UN says arrangements made to free peacekeepers

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Arrangements have been made with all parties for the release of 21 U.N. peacekeepers held captive by Syrian rebels, although the operation was delayed as darkness fell Friday, the United Nations said.

A team of peacekeepers was sent Friday to bring back their colleagues, who are being held in the village of Jamlah near the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, said Josephine Guerrero, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Peacekeeping Department.

Because of the late hour and darkness "it was considered unsafe to continue the operation" but efforts will resume Saturday, she said.

The captive troops, all Filipinos, are from a peacekeeping mission that had monitored a cease-fire line between Israel and Syriawithout incident for nearly four decades. Their abduction Wednesday illustrated the sudden vulnerability of the U.N. mission amid spillover from Syria's civil war. It sent a worrisome signal to Israel, which fears lawlessness along the shared frontier if Syrian President Bashar Assad is ousted.

Earlier, U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told reporters that the Filipinos are being held in the basements of four or five houses in Jamlah.

The peacekeepers are apparently safe, he said, but the village "is subjected to intense shelling by the Syrian armed forces."

"As of now, there is perhaps a hope — but I have to be extremely cautious because it is not done yet — but there is the possibility that a cease-fire of a few hours can intervene which would allow for our people to be released," he said after briefing the U.N. Security Council.

"If that were to happen, as we all hope," Ladsous said, "we would strongly expect that there not be retaliatory action by the Syrian armed forces over the village and its civilian population after our people have left."

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said late Friday that a media person with the group holding the peacekeepers reported that the rebels would release the captives if there is a cease-fire and a halt in shelling of the area between 10 a.m. and noon local time Saturday.

The Observatory, a British-based group that relies on a network of contacts in Syria, said teams from the Red Cross and the U.N. were expected to reach the area Saturday morning.

The peacekeepers' four-vehicle convoy was intercepted on the outskirts of Jamlah on Wednesday by rebels from a group calling itself the Martyrs of the Yarmouk Brigades.

Rebels said 10 people have died in regime shelling of Jamlah and nearby villages in recent days. Fighting continued Thursday, according to activists.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland condemned rebel forces anew Friday for holding the U.N. peacekeepers but also blamed President Bashar Assad's regime for attacking the area.

"We have the regime shelling this rebel-held position, further endangering the peacekeepers and making it impossible for U.N. negotiators to get in there and try to resolve" the situation, she told reporters in Washington.

Nuland said the U.S. is in contact with Syria's opposition leaders and telling them "that this is not good for them, it's not good for their reputation and that they need to immediately release these people."

Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari denied that government forces were shelling Jamlah, but he said they were involved in military activity in the suburbs "where the armed groups are concentrated."

He said Syria has three goals: To ensure the safe release of the peacekeepers; guarantee the safety of the inhabitants of Jamlah and other villages; and "get these armed groups, terrorists, out of there." He said Syrian soldiers are willing to risk their lives to see the safe release of the peacekeepers.

The capture of the peacekeepers came a week after the announcement that a member of their mission is missing.

Ladsous said that in light of the volatile situation, the United Nations has vacated two positions in the area that were particularly exposed to gunfire.

"In a wider sense, of course we are looking very closely at the 'modus operendi' of the mission in the situation it is facing," he said.

The U.N. monitoring mission, known as UNDOF, was set up in 1974, seven years after Israel captured the Golan and a year after it managed to push back Syrian troops trying to recapture the territory in another regional war.

For nearly four decades, the U.N. monitors helped enforce a stable truce between Israel and Syria.

But in recent months, Syrian mortars overshooting their target have repeatedly hit the Israeli-controlled Golan. In Israel's most direct involvement so far, Israeli warplanes struck inside Syria in January, according to U.S. officials who said the target was a convoy carrying anti-aircraft weapons bound for Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia allied with Assad and Iran.

U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said "the mission in the Golan needs to review its security arrangements and it has been doing that."

He said the mission has been looking at different scenarios and arrangements on how to operate "in these new rather difficult and challenging circumstances."

One change that has already been made is the elimination of night patrols, Nesirky said.

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Less fuss this time over NYC terror trial

NEW YORK (AP) — The first court appearance for Osama bin Laden's son-in-law and onetime propagandist unfolded at a Manhattan courthouse Friday without the fuss over security that the Obama administration encountered three years ago over its plan to hold a civilian trial for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

There were no signs of unusual police activity around the court complex as lawyers for defendantSulaiman Abu Ghaith entered a "not guilty" plea on his behalf. Public officials who had warned in 2009 that Mohammed's very presence in New York would put civilians at risk said they didn't have the same fears this time around.

"Times have changed," said Michael Balboni, a top domestic security adviser to two New Yorkgovernors.

Bin Laden is dead. Al-Qaida's ability to launch a strike in the U.S. is greatly diminished. Other terror trials have proven the city can handle security with minimal cost and disruption. And in any case,Abu Ghaith was known as a "functionary" in the al-Qaida network, rather than a leader, and as such was far less likely to inspire reaction from bin Laden's followers, said Balboni, New York's former deputy secretary of public safety.

"The NYPD is more than capable of locking down Foley Square and making sure they can protect anything going on there," he said, referring to the part of the city where the trial is taking place.

New York City had a solid track record for handling major terrorism trials until the effort to bring Mohammed to justice collapsed amid opposition to his presence on U.S. soil. The thrust of that debate was over whether al-Qaida figures were more properly tried in a military court, but security challenges also loomed as a factor.

At the time, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he planned to spend $200 million a year on extra security for the trial, which Obama ultimately moved to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly drew up a plan that would have created a "frozen zone" in vital business districts, involving thousands of extra officers and checkpoints for inspecting vehicles.

Since then, prosecutions of less infamous terror figures have quietly resumed in New York.

Three Queens men were prosecuted for plotting to bomb New York City's subway system. An Egyptian preacher extradited from Great Britain is awaiting trial on charges that he conspired to set up a terrorist training camp and helped abduct American tourists in Yemen. A former Guantanamo detainee who was once bin Laden's cook and bodyguard, Ahmed Ghailani, was convicted of playing a role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa.

U.S. Rep. Peter King, a Long Island Republican who had been a leading opponent of the plan to try Mohammed in New York, said he agreed that Abu Ghaith's presence Friday didn't present the same security issues. But as a matter of policy, "Military tribunals are the proper venue for enemy combatants," he said.

"If the Abu Ghaith trial does go forward in federal court, it must not be used as a precedent for future enemy combatants who should be tried at Guantanamo," he said.

A police department spokesman said the department was unaware of any specific terror threats related to the case.

Asked about the security issue on his weekly segment on WOR Radio, Bloomberg said he had no worries.

"No street is going to be closed because of this," he said. "Would I prefer it elsewhere? I'm not going to get involved in that because I don't want to make the president's job any more difficult. He's got to decide, or the attorney general has got to decide, what they're going to do. Tell us whatever it is. We have a well-trained and adequate police department that will provide them with any services they need, if any."

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Shiite leader: Sectarian attacks are 'genocide'

FILE - On this Saturday, Jan. 12, 2013 file photo, Pakistani Shiite Muslims sit next to the bodies of their relatives awaiting burial, who were killed in Thursday's deadly bombings, during a protest in Quetta, Pakistan. Pakistan's minority Shiite Muslims have started using the word "genocide" to describe a spike in attacks against them by Sunni militants with suspected links to the country's security agencies and a mainstream political party. The violence, which has killed nearly 300 Shiites this year alone, has thrown a spotlight on the freedoms politicians here give extremist groups and the murky and protracted relationship between militants and the nation's military and intelligence services. (AP Photo/Arshad Butt, File)

In this Friday, Feb. 22, 2013, photo, a Pakistani security man stands guard outside a mosque in Quetta, Pakistan. Pakistan's minority Shiite Muslims have begun to use words like "genocide" to describe a violent spike in attacks directed against them by a militant Sunni group, with suspicious links to the country's security agencies and a mainstream political party that governs the largest province, where some of the most violent jihadi groups are headquartered. (AP Photo/Arshad Butt)

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan's minority Shiite Muslims have started using the word "genocide" to describe a violent spike in attacks against them by a militant Sunni group with suspected links to the country's security agencies and a mainstream political party that governs the largest province.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a group of radical Sunni Muslims, who revile Shiites as heretics, has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks throughout Pakistan. Linked to al-Qaida, it has been declared a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S., yet it operates with relative ease in Pakistan's populous Punjab province, where Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and several other violent jihadi groups are based.

The violence against Shiites has ignited a national debate — and political arguments — about a burgeoning militancy in Pakistan. The latest attack was a massive bombing earlier this month that ripped apart a Shiite neighborhood in Pakistan's largest city of Karachi, killing 48 people, many of them as they left a mosque after saying their evening prayers. So far this year nearly 300 Shiites have been killed in devastating bombings, target killings and executions.

The unrelenting attacks also have focused the nation's attention on freedoms that Pakistani politicians give extremists groups, staggering corruption within the police and prison systems and the murky and protracted relationship between militant groups and Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies.

"The government doesn't have the will to go after them and the security agencies are littered with sympathizers who give them space to operate," Hazara Democratic Party chief Abdul Khaliq Hazara, told The Associated Press in a recent interview in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan where some of the most ferocious anti-Shiite attacks have occurred.

He labeled the killings as the "genocide of Hazaras," whom are mostly Shiites and easily identified by their Central Asian facial features.

"I have a firm belief that our security agencies have not yet decided to end all extremists groups," said Hazara. "They still want those (militants) that they think they can control and will need either in India or Afghanistan," he said referring to allegations that Pakistan uses militants as proxies against hostile India to the east and Afghanistan to the west.

The army has a history of supporting militant Islamists using them as proxies to fight in Kashmir, a region divided between Pakistan and India and claimed by both in its entirety. It is repeatedly criticized by the United States and Afghanistan for not doing enough to deny Afghan insurgents sanctuary in the tribal regions that border Afghanistan. Angry at the criticism, Pakistani army officials say they have lost more than 4,000 soldiers — more than NATO and the U.S. combined — fighting militants.

Yet, police officials in Baluchistan and the capital, Islamabad, told the AP that Pakistan's intelligence agency had ordered them to release militant leaders who had been arrested. The militants were not necessarily affiliated with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, said the officials, who asked not to be identified because they feared losing their jobs.

Even the judiciary has queried Pakistan's security agencies for information about their alleged ties to militants.

The Supreme Court previously ordered the intelligence agencies and the paramilitary Frontier Corp, which was given sweeping powers to track and arrest militants in Quetta, to explain accusations of their involvement in anti-Shiite attacks. The intelligence agency was told by the court to identify unregistered weapons and vehicles some of which were alleged to have been involved in suicide attacks targeting Shiites.

Still in Pakistan's most populous province of Punjab where 60 percent of the country's 180 million people live, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and other militant groups move largely unrestricted.

In 2010, Punjab's Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif issued a surprising appeal to the Taliban, asking them to stop attacks in Punjab province because his government — just like the militants — opposed the dictates of the West. In a recent interview with the AP, Ahsan Iqbal, the deputy secretary general of Sharif's conservative Pakistan Muslim League, clarified his boss's comments.

"What we were saying to the Taliban at the time was 'if you are fighting the Pakistan government because they are stooges of the U.S. ... if that is your logic then why are you attacking in the Punjab because we are not stooges of the United States," he said.

The dramatic increase in sectarian violence also has spawned fierce political debate in Parliament with rivals firing volleys of accusations and counter accusations.

The ruling, liberal-leaning Pakistan People's Party has accused its conservative rival, the Pakistan Muslim League, which governs Punjab province, of patronizing radical Sunni groups, including Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. In response, Punjab parliamentarians have shot back, charging the Pakistani federal government with inaction and ineptness for failing to establish a coordinated, nationwide anti-terrorist campaign during its five years at the helm.

Iqbal says his Pakistan Muslim League has "zero tolerance" for extremists yet its provincial Law Minister last year campaigned alongside the leader of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi's parent organization, Sipah-e-Sahabah Pakistan, which is outlawed in Pakistan.

"It is political expediency in the Punjab that they think they need the support from the SSP in some parts for votes," said Hazara. "But the policies of these extremists will destroy political parties in Pakistan. It will destroy Pakistan."

Today, the SSP operates in Pakistan's Punjab province under a new name, Ahle Sunnat wal Jamaat. It runs scores of religious schools unencumbered by government restrictions. The schools churn out students, who graduate with a loathing of Shiite Muslims, a willingness to be foot soldiers for other Sunni militant groups and ambitions of making Pakistan a radical Sunni state.

Both organizations also have links to Afghanistan's Taliban and in 2011 Lashkar-e-Jhangvi carried out an attack in Afghanistan, killing nearly 70 Shiites in a series of coordinated strikes in three Afghan cities. The attacks raised concern that insurgents wanted to further destabilize Afghanistan by adding a new and deadly sectarian flavor to the conflict already being waged between insurgents and Afghan and foreign forces.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi operated militant training camps in Afghanistan during the Taliban's rule that ended in 2001, said Waliullah Rahmani, an ethnic Hazara and executive director of the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies, a private think tank in the Afghan capital, Kabul. Still, Rahmani said the Afghan Taliban have not promoted sectarian violence, which might explain why there have been no other anti-Shiite attacks, Rahmani said Thursday in an interview.

Zahid Hussain, whose books plot the rise of militancy in Pakistan, linked the latest round of sectarian carnage in Baluchistan to lashkars, or tribal militias, established with the support of Pakistan's intelligence agencies to crush a burgeoning secessionist movement.

The militias, Hussain said, draw heavily from local religious schools or madrassas, which are heavily financed by donations from Gulf and Arab countries and are run by hard-line clerics with close ties to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

"That provides a deadly and unholy nexus (between) forces fighting the Baluch separatists and those waging war against the Shia community," Hussain wrote in a recent column. It also implicates Pakistan's intelligence agencies, even if indirectly, in the carnage — an allegation they deny.

In a column assailing the Punjab government's "dangerous liaisons" with militants in its province, Hussain said: "Pity the nation where the blood of innocents comes cheap and murderers live under state patronage."

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Kathy Gannon is AP's special regional correspondent for Pakistan and Afghanistan and can be followed on www.twitter.com/kathygannon

Iran Says UN Human Rights Rapporteur Took Bribes From U.S.

Huffington Post – March 8, 2013

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/08/ahmed-shaheed-bribes-iran_n_2836196.html

TEHRAN, Iran — An Iranian official has accused the U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in Iran of taking bribes from the United States, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported Friday.

The report quoted Mohammad Javad Larijani, secretary general of Iran’s high council for human rights, as saying Ahmed Shaheed received money from the U.S. He said that was why he could only parrot U.S. allegations against Iran.

“The money the special rapporteur has received from the U.S. State Department has led to a situation that he cannot write about anything except their anti-Iran desires,” Larijani was quoted as saying, without giving evidence.

Iran has barred Shaheed from Iran since 2011, saying there is no need for a special rapporteur because Iran has always answered questions from the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Larijani said Iran has provided U.N. with considerable evidence of violations by Shaheed, the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council’s special rapporteur on Iran. He did not provide details.

He said Shaheed behaves like a TV celebrity, appearing on western television stations to make comments against Iran.

“The special rapporteur has no right to take a stance against the country he is assigned to,” Larijani said, charging that in TV interviews, Shaheed “repeats the words of the U.S. and Israel” against Iran.

Afghanistan: Two suicide bombers strike on first day of Hagel's visit

About 20 people were killed in two suicide bombings in Afghanistan Saturday. A Taliban spokesman said the attacks were a message for Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who is in Afghanistan for his first official visit.

Militants staged two deadly suicide attacks Saturday to mark the first full day of US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's visit toAfghanistan, a fresh reminder that insurgents continue to fight and challenges remain as the US-led NATO force hands over the country's security to the Afghans.

A suicide bomber on a bicycle struck outside the Afghan Defense Ministry early Saturday morning, and about a half hour later, another suicide bomber attacked a police checkpoint in Khost city, the capital of Khost province in eastern Afghanistan.

Nine people were killed in the bombing at the ministry, and an Afghan policeman and eight civilians, who were mostly children, died in the blast in Khost, said provincial spokesman Baryalai Wakman.

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"This attack was a message to him," Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said of Hagel, in an email to reporters about the defense ministry attack.

Hagel was nowhere near the blasts, but heard them across the city. He told reporters traveling with him that he wasn't sure what it was when he heard the explosion.

"We're in a war zone. I've been in war, so shouldn't be surprised when a bomb goes off or there's an explosion," said Hagel, a Vietnam War veteran.

Asked what his message to the Taliban would be, he said that the US was going to continue to work with its allies to insure that the Afghan people have the ability to develop their own country and democracy.

Hagel's first visit to Kabul as Pentagon chief comes as the US and Afghanistan grapple with a number of disputes, from the aborted handover of a main detention facility — canceled at the last moment late Friday as a deal for the transfer broke down — to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's demand that US special operations forces withdraw from Wardak province just outside Kabul over allegations of abuse.

The prison transfer, originally slated for 2009, has been repeatedly delayed because of disputes between the US and Afghan governments about whether all detainees should have the right to a trial and who will have the ultimate authority over the release of prisoners the US considers a threat.

The Afghan government has maintained that it needs full control over which prisoners are released as a matter of national sovereignty. The issue has threatened to undermine ongoing negotiations for a bilateral security agreement that would govern the presence of US forces in Afghanistan after the current combat mission ends in 2014.

US military officials said Saturday's transfer ceremony was canceled because they could not finalize the agreement with the Afghans, but did not provide details. Afghan officials were less forthcoming.

"The ceremony is not happening today," Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimisaid, without elaborating.

Regarding Wardak, Karzai set a deadline for Monday for the pullout of the US commandos, over allegations that joint US and Afghan patrols engaged in a pattern of torture, kidnappings and summary executions.

"Each of those accusations has been answered and we're not involved," said Brigadier Adam Findlay, NATO's deputy chief of staff of operations. "There are obviously atrocities occurring there, but it's not linked to us, and the kind of atrocities we are seeing, fingers cut off, other mutilations to bodies, is just not the way we work."

Findlay said NATO officials have made provisional plans to withdraw special operations forces, if Karzai sticks to his edict after meetings this weekend with Hagel and top military commander in Afghanistan Gen. Joseph Dunford.

"What we've got to try to do is go to a middle ground that meets the president's frustration," but also keeps insurgents from using Wardak as a staging ground to launch attacks on the capital, Findlay said. "That plan would be that you would put in your more conventional forces into Wardak," to replace the special operators and maintain security, he said.

NATO officials see the weekend violence as part of the Taliban's coming campaign for the spring fighting season. "There's a series of attacks that have started as the snow is thawing. We had a potential insider attack yesterday ... and there's been a number of attacks on the border," Findlay explained.

The suspected insider attack occurred in Kapisa province in eastern Afghanistan several hours before Hagel arrived Friday. Three men presumed to be Afghan soldiers forced their way onto a US base and opened fire, killing one US civilian contractor and wounding four US soldiers, according to a senior US military official.

The official said investigators were "95 percent certain it was an insider attack," because the three men came from the Afghan side of the joint US-Afghan base, and rammed an Afghan army Humveethrough a checkpoint dividing the base, before jumping out and opening fire on the Americans with automatic weapons. All three attackers were killed.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

The Taliban said it was not behind the Tagab base attack, and has not yet weighed in on the attack in Khost, but the group claimed responsibility for the morning attack at the ministry shortly after it happened.

Pentagon spokesman George Little said Hagel was in a briefing at a US-led military coalition facility in another part of the city when the explosion occurred. He said the briefing continued without interruption.

Azimi, the defense ministry spokesman, said the bomber on a bicycle struck just before 9 a.m. local time about 30 meters (yards) from the main gate of the ministry.

A man at the scene, Abdul Ghafoor, said the blast rocked the entire area.

"I saw dead bodies and wounded victims lying everywhere," Ghafoor told the Associated Press. "Then random shooting started and we escaped from the area."

The ministry said at least nine civilians were killed and others were wounded.

Reporters traveling with Hagel were in a briefing when they heard the explosion. They were moved to a lower floor of the same building as US facilities in downtown Kabul were locked down as a security precaution.

Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor and Heidi Vogt contributed to this report from Kabul.

Dozier can be followed on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/KimberlyDozier