Afghans poised to take security lead from US, NATO

In this Thursday, June 13, 2013 photo, An Afghan National Army soldier aims his weapon, in Sangin district of Kandahar province southern Afghanistan. One of the most significant turning points in one of America's longest and costliest wars is imminent: Afghanistan's fledgling security forces are taking the lead for security nationwide, bringing the moment of truth on the question of whether they are ready to fight an insurgency that remains resilient after nearly 12 years of conflict. That question is especially pressing here in this border region where insurgents regularly ambush government forces and control parts of the countryside. (AP Photo/Allauddin Khan)

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AP) — One of the most significant turning points in one of America's longest and costliest wars is imminent: Afghanistan's fledgling security forces are taking the lead for security nationwide, bringing the moment of truth on the question of whether they are ready to fight an insurgency that remains resilient after nearly 12 years of conflict.

Nowhere is that question more pressing than in this city near the Pakistani border, which is the capital of Nangarhar province. In the province, which has a predominantly Pashtun population, the ethnic group that makes up the Taliban, insurgents regularly ambush government forces, blow up the offices of humanitarian organizations, and control parts of a countryside that has seen a spike in opium poppy cultivation.

Nangarhar is considered so dangerous that foreign military forces still handle security in more than half of its 22 districts.

That will change, after Afghan President Hamid Karzai declares — in an announcement expected soon — that Afghan forces are taking over security around the country and U.S. and other foreign forces will move entirely into a supporting, backseat role. At that point, the remaining districts in Nangarhar, along with other hotspots still in the hands of the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force, will become the Afghan troops' full responsibility.

Residents of Jalalabad, a bustling trading hub and agricultural center on the junction of two rivers, worry about whether the Afghan forces can keep them safe from an insurgency that they say is equipped and trained in neighboring Pakistan. They also fear that the Afghan forces still don't have enough heavy weapons or firepower.

"Our main concern is that for more than 10 years the international community managed to do nothing and that they are now trying to make us strong. It's too little too late," said Lal Mohammad Durrani, a member of the Nangarhar provincial council. "We need more weapons."

NATO training since 2009 has dramatically ramped up the Afghan National Security Forces, bringing it up from 40,000 men and women six years ago to about 352, 000 today. Once the transition is announced, coalition troops will move entirely into a supporting role — training and mentoring, and in emergency situations providing the Afghans backup in combat, mainly in the form of airstrikes and medevac.

That is to pave the way for international forces — currently numbering about 100,000 troops, including 66,000 Americans — to leave. By the end of the year, the NATO force will be halved. At the end of 2014, all combat troops will have left and will replaced, if approved by the Afghan government, by a much smaller force that will only train and advise. President Barack Obama has not yet said how many soldiers he will leave in Afghanistan along with NATO forces, but it is thought that it would be about 9,000 U.S. troops and about 6,000 from its allies.

In a series of wide-ranging interviews with Afghan and western military officials, experts and analysts, opinions are mixed as to the state of readiness of the Afghan forces — although nearly all agree they are far better now than they were when the NATO training mission began.

British Lt. Gen. Nick Carter, the deputy commander of coalition forces, said the transition to take the lead in security "represents a significant achievement for the Afghan security forces." But, he added, "That said we will require and need to deliver for the Afghans some fairly significant support for a while to come."

Already, Afghans now carry out 90 percent of military operations around the country. They are in the lead in security in 312 districts nationwide, where 80 percent of Afghanistan's population of nearly 30 million lives — and only 91 districts remain for them to take over — including 12 in Nangarhar.

The transition comes at a time when violence is at levels matching the worst in 12 years, fueling some Afghans' concerns the forces aren't ready.

"We thought this summer would not be easy for the Afghan security forces, but it was not expected to be like this. We have roadside bombs, we have suicide attacks, organized attacks," said Jawed Kohistani, an Afghan political and military analyst. "It is a mistake to transition this quickly."

Jalalabad's relatively peaceful tree-lined streets are crowded with checkpoints, manned by often edgy Afghan army and police worried about car bombs. Insurgents use the province's mountain passes and valleys to sneak in from neighboring Pakistan, where they retain safe havens in that country's lawless Pashtun-dominated tribal belt. Jalalabad is also just a 3-hour drive through craggy passes and gorges to Kabul, which has seen a spate of spectacular suicide attacks in recent weeks.

Al Hajj Malak Nazir — the local head of the Afghan High Peace Council, a body created in an attempt to reach out to the Taliban — said that even though he considers Afghan forces to be under-equipped, he believes they will eventually prevail over the insurgency.

"The Taliban can't take all of Afghanistan. After transition they could take a district, but they won't be able to keep it," he said. That. He added, is why he has been trying to convince the Taliban to enter negotiations.

"This is a very good opportunity for the Taliban to say they will stop fighting. But they won't," he said. "The Americans are now saying they are leaving, but the Taliban never say they are leaving."

Few believe the Taliban will keep promises they have made in the past to stop fighting when foreign military forces are gone. They have not stopped in any province where Afghan forces have taken the lead.

They have also rebuffed numerous attempts to start peace talks in the past year and have instead intensified a campaign that mostly targets urban centers and government installations.

There is overall agreement, however, they don't have much support outside their traditional areas and can't win militarily against the Afghan forces.

"I think, if the Taliban tried to come back, it would have to come back in a very different way. It would have to come back and participate politically," Lt. Gen. Carter said. "It is my sense that civil society, which is the future of this country, absolutely would not put up with sorts of standards that were here 15 years ago. And, therefore, my sense is that ultimately it is the politics that will determine this, and not the violence that determines this."

On battlefields around the country, Afghan forces plan and carry out operations on their own, with little help from coalition forces. They are often effective, but still need work on logistics and effectively using the weapons they have.

Casualty figures are indicative of the fight. More than 330 Afghan army soldiers have died so far this year, according to a tally by the Associated Press.

Last year, more than 1,200 Afghan soldiers died, compared to more than 550 in 2011, according to data compiled by the Washington-based Brookings Institution. By comparison, coalition casualties have declined as they take forces off the battlefield — 81 so far this year, 394 in 2012 and 543 in 2011.

About 1,481 militants were reported to have been killed by coalition and Afghan forces so far this year, compared with close to 3,000 militants for all of last year. The NATO command does not issue reports on the number of insurgents its troops have killed, and Afghan military figures, from which the AP compiles its data, cannot be independently verified.

"There is no doubt about the ability of the Afghan national army and police. The nation should trust them, and they do," said the Afghan Army Chief of Staff Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi.

The veteran commander rattled off a series of recent victories over insurgents, including kicking them out of parts of eastern Nuristan that they had controlled for about two years.

"There wasn't a single bit of support from the international community. Only the Afghan national army and national police were able to do that and they did it," he said.

But he grudgingly agreed Afghan troops still need help. That includes the use of coalition air power — including medical evacuations — help with locating roadside bombs and further developing the armed forces. They also need to bring down an attrition rate of 3 to 4 percent a month, which means NATO now has to help train 50,000 new recruits a year.

The U.S. has said that Afghanistan will get the weapons it requires to fight an insurgency, including a large fleet of MI-17 transport helicopters, cargo planes and ground support airplanes. The heaviest weapon the Afghan army will have is a howitzer.

"The force is designed according to the threat, and the threat here is an insurgency. The design of the ANSF is appropriate to counter that threat," said German Gen. Hans-Lothar Domrose, the commander of the NATO force that oversees ISAF.

The Afghans, on the other hand, want battle tanks and modern fighter jets — which they are unlikely to get given their cost and the training required to use them.

The war has already proven very costly

Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction John Sopko last April estimated that the ANSF has so far cost the American taxpayer $54 billion. The overall cost of the war is more difficult to estimate, but for America alone the Center for Strategic and International Studies put the price at about $650 billion through the end of 2013.

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Follow Patrick Quinn on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/PatrickAQuinn

Syrian troops capture Damascus suburb near airport

Activists take part in a rally to support the Syrian government headed by President Bashar Assad, in Rome, Saturday, June 15, 2013. The Obama administration hopes its decision to give lethal aid to Syrian rebels will prompt other nations to increase assistance, now that the U.S. has cited evidence that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its people. But the international reaction ranged from flat-out disbelief of the U.S. intelligence assessments to calls for negotiation before more weapons pour into the vicious civil war. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

U.N.-Arab League international Syria mediator Lakhdar Brahimi, left, meets with Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, June 15, 2013. Syrians are being killed at an average rate of 5,000 per month, the United Nation said Thursday as it raised the overall death toll in the civil war to nearly 93,000, with civilians bearing the brunt of the attacks. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian troops pushed forward with their offensive against rebels Saturday, capturing a suburb near theDamascus international airport as the U.S. warned that the alleged use ofchemical weapons by President Bashar Assad's forces and the involvement of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah in the civil war threaten to put a proposed political settlement out of reach.

The U.S. and Russia have been pressing for a peace conference to end Syria's civil war in Geneva, but prospects for that have been dampened after a series of regime battlefield victories and hardened positions by both sides as the death toll from the more than 2-year-old conflict has surged to nearly 93,000.

President Barack Obama's decision this week to send lethal aid to Syrian rebels and the deepening involvement of trained Shiite fighters from Lebanon's Hezbollah group also has raised the stakes, setting up a proxy fight between Iran and the West that threatens to engulf more of the Middle East.

The U.S. reversal after months of saying it would not intervene in the conflict militarily came after Washington said it had conclusive evidence the Syrian regimehad used chemical weapons, something Obama had said would be a "red line."

Syria has denied the accusations, saying Obama was lying about the evidence to justify his decision to arm the rebels. Syria's ally Russia also suggested Saturday that the evidence put forth by the United States of the use of chemical weapons doesn't meet stringent criteria for reliability.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was quoted in a statement as saying the United States continues to work aggressively for a political solution with the goal of a second Geneva meeting. But "the use of chemical weapons and increasing involvement of Hezbollah demonstrates the regime's lack of commitment to negotiations and threatens to put a political settlement out of reach," he said in a telephone conversation Friday with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the U.S. evidence does not include guarantees that it meets the requirements of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. He said the organization specifies that samples taken from blood, urine and clothing can be considered reliable evidence only if supervised by organization experts from the time they are taken up to delivery to a laboratory.

The OPCW is the autonomous body for implementing the international Chemical Weapons Convention that went into effect in 1997. Its website says Syria is one of six countries that have not signed or acceded to the convention.

Lavrov, after meeting with his Italian counterpart Emma Bonino, scoffed at suggestions that Assad's regime would use chemical weapons in light of its apparent growing advantage against the rebels.

"The regime doesn't have its back to the wall. What would be the sense of the regime using chemical weapons, moreover at such a small quantity?" he said.

Syria's conflict started with largely peaceful protests against Assad's regime in March 2011 but eventually turned into a civil war.

Russia has blocked proposed U.N. sanctions against Assad's regime and acknowledged last month that it has contracted to supply advanced S-300 air-defense missiles to Syria. ButPresident Vladimir Putin and other officials say the policies do not constitute overt support for Assad.

The statements by Moscow and Washington came days before a summit in Northern Ireland among the Group of Eight leading industrial powers. Obama is expected to push Britain and France to take similar action to arm the rebels when talks open in Northern Ireland. The U.S., Britain and France also will urge Putin to drop his political and military support for Assad, still in power after more than two years of fighting.

In fighting Saturday, Syrian government forces captured the rebel-held suburb of Ahmadiyeh near the Damascus international airport two days after a mortar round landed near the airport's runway and briefly disrupted flights, according to the state news agency. SANA said government forces killed several rebels and destroyed their hideouts in the area.

Ahmadiyeh is part of a region known as Eastern Ghouta, where government forces have been on the offensive for weeks in a move aiming to secure Assad's seat of power in the capital.

A local rebel commander who identified himself only by his nickname, Abu Hareth, for fear of government reprisals, said rebels have been firing mortar shells at the airport from Ahmadiyeh area and came under attack by the regime late Friday. He said two rebel fighters have been killed.

He added that rebels destroyed three tanks in the battle, claiming that they have acquired a small number of anti-tank missiles recently.

"A large regime force is attacking the area today," Abu Hareth said via Skype on Saturday.

Intense clashes also continued in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria's largest city, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists around the county. It said regime forces tried to storm the northern neighborhoods of Achrafieh and Bani Zeid after heavy shelling with mortar rounds and tanks but failed to advance after facing resistance from rebels.

The city has been witnessing some of the worst violence in months in recent days.

The Observatory also reported air raids and shelling of Jobar, a key district on the edge of Damascus.

Rebels, who are outgunned by Assad's Hezbollah-backed army, have been urging the world to send sophisticated arms, particularly anti-aircraft and anti-tank weaponry. The West, particularly the U.S., had been reluctant to arm the rebels, in part because of concerns the weapons could fall into the hands of Islamic militants with ties to al-Qaida.

The situation changed in recent months and alarm was raised after government forces withHezbollah's help captured the strategic town of Qusair near the Lebanese border. On Friday, Hezbollah's leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said his militants would keep fighting in Syria "wherever needed."

U.S. officials said the administration could provide the rebels with a range of weapons, including small arms, ammunition, assault rifles and a variety of anti-tank weaponry such as shoulder-fired remote-propelled grenades and other missiles.

Meanwhile, Syria's main opposition group called on Iran's new president-elect Hasan Rowhani to end his country's strong alliance with Assad, saying he should "know the mistakes of the Iranian leadership and change his country's stance before it's too late." The Syrian National Coalition said Iranian authorities have backed "Assad's criminal regime with all political, military and economic means."

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Associated Press writer Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.

End of BP cleaning crews leaves questions on Gulf

End of BP cleaning crews after oil spill leaves questions, concerns on some Gulf Coast beaches

Associated Press -

GULF SHORES, Ala. (AP) -- Finding tar balls linked to the BP oil spill isn't difficult on some Gulf Coast beaches, but the company and the government say it isn't common enough to keep sending out the crews that patrolled the sand for three years in Alabama, Florida and Mississippi.

Tourist John Henson of Atlanta disagrees, particularly after going for a walk in the surf last week and coming back with dark, sticky stains on his feet.

Henson said there were plenty of tar balls to remove from the stretch of beach where he spent a few days, regardless of what any company or government agency might say.

"I was out there yesterday and stepped all in it," Henson said.

Environmental advocates and casual visitors alike are questioning the Coast Guard decision to quit sending out BP-funded crews that have looked for oil deposits on northern Gulf Coast beaches on a regular basis since the 2010 spill spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf after an explosion and fire that killed 11 workers.

The patrols ended this month as coastal monitoring reverted to the way it operated before the spill: The Coast Guard investigates beach pollution reported by the public through a federal system, the National Response Center, and conducts cleanup operations as needed.

BP PLC, which has spent $14 billion on cleanup work, is still working with the government and says it will still pay for the removal of any lingering tar from its blown-out Deepwater Horizon well.

Cleaning crews will remain on duty in Louisiana, which was hit harder by the spill than other states because the well was so near its coast.

But with only "minute amounts" of oil being reported on most beaches now as compared with three years ago, it was time to end the practice of sending out teams in four-wheel vehicles with portable toilets on a regular basis, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Natalie Murphy said. The work itself can pose an environmental threat by damaging bird habitat and sea turtle nests, wildlife officials say.

"There was an imbalance that had to be addressed," Murphy said.

The oppressive chemical smells and thick oil deposits that polluted beaches during the summer of 2010 are long gone. White sand unmarred by tar stretches for miles on popular beaches along the Florida Panhandle and on Alabama's coast. The same is true in Mississippi, where the coastal economy depends more on gambling and shipbuilding than tourism.

But government reports show that patches of tar balls are still reported almost daily in or near popular spots like Gulf Shores and Pensacola Beach, Fla.

For example, 96 reports of tar balls spotted in coastal Baldwin County came in from April 1 through the middle of last week; 96 tar ball reports were submitted for Escambia County, Fla., over the same period. Those reports come in through the National Response Center, which has a toll-free number and website for reporting tar balls.

Some of the reports were submitted by trained crews that identified the oil as being from the BP well. Murphy said all the reports of tar balls she has heard involved oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Currently based in Gulf Shores, 20 trained Coast Guardsmen fan out under the National Response Center system to check reports of tar balls in Alabama, Florida and Mississippi and begin the cleanup once reports come in, Murphy said. BP is typically contacted to provide assistance for large concentrations of oil, she said, and the company gets a bill if the Coast Guard has to clean up smaller deposits linked to the spill.

BP crews cleaned the beach where Henson stepped in tar balls Friday, the day after the company said it got a call about the pollution from the Coast Guard. Records show the federal reporting database contained notes about tar balls being found in the same area five days earlier.

Environmentalists say a big problem with the system lies in the fact that many beach visitors may not know a tar ball if they see one. Tar balls and weathered tree bark closely resemble each other in the surf, and both are common along areas like coastal Alabama, where Mobile Bay empties both water and natural debris into the Gulf.

The uncertainty over just what is a tar ball leaves most people on the coast unable to report beach pollution even if they have the correct phone number, said Casi Callaway, executive director of Mobile Baykeeper, a nonprofit group that advocates for coastal preservation and protection.

"That's what worries me," said Callaway. "Until you step on (tar) and see it on your skin, you don't know what it is. It looks like gum in the water. And nobody is doing an education campaign on, 'This is what a tar ball looks like; here's who to call if you find one.'"

Murphy said the Coast Guard is trying to spread the word about tar balls through the media, but it's leaving it to property owners, environmentalists, condominium associations and other private groups to post signs or distribute fliers that could help in identification.

Sitting with their family near a concentration of tar balls at Little Lagoon Pass in Gulf Shores, Rick and Amanda Taylor of Tuscaloosa said the spill pollution wasn't nearly as bad this summer as in previous years since the spill. And the tar balls aren't too difficult to identify, they said: They're the dark, sandy globs that leave your hands a sticky mess.

"They're still here," Rick Taylor said. "There should be some kind of follow-up."

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Putin says West arming Syrian rebels who eat human flesh

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Alexei Anishchuk

AMMAN/LONDON (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, arriving in Britain ahead of an international summit set to be dominated by disagreement over the U.S. decision to send weapons to Syria's rebels, said the West must not arm fighters who eat human flesh.

In Syria, rebels fought back on Sunday against forces of President Bashar al-Assad and his Lebanese Hezbollah allies near Aleppo, where Assad has announced a campaign to recapture the rebel-held north after seizing a strategic town this month.

After months of deliberations, Washington decided last week to send weapons to the rebels, declaring that Assad's forces had crossed a "red line" by using nerve gas.

The move throws the superpower's weight behind the revolt and signals a potential turning point in global involvement in a two-year-old war that has already killed at least 93,000 people.

It has also infuriated Russia, Cold War-era ally of Syria, which has sold arms to Assad and used its veto at the U.N. Security Council to block resolutions against him.

Russia has dismissed the U.S. evidence that Assad's forces used nerve gas. The White House says President Barack Obama will try to lobby Putin to drop his support for Assad during this week's G8 summit hosted by British Prime Minister David Cameron.

After meeting Cameron in London, Putin said Russia wanted to create the conditions for a resolution of the conflict.

"One does not really need to support the people who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their intestines in front of the public and cameras," Putin said.

"Are these the people you want to support? Are they the ones you want to supply with weapons? Then this probably has little relation to the humanitarian values preached in Europe for hundreds of years."

The incident Putin referred to was most likely that of a rebel commander filmed last month cutting into the torso of a dead soldier and biting into a piece of one of his organs.

Both sides have been accused of atrocities in the conflict. The United States and other countries that aid the rebels say one of the reasons for doing so is to support mainstream opposition groups and reduce the influence of extremists.

DOUBTS OVER CONFERENCE

The U.S. plan to arm the rebels also places new doubt over plans for an international peace conference called by Washington and Moscow, their first joint attempt in a year to try to seek a settlement.

After meeting Putin, Britain's Cameron said the divide between Russia and the West over Syria could be bridged, although they disagreed about who was at fault.

"What I take from our conversation today is that we can overcome these differences if we recognize that we share some fundamental aims: to end the conflict, to stop Syria breaking apart, to let the Syrian people decide who governs them and to take the fight to the extremists and defeat them."

Britain has not said whether it too will arm the rebels, but the issue is contentious even within Cameron's Conservative-led government. Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister from his Liberal Democrat coalition partners, said: "We clearly don't think it's the right thing to do now, or else we would have done it."

Under its new posture, Washington has also said it will keep warplanes and Patriot surface-to-air missiles in Jordan, an ally whose territory it can use to help arm and train rebel fighters. Washington has 4,500 troops in Jordan carrying out exercises.

Washington has not ruled out imposing a no-fly zone over parts of Syria, perhaps near the Jordanian border, although it has taken no decision yet to do so.

Jordan's King Abdullah rallied his own armed forces on Sunday, telling military cadets: "If the world does not help as it should, and if the matter becomes a danger to our country, we are able at any moment to take the measures to protect the country and the interests of our people."

Washington hopes its backing will restore rebel momentum after Assad's forces seized the initiative by gaining the open support of Hezbollah, Lebanon's Iranian-backed Shi'ite militia, which sent thousands of seasoned fighters to aid Assad.

Just a few months ago, Western countries believed Assad's days were numbered. But with Hezbollah's support he was able to achieve a major victory this month in Qusair, a strategically located rebel-held town on a main route from Lebanon.

FIGHT FOR ALEPPO

Since then, the government has announced major plans to seize the north, including Aleppo, Syria's biggest city and commercial centre, largely rebel-held for nearly a year. The United Nations says it fears for a bloodbath in the north.

Rebels say they are fighting back against government offensives in the north. An opposition operations room in northern Aleppo said fighters had destroyed an army tank and killed 20 troops at Marat al-Arteek, a town where opposition sources say rebels are holding back an armored column sent to reinforce loyalists from isolated Shi'ite villages.

"Assad's forces and Hezbollah are trying to control northern rural Aleppo but they are being repelled and dealt heavy losses," Colonel Abdeljabbar al-Okeidi, a Free Syrian Army commander in Aleppo, told al-Arabiya Television.

He said Hezbollah had sent up to 2,000 fighters to Aleppo and the surrounding areas, but expressed confidence the opposition would prevail.

"Aleppo and Qusair are different. In Qusair we were surrounded by villages that had been occupied by Hezbollah and by loyalist areas. We did not even have a place to take our wounded. In Aleppo, we have a strategic depth and logistical support and we are better organized," he said. "Aleppo will turn into the grave of these Hezbollah devils."

Battles were also fought inside Aleppo itself, where thousands of loyalist troops and militiamen reinforced by Hezbollah have been massing and attacking opposition-held parts of the city, driving rebel fighters back.

Opposition activists said the army was also airlifting troops behind rebel lines to Ifrin, in a Kurdish area, which would give access for a bigger sweep inside the city.

"For a week, the rebel forces have been generally on the retreat in Aleppo, but the tide has started turning in the last two days," said Abu Abdallah, an activist in the area.

Hezbollah's support for Assad, a follower of the minority Alawite offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, against mainly Sunni Muslim rebels has increased fears of sectarian violence spreading into neighboring countries.

In Lebanon, security sources said gunmen had shot dead four Shi'ite Muslim men in an ambush in the Bekaa Valley close to the Syrian frontier. It was not clear who was behind the shooting.

Lebanon is still rebuilding from its own sectarian civil war, fought from 1975-1990. Fighting between Sunnis and Shi'ites was also behind most of the violence in Iraq in the decade after the U.S. invasion of 2003.

(Additional reporting by Laila Bassam in Beirut, Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman and Guy Faulconbridge, Costas Pitas and Andrew Osborn in London; Writing by Peter Graff)

Swiss president would back criminal probe against NSA leaker

GENEVA (Reuters) - Swiss President Ueli Maurer said on Sunday he doubted Edward Snowden's claims about his activities as a CIA man in Geneva and would back a criminal investigation into the secrets leaker if Swiss prosecutors called for one.

Ex-CIA operative Snowden broke cover in spectacular fashion earlier this month, unmasking himself as the source of leaks about U.S. government surveillance programs.

He had previously worked in the U.S. mission to the United Nations in Geneva between 2007 and 2009. He told the Guardian newspaper that he had a "formative" experience in the Swiss city when the CIA deliberately got a Swiss banker drunk and encouraged him to drive home. When he was arrested, a CIA operative offered to intervene and later recruited the banker.

"It does not seem to me that it is likely that this incident played out as it has been described by Snowden and by the media," Maurer was quoted as saying in the Der Sonntag and SonntagsBlick newspapers.

"This would mean that the CIA successfully bribed the Geneva police and judiciary. With all due respect, I just can't imagine it," SonntagsBlick quoted him as saying.

He added that Snowden was just 23 at the time, and unlikely to have had knowledge of such an operation, and that the CIA usually dealt with terrorism rather than financial espionage.

Snowden's revelations and his links to Switzerland surfaced at a sensitive moment for U.S.-Swiss relations.

After years of cat-and-mouse between U.S. justice officials and the Swiss banks whom they suspect of complicity in U.S. tax evasion, Switzerland may be about to pass a law that could end the U.S. investigation, at a price.

Switzerland's upper house approved the draft law on Wednesday but passage through the lower house is expected to be far tougher. U.S. authorities already forced the closure of Switzerland's oldest private bank, Wegelin & Co, earlier this year.

More than a dozen banks are under formal investigation, including Credit Suisse, Julius Baer, the Swiss arm of Britain's HSBC, privately held Pictet in Geneva and local government-backed Zuercher Kantonalbank and Basler Kantonalbank.

If the law is not approved, U.S. investigators have a "death list" of five Swiss banks that could be hit by immediate indictments, Der Sonntag quoted an unnamed insider as saying.

However, the story of Snowden's escapades in Switzerland was mainly media hype, Maurer said. The Swiss Foreign Ministry has asked the U.S. embassy in Bern to check what really happened.

Maurer told another Swiss Sunday paper, NZZ am Sonntag, that it was up to the judicial authorities to decide whether or not to launch a criminal investigation into Snowden, but the Swiss cabinet would back such a move as a formality, he said.