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Afghan, Pak Officials Discuss Peace Talks With Taliban

Afghanistan on Friday sent its second high-level delegation in weeks to Islamabad to press for the release of Taliban prisoners in a bid to kickstart peace efforts, officials said.
Talks this month between Pakistan and Afghanistan’s High Peace Council resulted in the release of nine Taliban, but not the militia’s former deputy leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was captured in 2010, AFP reported.
Afghan officials believe senior Taliban leaders held in Pakistan could help bring militants to the negotiating table, if released from jail, to end over a decade of war ahead of the 2014 pull-out of US-led NATO troops.
“I hope that we will continue to implement other concrete measures in a timely manner and push the peace process forward... so that all those who can help advance the peace process go free,” said Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul.
He spoke following talks with his Pakistani counterpart Hina Rabbani Khar and before meeting Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf.
An Afghan official said ahead of the meetings that Rassoul would ask for the release of further Taliban detainees in Pakistan, including Baradar.
The Taliban, leading an 11-year insurgency since the 2001 US-led invasion, has welcomed the releases, but refuses to negotiate directly with Kabul, calling the government of President Hamid Karzai a US puppet.
Pakistan confirmed that the release of prisoners had been discussed again on Friday.
“Other elements, whether it had to do with the release of prisoners or the safe passage or the facilitation of contacts, were all discussed thoroughly and we will all agree that we are making forward movement on each one of those elements,” Khar said.
Preliminary contacts between the US and the Taliban in Doha were broken off in March when the militants failed to secure the release of five of their comrades held at the Guantanamo Bay prison on the US base in Cuba.
Support from Pakistan, which backed the 1996-2001 Taliban regime in Kabul, is seen as crucial to peace in Afghanistan after the departure of NATO forces.

Tunisians March Against Police Repression

Thousands of people protested for a fourth straight day Friday in the central town of Siliana demanding the governor quit, as political instability mounts in Tunisia two years after a revolution.
Tunisia’s main trade union UGTT called for a symbolic march a few kilometers (miles) towards Tunis which drew a crowd of several thousand, who took part on foot, in cars and on motorcycles, AFP reported.
As they advanced they chanted, “With our souls and our blood we sacrifice for Siliana.”
Protesters from the impoverished town, 120 kilometers (75 miles) southwest of Tunis, told AFP they would continue their agitation until governor Ahmed Ezzine Mahjoubi steps down, police repression ends and a development program for the region is put in place.
More than 300 people have been wounded since Tuesday when the protesters first took to the streets of Siliana, sparking clashes with police.
The streets of the town were on Friday littered with stones, charred remains of barricades made from burnt tires, while residents also set up road blocks on the highway leading to Tunis, according to AFP reporters.
“We will undertake a symbolic march to show the determination of the people against (economic) marginalization,” UGTT secretary general Nejib Sebti said as he urged the crowd to march “quietly and peacefully”.
He said a delegation from Sidi Bouzid--the birthplace of the revolution that saw the exit of former strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and launched Arab Spring uprisings across the region--was expected to arrive later Friday.
“We are ready for dialogue but without the presence of the governor,” Sebti added. Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali has refused to sack the governor.
Protesters complained about police violence during the protests since Tuesday.
Jebali has promised an investigation into the violence, which he said was threatening the country’s fledgling democracy as it approaches the second anniversary of the revolution triggered on December 17, 2010.
“We will investigate the possible excessive use of force and the origins of the violence,” while demanding accountability from those responsible for “this catastrophe,” Jebali said on Thursday.

Filipinos Stage Anti-US Rally in Manila

Thousands of protesters in the Philippines staged a rally near the US embassy in Manila on Friday, denouncing the United States and accusing Philippine President Benigno Aquino of favoring foreign investors at the expense of local workers’ rights.
The demonstrators also commemorated the 149th anniversary of the birth of national hero Andres Bonifacio, who symbolizes the struggles of the working class.
They burned an effigy of President Benigno Aquino during the rally against his labor policy in Manila.
The protesters compared themselves with the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States, which demonstrates against income inequality.
The activists said Aquino’s government was comprised of business elites, and that the majority of the population remained oppressed and exploited.
They expressed support for anti-government uprisings in the Middle East and demonstrations across Europe that opposed austerity measures, such as cutting pensions and increasing taxes.
“Anywhere in the world where there’s oppression, where there’s economic hardships and exploitation, you expect people to rise up, and the Filipino people have been doing that way before the Occupy Movement of the United States. So I think it’s a good thing that many other peoples around the world are taking up militant forms of struggle, occupying public areas, the people in the Middle East, North Africa, in North America and Europe, and I think it’s a sign that the current system is really failing. The current capitalist order has failed the people and the people want a new system that would prioritize people over profit,” said Renato Reyes of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (New Patriotic Alliance).

US Flag Burned
Protesters burned a mock US flag with the slogan “Number one terrorist.”
The US military is shifting its attention back to Asia, after being embroiled in the Afghan war and anti-terrorist activities in South Asia.
Rights activists in the Philippines have long opposed an agreement that allows US troops to hold joint training with the Philippine military.
“Yes, we have always stood against the US presence in the Philippines and the region. We are against the Visiting Forces Agreement, we are against the deployment of US troops and the establishment of more bases, and our call is for the US to get out of the Philippines and the Asia Pacific region,” said Liza Masa, spokesperson for women’s rights group Gabriela.
The Philippines and other countries in the region have seen a resurgence of US warships, planes and personnel since President Barack Obama announced a “pivot” in foreign, economic and security policy towards Asia late last year.

US Soldier in WikiLeaks Case Held in “Cage”

A US Army private facing court-martial on suspicion of leaking secret documents to the WikiLeaks website testified on Thursday he was confined to a “cage” in the early days after his arrest in 2010, and thought he would die there.
Bradley Manning, in his first public comments since his arrest in Iraq, said his isolation quickly led to a breakdown, and his military captors eventually put him on suicide watch, Reuters reported.
“My nights were my days and my days were my nights,” Manning said. “It all blended together after a couple of days.”
The low-ranking soldier Manning faces up to life in prison if convicted of charges he played a role in the massive leaking of secrets by WikiLeaks, which stunned governments around the world by publishing intelligence documents and diplomatic cables, mostly in 2010.
Manning’s lawyers were working on a plea deal involving less serious charges that would result in a prison term of at least 16 years, one of his attorneys said.
His captors initially gave Manning little or no information about the charges against him as he was taken from Iraq to a US detention facility in Kuwait, he said.
Manning said he was confined to a structure he called a “cage” of eight feet square inside a tent. He suffered a breakdown about a month after his May 2010 arrest, and guards later found a noose in the cage. Manning had made the noose but failed to recall he had done so because he was so disoriented, he said.
“I remember thinking I’m going to die stuck here in this cage,” Manning said. “I thought I was going to die in that cage. That’s what I saw - an animal cage.”
Upon being transferred to Quantico, Virginia, in July of 2010, Manning was placed in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day, on suicide watch with a guard checking on him every few minutes. He was often noticed playing peek-a-boo in the mirror.
“The most entertaining thing in there was the mirror. I spent quite a lot of time with the mirror,” Manning said. When asked why, he said, “Just sheer, complete, out-of-my-mind boredom.”
The private’s testimony, which was set to continue into Friday when he would be cross-examined, came on the third day of a hearing at Fort Meade, Maryland, to determine whether his case should proceed to a full court-martial.
In the absence of a plea deal, Manning’s case could go to trial, where he faces possible life imprisonment if he is convicted of all the security breach charges against him.

Laureates Rap EU Nobel Peace Prize

South African Desmond Tutu, Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland and Adolfo Perez Esquivel of Argentina wrote an open letter criticizing the Nobel Committee’s decision, while the award ceremony approaches.
“The EU is obviously not the champion of peace that Alfred Nobel referred in his will,” write the Nobel laureates in their open letter.
The three received the Nobel Peace Prize respectively in 1984, 1976 and 1980. In the letter, they argue that the Nobel Committee has made an illegal redefinition of the Peace Prize and ask that the Nobel Committee must respect the original will of Alfred Nobel.
They also ask that the monetary prize (6.8 million NOK) should not be paid to the EU.
On October 12, the Nobel Committee awarded the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize to the EU at a time that social unrest and financial problems are shaking the very pillars of the 27-nation bloc.
A total of 18 European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Franois Hollande, confirmed their attendance to the peace prize ceremony in Oslo on 10 December. The British Prime Minister David Cameron and Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, on the other hand, have declined the invitation.
Since the Nobel Committee announced the award, many analysts have questioned the coincidence of the event with the ensuing wave of unrest across the EU over the bloc’s worsening financial woes and unpopular tight austerity measures.
Europe plunged into financial crisis in early 2008. Insolvency now threatens heavily debt-ridden countries such as Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Ireland.
Moreover, a group of Nobel peace prize-winners, prominent artists and activists have issued a call for an international military boycott of Israel following its assault on the Gaza Strip this month.
The letter also denounces the US, EU and several developing countries for what it describes as their “complicity” through weapons sales and other military support in the attack that killed 160 Palestinians, many of them civilians, including about 35 children.

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