The New Nation - Internet Edition

Afghan war cannot be won militarily: UN

Reuters, Kabul

The war in Afghanistan cannot be won militarily and success is only possible through political means including dialogue between all relevant parties, the United Nations' top official in the country said Monday.

His comments come after Britain's military commander in Afghanistan said the war could not be won and that the goal was to reduce the insurgency to a level where it was no longer a strategic threat and could be dealt with by the Afghan army.

Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith said if the Taliban were willing to talk, that might be "precisely the sort of progress" needed to end the insurgency. "I've always said to those that talk about the military surge t what we need most of all is a political surge, more political energy," Kai Eide, the U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan, told a news conference in Kabul. "We all know that we cannot win it militarily. It has to be won through political means. That means political engagement." Eide said success depended on speaking with all sides in the conflict. "If you want to have relevant results, you must speak to those who are relevant. If you want to have results that matter, you must speak to those who matter," he said.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said: "We're not losing in Afghanistan, though there certainly is a recognition that there's more we could be doing there." Asked about the possibility of negotiations with the Taliban, he replied: "This is not an element of our strategy. They have terrorized Afghan society for years."

The British ambassador to Kabul said a troop surge would only create more targets for the Taliban. The comments were made to a French colleague who sent a telegram to Paris which was leaked and published in Le Canard Enchaine newspaper last week. But the U.S. general commanding NATO forces said last month he needed three more brigades-possibly around 15,000 troops-on top of an extra 4,000 soldiers due to arrive in January. Faced with the persistent reluctance of some of its European allies to send more troops to Afghanistan or allow them to fight once there, the United States has asked Japan and NATO countries to help foot the $17-billion bill to build up the Afghan army. "The faster we get the (Afghan army) to the size and strength they need to be, the less they depend on us for providing security," said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell.

The Afghan Defense Ministry says the cost of one foreign soldier in Afghanistan is equal to more than 60 Afghan troops. More foreign troops have been killed in Afghanistan already this year than in any entire year since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban after the September 11 attacks in 2001. As casualties mount, so have Western calls for negotiations with the militants to bring an end to the conflict. But the Taliban have repeatedly rejected the idea of talks unless all 70,000 foreign troops leave the country.

"As we said before, as long as the invader forces are in Afghanistan, we won't participate in any negotiations," Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf told the Pakistan-based Afghan news agency, AIP, Monday.

Yousuf also denied reports that negotiations had taken place between the Taliban and the Afghan government in Saudi Arabia.

"All these reports are wrong. We have neither held talks with any government bodies nor have we sent any delegation for talks anywhere," Yousuf told AIP. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has also denied the reports but said he had asked the king of Saudi Arabia to help in talks with the militant group. Any negotiations would only take place in Afghanistan, he said.

Saudi Arabia was one of the few countries to recognize a Taliban government when they ruled most of Afghanistan in the 1990s.

3 Europeans win Nobel prize for medicine

Reuters, Stockholm

Two French scientists who discovered the AIDS virus and a German who bucked conventional wisdom to find a cause of cervical cancer were awarded the 2008 Nobel prize for medicine Monday.

Luc Montagnier, director of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi of the Institut Pasteur won half the prize of 10 million Swedish crowns (799, 000 pounds) for discovering the virus that has killed 25 million people since it was identified in the 1980s. Harald zur Hausen of the University of Duesseldorf and a former director of the German Cancer Research Centre shared the other half of the prize for work that went against the established opinion about the cause of cervical cancer.

"The three laureates have discovered two new viruses of great importance and the result of that has led to an improved global health," said Jan Andersson, a member of the Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institute.

Montagnier told Reuters in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where he was holding a lecture, that the award sent a strong message.

"It comes at a time when much progress has been done in research, but not enough because the epidemic is still there," Montagnier said.

"We are in Africa. Many infected people do not have access to medicine."

Obama wins vote by landslide in global polls

AFP, Washington

If the whole world could vote for US president, Democrat Barack Obama would win by a landslide, according to polls conducted in 17 countries by Reader's Digest magazine.

Respondents voted "overwhelmingly" for Obama in every country polled except the United States, where Republican John McCain was preferred by a narrow margin, the magazine said in an article posted on its website.

However, the surveys, with about 1,000 particpants in each country, were conducted several months ago, from June 2 to July 7, for an article in the November issue of the magazine. "It's Obama by a landslide-except in the country in which he's actually running for president," said John Fredricks, polling director for the magazine.

Pak President's India comments irk military establishment

AFP, Islamabad

Just a month after coming to power, President Asif Ali Zardari risks losing the support of Pakistan's powerful military establishment with a string of foreign policy gaffes, analysts and sources say.

From saying that nuclear archfoe India has "never been a threat" to reportedly admitting a deal on US missile strikes against militants, analysts say the new civilian leader's comments will cause concern in the army. As the widower of revered former premier Benazir Bhutto, Zardari also raised eyebrows in this conservative Islamic nation when he called Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin "gorgeous" in a recent meeting. But experts said it was the reference to nuclear-armed India in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that would most alarm the generals-who have been suspicious of Zardari since his wife's graft-tainted governments in the 1990s.

Thailand deputy PM resigns amid fresh protests

AFP, Bangkok

Thailand's recently appointed deputy prime minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh resigned on Tuesday because of a crackdown on fresh anti-government protests.

In a resignation letter seen by AFP, Chavalit, one of five deputy prime ministers, said his role as chief negotiator with demonstrators had been compromised after police twice fired teargas to disperse crowds on Tuesday morning, injuring 85 people.

"The reason I resign is because what the security officials have done is not in line with what I had promised and I have attempted to avoid casualties," Chavalit's letter said. "I consider that I have to take responsibility for the injuriest I quit as deputy prime minister post as of now," it said.

Recently appointed Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat had tasked Chavalit with ending a six-week occupation of the main government compound by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), a coalition of protesters calling on the government to step down.

US, NKorea seek compromise in nuclear deadlock

AP, Seoul

The United States and North Korea are being flexible in their effort to reach a compromise to resolve the dispute in the North's nuclear disarmament process, South Korea's foreign minister said Tuesday.

The North stopped disabling its main nuclear facilities in mid-August, rejecting a U.S. insistence that the regime should undergo a thorough inspection of its declaration of nuclear programs. Washington's top nuclear envoy visited Pyongyang last week to resolve the impasse, but it was unclear whether it produced any breakthrough. But on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan told a South Korean parliamentary committee that Washington and Pyongyang were trying to strike a compromise by exerting "flexibility" and "considerably reflecting each other's position."

Rescuers search Tibet rubble after quake kills 10

AP, Beijing

Rescuers rushed tents, food and water to villagers in Tibet on Tuesday after an earthquake and scores of aftershocks rattled the capital and surrounding areas, killing at least 10 people and collapsing hundreds of houses.

State media said soldiers and rescue dogs were searching through rubble for people in Yangyi, the hardest-hit village in Dangxiong County, where the magnitude 6.6 quake struck late Monday afternoon. The official Xinhua News Agency said nine people were killed in Yangyi. The 10th death was a high school student killed in a stampede in Shan'nan Prefecture, about 120 miles (200 kilometers) southwest of Dangxiong, during a quake evacuation, Xinhua said.

Nineteen people were injured in Yangyi, many with bone fractures, Xinhua said. They were mostly women, children and the elderly because the men were away harvesting and foraging for winter, it said. About 171 homes were destroyed.