taken, we will respond decisively.”The talks between Iran and the P5+1 group — the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany — are seen as an opportunity to defuse the tense situation.

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